Repeat After Me: Just Say No.

If we want to close the ambition gap, a good first step might be learning how to shake our heads. There’s this great quote from Feminist icon Germaine Greer: When we talk about women having it all, what they really have all of is the work.”  She was being somewhat facetious.   But then again, not […]

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From Delhi to D.C.: What We Can Do in the Fight Against Gender Violence

It’s easy to be appalled by things that happen elsewhere: the brutal, horrifying rape of the 23 year-old Indian student, so violent that she died of her injuries. Malala Yousufzai, the 15 year-old Pakistani schoolgirl/activist who was shot in the head by the Taliban. It’s easy to feel a sort of removed pity in the […]

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Reuniting With The Inner Geek

I received a terrifying letter in the mail the other day: an invitation to a grade school reunion.  As in eighth grade. Ew, right? The very thought sent chills up my spine.  Did I really want to revisit my adolescent self? Does anyone? Now, I am old enough to know that every one of us, […]

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Hillary for Veep!

Did you catch Bill Keller’s piece in the New York Times yesterday? Called “Just the ticket,” it’s a pretty compelling case for replacing Joe Biden with Hillary Clinton for second-to-the-top job when this year’s presidential election rolls around. Now, we love Biden’s faux pas and f-bombs as much as anyone, but–hello!–how could we not jump […]

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Self, How Did I Get Here?

 Last week during all the memorializing of Apple founder/college dropout/cultural visionary Steve Jobs, I found myself watching the commencement speech he gave at Stanford University in 2005 — and, in all that wisdom, one line in particular gave me the chills: Don’t Live Someone Else’s Life, he said. Actually, what he said was: Your time […]

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Why Women Need to Be the Ones Occupying Wall Street

What’s the Occupy Wall Street movement–an ongoing, multi-city protest against corporate greed, cronyism and inequity–got to do with gender politics, you ask? I say: everything. The movement’s rallying cry is this: We are the 99%. As in, 1% of the population holds the bulk of the wealth and the power in this country, leaving 99% […]

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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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Still Haunted by the Mean Girls?

So I came across a post over at BNET the other day that suggests that our high school selves sometimes come back to kick us in the pocketbook when it comes to our careers.   According to business writer Jeff Haden, our professional lives are “like high school with money.” But what might have led to […]

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Emerging Adultiness: 20-Somethings Are The New 20-Somethings

By now, you’ve surely seen it. The cover story in this Sunday’s New York Times magazine went viral days before it landed on my doorstep. Robin Marantz Henig’s “What Is It About 20-Somethings?” focuses a lot on the work of psychologist Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, who’s trying to get “Emerging Adulthood” identified as an official, distinct […]

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Ditching the Seventh-grade Self

Let’s revisit your school picture from seventh grade, shall we? No doubt, it’s tragic. Beyond the unfortunate hair, what you probably see is a very uncertain self lurking behind that all-too-eager smile. For many of us, life took an abrupt left once adolescence reared its awkward head. Maybe we were one of the cool kids. […]

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