women and writing

I’ve been thinking again about chick lit vs. lit lit since reading this Salon review of Elaine Showalter’s history of American women writers, A Jury of Her Peers. (That the book is called “monumental” in this review is, frankly, a deterrent for me to take it on. Some words just scare me off a book: monumental, lyrical, postmodern, magical realism. I’m stodgy that way. And linear. But I am interested so I might give it a shot.)

One interesting point Showalter makes, as discussed in the review, is that historically, European women writers tended to create greater works of literature because they had servants. American women writers were so busy with housework, they had less time for writing and their field of experience was proscribed by the demands of their lives. Reviewer Laura Miller writes:

The obvious subject for such women was what they knew: home life. But, as Showalter observes, "Domestic fiction has been the most controversial genre in the literary history of American women's writing, an easy target for mockery and an embarrassment to feminist critics who wish to change the canon." Margaret Fuller articulated that ambivalence when she announced that she wanted to "not write, like a woman, of love and hope and disappointment, but like a man, of the world of intellect and action"; she never managed to pull it off. … Even socially influential writers, like Harriet Beecher Stowe (teased by Abraham Lincoln for starting the Civil War), got sniffed at by the critical establishment, and it only got worse when the 20th century ushered in the cult of the he-man novelist as personified by Ernest Hemingway. (The leftist writer Meridel Le Sueur complained that an editor rejected one of her stories for lacking the requisite amount of what she called "fishin', fightin' and fuckin'.")

And that,

… many critics and editors, especially male ones, make a fetish of "ambition," by which they mean the contemporary equivalent of novels about men in boats ("Moby-Dick," "Huckleberry Finn") rather than women in houses ("House of Mirth"), and that as a result big novels by male writers get treated as major events while slender but equally accomplished books by women tend to make a smaller splash.

This is clear and obvious to me—and the review points out that critical acclaim leads to the kinds of grants and gigs that allow writers to support themselves to write, and those go primarily to men.

I’m still sorting out in my mind, though, the difference between women’s literature and chick lit and what allows traditionally told female-centric stories to transcend the chick lit label. Jane Smiley has broken out, has Anne Tyler? Annie Proulx, definitely, although I struggle with her. I read her book Postcards on a trip once and found it relentlessly bleak. I left it in an airport when I was finished (I often do that when I travel) and then felt guilty because someone else would pick it up and end up as depressed as I.

Is Nick Hornby chick lit? Was Edith Wharton chick lit in her day? As I recall from the monumental biography of her that I half read, she saw greater success than her friend and contemporary Henry James, but did she get the same critical respect? (I don’t remember off the top of my head. Anyone? She certainly has my respect. I adore her.)

And I recall a friend telling me about being told by agents and publishers that because her novel was about a teenaged girl, it could not be sold as an adult novel and needed to be recast as a young adult novel. Yet the male coming-of-age novel is a literary institution.

I’m confused.

Of course, Showalter points out that changing attitudes about domestic fiction is only one way for women writers to gain more respect. The other is for us to seize the big canvases.

Sigh. I don’t think I have the big canvas in me. (And of course you realize, this is all about me. It’s my blog.) Maybe I do. Maybe I have to get all my little stories out of me first and eventually the big story I have to tell will coalesce.

I guess I just have to live long enough and keep writing.

politics n flotsam friday

I'll write what I can about last night’s RNC but it’s all so depressing.

One small consolation is that looking at McCain’s 96-year-old mom, I’d say there’s a very good chance that he has a lot of lively years left in him. She looks amazing, and when he introduced her, she fairly leaped out of her seat. So that means if the Republicans do win, McCain might actually live through his term and not saddle us with a lipstick wearing pit bull running the country into the ground.

Not that McCain would make me happy.

It’s going to be a very interesting, very stressful couple of months.

Here’s Gloria Steinem saying things I like about Palin. Too bad it’s Gloria Steinem, since she carries the stench of feminism. A friend who teaches college in the Bible belt told me that when she mentioned feminism in class the other day, a student actually stood up and walked out in a huff. And, she said, that’s not unusual—the only difference is that it’s usually girls who get offended and this time it was a guy.

A feminist speaking out against Palin only makes her more appealing to her voter base.

Ugh.

Let’s change the subject. Here are some links to cheer us up.

Cartoons for the week …

Love this one, especially since it differentiates between blogging and mindless barking. I thought they were the same things.

