Writer Vixen Explains It All

Banning the Burqa

At President Sarkozy’s request, the French parliament has established a bipartisan panel to study ways of restricting the burqa in French society, including an outright ban on wearing it in public. Calling the garment “a sign of subservience [and] debasement” for women, Sarkozy boldly declared that the burqa “is not welcome in France.”

Host to Europe’s largest Muslim population—about 5 million people—French society has long debated whether the garment is an affront to women's rights and to the nation’s hard-won secular tradition. Although it’s been outlawed in schools and other public buildings since 2004, Muslims in France are increasingly adopting the trend. So the rest of world is watching the escalating debate with keen interest, and many western nations are asking the same questions as France.

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.

Farrah Videos

Ending the week on a lighter note, here are some fun vids of Farrah’s early days, before she got her big break with Charlie and the other gorgeous angels.

Let Farrah Cream Your Face

First up, the famous ad with Joe Namath, where she promises that Noxema will “cream your face” — a teenaged boy’s wet dream, right on your 1970’s television set.

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 depressed, angry 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.

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.

Elizabeth Gilbert: On Creativity & Dobby the House Elf

Are you struggling for a scrap of inspiration? Feeling like you couldn’t write a grocery list, much less knock out a brief for that new campaign? Wondering why your creativity seems to have departed for sunnier climes without so much as a postcard? Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the international bestseller Eat, Pray, Love has a theory about where you can find it.

In her funny and thought-provoking talk at the February TED conference in Santa Barbara, Gilbert takes us back to the ancient Greek and Roman idea of the artist’s muse—his “genius”—as something external to the artist himself. She explains, “They believed that a genius was a sort of magical divine entity who literally lived in the walls of an artist’s studio—kind of like Dobby the house elf—who would come out and sort of invisibly assist the artist with their work and would shape the outcome of that work.”

And the artist’s role in the process was simply to show up, to be present for their work, and give it a chance to express itself.

Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?

Last week I realized that my friend Cheryl is in a lesbian relationship . . . with her boyfriend of four years.

This accidental discovery surfaced when their recently purchased dream house sprang a plumbing leak so massive that the water department turned off their supply to halt the flooding on their neighbor’s property. In the midst of the ensuing chaos, Cheryl’s boyfriend meticulously fussed over his wardrobe before decamping for the calmer climes of his office, leaving her to deal with the water department, the insurance company, various contractors, and the bank, not to mention a nasty, disgruntled neighbor.

This struck her as distinctly (how to put it nicely?) . . . unmasculine.