Written Pyramids

I really need to go to sleep, but I just wanted to write something quickly about today's announcement that Jill Abramson will replace Bill Keller as the executive editor of the New York Times. 

My heart jumped a little when I read the news this morning. It's a really big deal. Journalism can still feel like an old boys club. I am shocked by the small number of women in the Senate press room every time I walk in there. Journalism will not become gender-balanced over night or even over the next few years, but Abramson's appointment is certainly a step in the right direction, and as a female journalist I can't help but feel elated (even as I wonder about the fallacy that women should automatically root for other women).

Now, the most prominent newspaper in the country will be lead by a woman. Her second in command will be Dean Baquet, the second black man to be managing editor. These are important steps for the slow-moving beast that is the journalism industry.

Abramson, who has served as a D.C. bureau chief for the Times, made clear that she valued contributions to the Times by both men and women, but she also took time to highlight the women.

From the Times:

In her remarks to the staff on Thursday, she took time to acknowledge “my sisters,” naming more than a dozen women at The Times who have helped her along the way, including the company’s chief executive, Janet L. Robinson. 

From the Washington Post: 

Among the bookcases and posters in Jill Abramson’s office at the New York Times is a blown-up black-and-white photo of the newsroom, circa 1895, in which a group of men huddle around a desk occupied by a woman named Mary Taft.


“She looks like the boss,” said Abramson. Not quite — Taft was the paper’s second female reporter. On Thursday, the 57-year-old Abramson was named the first woman to head the Times’ newsroom in its 160-year history. 

A few days ago I was re-reading my post on women in leadership positions in which I wondered if there would ever be a time when successful women did not feel that they had to be judged as female leaders as opposed to leaders, with gender a non-issue.

It's been almost exactly three years since I wrote that post, and I don't think society as a whole is there yet, but a quote in the Washington Post article leaves me hopeful (emphasis mine):

“I wouldn’t say that she was chosen because she’s a woman,” said Baquet, who is the second African American journalist to become managing editor of the Times, “but I still think it’s a big deal. It just so happened that the person best positioned to be executive editor of the New York Times is a woman. . . . I believe other women who aspire to jobs in journalism will see this as a statement about how far this profession has changed.”  

Bonus! This is an excerpt from the obituary of Mary Taft Welch published in the New York Times in December 1944:


The obituary informs readers that Taft, who was hired in 1897 or 1898, "covered news of women's activities" wrote "some art criticism" and "reported many of the early developments in the agitation for women's suffrage." She "won the respect and liking of her male colleagues on this and other newspapers" and retired in 1924.

I emerge from my half-a-year silence to talk about women. And writing. Surely, there was no shock in that.

The Pulitzer, by my own  count, is one of the more gender-balanced literary prized out there. By my count, 29 out of 86 Pulitzer awarded for fiction or novel (as the award category was once called) were awarded to women. That's 33 percent.Its not great, but its better than the other book awards.

The National Book Award has been awarded 68 times, 15 times to women (22 percent)  Twelve out of the 43 books awarded the Man Booker Prize were women (27 percent).  Twelve out of 107 Nobel Laureates in literature are women. That's 11 percent.

So, of all the prizes to win as a female fiction writer, the Pulitzer is the one where gender should be the smallest, issue. But, news questions are, to some extent, predictable, so a short Wall Street Journal interview with Jennifer Egan, who won the prize for her book Visit From the Goon Squad ended with this:

Over the past year, there’s been a debate about female and male writers and how they come off in the press. Franzen made clear that “Freedom” was going to be important, while others say that Allegra Goodman was too quiet about “The Cookbook Collector.” Do you think female writers have to start proclaiming, “OK, my book is going to be the book of the century”?

Anyone can say anything, that’s easy. My focus is less on the need for women to trumpet their own achievements than to shoot high and achieve a lot. What I want to see is young, ambitious writers. And there are tons of them. Look at “The Tiger’s Wife.” There was that scandal with the Harvard student who was found to have plagiarized. But she had plagiarized very derivative, banal stuff. This is your big first move? These are your models? I’m not saying you should say you’ve never done anything good, but I don’t go around saying I’ve written the book of the century. My advice for young female writers would be to shoot high and not cower.

