My First Time

She had observed that it was from those who had never sailed stormy waters, came the quickest and harshest judgments on bad seamanship in heavy seas.

--Susan Glaspell

I was 14 the first time anything like that had ever happened to me. He was a cousin of Sean, my friend Nicole's boyfriend, and we were hanging out in her driveway on a summer night, just teenagers with nothing to do. He had been teasing and flirting with me all night, but then he grew more aggressive, more forward. Nicole and her boyfriend told me they were going to take a walk around the block--they wanted to have some privacy. I nodded that it was OK, we were right outside her house, and light from her open garage flooded the driveway.

As soon as they had left, he pounced on me, came up behind me and said, "I think you're scared." I didn't want to be vulnerable; yes, I was scared, but I didn't want him to know. "No, I'm not," I told him. "If you're not scared, you'd pull up your shirt." I told him no. "Then you must be scared," he replied. He inched closer to my back, wrapped his arms around me, and started groping me, running his hands all over my body as I squirmed, trying to push him off of me. He kept reaching, grabbing, groping; I kept trying to gain control, push off his hands, wiggle out from under his grip. He continued to taunt, "I think you're scared," as I struggled under his arms. Suddenly, thankfully, Nicole and Sean returned from their walk and he quickly dropped his hands off of me.

Afterward, I was scared and confused. At 14, I had a general understanding that these things happened, but I didn't expect it to happen to me, in my friend's drive way, by someone I knew. I knew what he did was wrong and gross, but I couldn't tell how wrong or gross it was. My idea of sexual assault was the stuff you see in movies: the lone woman walking down the street at night who is attacked by a stranger.

The boys soon left to go home and I told Nicole what he had done to me when she was on her walk. Being 14, she begged me not to tell anyone else; she was embarrassed because it was her boyfriend's relative, and being 14, I agreed because I wanted Nicole to be my friend and I didn't really understand what had happened.

This was not the most offensive thing a man has done to me, but it was the first.

Now, many years later, I am taking a class on violence against women. What I am learning is eye-opening and disappointing: Prosecutors of rape and sexual assault cases have a harder time persuading women on a jury that a woman was assaulted than they do men. Men are more willing to believe that the attacked woman was a victim. This seeming contradiction exists because women put themselves in the victim’s shoes and think that they would have done something differently. Women want to believe, just like I did in the driveway that night, that we are not as vulnerable as we really are. We want to believe that these things cannot just happen to us, that we can control these things by our behavior. We cannot.

Most people define rape in the classic movie scenario I believed in as a teenager. It wasn't until the late 80s/early 90s that "date rape" or "acquaintance rape" even became part of the vocabulary. The truth is, however, that the majority of rapes happen this way; most rapes/sexual assaults are committed by someone the victim already knows.

My class really hit home one day as I was reading through a few blogs and came across this entry by Amanda B., recounting her sexual assault years ago by someone she knew. Amanda's story really impressed me; I was amazed by her courage in retelling her story. But what sent goosebumps over my arms was finishing Amanda’s entry and reading comment after comment that began, "It happened to me too." One commenter summed it up well: "The scary thing is that this happened to you. The even scarier thing is that this has happened to most of your commenters… and me, too."

It broke my heart to see how many women this has happened to. Amanda’s blog is not about sexual assault; this entry was her first on the topic. The women who read her blog don't come to read about sexual assault or rape, they come to read about all aspects of Amanda’s life that touch on their different interests, maybe Amanda’s life in Mississippi, or her love of animals, or her relationship to her husband. And yet, these women who have differing reasons for reading Amanda’s blog have one thing in common: they are victims of sexual assault. What a thing to unite women.

It is my hope that women will begin to realize that having something bad happen to you doesn’t make you a bad person. It’s easier to think that assaults and rapes happen because the woman made a mistake; it’s even perhaps comforting in a sense to believe that we as women have some kind of control in these situations and are not completely vulnerable. But as long as women continue to be assaulted, women need to accept that the only ones who should feel guilt or shame are the ones who commit rapes and sexual assaults.

The power of the harasser, the abuser, the rapist depends above all on the silence of women.

--Ursula LeGuin

Angry

On Friday night, I was attending a dance class at my university's gym. Like everyone else, I filed into the room in my regular dress clothes (we didn't need to wear special gym clothes) and put my purse, bookbag, and coat in one of the cubby holes in the back of the class for the two-hour session. At the end of the class, everything was in my cubby hole as I had left it. Everything except for my purse.

