Post #232,954
11/8/05 5:15:22 AM
|
And another take
[link|http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2005/11/08/dowd/index.html| Salon] Yes, Maureen Dowd is necessary
You can love her or hate her, but you can't dismiss her -- or her inflammatory new book on gender politics.
By Rebecca Traister
Nov. 8, 2005 | Given all the fur that's already flown over New York Times Op-Ed columnist Maureen Dowd's new book, "Are Men Necessary? When Sexes Collide," a weary reader can be forgiven for thinking it has been out forever. But while it was excerpted in a much-maligned essay in the New York Times Magazine last weekend, it hits shelves Tuesday.
The Times piece did not do Dowd's book any favors by chopping it up as if it were a cutesy retro-chic dating manual and a cackling dismissal of feminism. In fact, Dowd's 338-page cultural analysis and memoir of sexual politics is a blistering critique of modern gender relations, dressed up in a pulpy cover and too many puns. She's asking some very uncomfortable questions of her male and female readers, and presenting some startling answers, including the winked-at implication that, as the title suggests, men may not be necessary anymore. Dowd has clearly touched a nerve. And you only touch a nerve by telling a truth.
The Times excerpt pissed off bloggers and Op-Ed columnists alike. Outrage was varied: Women ripped Dowd's casual claims about the death of feminism, along with her assertions about women who want men to pay for their dinners, who believe "The Rules," who take their husbands' names and consider "Mrs." a status symbol. She has been rightly criticized for her reliance on questionable trend stories, many from her own newspaper, about women who want to opt out of careers and men who marry their secretaries. Young women felt they'd been misrepresented as plastic husband-hunters; older women were furious with Dowd's portrayal of second-wave feminists as earnest and Birkenstock-shod. Blogger Catnip snapped at Dowd: "I know lots of smart, career-driven women who ... didn't have to act dumb and dress like a tart to 'catch' their husbands." Feministing's Jessica Valenti knocked her for the "assumption that feminism ended back in the day, [her] reliance on dubious studies, and ... [her] elitism," while elsewhere, ruffled writers like Katie Roiphe and Kathleen Parker squawked their defenses of what Dowd, in the book, terms "the weaker sex": men.
Clearly, Dowd has exposed herself to an enormous amount of vitriol. A recent New York magazine profile of the columnist opens with a description of the naked women decorating her home, and her friend Michiko Kakutani's suggestion that she paint clothes on them. The response she's received so far makes me want to paint clothes on her.
Far from being any kind of feminism-denier, Dowd, the only female Op-Ed columnist at the most powerful newspaper in the world, is the embodiment of its triumphs, and she knows it. What she has to say in this book is sometimes crass, often recycled from old columns, intermittently sloppy, consistently over-generalized and rooted too firmly in her own rarefied D.C.-N.Y. corridor of power. But just because Dowd's sphere is a privileged one doesn't mean her observations aren't both fascinating and true. And, as the blizzard of response demonstrates, Dowd has kicked off a conversation we are desperate to have.
In "Are Men Necessary?" Dowd lays into men and women, calling out their hypocrisies and weaknesses, and engaging in quite a few of her own. She covers dizzying territory; anyone hoping for a single thesis will come up empty-handed. Dowd insists she is not "peddling a theory or a slogan or a policy," rather presenting the "diligent notes ... of a fascinated observer of our gender perplexities."
Her notes cover dating anecdotes (her own and those of her friends), the weakening of the Y chromosome, a recent cultural embrace of frilly-aproned 1950s femininity, and the disappointment of learning that her hero Katharine Hepburn tamped down her vivid personality to please Spencer Tracy. Dowd bemoans the transformation of the female journalist into the female sex columnist ("from Tess Harding to Carrie Bradshaw ... is not progress") and marvels at the matriarchal communities of sex-happy bonobo primates. She argues that Hillary Clinton destroyed feminism, selling out her sisters by sticking with her "dissembling, thong-seeking, wife-betraying husband," and becoming a feminist icon in the process. She decries Botox yet spends $195 on anti-aging cream. Given Dowd's penchant for puns and the breadth of her subject matter, "Are Men Necessary?" sometimes reads like a Jerry Seinfeld routine: What is the deal with Bratz dolls?
Dowd often asks for her chastisement, refusing to fit anyone's model of how we should talk about men and women. She is out of control, yes, wondering if the "cow goo" being pumped into age-defying cosmetics will lead to half-bovine women, "pouty young Gotham beauties, sipping raspberry mojitos at Koi ... running around in circles trying to bite their tails," and "high-powered professional women in leather skirts and Holstein-patterned heels clickety-clak[ing] up to the pool at the Four Seasons restaurant ... slurping at it like a trough."
But gender constructions are Dowd's playthings: She also suggests that Donald Rumsfeld is menopausal and that Al Gore is "practically lactating." Dowd subverts gender stereotyping by treating it as a laugh riot; surely her giggling does not disqualify her feminism. In fact, however grating her tone, her willingness to enter this fray is exactly what feminism needs; she adds heat that will bring long-simmering, difficult conversations to a public boil.
Dowd has always been an equal-opportunity provocateur, winning a Pulitzer for her evisceration of the Clinton administration between flirtily poking the elder Bush with a stick and eating his son for breakfast. Though she writes that she fears being called a catfighter and a castrating bitch, she is not impeded by either. This makes her as useful a critic as any out there; if women are to have constructive conversations about what comes next, we need someone willing to tell us when we make wrong turns or double back on ourselves.
Next page: Who can deny that in some ways feminism has been trumped by narcissism and materialism? Ah yes.. that pair of insightful words again - maybe the US now has Two Gods: $$ and Narcissus (?)
|