The authors Kaavya Viswanathan plagiarized were Megan F. McCafferty, Meg Cabot, Sophie Kinsella, and maybe Salman Rushdie. With the exception of Rushdie, where the plagiarism was also the least clear, Viswanathan plagiarized well known, successful chick-lit / YA authors.





Chick-lit authors and fans took offense at Egan's description of the genre (or, really, the parts plagiarized) as "very derivative, banal stuff" and bloggers suggested that Egan was guilty of  "girl-on-girl crime" and called for an apology. ( As for the three women themselves, Cabot, posted on her Facebook wall "I'm certain Jennifer Egan didn't mean to be rude." McCafferty was a lot more angry and also received an apology. I don't see anything from Kinsella, did I miss it? ).

Here's the thing: the genre is derivative and banal. Sometimes an author's work is even derived of her own previous books. I spent sometime in a bookstore looking at the backs of Kinsella's Shopaholic books (which is a different series than the book that was plagiarized from), and each one of them had the same book summary: Becky shops a lot, Becky is in trouble because of shopping (financially and romantically) Becky's troubles are resolved and deferred. Becky lives a glamorous life full of hot men (or man, she's loyal to her husband once they marry), cute shoes, gossip, and occasional career.

I've read books by each of these three authors. When I was in 12th grade, my English teacher asked me if there were any books that I was secretive about reading, ones that I didn't want to tell anyone else I was reading. I don't think she was asking me about books I was embarrassed about, but right now that's what I think of. I am embarrassed to admit that I have read these books because I believe in the power and importance of Literature, and I don't think those books are Literature (the pretentious capitalized L is intentional).

My English teacher's question came in the form of a question written in the margins of my final high school English paper. The paper prompt was "what is literature." My answer was "a work of writing that makes the reader feel something." Now, years later, I would change that to "makes the reader feel something that lasts beyond the time it takes to read the work itself or makes the reader re-appreciate the power of language." The second part allows for some of the post-modernist writers to be included as part of Literature and the addendum to the first part is reflective of my belief that not everything that is written is Literature. I write every day. Nothing I write for work is literature. It's written to inform and nothing else. Writing that entertains--even if it makes the reader laugh or cry--but leaves little emotion once the act of reading is completed falls into the same category.

I recognize that my answer is somewhat subjective; maybe there are people who read the works of McCafferty,  Cabot, and  Kinsella and find themselves marveling at the books weeks after the reading is complete. But for me--and clearly for Egan as well--these books fall short of being Literature.

They certainly fill a niche; the authors are wildly successful, and deserve to be. But the books are not memorable. They don't linger. There were no sentences that made me marvel at the possibilities embedded in the English language. At best, they are brain candy, light, entertaining fluff that fills the time well enough while being read but leaves nothing lasting.

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There are a lot of things to complain about with Glee. The music is great, but the plots can be sloppy bordering on offensive. 

I seem to be more or less on my own in my level of discomfort in the blackmail plot with Sue and the principal, but catching a Shakespeare reference in the season finale of Glee did not help much:

"One last chit, Figgy, give the glee club another year, and I won't mention us making the beast with two backs again."

I'm willing to bet that the writers did not know that "the beast with two backs" is from Othello. But I did; I am obsessed with Othello.  My thesis for my BA was titled "'All That Is Spoke Is Marred' – The Transformation of Othello As Seen Through Speech."

So, I knew that "a beast with two backs" is part of a list of racially-charged animal metaphors that Iago uses to describe Desdemona sleeping with Othello. And when I heard it here, in describing what the creators of Glee clearly see as a race as well as infidelity issue, I cringed a little. (Emphasis mine).

IAGO
'Zounds, sir, you're robb'd; for shame, put on
your gown;
Your heart is burst, you have lost half your soul;
Even now, now, very now, an old black ram
Is topping your white ewe. Arise, arise;
Awake the snorting citizens with the bell,
Or else the devil will make a grandsire of you:
Arise, I say....

