The New Yorker

Maude Lebowski called. She wants her vagina art back.

Lest you think nothing good could come of this essentialist (only women with vaginas who have orgasms that come from sexual partners can be creative or experience feminine joy), privileged (Wolf recounts looking out from her "little cottage upstate," contemplating her vadge next to a "cold iron wood stove," and she is getting paid to write a book about it), prescriptive (ladies, if you want a partner who treats your vagina right that person best be familiar with "the Goddess Array"), cringe-worthy (see: "yoni massage") tome, think again: Ariel Levy has written a smart and hilarious review and you should read it.

It's time for another episode of Bitch Popaganda! Tune in as Julie, Brian, and Kelsey discuss HBO's new George R.R. Martin series Game of Thrones and "Funny Like a Guy: Anna Faris and Hollywood's woman problem," a profile by Tad Friend in this week's New Yorker.

 

Sometimes a simple acknowledgment of douchery just isn’t enough. Sometimes you have to step back and marvel at how consistent, how dedicated, how impressively shameless a person’s commitment to being a total asshole is. And that’s why Bitch has decided it’s time to start recognizing those individuals as the All-Star douchebags they are. Practically, it just makes sense: We plan to be awarding Douchebag Decrees for many years to come, and there are some people it would just be easier to mention once, acknowledging that not only have they already amassed an impressive body of douchebaggery, they will surely keep it up for the foreseeable future.

It’s in this spirit that we give a nod today to the lifetime douchechievements of Mrs. Caitlin Flanagan: author, columnist, wife, mother, professional scold, and 24-karat-gold douchebag.

Crime novelist and book reviewer Jessica Mann isn't going to take it anymore. In yesterday's Guardian she was quoted as saying that she will no longer review crime fiction that features "sadistic violence" against women. And guess what? That seems to eliminate a sizable chunk of the genre.

Oh, and it doesn't stop there. The New Yorker posted a piece on this topic as well yesterday, pointing out that the reaction to Mann's decision not to review books she finds offensive has pissed off a lot of people, most of them women who love themselves some misogynistic crime fiction.

Bitch is proud to announce our new book lovin' blog, Bibliobitch! To kick off our foray into the land of literature, here is an interview with author Kate Walbert by Bitch contributor Sarah Seltzer. Stay tuned for more, you bitchy bookworms, you.



Kate Walbert's new novel "A Short History of Women" follows the women in a single family down through the generations. The official synopsis of the book is: "From a lecture delivered to suffragettes in Victorian England to a playdate on Manhattan's Upper West Side, this provocative work chronicles four generations of women, their aspirations, the limits imposed on them, and the sometimes startling choices they make in the world."

Walbert's fictional family history begins with Dorothy Townsend, who starved herself for the British suffrage movement, and continues through to today. As Dorothy's name reappears in different permutations among her children, nieces and grand-nieces, so does her struggle with "the problem that can't be named," or the problem of how women can find fulfillment in an obstacle-filled environment. Dorothy's daughter devotes herself to science and shuns intimacy, even while serving as a role model for younger women. Her grand-nieces contend with an emptiness and lack of purpose and take that feeling out in myriad ways: trespassing on military property, blogging their feelings, drinking and moving through life as best they can. Walbert has been a finalist for the National Book Award, and the "playdate" chapter of this novel appeared in the New Yorker.

A few months back, Publishers Weekly published my interview with Walbert. However, I also asked her a few extra questions that were near and dear to my heart: namely, about the F-word. Here are her answers.