Q. Doesn't it seem curious that this resurgence of the girlie girl and sex kitten seems to be running parallel to the great religious and political conservative movement engulfing us today? What are we doing wrong in letting the lessons some of us learned in that period go quietly by? Whether by folklore, story-telling, or by virtue of your upcoming book, shouldn't more be done to show the risky effects of insular dependence on the man in your life?
— Barbara P. Hageman, Brewster, Mass.
A. I recommend reading Ariel Levy's new book, "Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture." It has a lot of interesting material linking the red state surge and the self-actualized sex kitten surge.
In my book, I make the point that we live in a society that is so derangingly sexualized, it's not a sexy society. You can't think about sex clearly if all you're thinking about is sex, whether it's an obsession over celibacy or nymphomania. America has always been conflicted about sex, its puritanical side clashing with its prurient side. But now, with the ascendance of the prudish religious right and the numbing oversexualization of commerce and culture, America seems positively bipolar about sex.
As Amazon.com began selling sex toys, a public radio station in Kentucky briefly canceled the venerable Garrison Keillor's show "The Writer's Almanac" a few months ago because he read a poem with the word "breast" in it. An art dealer in New York captured the schizoid insanity of the moment perfectly, confiding that he gets calls from wealthy private collectors in places like Texas saying that they don't want Rubens or Monet nudes because they have small children at home. They'd rather stick with impressionist landscapes and old Dutch masters. I agree that young women, like the Ivy Leaguers interviewed in a recent front-page story, may correctly assess that it was a grind for baby boomer women trying to have it all. But they seem oblivious to the perils of insular dependence on a man.
Q. Who would you identify as positive role models today for women looking to stand on the shoulders of our feminist foremothers and build from that place rather than reject it? In other words, if you had your way, who would you like to see on the cover of magazines instead of Jessica Simpson?
Amy Selwyn, London
A. I introduced Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and former U.N. commissioner for human rights, the other night at a Glamour Magazine Awards dinner. She was very impressive. She got 90 percent approval ratings in Ireland and led with moral authority in a country dominated by men, reflecting feminine grace and macho tenacity, always trying to unite society and heal divisions, reaching out to her political rivals, and reaching out to help the poor and suffering, and working for women's legal and reproductive rights. Mrs. Robinson is now running an international organization called Realizing Rights, trying to end extreme poverty and to move women's health to the top of the international agenda, to try to stop the gap between rich and poor, powerless and powerful, from getting bigger. It's fine to have beautiful women on the covers of magazines, but there are many ways to be beautiful, and I worry that America has lost a sense of that. Women used to demand equality; now they just demand Botox.
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Maureen Dowd Feminism Equality Gender New York Times
