Writer Vixen Explains It All

What Do Women Want?

“The great question that I have not yet been able to answer, despite my 30 years of research into the feminine soul, is, What does a woman want?” —Sigmund Freud

A century has passed and Freud’s famous query still echoes. Men ponder it in terms of what women want in a man (of course) and they’re pretty sure it’s confidence, honesty and communication.

Dell thinks women want laptops in pretty colors wrapped up with calorie counters and cooking videos masquerading as “tech tips.”

Google claims there are over 13,000,000 answers to the question, “What do women want?”

Honestly, so much ado over such a simple thing! It will take me 10 seconds to explain it all. Are you ready?

HERE'S WHAT WOMEN WANT

We want

What we want

When we want it.

Come on . . . you kinda knew that, right? This knowledge has been passed down since the time of the Round Table. The knights, not the pizza.

The Updating Game

By Gail Collins

This entertaining piece by the fabulous Op-Ed columnist Gail Collins ran in The New York Times on 8/28/09.

There was a time when people in search of a full and meaningful life were advised to start off each morning by telling themselves: “Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better.”

Now, we get up and hear: “Updates are ready for your computer.”

It’s depressing to realize that my computer is more bent on self-improvement than I am. At home, my laptop is so ready to update that it can barely be constrained. The other day, I found three different pleas floating around on the screen.

The “Dell Support Center Automatic Upgrade” was the most tempting since it sounded as if the computer wanted to give me a really good seat on a plane.

“Effective now,” the announcement continued, “these valuable messages are part of the new Dell Support Center. Dell needs to upgrade Dell Support without impeding system performance so that messages continue to be received.”

In other words, I need an upgrade so that I will better be able to receive more upgrade requests in the future. This is extremely important to my laptop, which is only offering me the response options of: More Details, Start Upgrade or Remind Me Later.

Imaginary Bitches (A Review)

Originally published for "Zeitgeist: Quirkyalone Pop Culture" on Quirkyalone.net.

Choosing to remain single in a coupled world is sometimes a lonely gig, never more so than when all of your close friends are smugly cocooned in their couple-bubbles. It can make you feel like the last single person on Earth.

As once-single friends morph into couples, it often becomes irritatingly apparent that they no longer understand the challenges or perspectives of singledom. You sometimes feel like hitting them over the head, yet you still love them and yearn for common ground to maintain your friendships. This painful conflict is played out to hilarious effect in the engaging Web series Imaginary Bitches.

Eden is the last single girl in her circle of friends, refusing to compromise her standards simply to have a boyfriend. After an amazing date with a guy she really likes, Eden calls each of her friends to share her exciting news, but they’re only interested in talking about their relationships. Increasingly dispirited with each aborted call, Eden discovers, to her astonishment, that she has conjured an imaginary friend named Catherine—a friend who’s avidly interested in discussing all the details of Eden's date.

But Catherine proves to be less a “friend” than a total bitch, with lots of nasty things to say about Eden and all of her real girlfriends.That's right, Eden herself is not exempt from Catherine's bitchiness. Furthermore, Catherine is soon joined by a second imaginary bitch named Heather. The imaginary bitches quickly establish their presence in all of Eden’s relationships, leaving her to deal with the fallout even as they help her sort out her friendships and her love life.

Ted Kennedy: End of an Era

One of [the good] times was the day in 1986, when he gave niece Caroline away at her wedding to Edwin Schlossberg.

"She was so extraordinarily happy and joyous," he said. "And Jackie was absolutely radiant." 

After the wedding, Jackie wrote Ted a thank-you letter—a token of gratitude for what he’d meant to all the Kennedys over the years. The letter read:

There have been 17 children besides your own—Bobby's, Pat's, Jack's and mine, for whom you have always been there. Every graduation, every big decision, every trouble, every sad and even every happy day. On you, the carefree youngest brother, fell a burden a hero would beg to be spared. Sick parents, lost children, desolate wives. You are a hero. Everyone is going to make it, because you are always there with your love.

Jackie

[From "Ted Kennedy: The Last Brother" | Photo: Stephen Crowley/The New York Times]

Advice: I'm a Night Owl!

Dear Vixen:

Sleep. I stay up all night. I don't get sleepy until 4:00, don't FALL asleep until 5:00 and then I get up at 1 or 2 in the afternoon. This would not be a problem EXCEPT . . . I am missing out on auditions (I'm an actress) because I can't haul my a** out of bed!

How can I get on a more, uh, “responsible" daytime schedule? I've been on owl-time since college. But now it is screwing up my career. Help!

— Literally Sleepless in Seattle

a

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Dear Sleepless —

People will tell you that the world is divided into dog people and cat people. Or into optimists and pessimists. Or into iPhone enthusiasts and BlackBerry lovers.

Those people are wrong.

There are really only two types of people in the world: early birds and night owls. While early birds are perky and annoying, it’s a well-known fact that night owls are artistic and highly creative. Don’t ask me to cite my sources—obvious truths don't require substantiation!

Advice: Do I Love Too Much?

Dear Vixen:

How far would you go for someone that you love, whether that person be a sibling, a parent, a lover, or a close friend? Would you love someone so much that you give them as much love as you want to give even though you know that their love for you may not be as strong?

I think it's safe to say that most people feel that they would never love someone more than they can get back. I used to say that but I've recently realized that I'm not getting as much love back as I'm putting in with more than one of my relationships.

I love my father more than he loves me or is willing to admit but I still give him all that I can give.

My friends are important to me and I treat them as such, but I'm also sure that I am being taken for granted.

I've been in love with a wonderful man for the past year and a half. It's recently come to my attention that he's realized that he's still in love with his ex. He doesn't believe that he will get back together with her, but it hurts to know that I don't completely have his heart.

Is it Better to be Married or Single?

