Susan Jane Gilman - Kiss My Tiara

Sections in Chapters 1, 2, 10, and 23 originally appeared in a different form in HUES magazine, Vol. IV, issues 2-5, and Vol.V, issue 1, and are reprinted with acknowledgment and gratitude to New Moon Publishing.

Sections from Chapter 4 originally appeared in abbreviated form in the Los Angeles Times copyright 1998 and are reprinted by permission of the Los Angeles Times.

Sections in Chapter 23 were originally published in the New York Times, Sept. 1, 1991, copyright 1991 and are reprinted by permission of the New York Times Co.

The quote on page 129 appears by permission of Madonna and Miramax Film Corp.

Lyrics from Chopsticks copyright 1995 Liz Phair & Matador Records and Shitloads of Money copyright 1998 Liz Phair & Capitol Records are both reprinted by permission of Liz Phair.

KISS MY TIARA. Copyright 2001 by Susan Jane Gilman. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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Hachette Book Group

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New York, NY 10017

ISBN: 978-0-7595-2098-1

A trade paperback edition of this book was published in 2001 by Warner Books.

First eBook Edition: February 2001

Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

This book is dedicated to the memory of my grandmother

Elizabeth Gilman

who insisted on living life her own way.

My grandma never said, Let him take
the lead.

My grandma said, Have another piece
of cake and wash it down with a gin
and tonic.

F or centuries, lovers, philosophers, and marketers alike have pondered the question, What do women want? Having been an editor for a young womens magazineand being a woman myselfIve come to find that most women today want two things: (1) some smart, no-nonsense advice about how to navigate the world, and (2) to laugh. Ideally, we want both these things at once.

Face it, todays world is full of contradictory messages and expectations for young women. Why else would platform sneakers have been such a hit with us? We post-Baby Boom Babes suffer from conflicting impulses. If only I could balance my life the way I balance my checkbook, a friend of mine recently moaned. (If only I could find my checkbook, said another.)

Women of my generation have acquired all the responsibilities that come with sexual equality (i.e., earn your own paycheck), but few of the equal benefits (again: see paycheck). Were encouraged to be empowered but vilified for being feminists. We have more career opportunities than ever, but somehow we still get the message that a bustier, not a brain, is the real source of Girl Power. Were urged to put on Nike cross-trainers and Just Do Itbut were encouraged to just do it while consuming twelve hundred calories a day and weighing no more than 103 pounds. Were inspired to scale the corporate ladder, but were fully aware that it still bumps up against the glass ceilingand that, more often than not, some guy is still peeking up our skirts as we climb.

Of course, pressure to get married and have kids is always buzzing in our ears like societal Muzak: Hurry up! Your clock is ticking! Unless, of course, were gayin which case we experience pressure to straighten up. And all the while we know that we probably have it better than any group of women in history. But were still fraught with ambivalence over choices.

Throughout all of this, sadly, many womens personal battles are not in the boardrooms or courtrooms but in our own bathrooms. Though the womens movement has done a lot over the past few decades to right the scales of justice, it has had little effect on our own scales and mirrors. For so many women, our physical appearance is a major hurdle to feeling powerful and confident. And we just cant seem to get over this. Want to know what todays chic young feminist thinkers care about? Time magazine crowed recently. Their bodies! Themselves! Much as I hate to side with Time, its true that some of us literally cant see past the nose on our face.

And while were sitting there immobilized before the mirror, were reading backlashy, boy-crazy womens magazines that instruct us to do stuff like master the art of fellatio, wrap our thighs in cellophane, or put your panties in the freezer, then mail them to him at his office in an envelope full of confetti!

On top of these, of course, weve also read The Rules.

The Rules came out, like, what, a zillion years ago? And yet people still refer to them so often, youd think they were the Ten Commandments.

The Rules essentially instructed women to act like diet soda. Be effervescent! Sweet! Chronically artificial! Remain bubbly and fluid, they implied, and you could trick a guy into marrying you.

For us progressive prima donnas, The Rules, at first glance, was nothing but a warmed-over version of the trade your hymen for a diamond formula that nice girls followed in the fifties. But the book was seductive. Why? Precisely because it offered, well, rules. It gave young women very clear instructions: Follow these, it promised, and you will live happily ever after. It was a guaranteed formulaa godsend! Finally, tangible guidelines! Order amidst the chaos!

And the clincher? These time-tested secrets supposedly came from Grandma. Who could be more comforting and wise than Grandma? Who can resist Grandma?

In todays day and age, oh, how we want Grandma! How we crave reassurance and permission and advice! How we long for a wise, maternal female to help us navigate an increasingly complicated worlda world where all the old bets are off, the new ones are risky, and the payoffs are less certain. Some women long for Grandma so badly, we buy books called Chicken Soup for the Soul, co-authored by two guys.

The problem, however, is that some of us dont want a grandma whos fixated on getting us married off. Catching a husband sounds a little too much to us like catching a cold. Wed rather act up than settle down. Sure, we want love, but were also a little ambitious. We have passions and interests and dreams.

Too often, women are confronted with the social equivalent of Sophies choice. Which children are we willing to sacrifice, were asked: our hearts or our minds? our independence or the prospect of intimacy? our careers or our families? Although were aware that having it all may not be realistic (or even desirable), we dont want to relinquish one part of our soul for another. We want to achieve some balance and richness in our lives. We still want to prevail.

Wed like a sage female voice to counteract all those other grandmas telling us to lose weight, grab that engagement ring, and produce grandchildren before our clock runs out. Wed like a voice to help us deflect all the negative and contradictory messages that fill our heads every day. Wed like a guardian angel perched on our shoulders, helping us to stand tall, be ourselves, and not take any shit. Never mind self-esteem and self-help. We want a bad attitude, thank you, and a good set of power tools.

Well, thats why Ive written Kiss My Tiara.

For in certain ways traditional feminism just isnt cutting it with us. For women today, feminism is often perceived as dreary. As elitist, academic, Victorian, whiny, and pass. And to some extentGoddess forgive me for saying thisits true. Im not knocking the womens movement of the past years. Im a huge advocate and beneficiary of choice, workplace-protection laws, and domestic-violence legislation. But I also realize that feminism seventies-style is just about the only trend from the disco era that young women today have not rushed to resurrect. Rhetoric about reconfiguring the phallocentric modalities of the patriarchy just turns us into zombies. A lot of us could do without the folk singers, too, thank you, not to mention the Birkenstocks and the sanctimonious veganism. I mean, some of us prefer slaughtering sacred cows to eating tofu any day.