Lori Gottlieb
Feb. 1st, 2010 06:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kitewithfishSo, Lori Gottlieb has written a book called MARRY HIM! THE CASE FOR SETTLING FOR MR. GOOD ENOUGH, based off the article here: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/single-marry
For obvious and fairly sound reasons, Ms. Gottlieb has garnered a lot of criticism from Feministing.com, of which I am an avid reader. Most of the criticism boils down to the fact that Ms. Gottlieb's experience as a single woman is not representative of single women, and that it represents a backlash against the higher standards feminism set for women's goals. Excerpts from her books cement in my mind her writing as more representative of her own unhappiness than as a viable goal for other women to follow in romance and marriage. (There's also a case to be made that Ms. Gottlieb fails to adequately separate the two concepts, but having not read her book, I will leave that to your own judgement.)
So, overall, I was prepared to dislike Ms. Gottlieb a great deal, and not having anything positive about her in my brain whatsoever, until she popped up telling anecdotes on THIS AMERICAN LIFE. And that's a bit of a problem for me. Because her story, featured in the episode "Mind Games", is fairly creepy. Ms. Gottlieb wrote a fan letter to a writer based on his picture, in which she claims to have met him in an airport years before. This is a lie, but months later he calls and meets her, claiming to remember having met her at the airport and recollecting parts of a conversation that never happened. When she confesses, freaked out by him, he claims to really remember the first encounter.
Now, on listening to this episode, I was not really paying attention to Ms. Gottlieb's name, but by the end of the story, when this was revealed, I was rather shocked. Based on her writing samples posted on Feministing.com, I had not expected Ms. Gottlieb to be funny at all. I had a brief moment of doubt- did I just assume, because her book is rather depressing, that Ms. Gottlieb had nothing worth listening to?
But on second thought, I keep considering these examples, and I wonder if they are not of a piece. They both seem to indicate a really unhappy woman seeking connection. It renders what was just an oddly funny story into a facet of a weird and creepy desperation. I really had not wanted that as part of the background of this tale, but there it is. It's more than a little sad, really.
For obvious and fairly sound reasons, Ms. Gottlieb has garnered a lot of criticism from Feministing.com, of which I am an avid reader. Most of the criticism boils down to the fact that Ms. Gottlieb's experience as a single woman is not representative of single women, and that it represents a backlash against the higher standards feminism set for women's goals. Excerpts from her books cement in my mind her writing as more representative of her own unhappiness than as a viable goal for other women to follow in romance and marriage. (There's also a case to be made that Ms. Gottlieb fails to adequately separate the two concepts, but having not read her book, I will leave that to your own judgement.)
So, overall, I was prepared to dislike Ms. Gottlieb a great deal, and not having anything positive about her in my brain whatsoever, until she popped up telling anecdotes on THIS AMERICAN LIFE. And that's a bit of a problem for me. Because her story, featured in the episode "Mind Games", is fairly creepy. Ms. Gottlieb wrote a fan letter to a writer based on his picture, in which she claims to have met him in an airport years before. This is a lie, but months later he calls and meets her, claiming to remember having met her at the airport and recollecting parts of a conversation that never happened. When she confesses, freaked out by him, he claims to really remember the first encounter.
Now, on listening to this episode, I was not really paying attention to Ms. Gottlieb's name, but by the end of the story, when this was revealed, I was rather shocked. Based on her writing samples posted on Feministing.com, I had not expected Ms. Gottlieb to be funny at all. I had a brief moment of doubt- did I just assume, because her book is rather depressing, that Ms. Gottlieb had nothing worth listening to?
But on second thought, I keep considering these examples, and I wonder if they are not of a piece. They both seem to indicate a really unhappy woman seeking connection. It renders what was just an oddly funny story into a facet of a weird and creepy desperation. I really had not wanted that as part of the background of this tale, but there it is. It's more than a little sad, really.
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Date: 2010-02-02 05:49 pm (UTC)