And this may be the most delightful depiction of marriage ever. I would venture to say that this is just how Tom feels about me and the feeling is mutual. Except he's a manly cupcake. No pink icing on him.

Yoga joke du jour. Have I posted this one already? The New Yorker repeats the cartoons it sends out. I know I’ve seen it already.

Speaking of yoga, I’m way off that program. In fact, maintaining my workout regime has become a major struggle. I have resumed power walking, which I gave up many months ago out of boredom. But now that the weather is marginally cooler than it’s been all summer, I’ve been back out there with my iPod. It’s still boring but it’s something. If I don’t ramp things up very soon, I’m going to start splitting seams. It’s that bad.

And finally, here’s a delicious blog my friend Mary turned me onto, in which an artist takes commissions and critiques from his three-year-old daughter, Tiny Art Director.

If that doesn’t cheer you up, I can’t help you.

abercrombie & fitch should shrivel and die

Abercrombie & Fitch is entitled to run its business almost any way it wants, although it did get spanked for discriminatory hiring practices.

However, this story about how employees deemed not attractive enough are hustled away to the storeroom, out of sight of customers, is so very very icky that I get the hoobie goobies thinking about it.

Ick. Ick, ick, ick, ick, ICK!

What are we doing to ourselves, what are we doing to our youth, where did our values go so far astray? We are marinating in a strange brew of entitlement and self-loathing, setting up impossible standards and then hating ourselves for our inability to live up to them. We must not only be young forever, we must be young and beautiful.

But by whose standards, please? Some numbnuts who has risen to district manager of an Abercrombie & Fitch? This person gets to decide who is beautiful enough to represent the company? Are our sensibilities, as consumers, so rareified that we would make our shopping decisions according to whether we are attracted to the elf who greets us at the door? Honestly, if you haven’t been chased out by the onslaught if music in A&F, which is played at jet-engine decibels, then surely you are tough enough to withstand the shock of seeing a young person who might not ever appear on the cover of a fashion magazine.

Besides, even if that person is worthy of a cover shot, he or she would be airbrushed anyway. Lilies must be gilded and then gilded again. We are never good enough.

enough with the beauty

So I was watching Mad Men the other night and a startling thought suddenly occurred to me: I’m tired of looking at beautiful people. Beautiful women in particular, all roughly the same age. Separate from the feminist issue of media images and the psychological issues of self-esteem and body image--all this beauty has become dull and predictable,

Specifically, it occurred to me how much more interesting the character Bobbie Barrett would be (she’s the comedian’s wife, Draper’s most recent dalliance) if she were a little more roadworn, a little less young and fresh under her hardened broad act. Give me a face that has lived a little, please. On a person who still manages to be sexy and sexual.

One reason British television shows and movies are so engrossing is that the Brits are unafraid of character actors whose faces are more interesting than strictly beautiful.

Which leads me, in a roundabout way, to an interesting campaign to get one of the women’s magazines to publish an issue in which the feature photo shoot and cover have no airbrushed imagines. If you join the campaign, you are promising to purchasing at least two copies of the first magazine to rise to the challenge.

Sure, it sounds like a very fat chance. But it’s worth a try, eh what? To join the campaign, click here.

dillard's is silly but neimans is creepy

Here’s our happy multiple mom again, from today’s paper. She’s still silly but the bathing suits in this ad aren’t hideous and I’ve grown accustomed to her face and her easy-care hair.

Turn the page and…. (cue music from Psycho shower scene)


My god! This poor child! Feed her! Get her out of those Devil Shoes! For god’s sake, at least let her grow up a few years before you put her through this. Look at this sweet little girl face.

Yeah, yeah. Fashionistas are rolling their eyes at me—so gauche to complain about skinny underage models. But this photo gives me the willies.

Here, a young Dallas model discusses her bout with eating disorders. I wanted to cry and throw up reading that one casting director for Paris fashion week told her, "You're turning into a woman, and your body is changing. You need to learn to control that."

I know women are supposed to be inspired to shop by imagining they look younger, slimmer and sexier than they are, but this can go too far. Even when fashion photos aren’t quite as disturbing as this one, I’m not dumb enough to imagine I’ll ever look like a 14-year-old dressed as a grown up. I wouldn’t want to, anyway.

