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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Fear Mediocrity? Five Reasons Why

Is mediocrity the last taboo? The question came to mind a while back when I spied a column by Thomas Friedman, who suggested that in our global economy where work gets done cheaper overseas and where, here at home, technology is eating jobs in a rapidly accelerating pace, only the strong  will survive.  His overall […]

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She’s Just Not THAT Into You

Face it, fellas. She’s hot. You’re not. Walk away. Right? Nope. At least, that’s what an upcoming study in Psychological Science suggests.   In a study of 200 undergrads at University of Texas, lead author Carin Perilloux found that the least attractive men were the most likely to think that the attractive women in a “speed […]

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I Think Therefore I CAN!

Two new studies, just out this week, show that the brain is mightier than the baggage — especially when it comes to those stereotypes we women carry around in our backpacks.  It’s fantastic news for women, but before we dive in: Parallel parking: Good at it?  And speaking of driving: Get lost much? Stereotypes tell […]

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Burn Me Up, Burn Me Out?

The other day, I got a ping from a former student who sent a link to a recent piece she’d read over on Forbes.com.  “Have you seen this?” she wrote.  “It reminds me of Undecided!” The topic? Burn-out.  Apparently, it’s rampant among high achieving millennial women. At least that’s the skinny according to a piece […]

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Is Sleep A Feminist Issue?

Well, it certainly seems like it. According to Pamela Paul’s piece in Sunday’s New York Times, Mother’s little helper of the new millennium may in fact be the sleeping pill – a prescription not likely to inspire a jaunty pop song anytime soon. Nearly 3 in 10 American women fess up to using some kind […]

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Oh Wow: The Meaning of Life

Of all the words that have been spoken or written (ours included) about Steve Jobs in the past few weeks, the wisest and most meaningful may have come from the eulogy delivered by his sister, novelist Mona Simpson, who recently shared it with the New York Times. By now, you have probably read Simpson’s opening: […]

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So, What Do You Do?

A perfectly reasonable question, right? It’s social shorthand for “who are you?” a convenient fall-back in the face of awkward silence or prolonged mingling; polite, simple, safe chit-chat. Um, right? Well, consider: A couple of years ago, I reconnected with an old friend who’d since moved to Alaska. I asked him what it was like […]

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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 We Are All Fashion Victims

In the ever-escalating fetishization of the female form, I was left scratching my head once again when I opened the latest issue of Newsweek to find a quick take on Paris Fashion Week. The story focused on the untimely collapse of a few high-rent benches at the Balenciaga show. News, right? But what sent me […]

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