BRABANTIO
What tell'st thou me of robbing? this is Venice;
My house is not a grange....

IAGO
'Zounds, sir, you are one of those that will not
serve God, if the devil bid you. Because we come to
do you service and you think we are ruffians, you'll
have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse;
you'll have your nephews neigh to you; you'll have
coursers for cousins and gennets for germans.

BRABANTIO
What profane wretch art thou?

IAGO
I am one, sir, that comes to tell you your daughter
and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs.

It should be noted that this dialogue also produces an exchange that should be printed on DC Shakespeare shirts:

BRABANTIO
Thou art a villain.

IAGO
You are--a senator.

This is an essay, apropos of nothing, that I originally wrote for another blog. I'm reprinting it here, because more than a year after writing it I am still proud of it and still grappling with these issues. 


"It's really important to make women in our community less invisible," the chief Rabbi of England, Jonathan Sacks, said at a panel discussion in D.C. in advance of the release of a prayer book with his commentary. A murmur of approval rose from the audience.

"You can see it on the first page of my siddur," he said, referring to the version of the prayer book with his commentary. He has written the first prayer in both the feminine and the masculine grammatical forms. He has included a prayer of thanksgiving for the birth of a girl. He has -- as chief rabbi--fought for aggunot [women whose husbands refuse to give them a divorce] and for strong, religiously acceptable prenuptial agreements, and for communal lay-person leadership roles.

His prayer book still has the line "Blessed are you God for you did not make me a woman." In the American version, there is no commentary on that line. The editor took it out; it was too much apologetics, not enough explanation.

Celebrate Moms by "liking" a cleaning supply? Ugh.

And then there's this. I don't understand this at all. If Clorox thinks it's important to help kids, why make people "like" it on Mother's day in order to make the donation? This is a general gripe and confusion about corporate giving; do consumers like it more when they feel involved? Does it sell more products? Does it sell more than just printing "Clorox supports kids" on the package?

How about not only marketing it to women? Does that help?

Here ends today's rant.

O.K. I get that Glee is making fun of stereotypes and the cliques of high school. There is also some making fun of the "let's break out into song" genre, although the Glee numbers all come across as pretty earnest. AND I get that Sue Sylvester is over-the-top evil incarnate.

But the internal culture of "for and about Women" made me feel uncomfortable. Women were treated exclusively as shoppers, party-goers, cooks hostesses, and mothers, and men were ignored. We began thinking of a section that would deal with how men and women live­d—together and apart—what they liked and what they were like, what they did when they were not at the office. We wanted profiles, but "new journalism" profiles that went way beyond the bare bones of biography. We wanted to look at the culture of America as it was changing in front of our eyes.

What we have here, folks, is a quote from a book published 1996. The passage is about a decision made in the late 1960's. It is from Ben Bradlee's book A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures. The passage is about how the Style section came to be at the Washington Post. Over 40 years ago.

It also kind of describes what Slate.com does, except Slate is a little wonkier. Slate, not incidentally, is owned by the Washington Post company.

I mention all of this, because after DoubleX folded into Slate, they started adding little pink X's next to the stories that used to be on a separate, segregated site for women, and now are just labeled as women's stories.

That's right. Over 40 years after the Washington Post's "For and About Women" section became "Style," Slate launched what seems to amount to a "For and About Women" section. Argh.

Why is an article about Virginia Thomas, Clarence Thomas' wife, and her Tea Party ties an article specifically for women? I mean, I know what Virginia Thomas is a woman, and I know that Emily Bazelon is also a woman. But why is the writer's gender relevant? Why would Slate want a big fat X next to this story to not so subtly say, "are you a guy? If so, this story is not really of interest to you."

How about this great story about the woman who live-blogged/tweeted her abortion? It's the 21st century people, men get angry about abortion on both sides of the debate. Abortion is a women's issue, but it is also an everyone issue. So is religion. Which is what this story is about.

And, looking at it from the other angle, a disproportionate percentage of stories that get the pink X icon are some kind-of-modern-day variation of "shoppers, party-goers, cooks hostesses, and mothers." Siiigh.