Someone had stolen my purse. I am so angry I cannot begin to explain how upset I am. I am now without any access to cash (and today being President's Day means that I have to wait even longer to go to the bank, the DMV, etc.), a cell phone, my driver's license, my school ID, all of my credit/charge cards, my wallet, and the 90,000 personal items I stowed in my purse that were all of my go-to things: My go-to brush, my go-to concealer, my go-to pen, my go-to lip gloss, etc. In truth, there had to have been at least $60 worth of makeup in that bag, and probably more. My belief is that my purse was stolen--in stead of anyone else's--because it was a large, beautiful expensive black leather Coach purse. It cost almost $300.

All of this may seem so insignificant, but it really isn't. The cost of replacing everything in that purse--not even the purse itself--is quite a lot. I'll have to pay a fee to get my new license, pay to get a new school ID, pay for a new wallet, pay to replace all the cosmetics in the bag (that I use everyday and actually do need), pay to replace the prescriptions in my bag, pay to get a new cell phone, not to mention the cash that was lost and the subway tokens that I had stashed in it.

I've been calling Equifax to put a fraud alert on my credit file, calling each company to report a stolen card, calling my cell phone company to suspend my account and figure out what to do next since all of my resumes for summer employment have my cell phone as my contact, calling my friends to explain why they cannot get in touch with me.

Each day I think of some new area of my life that this affects, or something that was in my purse that I forgot and that I need to replace. Just now I realized that I had my insurance card in my purse and that I'll need to replace that as well.

I am so angry. Angry that someone would steal my purse just because she wanted it. Angry that someone would put me through all of this extra cost--not to mention all the extra time I'll have to spend replacing everything on lines at the DMV and school ID places and on the telephone. All for a purse.

It really boggles my mind that people are like this. That people are so selfish, so self-serving that they will take something from someone else--while they are in the same room as that person--just because they feel like it. I really tire of hearing the same old excuses in my liberal law school justifying criminal behavior. I don't want to hear any excuses. There are sometimes when things really are this black-and-white. Stealing is wrong. Being selfish is wrong. The person who stole my purse didn't need it. She wanted it. And that was all that she cared about.

I am so angry.

Stupid Girls

Admittedly, I am a fair-weather fan of the singer Pink. Nevertheless, her latest song and video, "Stupid Girls" caught my attention, and I have to say that I like it. The ending scenes of the video, where she mimics Paris Hilton's infamous sex tape, are hysterical. And Pink's imitation of Jessica Simpson's writhing car wash routine from Jessica's "These Boots Were Made for Walking" video is almost as awkward as the real thing--the only difference is that Pink intentionally looks awkward, while Jessica's awkwardness was simply a result of trying too hard to be sexy.

My one concern is that Pink seems to cast being an ambitious girl (vs. being a "stupid girl") in terms of the masculine (e.g., the choice being between a football--a traditionally male symbol--and dolls--a traditionally female symbol). I take issue with the idea that women need to surrender their feminity in order to be ambitious, intelligent, and successful.

You can check out the humorous vid here:
http://search.music.yahoo.com/search/?m=video&p=stupid+girls

Wife + Husband + (Housework/2)=Love

Neil Chethik, a journalist interviewed in Newsweek's article, "The Married Male Mind," reveals information shocking to no one. He does, however, reaffirm a research study I discussed in an earlier post ("Women Happier When Men Do Their Part") that reports that women are happier in marriages when their husbands share in the housework. But don't think there's nothing in it for you, men. For all of you husbands and husbands-to-be, let Chetnik's observation be a message to you:

In writing the book, I kept seeing the parallel between housework and sex in the interviews. Men said the happier their wives were in the division of housework, the happier the men were with their sex lives. We even looked at the numbers and found that there's more sex in the relationship if the wife is happy with the division of housework. It doesn't have to be exactly equal, the wife just has to think it's fair. When a woman comes in she notices if it's a mess, it's often socialized in [her] that [she is] more responsible for the look of the home So if he can recognize that by doing a fair share, then he is often rewarded with sex. She's not as angry, or burdened and she's not as tired.

See? Everyone wins!

Happy Valentine's Day

In honor of Valentine's Day, I am posting two poems by Sappho, who is regarded as one of the earliest female poets (and even though all that remains are fragments, they are among some of the most beautiful lyric poems of all time).


