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Jewish World Review April 21, 2005 / 12 Adar II, 5765 Bulimic broads By Marianne M. Jennings
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
I slogged through Martha Beck's Leaving the Saints and Jane Fonda's My Life So Far. The first tackled bulimia and left the Mormon Church, and the latter tackled bulimia and sexual threesomes after ensuring American prisoners got more torture in Vietnam. My conclusions: (a) avoid women with bulimia stories; and (b) read Henry James. The latter will be less painful.
I blame Toni Morrison. And maybe Oprah. Since these two have been slinging nouveau literature, wannabes have conjured up bulimic, anorexic, incestuous horror in a confessional format lodged between the mesothelioma lawyers and windshield replacement ads of afternoon TV. There they wax whiny about childhood abuse they just recollected, misogynistic marriages through which they binged and purged, and their new selves that involve fluffy hair and a book contract.
These sobbing tales of self-discovery and barfing make the intermittent Ovaltine commercials Oscar material. Mistress-to-a-murderer Amber Frey got her book atop the bestseller list. This is what happens when Maya Angelou is the inaugural poet. We didn't have this kind of trouble when Robert Frost was in charge and good fences made good neighbors.
Dr. Beck, Harvard PhD, life coach, bulimic, and incest recollector extraordinaire, bears a striking resemblance to Frau Farbissina, the Austin Powers sidekick, something that makes it all the more difficult to take her lion, camel, butterfly meditations, and evolutions seriously. Beck's book has four themes: (1) she threw up a lot; (2) Mormons are loaded with problems because they cook, clean, raise decent children, head to church with regularity, and, worst of all, helped her through a pregnancy in which she was bedridden (one can understand why she hates them so); (3) she threw up a lot; and (4) her father, Mormon scholar, Hugh Nibley, molested her, something she recollected after she passed out whilst listening in on BYU students allegedly confessing to date rape, child sexual abuse, and pretty much anything Toni Morrison has loaded into her dime-store smut.
It's your standard Oprah stuff. Lo and behold, after reading Beck's ad nauseum tome, I found this in the preface, "More recently, and in particular, the wonderful people at O, the Oprah Magazine have given me the opportunity and encouragement to speak in my real voice, to both discover and convey what I believe to be most true. I'm inspired by the great O herself and editor-at-large Gayle King." My Oprah theory rates a Nobel. The obsequious Frau Beck heaped praise with the none-too-subtle hope of getting this bulimic book on O's list. Her relativist hedging is beautiful to behold: "what I believe to be most true."
My favorite part of the book comes when Dr. Frau confronts a rattlesnake in her Phoenix home, something that hasn't happened here since Ronald Reagan hosted TV's Death Valley Days. But, she believes this to be true stuff rearing its ugly head, or at least slithering its head in through the arcadia door. Frau Martha tells us that she talked the reptile out of her house. "Life-coached" him to better digs, $5,000 a week, and Tony Robbins videos? If she speaks as she writes, the snake's rapid exit makes sense. My guess is that, truth, whatever it is, be told, she threatened to throw up on the critter and he fled.
Much of the book defies logic. She complains of Mormons' clannishness and their shunning of non-members. She says that her Mormon high school teachers in Provo, Utah cautioned her against her friendship with a Catholic girl. I got 9 million Mormon converts around the globe who can refute the shunning allegation. When Mormons spot fresh missionary targets, they aim, fire, and suffocate with attention. This Provo Catholic lass was Utah's only missionary work.
Another Beck story, true to the O formula for literary greatness, involves hair. Dr. Frau whines that a Utah hairdresser wanted to call her husband for permission before cutting her hair (the husband is now ex- and may be coaching and living with the snake). I only lived in Utah for 6 years, but have been a Mormon for 31 years. Men have never been in charge in our faith. Our prohibition on tobacco came because Emma Smith hated cleaning up the chaw after the men of the church met with Joseph in their home. My husband is afraid to park his car too far over in the garage for fear of my leaving him. Men please women in the Mormon culture — it was one of the great draws for me, a woman who came of age during the Barbarella era.
Which brings me to Hanoi Jane. The Fonda book also has four themes: (1) she threw up a lot; (2) she engaged in threesomes with Roger Vadim when they were married (move over Elfriede Jelinke, 2004's Nobel literature winner, for writings about "raw, depraved, sadomasochistic" sex); (3) she threw up a lot; and (4) she's really sorry about that whole giving aid and comfort to the North Vietnamese thing. While Ms. Fonda is not yet evolved into a "life coach," she has been consulting psychics and cavorting with "smart, hip Christians" while "humming with reverence." I believe she may have confused faith and conversion with a Lionel Ritchie concert, but Fonda gets the benefit of the doubt as she explores Christianity, the musical.
After finishing these two wonders of writing, I have a tie for my annual Barf Award for worst book of the year. These top Naomi Wolf's best efforts, so I am inspired to begin a new award: women who have done the most to support my call to disenfranchise the vomiting sex once again. I have other candidates for this year's Wacky Broad, so the competition will be stiff. There's Lil' Kim who committed big perjury while explaining her friends, colleagues, and their weaponry. And MIT professor, Nancy Hopkins, who, when listening to Harvard president Larry Summers discuss differences among (remember the transgenders here) the sexes, left the room because she feared she would throw up.
So, with four decades of feminism under our nonchastity belts, we have come a long way. I ask you, as you ponder the words of Fraus Beck and Fonda and the fortitude of Prof. Hopkins: Is this the behavior of those who would be titans of industry and cutting-edge scientists? I am woman, hear me barf.
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JWR contributor Marianne M. Jennings is a professor of legal and ethical studies at Arizona State
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© 2005, Marianne M. Jennings |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
