Women who belittle women deserve to be belittled

Maureen Dowd has managed to thoroughly piss me off again. Her column in today's New York times is a searing indictement of- the government? Nope. The media for it's coverage of Anna Nicole Smith's death? Nope.

Chicklit.

That's right, apparently, Dowd wandered into a bookstore for the first time in the past decade and realized that books written by women for women have moved out of its ghetto and made their way into the front of the store. Apparently, unknown to Ms. Dowd, reading for entertainment has become quite a hit, and she isn't happy about it.

Not only is her column condescending, outdated, and factually wrong (one of the books she cites as a sign of the epidemic of pink is actually written for the tweener girl audience, not for adults), but it seems to indicate a deep-seated dislike of women reading and writing about women.

She complains about the pink covers, as if the authors get any say about the color of their bookcovers, or the color is indicative of the subject matter. Jennifer Weiner fought for her book Goodnight, Nobody to be another color, but marketers at her publishing company worried that readers would not realize it was a new book by her- despite the fact that her name is larger than the title on the front. She also complained about the skinny girl on the front, but was ignored. (Her newest collection of short stories has a light blue cover.)

That's not the real issue though. The heart of the matter is that Dowd is buying into the old, tired, frustrating, disgusting idea that women's writing for other women is frivilous, meaningless, and personal whereas men's writing is literary, meaningful, and universal. Her condescending attitude and dismissal of chicklit make it very clear that she's never read anything in the genre, and that she is clueless as to why millions of women buy and read these books.

Bookstores moved chicklit out of the ghetto because these books sell. While the "literary world" is arguing about what books constitute literature and have meaning, women have spoken quite clearly with their credit and library cards. Bring on the pink covers!

Chicklit is often meaningful, relevant, and fun. It connects readers to other readers who are excited about the next book in the series. It reminds women that they are not alone. It also deals with topics that are weightier than its ever given credit for. For example, I think chicklit finally broke the code of silence around the exhausted mommies- women who didn't want to admit that having kids isn't always all it's cracked up to be spoke up first in fiction. Chicklit writers also deals with issues like infidelity, friendship, sexism, and workplace issues with a refreshing honesty.

Her advice to read the Red Badge of Courage was particularly out of line. If you're at all well-read or educated, you should have read The Red Badge of Courage in high school (or junior high). So Ms. Dowd can shove her literary pretentions up her ass.

Ms. Dowd is, frankly, an idiot- a sexist idiot whose own writing reads more like a stilted gossip column than the books she chooses to malign. The NY Times should be embarrassed for running this dated, sexist, poorly written, badly researched piece of crap. Her writing, reading recommendations, and examples all lead me to believe that Ms. Dowd's reading level and interests are at about the 8th grade level.

For more on this topic I recommend the following (literate) columnists:

Jennifer Weiner

Galleycat