The Anactoria Poem
by Sappho, Translated by Jim Powell

Some say thronging cavalry, some say foot soldiers,
others call a fleet the most beautiful of
sights the dark earth offers, but I say it's what-
ever you love best.
And it's easy to make this understood by
everyone, for she who surpassed all human
kind in beauty, Helen, abandoning her
husband--that best of
men--went sailing off to the shores of Troy and
never spent a thought on her child or loving
parents: when the goddess seduced her wits and
left her to wander,
she forgot them all, she could not remember
anything but longing, and lightly straying
aside, lost her way. But that reminds me
now: Anactória,
she's not here, and I'd rather see her lovely
step, her sparkling glance and her face than gaze on
all the troops in Lydia in their chariots and
glittering armor.


Sappho Poem 1 (fragment)
translated by Robin Mitchell-Boyask

He seems to me like the gods --that man whoever facing you
sits and nearby hears your sweet voice

and lovely laughter, which makes my
heart flutter in my breast;
if I glance at you, how
my tongue can't speak

anymore but is pained, fine
fire flickers beneath my skin,
your vision not in my eyes,
my ears abuzz,

then cold sweat drips down me, trembling
captures me completely, greener than grass
am I, to die too weak
I seem to be to myself.

But all is dared and endured....

Fools for Love?

Women stereotypically turn to putty in the hold of a great love story. I remember when I was a kid and my mom staked out the local video rental store for a week to get her hands on a copy of Dirty Dancing. After hearing all of the women her age rave about Dirty Dancing after they had seen it in the theaters, my mom was expecting a love story the likes of An Affair to Remember or Splendor in the Grass. She was of course disappointed when she discovered what a sappy, Swayze-chest loving film it actually turned out to be. But many women bought into it.

Years later, when I was in high school, Titanic came out. And while I enjoyed the movie, I was nowhere near to reaching the status of devotion that the movie garnered in a group of three girls that I knew. I overheard in chemistry one Friday afternoon their plan to go see Titanic again. And when I say again, I mean the for FOURTH time in the theater.

So maybe Paul Rudnick, a playwright speaking to CNN, felt he had some basis for saying of Brokeback Mountain:

"[Men are] not quite sure what to make of it," says Rudnick, who is gay. "They know their wives are going to fall in love with the movie, and with the men in it."

I had already seen Brokeback by the time that I read the CNN article, and I admit it: I was flabbergasted. And I don't get flabbergasted easily. Why would women fall in love with the men in Brokeback? The characters had sex with no tenderness or real hint of intimacy. (As one reviewer, John Venable wrote, "the way the initial encounter is shown will only reinforce the negative view that bigots have about gay culture.") The Oscar-nominated Ledger's performance consisted largely of grunting. The men both married women and commenced an affair that lasted decades (and one of the characters had several affairs, including some dangerous back-alley rendezvous with strangers). The only sex scene between Ennis (Ledger's character) and his wife Alma (played by Michelle Williams) was as devoid of tenderness as that between him and Jack, and it echoed his desire for homosexual sex over traditional heterosexual intercourse.

No woman would want to be in the position of Alma or Lureen (the other main character's wife), who were not what their husbands desired. Their husbands spent their entire marriages desiring other people and acting on those desires. Their marriages were filled with deceit and infidelity, and marred by a lack of passion.

Women may like Brokeback Mountain because they cheer its message (respect for gay relationships and the promotion of gay rights), but to assume that women are going to buy into a love story simply because it is framed as a love story is to underestimate women, and, perhaps more shamefully, to underestimate love.

Post Script: This post was inspired by a discussion on Sarah's blog. Go read it; it's very timely!

The Battle Within

I am not a dirty person. In the three years that I have been living in my lovely studio apartment in the city, I have had exactly 1 roach and 1 nondescript bug in my apartment. The roach incident was after I had rushed off one weekend to visit friends at the shore in the heat of July and neglected to empty the trash. I was a big girl; I killed it, I picked it up with a napkin, laid it to rest in the trash bin, and washed my hands. And I'll admit it: I was proud of myself for killing my first (and thankfully last) roach.

But this winter, I have had mice. After living a relatively mouse-free existence during my tenure in the apt, these little critters have decided that they've been neglecting their neighborly duties and have come a-callin'. The maintenance man attributes the little darlings' (audacious as they are, they're practically becoming pets, and yes, I feel your pain Camilla) unprecedented visits with the fact that I live on the first apartment level (very accessible--apparently the mice are simply too lazy to hoof it any farther) and the fact that every abandoned building within a 1-mile radius of my building is being demolished to make way for new condos, causing the mice to scurry to our building for shelter.

