Bitch - In Praise of Difficult Women [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION Manufacturing Fascination The chief glory of a woman is not to be talked of, said Pericles, himself a much-talked-of man. VIRGINIA WOOLF A Room of One's Own In the November 1996 issue of Allure, editor-in-chief Linda Wells writes a column about how she wants to be dark and bad. This is a woman so blonde and light-eyed and white as the driven snow that for her to imagine herself as lush, in torrents, a smoky volcano of gushing feminine lava, is preposterous. As it is, Ms. Wells runs a makeup magazine and doesn't even wear much makeup. But still, when a man in the gym flirts with her by saying, "Hey, Ivory Girl, can I walk you back to work?" she is deeply offended. "In my mind, I'm the last person who'd . . . wash my face with a soap billed as 99'^Vwo% pure," Wells writes. "I may look blond and corn-fed, I may come from a long line of Iowa farmers, but in my heart I am dark and cynical and dangerous So humor me. Tell me I'm Catherine Deneuve, Anna Magnani, Dominique Sanda, just don't tell me the truth." This true confession is, of course, much less alarming than any woman admitting that, in her secret life, she wishes she were Sandra Dee or Doris Day or Tipper Gore. Unless she wanted to take on these roles in order to prove—in a fantasy within a fantasy—that these girl-