My husband and I are very different in many ways.

He’s a city boy and I’m a farm girl. I’m Protestant and he’s Jewish. I’m addicted to Project Runway and he doesn’t get it!

Even with those differences, our “mixed” marriage is strong. But I wasn’t sure what was going to happen when it turned out that we had voted for different candidates in our state’s presidential primary.

I voted for Hillary, but he voted for Obama. To say I had Barack Shock would be an understatement.

You see, for as long as we’ve been together, for whatever differences we’ve had, we’ve always been on the same page politically. There has never been an electoral disagreement in our house — until now. (At least he didn’t vote outside the party — now that WOULD have been grounds for divorce!)

Apparently, we’re not the only ones working on this issue in 2008. And someone is trying to cash in on this phenomenon. Read the rest of this entry »

I have long joked that things would be a lot different when I’m King of the World.

Public places would have more “rest” facilities for women since the lines are always so much longer than for the guys.

Men would be required to do half of the child care for their own kids and every employer would have on-site day-care facilities.

And while I’m at it, I’ll hire Clive Owen and John Cusack to clean my house and cook the meals! Hey, it’s my fantasy, right?

I do believe there is plenty of truth to the argument that loads of things would be better if women ruled the world.

Dee Dee Myers has beaten me to the punch in bringing this discussion to the main stream media. Read the rest of this entry »

The women we love in popular culture are the good girls.

Cinderella. Sleeping Beauty. Girls who don’t rock the boat. Pretty, demure and corseted. These are the models we let our little girls believe are the ideal.

And that’s Hillary Clinton’s problem. She’s not the “good girl” in that fairy tale princess sort of way. That makes a lot of us a little uncomfortable.

Hillary is more Princess Smartypants than Princess Aurora.

More Mulan than Madeleine.

For some reason, we can’t get past our lingering, underlying obsession with the idea that girls are for rescuing, not ones to be cast in the role of smart problem solver. Read the rest of this entry »

Buzz is in the air about a new book called How Not to Look Old.

Bit by bit I’ve been “coming out” about my looming big birthday. And as I contemplate what 49-going-on-I-don’t-feel-50 should look like I find thoughts of Botox dancing in my head. And then I feel ashamed.

Aren’t I supposed to embrace myself as I am? I certainly don’t want to send the signal to my eight-year-old daughter that mommy is obsessed with her changing body because soon enough she’ll be confronting her own changes that I want her to embrace. How non-P.C of me to struggle with my bulges and my roots!

Still, I wonder — should I hate this book or run to Barnes and Noble to buy it?

Read the rest of this entry »