But now I have a confession. I've wrestled with revealing this for at least a week, not knowing quite how to say it, or what you'll think of me. But I think we've come to the point in our relationship when I have to just put it all out there, just take the risk, and hope you'll accept me: When a mouse foolishly fell for my cunning scheme of placing peanut butter at one end of a mousetrap, I couldn't get rid of the body. I had to--gulp--call my boyfriend on the phone and have him come over and do the dirty work for me.

It's such a stereotypically girly thing to do. And although I am sure it makes him feel like the Popeye to my Olive Oyl, it makes me feel a little bit like a fraud. But the funny part about the whole thing is that I am so averse to getting anywhere near a mouse, dead or alive, I don't even want to get over this phobia.

So, now that the cat's outta the bag (and hopefully patrolling my apartment for unwanted guests).... I have to ask: Does this make me a bad feminist?

Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Week

You know the world is in a sorry state when the U.S. Congress sets aside an entire week for "National Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention." According to an article on CNN.com, "The Justice Department says girls between the ages of 16 and 24 are more likely than any other age-group to become victims of relationship abuse -- almost triple the national average."

I guess I'm a little naive. I had no idea that young women were this susceptible to abusive relationships--I always assumed that abuse was something that crept into adult relationships along with alcoholism, financial pressures, and the general stress of raising a family. A group of teenage girls have formed a group, TEAR (Teens Experiencing Abusive Relationships), to help other girls avoid getting involved in abusive relationships. As discouraging as this all is, raising awareness of abuse in teenage relationships will hopefully lower the number of women getting involved in abusive relationships as adults, when there are added complications like children, family expectations, and finances to make it so much harder for women to leave harmful relationships.

Source:
Feyerick, Deborah. "Young Women Form Anti-Abuse Group."
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/02/08/teen.abuse/index.html

Campaign for Real Beauty

I was always a fan of Dove's moisturizing soap bars (they don't dry your skin out like most other drugstore brands), and when the company expanded its product line to include hair care and other skin care products, it used not 14-year-old twiggy models or famous faces (Andi McDowell, Halle Berry, Lauren Hutton, etc.) but real women. Dove has called this its "Campaign for Real Beauty." Dove's efforts in their ad campaign deserve much more depth than I have time to devote right now, but I did want to highlight the new commercial (click here to view) they launched during the Superbowl, introducing a program called the Self-Esteem Fund for girls. As inspiration for the campaign, Dove cites the statistic that 92% of girls say they want to change at least one aspect of their appearance. I am a huge supporter of Dove's campaign and encourage you to choose Dove products when you buy shampoo, conditioner, and soap.

Source:
Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty
http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com

Foul Bowl

While young women achieve accolades in the high school sports arena, women desperate for a little bit of fame take us a few steps back. The Lingerie Bowl, a pay-per-view event that apparently aired while the Superbowl aired its own half-time show, featured shapely women in nothing but bras and panties running around on a field for a football game between teams "Euphoria" and "Temptation." It's so discouraging. While the Superbowl takes a break from serious athletes being paid serious money to win a self-affirming title, women take to a football field to.... well, basically make it appear that a sports arena is not a place where women truly belong.

The Lingerie Bowl, despite making the connection between women and sports seem ridiculous, takes itself rather seriously. The website refers to its quarterbacks as celebrities. Who are these famous celebs, you ask? Scarlett Johansson and Salma Hayek, mayhaps? Drew Barrymore and Jessica Simpson? Not quite. The "celebrity" quarterbacks are Trishelle Cannatella, who has the dubious achievements of starring on reality television favorites such as MTV's "Real World: Las Vegas" (arguably the sleaziest Real World season ever, where Trishelle embarrassed herself by repeatedly begging a male housemate, who alternated between using her for sex and rejecting her advances, to share her bed) and "The Surreal Life 2," and Katie Lohman, whom I've never heard of, a "celebrity" by virtue of her being Miss April in Playboy five years ago.