Originally published as "Defending Marriage . . . and Singledom" for "Zeitgeist: Quirkyalone Pop Culture" at Quirkyalone.net.

You’d think it was the first time anyone’s ever gotten a divorce.

Sandra Tsing Loh’s recent admission in The Atlantic that she’s divorcing her husband after 20 years (following her own extramarital affair) has ignited a firestorm of high-minded controversy debating the pros and cons of marriage. The story was picked up nationally, with nearly all the major news outlets chiming in online, on air and in print.

The particular point of contention is Ms. Loh’s theory that perhaps the reason we have a divorce culture is because we marry too often. Citing “all the abject and swallowed misery” she observes in modern marriage, she wonders, “Why do we still insist on marriage?”

Then she really gets down to it, ending her polemic with

"a final piece of advice: avoid marriage—or you too may suffer the emotional pain, the humiliation, and the logistical difficulty, not to mention the expense, of breaking up a long-term union at midlife for something as demonstrably fleeting as love.”

Reality TV Idea #1: "I Complete Me"

The following is excerpted from an essay originally published on Onely on 30 July 2009.

"Onely: Single and Happy" is a blog that offers fresh perspectives on living solo. It's produced by the dynamic writing duo known as "Lisa and Christina," both of whom hail from the East Coast. They are also the advice columnists for Quirkyalone.net, the newly redesigned online home of the quirkyalone community.

Christina and I have decided to pitch our own Reality TV show, called I Complete Me. We don’t have any illusions that anyone will actually take us up on the offer, but just for kicks, here’s what we propose:

I Complete Me
(alternate title: A Shot at Independence)

SUMMARY

Instead of forcing (supposedly inept) single people into the world of coupling, (overly dependent and unhealthily) coupled people are forced to navigate the world as singles for a full month. Both members of a pair are ranked and judged against other pairs according to how well they handle the single life.

CONTESTANTS

Pairs are nominated and chosen on the basis of how “unhealthy” their friends and family think the pair has become as a result of coupling. The best contestants are those who (separately or together) have lost track of the “selves” that friends and family used to know and love. Have they stopped paying attention to their single friends? Have they dropped their favorite hobbies? Is every weekday and weekend night spent, in some way, shape or form, with the significant other? Do couples take personal offense at invitations that do not automatically include the significant other?

The Age Thing (Redux)

When I was in my mid-20s I was quite a dish. I was blonde and bubbly and eager-to-please. I tended to believe the things people told me, especially things they told me about me. I didn’t know whether I was smart, mostly because some people thought I was kind of brilliant while others thought—or assumed—that I wasn’t very bright. It was very confusing to me—especially since the fact that I was an outstanding student at top-tier schools seemed somehow irrelevant to this calculus.

Around this time I went to a New Year’s Eve party hosted by a hot-shot Wall Street money guy who later did white-collar prison time for insider trading. He lived with his 25-years-younger girlfriend in a Fifth Avenue penthouse with a wraparound view of Manhattan. I was studying architecture at Parsons, and in typical grad student style I’d go pretty much anywhere on the promise of a free meal. So although this promised to be a tiresome evening of my-toys-are-bigger-than-your-toys one-upmanship, I cheerfully accepted the invitation.

Most of the guests were couples in their 40s and 50s. The men struck me as one-note bores (my date the exception), but I found the women fascinating. They all seemed so chic and accomplished and self-assured, and I couldn’t wait to meet them. Always in the throes of trying to figure out who I wanted to become in my life, I was sure that they knew things, things that I needed to know, things about being chic and accomplished and self-assured.

The Age Thing, or "It Only Hurts When I Lie"

By Colleen Wainwright

Colleen Wainwright is an LA-based writer-speaker-illuminator who started calling herself “the communicatrix” when she hit three hyphens. An award-winning TV copywriter in a former life, Colleen now spends her time teaching other creative souls how to talk about what they do in a way that wins them attention, work and satisfaction.

The following essay was originally published on Communicatrix on 10 July 2006.

After my recent stumping for the sisterhood, this is going to sound like a reversalist smackdown, but a story in this Sunday’s LA Times (I know, I know, but I like the ritual of fresh comics in bed) set me off. Big time. And I tried to ignore it—really, I did—but here I am, a day later, still cheesed off.

It was more than a story: the Times devoted their entire Sunday magazine to the issue of aging and its attendant hoo-hah in modern society—how we try to stop it, how we try to look like we’re stopping it, how we succeed (or fail) at both. Not a lot of insight or exploration into why we chase the dragon, but hey—this is L.A., it’s the Times, and that’s probably a given, right? Because it’s better to be young, dumbass!

Advice: Found Money

True fact: I have an opinion on just about everything.

It’s also true that I’m not shy about sharing my opinions with other people, even if they haven’t yet realized that they’re dying to know what I think. In fact, it’s often those who fail to ask who most clearly need the benefit of my extraordinary insights. So how can I resist when someone actually asks for my opinion on a personal dilemma?

Although this isn’t technically an advice column, I’m happy to give it a try. Lucy van Pelt doled out psychiatric advice to Charlie Brown for “5 cents please,” so 25 cents seems about right when adjusted for inflation. In the spirit of the Writer Vixen motto (“Often wrong but never in doubt”), I offer the following questionable advice with complete conviction. No refunds.

Say Hey (I Love You)

Start off your day with a reggae beat that will put a smile on your face and a bounce in your step. Here’s the flash mob scene from the first episode of the new season of Weeds (to Michael Franti’s “Say Hey (I Love You)”). Enjoy!

I say hey I'll be gone today
But I'll be back all around the way
It seems like everywhere I go
The more I see
The less I know
But I know one thing
That I love you
I love you
I love you
I love you

__________________________

Twittering vixenish things @WriterVixen