Swimming with the Smalleys

I went swimsuit shopping today, and, according to all women's magazines and every single Cathy cartoon ever published, women are supposed to hate that, right? We're supposed halfheartedly pull on a dozen different suits, none of which fit, and run out of the dressing room, traumatized and crying, and straight into the arms of Ben and/or Jerry.

Yes, it's a bummer. No one likes to be nearly naked in front a full-length mirror while wearing white socks and standing under ultrafluorescent lights. But, as I found today, there's a way to skew the experience in your favor.

I went to Macy's to find a decent swimsuit. Macy's puts all their ladies' swimsuits on the tippy-top 8th floor, to create a sort of hushed, closed-off chamber of torture. That means every single woman in the dressing room is trying on a swimsuit, just like you are. When I went into the fitting room and shut the door to my stall, I couldn't help but overhear a conversation between two women who were trying on swimsuits in the adjacent room.

"Girrrrl, you look good!," one said. "So sexy! You have GOT to get that one."

"You like this one?" the other said. "What about the other one? What about her?" (Somewhat endearingly [and perhaps crazily] they were personifying the suits. Each swimsuit was a "her.")

"Oh, girl, maybe get that one, too, but you GOT to get the first one," her friend said. "You look sooooo good! I'm sorry I'm staring, but you do!"

This went on for a good 10 to 15 minutes.

What struck me, though, was that as I was trying on my suits and listening to their conversation, I started feeling positive about myself and how I looked. I mean, yes, not every bathing suit fit me perfectly, but, in general, the more I heard, "Girrrrrrl, you look goooood!" from the next stall, the better I felt. That got me thinking: What if, instead of weight loss commercials and women's-magazine diets and pictures of the Olsen twins, we got steady confirmation of our worth, our beauty, and our sexiness? Granted, I don't know how we can do this without turning American values on on their head. Maybe start with a podcast? (Ha.)

Related to that, I read the "manifesto" of new Gawker Media blog Jezebel today, and, lordy, I sincerely hope the ladies who edit the blog can succeed in figuring out a way to combine traditional women's interest topics (celebrity, fashion, etc.) with feminist rhetoric and have it come out on top (so to speak/that's what she said), popularity-wise. Until time tells, I'll keep reading. Good luck, gals.

But anyway, back to the swimsuit: I walked out with this bikini in hand, a smile on my face, and an unusually positive feeling about my body image, thanks to the ladies in the stall.






















P.S. Tune in Tuesday night at 9 p.m. EST to Dr. Blogstein's Radio Happy Hour to hear Blogstein and me do our usual song and dance and talk with several special guests.

My Two Cents on a $650,000 Investment

Through a publishing contact of mine, I got my hands on a copy of Dana Vachon's debut novel, Mergers and Acquisitions, and read it this past weekend. For the uninitiated, it's former blogger Vachon's roman à clef about his days working on Wall Street.

I liked the book. I didn’t love it. But I liked it enough to talk about it later with friends who hadn’t read it. There’s a sense that this territory has been covered before, by books and movies as similar to the subject matter as Wall Street and removed from it as The Devil Wears Prada (rich, fashionable, cutthroat people = bad; helping others through journalism or medicine = good). As the PW review pointed out (scroll down to read it), its portrait of the rich – at once sycophantic and horrific -- is a bit of an oxymoron. The book is not particularly qualified to be a true social commentary about young people in Manhattan (at least not most of them -- most definitely not me!), and it’s not an especially hilarious book. Somewhere between those extremes is a well-written novel that’s silly and winking, but when Vachon attempts to pin any sort of morality or consequence – however fleeting – to the characters, the intellectualism comes off as a bit too big for its britches.

It was Vachon’s stellar writing and dry sense of humor that spirited me through the book; I turned the pages quickly to see what crazy, over-the-top scenario he would describe next. What irritated me was the dearth of sympathetic female characters who aren’t either prostitutes or completely bonkers. (But maybe that's Vachon's opinion of women.) I was interested in hero Tommy Quinn's long-suffering mother, but she didn’t get enough page time to make much of an impact. Even with the lack of women to root for, I fell hard for Makkesh Makker, a 29-year-old JS Spencer employee who gives his life to the company.

I don’t feel as strongly about Vachon as the bloggers who love him or the writers who want to rip him a new one (though I love Lizzy Ratner’s writing – her "Murray Hell" piece couldn’t have explained the 'hood better): I don’t want to do him raw, and I don’t hate him for his heritage. I would like to ask him exactly how fictionalized the book was – which parts of it were made out of whole cloth or if most/all is ripped almost directly from his own nights out in the city.

Print publications have described the book as a satire, but I don’t necessarily see how somebody can make fun of such high-falutin' places as Le Bilboquet while choosing to make their dinner reservations there after the fun has been made. Again, it smacks of at least some reverence. It’s possible that Vachon is a little too close to this social caste to properly mock it. Also, according to a few news articles, it seems Vachon used his friends as near-exact molds for the characters. And those same friends still like him – and apparently dine at Le Bilboquet with him. How
that’s possible I’m not sure. Perhaps they haven’t read the book closely, or maybe they’re taking it more lightly than even Vachon himself intended.

A lot of people have weighed in about the book so far. I liked what Emily from Gawker said today: "Five or six more years of actual life experience would have enriched the book considerably, potentially transforming the easy caricatures into insightful portraits." But I think I agree most with Lindsay, who wrote, “It is a much better book than it needed to be.” I don’t have any more sympathy for the rich now than I had before (which is none), and it didn’t change my worldview, though it did change my dinner conversations for a few days.

Verdict? Wait for the paperback and read it on vacation, but you'll sure as hell enjoy it when you do.

How Now, Wow Vows?

I'm not one of those women who voraciously and/or wishfully reads the New York Times' Vows section. I haven't been planning my future wedding since age 5 (or at all), and I sort of hate canned, drippy tales of pursuit and subsequent romance -- you just know they're sugar-coating certain parts or conveniently leaving out the alcohol-consumption levels.

Confession time: I do skim the Vows, but I skip over the engagement particulars and instead look for what kinds of jobs the brides-to-be have and by what age they've achieved such things. It serves as a barometer of sorts for my career. Usually they beat me out (lawyer) but sometimes they don't (grad student who probably will not work after she's married). It's ridiculous to play that game, especially considering most of the couples featured are Ivy League grads with deep pockets, which I decidedly am not, but keeping tabs on everyone else is fun and New York-y, what with our competitive streaks and all. (Speaking of Vows, Gawker's new-ish Altarcations feature is pretty funny.)

Today, though, in the midst of my career comparisons, I read something I found lovely. The Levine-Alswang courtship tale in today's paper seemed refreshingly honest, especially from the groom's side. I loved this quote:

“I never met anybody that could be a female version of me,” he said. “She’s a tiny little thing but she’s rough and tough and she shoots guns.” He added, “When we go somewhere, I wish I looked better because I find her so beautiful.”

Drat! Foiled Again (By Those Nosy Hipsters).

Those wry and witty hipster kids over at Gawker quasi-stole my idea today, as evidenced here. But I'm not mad; the concept of a Mounted Deer Head Necklace is so ridiculous it deserves as many mocking posts as it can garner -- or "lock," as it were. By the way, is anyone else baffled by the fact that two different companies make two different versions of this bizarre, overpriced bauble?

You know you want to see the picture of the one from Daily Candy again:











And here's the new Gawker-endorsed one:









Oh, yeah. That's the stuff. Santa, you're listening, right?