Letters to the Editor
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At 20, I thought she was funny; at 50, I'm bored
"You realize that you actually thought you were going to be the only person who didn't go through menopause," she said.
Why does she insist on writing "you" when she clearly means "me"? Not all of her "insights" are universal. I went through menopause at 45 and it was a breeze. At 50, I don't give crap about the "youth-obsessed" culture, except to enjoy mocking it.
"The constant confusion in life for me is that you honestly do feel bad when you see in the mirror that yet another coup de vieux has happened to you while at the same time understanding that it's better than being dead. There's this gigantic distance between those two things."
I figured this out in my 20s and moved on. Ephron still writes like someone who cares far too much about what other people think of her in regard to utterly superficial matters.
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Where's the Copy Editor?
Rebecca, honey...
It's " cracking good writer" or " crackling writing," not "crackling good writer."
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My Blue Heaven
I thoroughly enjoyed My Blue Heaven. Rick Moranis was an excellent sidekick to Steve Martin. I thought it was a funny take on something you usually only see dry, boring dramas about. Not everything needs to be, or should be Citizen Kane. Imagine how boring that'd be. It was a great movie, sure, but who wants just one thing over and over?
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Baffled
A few things:
1) How can Traister praise Ephron's movies with a straight face? I was all set for a bright, funny critique of a woman who has spent her career trafficking in cliches and reinforcing sexist stereotypes, but what I got instead was a puff piece that cannot possibly relate to the person who brought us ole chestnuts like "Sleepless in Seattle" and "When Harry Met Sally."
2) Why is the only starred letter also the sole letter that is not critical of Ephron and this story?
3) In almost every fawning profile published anywhere, the writer comments on the subject's amazingly youthful appearance. Has anyone ever considered that "this is what 65 looks like?" Ephron doesn't look particularly youthful, which is fine. She looks like many her age.
JM
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Man, you people are cranky
This was a nice profile with some apt back story and a good interview. For some, it underlines what they don't like about Ephron. Fine. It does a solid job of getting across who she is, what she's done and what she thinks about it. What more would one want of a personality piece?
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Attack dogs:
Who are you people that attack her writing, her films, her family, her looks? I know that conflict is more interesting than civility and I suspect it feels ducky to swing away at a celebrity, but are you attack dogs as aggressive in the meat world as you are in cyberspace? I struggle to perceive your points in the rush of aggression.
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She is wrong about the hair dye
The book also details her personal maintenance, including her wise observation that the "reason why forty, fifty, and sixty don't look the way they used to [is] not because of feminism, or better living through exercise. It's because of hair dye."
Actually, women (and men) have been using hair dye for thousands of years.
There are plenty of places in the world where they have hair dye but they don't have feminism or allow women to go to the gym. And forty year old women in those places look much older than sixty year old women here.
Stress also plays a role. Like the stress of war and poverty, for example. And rape and forced childbearing and being politically powerless and all that.
Yes, those are the things that really age women. And we look so young now because we don't have as much of them here as we used to.
It is definitely not the hair dye.
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Another Classic Traister in the guise of Phebe from As You Like It
Rebecca Traister's writing is proof that the only people who are allowed to speak freely are people who won't do anything substantial with that freedom. At least when she was writing about Anal Sex a couple of years ago... oh nevermind.
That said... I think the main thing we should all be looking forward to from Rebecca is a career in fluff journalism where she basically gets paid for the next few years to hang out with super weathly elite (and Gore Vidal) and then she herself will take the Nora Ephron route, move to Los Angeles, and write a bunch of moronic movies while making millions of dollars, then marrying well, and then writing about the whole whirlwind of fun in a memoir called "The Road Not Taken" or something. Why do we have to actually read this future memoir, Rebecca, when your life trajectory is so obvious.
It's painful, Rebecca, to see you waste your talent being a boot licking toady who writes personality pieces about rich people. But, as the Nora Ephron piece proves, if you want to act on the big stage you have to work the casting couches first. Letting Nora Ephron off the hook for the crap movies she's been making for years is pathetic, but obviously a wise career move for Traister, who will no doubt be reaping big rewards from her social connections any time soon.
Why didn't YOU or NORA or any other woman who's currently being put forward as a shining example of the successes of feminism study math or science, Rebecca? What did you really do to earn the right at such a young age to be one of the most influential women journalists in America? And do you not, Rebecca, feel a little bit more responsibility as a journalist to cover more significant issues? Like for example: don't you think that getting Cosmetic Surgery, Nora, is stupid?
Seriously. Lame.
And, by the way, the whole Rebecca-Traister-As-Feminist thing is getting tiresome because to me Rebecca's Feminism is nothing more than a careerist pose. She's got a job. That job is writing about rich people. The feminism isn't really anything more than a tangential issue.
And, finally, Rebecca: Tell Ariana Huffington "hi" for all of us proles next time you see her, and I hope your vacation over in Martha's Vineyard, or where ever, goes well. Maybe THIS is the year that Bif or Chip or whoever really will pop the question!
GAWD.
At the same time, I have to admit, I love Rebecca Traister and I wish I was her. Not that I want to be a woman or anything, I am just saying... oh nevermind.
"Wilt thou, Silvius?" ...to quote the bard.