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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Could Women Against Guns Be As Powerful as Mothers Against Drunk Driving?

Do not let the outrage die. In the wake of the horrific mass murders in Newtown, Conn., we’ve read plenty of newspaper articles, listened to numerous TV commentators, read hundreds of Facebook posts, all with the same message:  we need to talk about gun control. And yet. My biggest fear is that, once the grief […]

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What Girls Can Learn From Olympic Grrrrrrrrrrrl Power

The other day after I got home from my run (I use the term advisedly), I got a call from the local NBC affiliate asking for a quick interview on the overall impact of “girl power”  in this year’s Olympics.  Within ten minutes, the reporter and her cameraman were on their way. While dashing around […]

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Are We What We Wear?

Does fashion reflect the culture, or does it sometimes shake it loose? I bring this up because we were recently on a decadent vacation and somewhere between a tamarind smoothie and a full body massage, I picked up the latest issue of Vogue and flipped to a fashion spread entitled “Risky Business.” And what did […]

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Happy Graduation: Now Go Out There and Fail!

This being graduation season, the other day I asked the over-achieving rockstars in my senior journalism capstone class what they’d most like to hear from a commencement speaker. Thankfully, I heard no references to roads not taken nor endings-versus-beginnings.  (Though I would have enjoyed a quick reference to that four-word piece of advice from the […]

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You Rulebreaker, You.

If rules were made to be broken, why are so many of us so afraid of breaking them? They have their function, after all: if everyone took a red light as but a minor suggestion, driving—or merely riding in—a car would be a seriously risky endeavor. Actually though, it occurs to me as I type […]

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Leap of Faith, Please

The other day, I ran across an interview with Susan Sarandon over there at ontheredcarpet.com that reminded me once again that good things are often born of chaos.  Or, as we so often write: We are our failures, those blips in the road that can propel us forward. But only if we let them. Back […]

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The Real Lessons We Can Learn From Mad Men

Sure, there’s been a lot of chat about everything that’s wrong with Mad Men and why women in general and feminists in particular should hate its unrepentant misogynystic guts.  And let’s face it:  this is a show that glorifies gin, Lucky Strikes and getting laid (by anyone but one’s spouse). What’s not to hate, right? […]

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New Generation, Same Story?

Bryce Covert’s recent post on The Nation’s website got me thinking today. It’s about an Accenture survey of Gen Y working women which found that -they have the most positive outlook for women in the workplace of any other generation. And yet: -when it comes to their careers, they’re less likely to proactively manage their […]

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More Americans Than Ever Are Living Single. Here’s Why.

Flying solo is in–in a serious way. A New York Times Q&A with Eric Kilnenberg, NYU sociology professor and author of the new book “Going Solo,” leads with the facts: In 1950, 22 percent of American adults were single. Now that number is almost 50 percent. One in seven adults lives alone. Half of all […]

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