I had a similar thought while working out the other day to a Crunch DVD. All those pretty, perky and extremely buff women were supposed to inspire me but that was not the effect they had. I wished for someone I could relate to, someone who was a little bit older, a little bit curvier, a little bit imperfect but fit. I wasn’t discouraged by the sight of all those sexy sixpacks, but with them on the TV screen, my reflection in the mirror was kind of depressing. One reason Richard Simmons workouts are so much fun is because he has people of all sizes Sweatin' to the Oldies. To me, that’s much more inspiring than a chorus line of women who clearly dedicate their lives to their buns and abs. They only makes me feel that what I can do is not enough and never will be.

this n that tuesday

The Dallas Morning News is launching a new publication called The Briefing, which will be an abbreviated newspaper—a one-section broadsheet, that will be delivered free to non-subscribers. Full story here.

Hm…interesting concept. I’m trying to decide how I feel about this. Advertisers will like it since it will deliver their ads into more hands. And that may keep the the dinosaur lumbering along a little longer. I'm all for that.

Funny--I can’t imagine my newspaper taking any less time to read in the morning than it already does, although I do have the benefit of spending days at my computer, keeping up with news online, so I can breeze through much of it. A lot of people don’t have that luxury. (I spoke to a busy working single mom recently who, when I mentioned the earthquake in China, said, “There was an earthquake in China?”)

Still, I’m always slightly irked at the benefits showered on new customers/non customers by companies. You know, the old open a bank account, get a free toaster thing. No interest introductory rates on credit cards.

At best, existing customers can opt-in to be barraged by offers of nominal discounts from various “partners.” (I don’t consider 10% off to be anything but a come-on) If my credit card company really wanted to show its appreciation, it would reward me with a couple of interest-free months. My newspaper—I pay $228 a year for a daily subscription--would cut me a price deal or give me access to its online archives free. My bank could toss $25 in my account for every year I stick with it. That kind of thing. Show me some love.
___

I’m not usually a National Review kind of girl, but this essay by Mark Steyn tickled me. Yes, I support Obama and will vote for him. No question. I think the army of malevolent Hillary supporters planning to vote for McCain are some sort of invented bogeywomen.

But I admit that I will get some small satisfaction in seeing Obama parsed with the same glee and attention that Hillary was throughout the campaign, as in Steyn’s essay.
___

Here is a fabulous blog post from Judith Warner (thanks Mary) that ties together Hillary and Sex in the City. Take a moment to take a look.

---

And finally, watch this video and tell me again how there was no sexism and misogyny in this past campaign.

follow-up

MsKrit, whose depth of celebrity knowledge always surprises me, sends me this news about our insane young woman wearing her underwear over her clothes. Yeah, I suppose if you're annoying three times in the same ad, that would count as overexposed.

My friend Nancy sent me this fabulous Salon.com essay by Joan Walsh about what Obama must do to win over Hillary's constituency--especially women. Especially middle-aged women, who were brutalized by this campaign.

I've been stunned by the extent to which trashing Clinton supporters as washed up old white women is acceptable,Walsh writes. A writer whose work I respect submitted a piece addressed to "old white feminists," telling them to get out of Obama's way. I've found my own writing often dismissed not on its merits (or lack thereof) but because as a woman who will turn 50 in September, I'm supposed to be Clinton's demographic. Salon's letters pages, as well as the comments sections around the blogosphere, are studded with dismissive, derisive references to bitter old white women.

I'm all verklempt.

no thanks

Although I like both sex and the city, I don’t really get the whole cult status of Sex and the City. I used to watch it in reruns sometimes, BC (Before Cable) but found it more irritating than entertaining.

I was particularly annoyed to read a quote from a 45-year-old woman in today’s paper saying, “They were the first really powerful women” on television.

Wow. Can we define power here? Yeah, have good jobs, although except attorney Miranda, they all were in pink-collar jobs. (And, by the way, could Carrie really afford all those clothes on a columnist’s salary? She must work at the same place the friends of Friends worked to pay for all those nice apartments.)

But what they did most was talk about men, think about men, fret about men, sleep with men, pine for men, break up with men … I know sex is in the title, but where is the power in all that? Considering that the theme of the show seems to be we don’t need no stinkin’ men, we have each other! they sure seem boy crazy. Bo-ring.

And let’s talk about powerful women on TV. While she’s at the front of my mind--what with the death of Harvey Korman-—how about Carol Burnett? She was powerful as a professional and she was completely in control of her comedy. Maude was a powerful female character. The golden girls of The Golden Girls had a lot more on their minds than men, even though they were out there dating and getting laid plenty. I know that because the show has become one of my late night guilty pleasures. Believe it or not (I know you don’t) it’s funny.

