Marcelle Karp - The Bust Guide to the New Girl Order

Table of Contents

Marcelle Karp and Debbie Stoller are the editors, and, together with art director Laurie Henzel, the founders and publishers of BUST magazine.

Marcelle Karp, a.k.a. Betty Boob, is an award-winning television producer (Lifetime, Fox, HBO) and director. In her spare seconds she writes for Spin, Details, and Jane about the zeitgeist of all things girl.

Debbie Stoller, a.k.a. Celina Hex, has written about feminism and girl culture for George, Ms., The Village Voice, and New York Newsday, among others, and also pens a column about women and pop culture, The XX Files, for Shift Magazine (www.shift.com). She holds a Ph.D. in the Psychology of Women from Yale University.

You can check out their award-winning web site at www.bust.com.

Debbie and Marcelle would like to thank: Lydia Wills, for helping us get our act together and take it on the road, and without whom this book would never have happened; Courtney Hodell, our first editor at Penguin, for functioning not only as editor but also as a therapist who coaxed us through our numerous fears about writing; Laurie Walsh, our new editor at Penguin, for always giving us an extension when we needed it, for being on our side, and adding much coolness and brilliance to the manuscript; all the people who have helped us along the way, but especially the contributors, those who took the time to write, illustrate, shoot, etc. (for free!) and be a part of BUST, because without yall, BUST would be a bunch of pages with just Debbie and Marcelles meanderings; and last but not least, Laurie Henzel, for being an understanding and soothing influence on us both, for playing a much-needed smart and level-headed Kate to our often flighty Farrah and Jaclyn, and for being the only third of the BUST triumverate who has taste: without your vision and drive, we would still be somewhere in the photocopy ghetto.

Debbie would like to thank: Best friends Jodi and Fran, who were not just supportive in real life, but were also the imaginary, encouraging eyes that looked over my shoulder when I was too afraid to write another word; Wednesday, for her endless patience and reassurance; little-sister Meg, for reading the manuscript and giving me input on my chapters, and soul-sister, Kim, just for being so Drew-like; Michael, for giving me good loving, being my one-man cheer-leading squad, and, especially, for giving me the sweet, nurturing support without which I would have imploded long before the completion of this manuscript. And, of course, my dad, for having so much faith in me, and my mom, for being the first, and most wonderful, woman in my life.

Marcelle gives props to her family of friends: I would like to give a shout out to those who have been more than a support network to me over the years; youve been surrogate siblings, tear-wipers, partners-in-crime. Thank you for lasting, for not running away, and for being such a vital part of my real and not-so-real life. Starting with the girls: Anne-So, Cathie, Denise, Farai, Janet, Jax, Kelly, Lizz, Maria, Melissa, Mikki, Ronit, Sia, Tiggys Mom, Wendy Bott, and Wendy Shanker; the boysDean, Jack, Jake, Jerry, Fabien, Kendryck, Matt, Matthew, Olive. Thanks to the advisory committee for your pearls: Arthur, Christina, Peggy, Penn, and Girls Against Boys. And to my mom and dad, well, there are no words to express how much you mean to me. To paraphrase Sandra Bernhard, without you, I wouldnt be.

Theres
been a lot of talk lately of
defining our generation, this generation
of late twenties, early thirties, non baby-boomer
slackers. They call us Generation X. They talk about our
difficulty committing to jobs, difficulty taking on responsibilities,
difficulty becoming adults. But there has been very little
talk about Generation XX, we women slackers, the girls having a
difficult time becoming women, and the adult fears that are particular to
being female: having children, fear of becoming spinsters, dealing with
men who cant commit, being way more than two boys away from being virgins,
aging and our body image, to name a few. There are a ton of womens magazines
out there, but they all seem to tell us that being an adult woman is a major bummer.
They tell us to exercise, just say no, decorate your apartment, get a facial,
diet diet diet, how to deal with the married man, how to deal with the single man,
cooking, how to keep your man, how to avoid sexual harassment at the office, how to
avoid date rape, etc. Only Sassy magazine, devoted to the newly found freedom and sexuality
of the teenage girl, seems to understand that being a girl can be really fun.
That being independent is a cool thing, that girls make great friends, that boys are
only part of the story, that the way you look doesnt matter all that much and that
beauty comes in many shapes and colors, that you buy clothes because its fun to buy
things you like, fun to listen to music that floats your boat, excellent super fun
to say yes to cute boys, yes to wild car rides, and yes to life. Those of us
older girls who get off on reading Sassy do it as a sort of guilty pleasure:
sure, it makes us feel good, but it also makes us feel like losers because
the only magazine we can relate to is meant for teenagers! One by one we
think to ourselves: why didnt I grow up to be the type of woman who
relates to Mademoiselle or Essence? What kind of weirdo am I? And
mostly, we get to feeling really lonely, and really afraid.
We are the women who were raised on feminism, who pitied
our mothers for being choicelessly house bound, and
looked down on those girls we went to high
school with who got married to
the first guy

they
fucked, had kids, and worked
in shoe stores. We wanted to have
choices, to have careers, to not be tied down, to
hold onto our freedom, and to become sexually experienced.
And we were sure that neither our gender nor our race
would stop us. But somewhere, somewhere in our girl-brains the
idea had been planted-when we were young, when we watched The Brady
Bunch, when we were forced to take homemaking while the boys took
shopthat we would, of course, be married to successful men and be ready
to have families by the time we were, well, at least definitely by the time we
were thirty!! Instead we find ourselves nearing or past thirty, still in dating
hell, still trying to figure out our sexual identities, still sleeping too
late, forgetting to do the fucking laundry and wearing dirty underwear, not knowing
how to cook, worrying about the electricity being turned off again, being in debt
to our creditors, not having any savings, and hearing the TICK TICK TICK of our goddamned
biological clocks. When we were in our early twenties we thought that that biological
clock and juggling career and family stuff was yuppie bullshit for women
who wore beige stockings or relaxed their hair. We knew better. We would figure it
all out, in our own radical bohemian thrift-store ways. Surely it would happen to us
in its own time. Surely wed figure out what we wanted to be when we grew up. Surely.
And yet it hasnt. We havent figured it out. And now here we are. But look around