I really like Slate. I really wanted to like DoubleX. I just wish I could have liked it without my feminism kicking into high gear.

Because it's a Web site about parenting, decorating your house, and chick lit. It's not for me.

This is not the post I was going to write.

I had lots of paragraphs on learning that city editors were still presumed male, on noticing that the world that I cover is still made of old, white men. It was going to be a post on how this clip from Ratatouille still applies.



But then over at Glamocracy a friend wrote this:

The thing is, I resent the fact that Hillary is now inescapably a symbol of women in power, and that women for years to come will be compared to her. I have a problem with this because I'm used to a new kind of woman leader, one who doesn't have to try so hard to fit in with the boys and prove that she can be aggressive and ruthless just to be taken seriously. By acting in such a decidedly un-feminine manner, Clinton has actually made it harder for us who had already felt accepted as leaders without resorting to those measures—now, it will be harder for women in my generation who don't act like her to be taken seriously. She cemented a new standard that, in my mind, had already been broken.

My first impression was that she was wrong, that the standard had not been broken, that female editors of my school paper were described as "the ones wearing the pants," that there was subtle sexism in our college age leaders that she had missed.
Ratatouille, I thought is representative of what it is like for woman leaders in Clinton's generation and what it is in ours.

And it's not Clinton's fault. It is the whole world. In New York Magazine in an article titled "Only the Men Survive," Zoe Cruz, who was fired from Morgan Stanley is described as aggressive and having that be her downfall.

Cruz attributed her flare-ups to her “Mediterranean blood,” but they may also have been a matter of necessity. “For women to get to the top, they have to be so much more ruthless,” says another former colleague. “Whether it’s Martha Stewart or Donna Karan—the most bitchy people you’d ever want to meet in your life. But they had to be that way.”

Cruz’s brand of aggression seemed to define her more than it did her male colleagues, partly because she wasn’t very good at—or didn’t see the point in—smoothing over a relationship after a conflict. “A guy can say, ‘But you know I love you, right?’ ” says a female colleague who worked with Cruz in the nineties. “She can’t say, ‘But you know I love you, right?’ It’s the pounding-each-other-on-the-back stuff that men do. Maybe it’s because a woman is seen as too soft and nurturing in a man’s world. Women aren’t encouraged to do that.”

But maybe that isn't true. Maybe woman CAN move into traditionally male roles while embracing their less aggressive side. Nancy Pelosi, after all, was sworn in with her children and grandchildren in the background. I have once flirted to get someone to give me his name. I have cajoled sources. But I have also given them the bottom line: I am going to print this whether you like it or not.

I can choose to be aggressive when I want to be, but I don't have to be.

Maybe Disney is wrong in letting Collete push this. Maybe they are inadvertently saying " you can be a princess for a while, but when you grow up, you've better face the world with sass. It's tough out there if you are not tough."

Maybe the New York Times Magazine columnist who worried about what message the Clinton Nutcrackers and sexist slurs would send to her four year old daughter was hinting at something larger when she writes: "My daughter has never heard that “girls can’t be” or “girls can’t do.” Why should I plant the idea in her head only to knock it down?"

Maybe, there can be a new generation of girls who scoff at t-shirts that say "I'm a writer. I'm a reporter. I'm a girl. Any questions?" not because they, as I did, believe they can and will move beyond that, but because it has never occurred to them that their would be a problem with being a girl and a reporter.

Maybe they will see a female executive editor in one of the nation's largest papers, and will see how she leads the newsroom with her own personality, whatever that may be, and does not have her personality compared to gendered stereotypes.

When those girls run for president, there will be discussions about their strengths and weaknesses as a candidate and that will include how they interact with people and how much of the personal they bring to the campaign, but it won't include questions about how their candidacies would be different if they were men.

Maybe there will be a generation that the "you can't" is foreign. But in the end, I don't think we can blame Clinton for reacting to her gender by being empowered to fight the man's fight. (I also want to note that while I understand why she went by Hillary instead of Clinton or Rodham Clinton in terms of wanting to seperate herself from the former president, it drove me nuts because it felt like in the name issue she did not demand the same level of respect as the male candidates did. I guess this might go against the rest of what I am saying).