Mary Richards was virginal, but she was out there makin’ it on her own. Actually, the girls of SATC are more like Rhoda, who was supposed to be the boy-crazy loser on the MTM show. Hot Lips Hoolihan wasn’t above a little extramarital hoohoo, but she was nothing if not strong like ox and she had lots more on her mind than shoes and penis.

Yeah, SATS brought a baby into the mix, and breast cancer. But in the shows I saw, all the other characters were self-congratulating when they tore themselves away from their sexual needs to pay attention to the enormous life challenges their dear, dear friends faced. Such sacrifice!

First strong women on television? I don’t see the characters of SATS as strong at all. I see them as needy, demanding and annoying. They might have been the first to talk openly about sex, but they also had the benefit of cable. The Golden Girls was pretty good at innuendo, working within network broadcasting codes.

Are the women who admire this gang of whiners as strong women to emulate the same ones who think a Hillary nutcracker is funny?

OK, I’ll give the show one thing: The catch phrase “He’s just not that into you” is incredibly useful and applies in various contexts. But even Dr. Phil has contributed to our society with “How’s that workin’ for you?” which is equally useful although he is equally annoying.

I won’t be getting a gang of gal pals together to partake in this particular pop culture nonevent. I’m just not that into them.

if it's friday it must be flotsam

Lots of flotsam today so let’s get busy.

First, shameless promotion: Black and Blue and the AllGood Café tomorrow night. Meet me there! The Dallas Observer advanced the show here.

***
A month or so ago, my brother sent me this link to Missing Money, a site that searches for unclaimed property (i.e. money). He’d searched my name and found money owed to me. I went to the site, filled out the brief form and forgot all about it. Well shiver me timbers and blow me over—a check for $371 turned up in my mailbox last week! Try it.

***

The email subject line said: Press release

The message said: Hope your readers find this press release of interest.

The press release was an attached Word document.

If ever a presentation begged to be ignored, it’s this one. A subject and message that tells me nothing, and an attachment from someone I don’t know. Maybe it’s a perfectly legitimate release with information that my readers would find of interest but I’m not going to investigate. Hit delete, get on with my life. The world is full of cluelessness.

***

Here’s a nifty little tip from the NYT tech blog. If you use Firefox, you can bring up the Quick Find box to search a page by just hitting the forward slash key (same key as the question mark). Seconds saved every week!

***

Texas Tech University psychology department has launched a series of short podcasts about this and that, psychology-ish, featuring interviews with experts here and there. Here’s the homepage. They’re a little homespun sounding but that’s OK.

***

I don’t know why this story is buried on page 3 of the business section, but it’s big exciting news to me. Gas prices are causing people to “stampede” to small car. Can I get a HELL YEAH?

Unfortunately, this is bad news for SUV and truck manufacturers (i.e. American companies). But it's good for the planet, the highways and my blood pressure, since the mere sight of a Hummer makes it soar. I'm very sensitive that way.

***

Another of my pet peeves is the luxurification of the world. Have I discussed that before? How we seem to be devaluing all qualities—quaint, cozy, charming, kitschy—in favor of luxurious? It’s one of my favorite rants, I’m happy to go into it if I’ve neglected to rant it here.

Anyway, the DMN has a story this morning that seems to back my point, about a direct sales company called Home Interiors that was extremely successful until new owners decided to aim for the high-end market instead of the cozy low-incomers for whom the brand was developed. It didn’t work and now the company is filing for bankruptcy.

I love having my prejudices affirmed.

***

The snarky chick-oriented website Jezebel puts an interesting and believable spin on reports that the depression rate in women is twice that of men.

The Jezebel writer suggests that this isn’t because twice as many women as men get depressed but because women are so much more likely to go for treatment when they do. She speculates that many more men are depressed than ever seek treatment. If some dude is walking around depressed but undiagnosed, does he count? she asks.

It’s a good post, take a look.

***

Jezebel has also alerted me to a Ms. magazine article that sounds interesting, about self-objectification or "viewing one's body as a sex object to be consumed by the male gaze."

The post continues: More and more women are viewing themselves as sex objects, says Caroline Heldman, Ph.D., an assistant professor of politics at Occidental College, and it's due in large part to the veritable onslaught of advertising images that we're subjected to.

I think this is right on right on but the only solution offered, evidently, is to avoid media images objectifying women, but that would pretty much mean locking oneself in a dark room.
Read the post yourself.

