Writer Vixen Explains It All

Breaking Up Is (Not So) Hard To Do

I was commiserating with my friend Jackie over the recent breakup of her two-year relationship. "I thought breakups would get easier after my 30's," she lamented over triple-tall-non-fat mochas at Starbucks. "But instead, they seem to be getting harder."

I suggested that perhaps that’s because of the way her boyfriend ended things. After two weeks of not hearing from him, she came home from work one evening to find a Post-It note on her front door saying that he’d met someone else.

Some men just have a knack for taking your breath away.

Personally, I find that breakups actually get easier as I get older. First, you get more practice. Like anything else, the more you do it the more adept you become. And although it’s not something anyone wants to practice enough to become, say, Carnegie-Hall-level perfect, your skills definitely improve as time goes by.

I'm No Angel: Remembering Farrah

I feel strangely sad about Farrah Fawcett's death. She was such a huge star during a formative period of my life. Growing up in the south, in the 1970’s, there were no feminine role models showing us how not to turn into our stay-at-home moms.

When Charlie’s Angels exploded on the scene it was a revelation to adolescent girls everywhere. Silly as the premise was, it showed women living on their own terms, creating independent lives born of their own desires and abilities. If that sounds a bit overblown for a typically implausible, air-headed Aaron Spelling creation, that just shows you how desperately we were seeking road maps to the women we sensed we could become, if only we could chart the route.

Farrah’s character, Jill Munroe, was successful in two male-dominated careers. Okay, so they were auto racing and boutique private investigation, but at least she wasn’t languishing in the pink ghetto. She held her own in her chosen profession, without clinging to a man or sacrificing her femininity. And if you think that’s no big deal, it’s because you didn’t grow up looking at Gloria Steinem, and then at your mother, thinking, These are my choices?

Angelina Jolie-Laide

I have a love-hate relationship with Angelina Jolie. Angie (as she prefers) seems blissfully unperturbed by this. But I, feeling constantly pulled in opposing directions, am less sanguine about it. And since she’s arguably the most popular woman in American culture, I have to think about her pretty frequently. Specifically, I have to think about what I think of her. And honestly, it’s exhausting.

Naomi Wolf’s June cover story in Bazaar, for example. Not an interview. Not even, strictly speaking, a profile. What it is (strictly speaking) is an unabashed girl-crush of a love letter, thinly disguised as an essay—a frothy 1600-word gusher extolling Angie as “the face of female empowerment” who “brings together almost every aspect of liberation.” That laughably overblown accolade lands squarely on my Angie-angst.

“Jolie-laide” (literally “pretty-ugly”) is a slangy French expression for something that’s beautiful in an off-key or unexpected way. Someone (or something) whose beauty draws you in even as their ugliness repels you. Think pugs. Or Sandra Bernhard. In relation to Angie, I also think of it as something beautiful that lives in close proximity to something ugly. Or something beautiful that’s done in an unbeautiful way. Angelina Jolie-Laide—the things that are most appealing about her co-exist in glaring discord with her least admirable qualities.

Magical Products for Princesses

Married or single, if you’re a modern woman you’re actually a real, live princess. I know this because advertising tells me so every time I turn on the television or open a magazine. And as privileged princesses, we have our very own products that make everything in our lives magically better. Plus, every princess gets a prince, or what’s a tiara for?

Sarah Haskins breaks it down for us in her hilarious “Target Women” series, in which she mercilessly pillories Madison Avenue. From candles, to cooking, to shoe porn, Sarah reminds us to appreciate the most fulfilling aspects of being a woman.

LADYFRIENDS

As every woman knows, the very best thing about being a girl is our girlfriends. They’re always there for us . . . telling us what we should buy, staging shopping interventions when we buy too much and — apparently — giving us too much advice about overly personal things in inappropriate places.