I think our generation will be the transitional generation. We will still get told to suck it up if a cop says something sexual to a cops reporter or mimics the pitch of her voice, but we might be able to fight back with a display of talent rather than a need for extraordinary aggressiveness just to prove we have it in us.

And the generation after us will look confused when we show them the a display of "the bad girl side of Miss Bell that Walt never saw" because they will not have realized that they have to chose between being a princess and having a personality. They will have found a compromise that triumphs individuality.

But I am not sure we are there yet.

This is not the post I was going to write: there are all sorts of thoughts about the mass of articles about Clinton that have been published recently. But those may have to wait. I'm not even sure I will agree with this post in the morning.

Over the course of my one year as a mid-level editor at my school paper, I spent a lot of time talking about how to solve problems. Once, the 14 news editors expended over 5,000 words in e-mails about deadlines. I spent hours in meetings and talking on the phone about reporters. About editing. About making the paper more hospitable. More professional. Less professional. Fewer corrections. Less pressure. You name it. And a lot of the problems that we talked about for hours still exist, two years later.

But among all those conversations that were in retrospect not all that important, there was one that stands out. It was a two-hour one-on-one meeting with my editor in which we talked about gender. About glass ceilings. About the way we cover or don't cover sexual assault. About why my experience walking down the street was different than his. The conversation was spurred by a nasty argument, but the conversation was civil, and one of the most honest conversations I've ever had with anyone.

The tenor of the newsroom changed a little after that conversation. Both I and my editor became more thoughtful journalists and editors after that conversation. What better place than a newsroom to throw around words that really matter. That's what I thought about when I read Kristol's column about a dialogue on race. Have people been talking about race for decades, if not centuries? Yes. Are there still problems? Yes. Is it possible that a repast from rhetoric, especially inflammatory rhetoric would be helpful? Yes. Is it likely that racial problems will be solved in a campaign speech? No.

But does that mean we should stop talking? Stop having conversations? Stop being honest? That words will always fall flat? Absolutely not.

Relatedly: Slate ponders what a speech on gender would sound like, and Katie Couric marvels at the number of women on the staff of her college paper.

Yeah. I have a few.

• Why is this a t-shirt that needs to be created in the first place? It just doesn't seem that odd to me. Last night, a friend told me that the majority of his editors have been female.
• Aren't the reporters supposed to be asking the questions? (This one courtesy of a friend).
  
• Who writes with a typewriter, let alone a pink one?
• Is there anyway that the implications of this are not demeaning?
• Who would buy this? A friend suggested "lame high school editors".

Eww.

When a woman I know left a good position at a small daily to a very good position at a weekly, a male friend said "Wow. She knows she's making the wrong career move". Maybe. Maybe not. I think it depends on how we define success. I do want to work at a daily, so I understand where he was coming from. But I also understand where she was coming from, and I have a sense that my friend--as a guy--might never understand. Even if she really wanted the new job, what may be confusing for my friend is the twisted career path she's taking. There is no set goal, no one way to get there, and for some that may be confusing. For women, I think, it is often normal.

A woman leading a discussion with a room full of high school graduates headed to prestigious colleges about balancing school and work (the mother of two wonderful kids, she looked around the room and said, I feel like an alcoholic lecturing to an AA meeting) asked the girls to raise their hands if their mothers were on the same career path they had been on when they graduated college. Almost no one raised her hand. (Yes, I was one of those graduates. It was a bunch of years ago now). I am not sure the same would be true for fathers.

This New York Times column sums it up nicely. What do we tell our daughters about going to work. How easy is it to tell them they can do everything? How easy is it to lie?

The column advises this:

"Of course we want to tell them [our children] that they can achieve all they can envision. But we also need to tell them that those visions may change color and scope along the way. Of course we want to tell them that hard work will pave their way. But we must also warn them that sometimes it won’t be enough, and that they will have to choose, because the whole of work and the whole of life rarely fit neatly into every working day."

Maybe it's not an issue of a glass ceiling so much as it's an issue of an almost-invisible labyrinth.