I certainly wish I could stop constantly comparing myself with other women--both media images and women I see every day. It’s a miserable pastime, a distracting little drone in my head: I’m fatter than her…I’m thinner than her...fatter…thinner…fatter…fatter…older…younger….fatter…

What a useless waste of brain energy.

***
Hey, the cool website WorldHum linked to my post this week about how rising travel costs might discourage dabblers from traveling. OK, so I alerted an editor to the post in a bit of Shameless Self Promotion, but he liked it enough to link so that was very gratifying.

***
Finally, in what may become a weekly voyeuristic feature as long as I feel like it, this week’s Google searches that brought people to this site are:

xoloescuintle price

Thank God I books for sale Castagnini

inside the brain of a narcissist

Narcissist Bully

negative reviews of elizabeth gilbert's eat, pray, love

gmail emails not reaching their destination

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give me obama email adress and guest 2008@yahoo.com

Xoloescuintle Dog

jack kent cooke Conundrum

gmail to yahoo not getting sent

chick stuff

Chick flicks and chick lit are under discussion these days. In a review by Jane Smiley of Jennifer Weiner’s Certain Girls, Smiley bemoans the pinkness of the cover, which relegates the book to the girl ghetto. Actually, she laments Weiner’s evident decision to aim for the chick lit shelves.

Smiley writes:

In her latest novel, she seems boxed in by her chosen genre, and it's a shame, because she's got the intelligence and the ambition to address larger questions than the psychological ups and downs of her nice Jewish characters. For whatever reason, though, she doesn't dare.

Meanwhile, Hollywood is trying to figure out what the Next Big Thing in chick flicks will be, now that Meg Ryan is getting long in the tooth. (OK, Hollywood didn’t say that, I did. But to me, Meg Ryan epitomizes the last round of chick flicks. She’s just so cute and inoffensive.)

My first question: Why is chick lit considered a ghetto while guy lit is considered the real deal? Why should the psychological ups and downs of Martin Amis’ characters be more respected than Weiner’s?

For that matter, why wasn’t Wally Lamb’s massive bestseller, She’s Come Undone given a pink cover? I wonder if Henry James was considered chick lit in his day, since his stories are all about intimate relationships? What about Jane Austen? Is Anne Tyler chick lit?

I have similar questions about chick flicks. I love the entire Bette Davis canon—are those chick flicks? What about Gone With the Wind? (Movie and book, actually.) If a book or movie has staying power, does that move it out of the ghetto into the good neighborhood?

I guess what is considered hardcore chick lit today is written to a formula that includes lots of shopping, brand name-dropping, cocktails and looooove. And chick flicks basically are boy+girl= happily ever after, eventually. Unless they’re a about somebody dying. (Beaches—which I’ve seen and didn’t care about.)

I don’t read a ton of hardcore chick lit, but I read The Devil Wears Prada and was surprised by how well-written it was. I also enjoyed the movie. Then I read Lauren Weisberger’s second book, Everyone Worth Knowing, and found it to be the exact same story, different career (public relations). Tedious. I read Bridget Jones’ Diary and enjoyed that and the movie, but decided not to read the follow-up for fear it would suck. (I rarely see movie sequels either, for the same reason.)

I am a sucker for a few recent-ish all-out chick flicks. Although I usually find Julia Roberts irritating, I do have a soft spot for Notting Hill. (I suspect my aversion to Julia Roberts has something to do with my loathing for her breakthrough movie, Pretty Woman. No, don’t get me started.) I catch Legally Blonde on TV whenever I come across it. I love the fact that Elle gets the degree and, only incidentally, the good guy.

Most of my favorite chick flicks are moldy olides, though. An Officer and a Gentleman got me through some hard times when I first moved to Texas and things weren’t going well. I saw it several times in one week because I needed escapism so badly. I love Private Benjamin, with Goldie Hawn, in which she is widowed on her wedding night and joins the army. The ending tickles me every time I see it (and it’s been a while—I might have to find it for fun). I also like Rich and Famous, with Candice Bergen and Jacqueline Bisset, which follows a friendship over decades.

I suppose my favorite chick lit and flicks involve women going for something other than the guy. You know, finding a guy is great, but that’s not all there is to us.

gloria sez

Much better than I.

awf

So I’m trying to wrap my mind around the fact that when blacks talk about racism, the nation is awed but when women talk about sexism, we are mocked. Shoulder pad feminists, my ass….as always, it comes down to what women wear.

