boring thing yet I've ever read on Salon. I mean, who cares?

Though I was never as attractive as Wurtzel or as successful, I am in the same boat.

You can't help but think about missed opportunities and what-might-have-beens. Self-absorbed. Certainly. But it tends to happen when it's just yourself to be absorbed with.

The equivalent of ugly women isn't "nice guys", it's ugly men. Actual nice guys come in all levels of attractiveness from stunning to chow chow the dog faced boy. As do assholes. Proclaiming that women don't like nice guys and completely erasing the men's looks from the picture while simply assuming female beauty as part of the concept "nice girls" is pretty much sexism 101. Personally, I've always been a pretty girl (and quite nice most of the time)and I avoid self proclaimed "nice guys" like they were carrying ebola, because they're never as nice as they think they are. My husband is both good looking and one of the nicest guys you could even hope to meet, and the least nice man I ever dated was also the least good looking, so go chew on that, whiny boys.

As far as the Wurtzel article is concerned, it sounds like she's having a pretty standard mid life crisis full of regrets about what might have been. In her case she's seeing it as all about beauty and the loss thereof because that's always been what she hinged her identity on.

The sad thing about her essay is that for all her talk about gaining wisdom she doesn't actually sound like she's learned anything at all. Which is a damn shame. I don't feel any bitterness or resentment towards her, I just feel sort of sad for her that in her 40s she still hasn't attained any sort of internal sense of herself separate from how other people see her. No wonder she sound so unhappy.

Boy, it sure makes me sad to hear that you know such shitty "feminists."

I'm a feminist, and about as pretty as I need to be (I mean, I'm no Elizabeth Wurtzel or anything, but I'm alright) and I don't begrudge other pretty women anything they have.

I don't recall ever losing out on anything because I'm not pretty enough.

I'm also intelligent enough and confident enough that I'm able to wish other women well.

In fact, I'd say my desire for other women to achieve success and accumulate blessings in their lives is at the very root of my feminism.

I don't want anything out of life that I have to hold another woman down to get, and I believe abundance breeds itself.

And I'll tell ya, I'm SURROUNDED by women who are the same way and more - generous, loving, sweet, gorgeous, funny, feminist, and possessed of a knowledge that life is not a zero-sum equation in which everything you have reduces what I have. Au contraire.

Anyway, I hope someday you get to meet a few of the feminists I know. Sounds like you're missing out on some of the world's best women.

You say nice guys are ignored and jerks rewardd, just like ugly girls for hot girls.

Not so. Because even the nice guys revile us ugly girls, and claim biological entitlement to do so.

I always laugh, because whenever a guy says this, you can bet, like I said, he never gave a moment's respect or attention to an ugly girl, but bases all assumptions on the shllow girls who don't know better than to go for jerks.

Some of us would love a 'nice guy'.

It's the women like Wurtzel who keep this going- her behaviour becomes an excuse for hating women, while only looking to those who look like her as evidence.

I read Wurtzel's Elle article. There is more to it than Amy Benfer's Salon article or the comments on it would indicate. I haven't read her books, but I found Wurtzel's plight very relatable.

I think that Wurtzel's regrets are much deeper than the alleged loss of looks that she bemoans in her article. I also read in there a lot of sadness, loneliness, and uncertainty about the past and the future. It seems like she is just focusing on the loss of her looks because that loss is more concrete than the loss of youth, love, opportunity, and innocence.

When I hit 35 or so, the awareness that I was going to die someday struck me in a way that I never, ever experienced when I was young, when the future was open and endless. Living with the awareness that the future *isn't* open and endless is a whole different ballgame; I think most people call it a mid-life crisis, and they tell me life can get better on the other side. I think Elizabeth might be experiencing the same kind of existential angst, so let's cut her a break. If you aren't or haven't been mayor of mid-life-crisis city already, there's a good chance you will be someday, no matter who you are!

Also, she admits she's depressed on the cover of her book Prozac Nation, and that's how she sounds in the Elle article. That doesn't seem to have changed from her younger days. I really hope she finds her way to shared happiness, self-love, and a true sense of contentment.

I think she'd do a whole lot better to look forward rather than back. If beauty is important to her, there's a beauty that comes with realizing who you are, what you're for, and what you can do. If she wants men, as she gets older, perhaps she'll learn to want the right ones for the right reasons.

Perhaps, she'll think of people other than herself -- but not if she lives in her memories.

There's a good mind in there somewhere. I hope the light goes on and lets her out.

Her and everyone else in a similar position. Including the guys.

I love how a couple of the guys here are certain that Wurtzel must have said something to deserve being chased down by a man wielding a hot frying pan.

Woman complaining too much = Okay for man to hit her in the fucking head.

You make me sick.