She's So the One! by Belle Rose

(Available as a Kindle e-book at www.amazon.com)

We will return to bloodless battles. In the meantime, Anon.#2 wants to talk about one of her favorite writers.

    
      "You go to a man?!"  my friend said, incredulously. I had committed a heinous crime by using the services of a masseuse, a male masseuse. How could I do that? I was a woman, after all. And I had betrayed woman kind.

     Call me gender blind, if you will, but I had to think about that. It never occurred to me to go searching for a woman if there was a well recommended man who could do an excellent job. It also occurred to me that this particular man might not have noticed that I was a woman. Assorted body parts were covered up with a sheet, while he worked on my tender muscles four square inches at a time,

     To say that he was indifferent to my gender would be to understate the the case. He was so impersonal as to be almost chilling. But he was good at his job; that's why I was there. He could have been a homunculus for all I cared. 

    Unlike other women who marched on Washington for equal rights, burned bras, and stopped shaving their legs to make a statement, I have always just taken my positions with me into the voting booth.  But there are times when women who have been called strident, unpleasant loudmouths do us all a favor. So today, apropos of a recent article, I'd like to say thank you to one of those women.

     A former newspaper reporter, Jennifer Weiner is the author of "Good in Bed," "In Her Shoes," and a new novel, "The Next Best Thing." This spring, her eleventh novel in thirteen years, "All Fall Down," is to be published. But for all her success, she has a grievance. Perhaps because of this success she can afford to complain. For her efforts, she has been called "strident," as well as a "whiner," as her surname is pronounced.

     The gist of her grievance is the disproportionate attention given to male over female writers of fiction. She maintains that there is a bias against female writers. Thousands of writers in her positon would only be grateful, as no fewer than seven pages of a recent edition of The New Yorker were devoted to her and the source of her discontent. The photo of her, mouth open wide enough to swallow the little dog that she is holding, pretty much says it all.  

     The article itself is enormous fun to read--Weiner is nothing if not hilarious--but as you laugh, you feel the slight she thinks that she and other women writers have been given. Why hasn't she ever been reviewed in The New York Times? Her books have sold more than four and a half million copies. One of them, "In Her Shoes," was made into a romantic comedy in 2005, starring Toni Colette and Carmen Diaz. 

    I happen to love her books. I find them funny, poignant, and true. The success of any book, whether it's a heavy weight literary fiction, or one disparagingly described as "chic-lit," is how it resonates with the reader. Any woman who has a gorgeous sister can relate to "In Her Shoes."

     It helped that my sister was older than I was by nearly four years. It was expected that, at a certain age, she would have breasts, whereas I would, as yet, have none. By the time one is eighteen, however, that expectation would normally change. 

     Ditto for the long, dark eyelashes. I loved to hear that she was jealous of me. My mother confided to me that my sister took a pair of scissors when I was a baby and cut my eyelashes. Years later, apart from being locked into a hostile dependency on Clinique eye products, I enjoyed knowing that she had some vulnerability. Even if, in my dreams, were the lashes of a llama.

     It has been said by other writers, some men, including Jonathan Franzen ("Freedom"), that Weiner's outrage is borne of publicity, that she engages in self-promotion. Her response at the time, in true Weiner style, was to change her Twitter bio to "Engaging in Jennifer Weiner-ish Self Promotion."

     Even in the smallest of revolutions, things change. The New York Times Book Review, for example, now has a woman editor, one who is reportedly "woman friendly." Weiner does not take credit for that change or others. "No one," she says, "has sent her a thank-you note." But she does, admittedly, take satisfaction in them. 

    And so can we.