Blessed Be the Risk-Takers

And so a self-assured, kick-ass student we’ll call Jena followed me up to my office after the first day of class last week.  We made some idle chit-chat for a minute or two and then she got down to it:  She wasn’t sure she was going to stick it out.  Why?  For the first time [...]

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You’ll Never Have Sex Again, You’ll Be Alone Forever, and Other Best Sellers

Oy. You’ve surely seen the headlines by now: Women in charge have less sex! Too bossy to make love: Women who make all the decisions at home pay the price in passion! The message is clear: The stronger the lady, the less likely she is to get laid. The thing is, though, that’s not exactly the [...]

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Diaper Parties? Bring on the Beer Bong

Let me begin by telling you about the best baby shower I never went to. It was in honor of the daughter of a good friend who lived far, far away from most of us who knew her well. But she and her husband were, like all new parents, still in need of a great [...]

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Fail Thee Well

What if the surest indicator of your future success–of living a happy, meaningful, and productive life–is how good you are at failing? Brace yourselves, perfectionists, because the evidence is mounting: in order to fly, you’ve first got to fail. And (worse!) how well you fail may be one of the biggest predictors of success. Bigger [...]

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Poor Women and the End of Men?

Remember Hanna Rosin?  She’s the author of last year’s controversial “End of Men” cover story in The Atlantic that suggested that because women do better in school, earn over half the college degrees, and are soaring into the professions, a matriarchy is precious minutes away. Wednesday, she was interviewed over at Slate where, in anticipation [...]

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On Getting Real

Be authentic. What does that even mean, anyway? Not a whole hell of a lot, according to Stephanie Rosenbloom in this Sunday’s New York Times. The word, she says, has been watered down to the point of meaninglessness, like so many white wine spritzers. Everyone from Anderson Cooper to Sarah Ferguson to Katie Couric to [...]

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“Too Pretty To Do Homework?”

I almost choked on my Cheerios Wednesday morning when I read about an incomprehensibly sexist tee-shirt that JCPenney had attempted to market to tweener girls. The shirt not-s0-subtly trumpeted the retro stereotype that girls can be smart or they can be pretty.  But never both. Its slogan, emblazoned front and center in colorful girly writing, [...]

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