I’d like to point out that racism is divided by race but in our world, all the races are united in sexism. Women are fair game to all. You can make jokes about women in general. Jokes about fat women are mainstream. Old women are frequently portrayed as ridiculous. Blond jokes are a national institution.

Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, Feb. 13, 2008
Relaying a joke told by Penn Jillette: "Obama is just creaming Hillary. You know, all these primaries, you know. And Hillary says it's not fair, because they're being held in February, and February is Black History Month. And unfortunately for Hillary, there's no White Bitch Month."

And this is different from Don Imus…how? Actually Don Imus managed to insult all women, black and white, but it was the black part that caused the real uproar. (The column from which the above was excerpted, by NOW president Kim Gandy, is great reading.)

Women are still murdered for being not toeing the line men set.

From NOW: Every day four women die in this country as a result of domestic violence, the euphemism for murders and assaults by husbands and boyfriends. That's approximately 1,400 women a year, according to the FBI. The number of women who have been murdered by their intimate partners is greater than the number of soldiers killed in the Vietnam War.

From UNESCO, as published on PBS.org:... the UNESCO project illustrates the wildly varying data on human trafficking produced by government organizations and NGOs (non-governmental organizations). For example, in 2001, the FBI estimated 700,000 women and children were trafficked worldwide, UNICEF estimated 1.75 million, and the International Organization on Migration (IOM) merely 400,000. In 2001, the UN drastically changed its own estimate of trafficked people in 2000 -- from 4,000,000 to 1,000,000.

There’s that pesky wage gap…

From NOW: Fifty-five percent of all women work in female-dominated jobs (jobs in which women comprise 70 percent or more of the workforce) whereas only 8.5 percent of all men work in these occupations. However, the men working in female-dominated jobs still receive about 20 percent more than women who work in female-dominated jobs.

And poverty gap…

From the U.S. Census: Women are more likely than men to live in poverty.
In 2001, 12.9 percent of the female population and 10.4 percent of the male population lived below the poverty level. Poverty rates were highest for children: the proportions of boys and girls (those under 18) who were poor were not statistically different (16.4 percent and 16.2, respectively). From ages 18 to 64, the poverty rate was 11.6 percent for women and 8.5 percent for men. For those 65 years and over, the poverty rate was 12.4 percent for women compared with 7.0 percent for men (see Figure 6). Like income, poverty varies by family type. Of families living in poverty in 2001, 50.9 percent were maintained by women with no spouse present, 40.5 percent were married-couple families, and 8.5 percent were maintained by men with no wife present.

In my business, some of us were mighty happy to learn of women doing loudly what some of us were doing quietly for years— counting bylines in the major (i.e. prestigious and high-paying) magazines. What a surprise! More men than women!

Am I pissed? Yup, I’m an angry white female.

Speaking of what not to wear, I then pick up my paper and see a photo of this full-grown man, Jason Helgeson, dressed like a five-year-old and am yet more disgusted.

Guys can get away with just about anything but when women gripe, even other women turn against them.

invisible, shminvisible

I would like to write all sorts of interesting things for you today but computer-related limitations interfere, so I will be brief and point you elsewhere for your day's reading--specifically to this Newsweek essay by Tina Brown about Boomer women and Hillary. (I know, Ruth. Not all Boomer women. No guilt trip implied here.)

Brown writes: Much has been written about how boomer women have rallied to Hillary's cause (she won an impressive 67 percent of the white women voting in Ohio; they were 44 percent of the total). It's fashionable to write off this core element of her base as rabid paleo-feminists fighting the tired old gender wars of the past....

It's a revolt that has been overdue for a while and has now found its focus in Clinton's candidacy. In 1952, Ralph Ellison's revelatory novel, "Invisible Man," nailed the experience of being black in America. In the relentless youth culture of the early 21st century, if you are 50 and female, the novel that's being written on your forehead every day is "Invisible Woman." All over the country there are vigorous, independent, self-liberated boomer women—women who possess all the management skills that come from raising families while holding down demanding jobs, women who have experience, enterprise and, among the empty nesters, a little financial independence, yet still find themselves steadfastly dissed and ignored. Advertisers don't want them. TV networks dump their older anchorwomen off the air. Hollywood studios refuse to write parts for them. Employers make it clear they'd prefer a "fresh (cheaper) face."

Yup. And a lot of us are getting surly about it.