The other women on the "teams" are touted as supermodels. When I hear the term "supermodel," I think of women for whom the phrase was invented during the height of the supermodel era in the 1980s and early 90s. Women like Christie Brinkley, Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista, Noami Campbell, and Cindy Crawford. Who are the "supermodels" in the Lingerie Bowl? Well, half of their biographies don't even mention any credits whatsoever, and the rest credit appearances in magazines like Playboy and Maxim. (Let's keep in mind the fact that Maxim had Haylie Duff as its covergirl a few months ago, whose only real achievement is having Tween Queen Hilarie Duff as a sister. She's basically the female equivalent of Frank Stallone.)

Yet the most distressing part of the Lingerie Bowl website is that it hails itself as "The Ultimate Catfight," complete with audio clips of cats growling. I guess this is something I'll never understand. Men complain that women are too catty. Then a spectacle like the Lingerie Bowl comes out, which is clearly made for men by men. And what does it promote? Women having "the ultimate catfight."

Of course, who would you expect to host such an event but Jenny McCarthy, who once had fame for her (surgically-altered, of course) cleavage in Playboy and tongue-sticking out antics on MTV's "Singled Out," and Cindy Margolis (with surgically altered everything), who earned her fame by being "the most downloaded woman on the internet." USA Today writer Michael McCarthy writes that the Superbowl included events from "cheesy to sleazy," and I can definitely guess which end the Lingerie Bowl fell on.

The Lingerie Bowl is offensive on so many levels. It alienates women from participating in sports either as athletes or spectators, and makes a mockery of women's real achievements in sports. It also encourages stereotypes about women's "cattiness." The idea that while the men go off and compete in real games for real honors whilst women dress up in frilly lingerie ensembles as participants in the "ultimate catfight" exaggerates the differences between men and women and makes it seem like women are not capable of more, which, as numerous posts in this blog have attested, is simply not true. As Shannon O'Toole, author of Wedded to the Game: The Real Lives of NFL Women says,

These events "demeaned" female football fans, who now make up 43% of the NFL fan base. "Women football fans watch football for the game. They respect the players."

Sources:
McCarthy, Michael. "Pricey Celebrity Events Mix Sex, Big Game," USAToday.com.
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/super/2006-02-05-sex-super-bowl_x.htm

The Lingerie Bowl
http://www.lingeriebowl.com

Photo by Penny Bubar

Wrasslin' Fool

Kudos to Michaela Hutchinson! She became the first girl in the nation to win a state high school wrestling title while competing against boys. Seems it runs in the family--two of her brothers also have titles.

It's about time that women started wrestling with the boys and doing damage to the notion that the only wrestling women can do involves bikinis and pits of mud.

Source:
Espn.com, "Girl First to Win State Prep Wrestling Title Over Boys."
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/news/story?id=2320537

Basketball's New "Prince"

I was so thrilled when I learned about the latest female superstar. A girl named Epiphanny Prince broke the high school girls' basketball record for most points scored by one player in a game. Prince scored 113 points; the previous record-holder, Cheryl Miller, had scored 105 points. As I eagerly read about Prince's accomplishment, I came across a statement made by LeBron James, who's touted as the next Michael Jordan, and I was even more encouraged:

"It's an amazing thing when an individual does that," NBA star LeBron James said when told about Prince's performance. "I don't know who she is, but maybe we'll see her in the WNBA. For that matter, the NBA."(1)

My parade was quickly rained on, however, when I did some research and found several articles criticizing Prince for dominating the ball over her teammates and unnecessarily humiliating the other team.

Kara Yorio, of the Sporting News, called Prince's achievement "appalling." Yorio goes on to say

My disgust is not really aimed at Prince or even so much personally at Grezinsky [Prince's coach], as much as it is as every coach and team that lets their star go above and beyond and needlessly rub the opposition's noses in their futility.(2)

I have to say that I am amazed by such comments: "needlessly rub the opposition's noses in their futility"? Yorio writes as if the only reason that Prince was allowed to continue playing in the second half (which is the point at which her coach realized that Prince had a shot at the record) was to humiliate the other team. That's absolutely ridiculous. Her coach let Prince continue because she had a shot at setting a national record.

The game speaks not so much to the opposing team's weakness as much as it does to Prince's outstanding talent. And while I understand that basketball is a team sport, I hope that none of the negative reactions to Prince's record-setting game result from a gender bias that expects females to be self-sacrificing for the greater good and always considerate of the feelings of others, even if it means accepting less for one's self (think of the ubiquitous mother who is so busy cooking dinner and making sure that everyone gets what they need at the table that her food is cold by the time she finally eats).

