If You are Bored and Sad, Try Reading a Book

I spent a few minutes yesterday trying to think of women who lived interesting lives who could help Rachel Hollis and Glennon Doyle and all the people to try to blame “society” and “the patriarchy” for all their problems. When really, having discovered that they are sad and bored by their lives, they should go read something, or maybe even watch an interesting movie. There are so many curious real people and fictional characters out there, there is no reason to languish or give over to hysteria. Indeed, with thousands of fascinating women on the page, there has never been a better time to self-identify as female. One needn’t even be confined to one’s own culture. You can find women translated in one way or another from so many other places around the world. I’ve taken a moment to compile my own list off the top of my head. Think of it as me being an encouraging help to whatever kind of wave of feminists all over the world who can’t believe how bad they have it.

The six women in What She Ate (such a great book): Dorothy Wordsworth, Rosa Lewis, Eleanor Roosevelt, Eva Braun, Barbara Pym, and Helen Gurley Brown. The book is by Laura Shapiro, who also seems like a very interesting person. I didn’t know, for instance, that Hitler loved cake and champagne and that Eva Braun was adept at making sure he always had it, no matter what was going on in his life, or that Eleanor Roosevelt probably did on purpose hire the worst cook in America to get back at her husband. She, when he finally died in the arms of another, spent a lot of useful time at Cornell helping bring into being the new Home Ec, then Hum Ec (now I don’t know what it’s  called now) school. Also, Helen Gurley Brown didn’t eat food, but she did it with a vengeance. Gosh, I need to reread this book.

Marianne and Marguerite in Green Dolphin Street are complicated and interesting. Neither of them are perishing, wilting, boring flowers with nothing to do but scroll through instagram. I’m serious, I keep telling everyone to read this book and I don’t even know if anyone is listening.

All of Anthony Trollope’s female characters are complex and fascinating, Mrs. Proudie, in particular, but also Lily Dale and honestly all of them. How  he writes female character so well is a touch unnerving.

Medea (written by a man, so who knows) was surely untamed in all the senses of the word, and “lived into her true self.” What a treat of a person.

JK Rowling, of course, is full of interesting controversy right now. I haven’t read the books, being a wicked person, but I have paid my children to breeze through them, and I am shocked and impressed that she would be so bold as to declare that men and women are not the same.

Rebecca West is a remarkable person, who certainly lived into all her potential as a human. The cluster of female characters she invents in The Fountain Overflows are heartbreakingly captivating. She does go in, rather, for the weak, useless male character (the father) who makes shipwreck of his life and theirs, but even then, the beauty of her descriptions are sublime. Oh, and unless you’ve traveled around the Balkans writing an unparalleled in its scope and beauty historical cultural commentary, I don’t want to hear any of your tiresome whining about the patriarchy. Suppressed forsooth.

This woman and her daughter seem to be living fully into their own vision for life. It is a wrong vision, of course—appalling actually—and someone should help them out of that horrifying thing that they are doing immediately. But look how confidently they go out there and express their true selves.

This person is a person to watch. One of the great heartbreaks about the spread of certain kinds of ideology, especially in Northern Africa, is that those closely held beliefs usually do completely destroy the education of girls and women, besides ruining everything.

A quick glance at the Bible reveals a whole lot of complex women: Eve, Sarah, Athaliah, the wife of Hosea, Lydia, and literally all the other women, for real, all of them.

This person and the woman she’s talking about are both super interesting. And! She’s on YouTube so you don’t even have to actually read about her, or any of the books, I guess, if you hate reading, which is kind of the problem.

And now, if you will excuse me, I need to go work on being an interesting person myself, which is lots more productive than offering advice to people, no matter their sex, gender, creed, ideology, or preferred social media platform. But what do I know? I am but a mere mortal, and fail in so many ways all the time.