Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women (Paperback)

*that the book did not follow any sort of train of thought. Even though it was broken up into five or six essays, she would go from one person to the next so quickly, you don't even know she was talking about a different person. I skipped most of the stuff on Delilah, the character showed up on occasion throughout 2-3 of the essays, and sometimes stayed for pages. I wasn't interested in it, and the author probably should have just written a whole essay on her. Apparently, this book was written on some kind of speed, which makes sense, but couldn't it have been cut down a little? Or, at least, molded into something readable? Maybe its supposed to fit with the running theme: "Bad girls: young, beautiful, and on drugs." Which leads me to the next thought...

*What is her obsession with beauty? It seems like every woman she mentions is somehow tragically beautiful.. and these are the women who are bi#$%#s, the "difficult" women... how she says: "I am still pretty. I still have time to work out my marital status." <---What is that about? As if the only people who are married are good looking? Since when is marriage about "looks" anyway? or she also says.."even worse, it seems inevitable that there will come a time when I won't look good, when men will stop flirting with me, when this freedom sh#$ will start to feel more like free-falling. Will I know? Will I become pathetic?" No, you will just have to win people over by personality for a change! I just don't understand the superficial attitude for someone who is supposed to be a feminist. I have known women who are not great beauties, but everywhere they go, men fall in love with them. Once again, love is not about outside beauty. Unless, she is worried that at 50, she won't be able to have lots of one night stands, and men falling at her feet. This is probably true.

*Her opinions didn't even follow anything concrete. It seemed that at one moment she believed wholeheartedly in something, and then turned around and said.. oh wait, i forgot about that. nevermind, i believe this instead. Unfortunately, i can't come up with an example, because I would have to plow through this monstrous book for it. At least, she broke it into paragraphs.

What I did like about the book:

* the way she uses examples of movies, books, stories, and songs in her essays. Most of the movies are familiar to me, Fatal Attraction, Foxfire... then she mentions others that maybe some people wouldn't know, but should watch.. like Welcome to the Dollhouse or if Lucy fell. Many books that I own, have references or what the author has as a bibliography... My favorite author SARK recommends books on every chapter, sometimes music or web pages. It's just like a chain where you are exposed to things you would never have been before you read this book. Unfortunately, in Wurtzel's bibliography, i think she fails to mention the movies.

* I liked the essay, "Used to love her but I had to kill her." This touches on a lot of things having do to with O.J., and his late ex-wife Nicole. I never really followed the trial, but I do agree with the author, that he did it. It's funny too, because she doesn't use the word "allegedly" anywhere in the chapter. It's written like: when he killed her.... or he probably killed her because. It's as if she believes beyond a shadow of a doubt that he committed the crime, and she is not going to believe otherwise no matter what you say...

*which leads into this: the honesty of the book gets me. I would be afraid to let go of myself too much into a book. She has very strong opinions. Not only that, but she talks about her life, how she feels about herself, what she has done. One of my favorite paragraphs is where she talks about how she is not married and why she is not.. the reason is because there are things she "needed to do." the start of this paragraph is... "I needed to spend a week in Florence by myself, to check into the Excelsior Hotel and eat breakfast and dinner in bed with a view of the Arno, watching soccer on Italian television and be amazingly bored, I needed to walk the streets of this most romantic and recherche of cities all alone..." I loved that. It goes on for about two pages but I didn't mind. You get a peek into her life and all of the adventures she has had. For me, I yearned for those experiences to be mine. I want to go back to Europe, this time all by myself, and see things I didn't get to see the first time because I was going to pubs and hanging out with friends.

To sum up, it is a whale of a book, but if you have the patience to go through it, you should. She is very intelligent and has a lot of insight on things that I had never thought to analyze. If it is confusing or boring, skip it. That's what I did. There are just little gems scattered throughout. You just have to look for them sometimes.