I recalled in a class the other day observations my father had made about watching my volleyball games as compared to watching my brothers' basketball, soccer, and baseball games when we were teenagers. The girls were far more polite; if we saw a chance to go for the ball when our teammate had a shot at it, we would either let the other girl get the ball, or hit the ball but apologize for doing so. We were so afraid of offending anyone by being too aggressive, or of stealing anyone else's chance at scoring.

After relating that story on Monday and learning of Prince's achievement yesterday (and of the backlash toward it today), I have to salute Prince. I hope that other young women will follow her example and assert themselves by "going after the ball" in whatever arena they find themselves. Young women should not be socialized into a culture of mediocrity, no matter how polite or genteel it may seem.

Sources:
(1) AP, "Look Out Kobe: NYC Girl Scores 113 in HS Game," ESPN.com http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/news/story?id=2315990

(2) Yorio, Kara. "One Record That Shouldn't Have Been Set," Sporting News. http://www.sportingnews.com/yourturn/viewtopic.php?t=58639

Wal-Mart Strikes Again

I'll admit it: I really want to like Wal-Mart. They stock just about anything you could ever want to buy, and at dirt-cheap prices. But nothing comes without its price. The cost of shopping at Wal-Mart? Well, among claims of poor healthcare for their workers and sexual discrimination, Wal-Mart is also not stocking emergency contraception (EC), one of the most fundamentally important drugs for women.

Emergency contraception is distributed in a variety of combinations, including the name brand EC known as "Plan B." It should not be confused with RU-486, which is a pill that induces an abortion. Emergency contraception stops a pregnancy from occurring in the first place, therefore eradicating the need for an abortion altogether. EC works one of two ways: it either stops an egg from being released by the woman's ovary, or, if an egg has already been released, it alters the uterine lining so that a fertlized egg cannot implant and become a pregnancy. EC is a time-sensitive drug; it is most effective right after the unprotected intercourse (when a condom breaks, a woman is raped, or a situation in which both partners are intoxicated and not using proper judgment regarding birth control), and becomes less effective over time. If taken within 48 hours, it is very effective, but its efficacy drops off sharply after 72 hours.

As most unprotected sex acts tend to occur on the weekends--Friday and Saturday nights--when doctors' offices are typically closed (even Planned Parenthood's hours are curtailed on Saturdays and generally closed on Sundays), it is critical that when women finally do get a prescription for EC, they are able to get the prescription filled as soon as possible.

This is what makes Wal-Mart's decision to not stock emergency contraception in its stores (except for those in Illinois, which are required to stock EC by state law) so distressing. I can only conclude that the people behind this decision are so removed from the reality of what women go through--how men and women can together make a mistake that puts women's lives--as they know them and want them to be--in jeopardy. EC can take women out of this agonizing position--but only if pharmacies do not add unnecessary hurdles to women's access to emergency contraception.

Source:
"Women Sue Wal-Mart Over Contraception," CNN.com
http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/02/01/walmart.contraception.ap/index.html

I'm from Venus, Hear Me Roar

OK, boys and girls. I finally got on the bandwagon of 1992 and bought a copy of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. I would be lying if I said I'm not skeptical about this book. The whole experience is giving me deja vu of the time in college when I bought The Rules with my erstwhile best friend on a lark. We had been drinking coffee and complaining about our love lives in the Barnes & Noble Starbucks, and $9.95 seemed like a small price to pay for knowing how to stop wasting our time with idiot college boys who didn't know what they wanted. After reading the book, I found out that I paid an hour's wage to be told things my mother had been telling me for years ("girls don't call boys, boys call girls!" etc., etc.). Shortly thereafer, I learned that at least one of the two authors of the book got divorced. Not a very encouraging first-time experience with the self-improvement aisle.

Never being one to refuse someone, or in this case, something a second chance, however, I picked up John Gray's tome after having a discussion with my BFF Lauren. She told me that she knows a woman who swears by the book, even though she acknowledges that it seems silly. My initial skepticism lessened a little more when I brought the book up to the register and the man who rang me up told me that it had a lot of useful advice in it, and that he hoped I was buying it for the man in my life (I'm sure my bf would be thrilled with that reading assignment!).

So I am going to give it a try. Because, as the saying goes, I will continue to learn as long as there is something I do not know. Which means that I will be learning about relationships for a long, long time.

Photo courtesy of Jessica M, stock.xchng.