Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On The Book Of Jezebel 20140525

Gaithersburg maryland. This hourlong program is next on both tv. Today we are welcoming anna holmes the founder of the web site jezebel in conversation with john. John is written for many Media Outlets including the New York Times buzzfeed. His novel focuses your captain speaking is a highspeed satirical commentary about celebrity obsession and how Corporate America has learned to capitalize on it. We asked john to speak to and that today since he wrote a satire about 24hour days seven days a week media and not for a while anyway was the 24hour seven days a week media. And the homes founded the web site jezebel in 2007 to provide an on line presence for women by women about everything that women care about. Just about drove deep into nittygritty subjects that are covered by todays media. This includes everything from conversations about rape on College Campuses to scathing criticism on equal pay legislation to the pressing needs about beyonces personal life and fashion choices. The editors and columnists at jezebel have shattered the tiny glass ball ball that uses around the label of feminist media. They have no trouble calling themselves ladies. While they put the magnifying glass on the way women are portrayed in the media is the reality of what women deal with every day and how women view themselves. The commentary is sometimes irreverent and sometimes heartbreaking but always poignant. The site has become a mouthpiece for generation of women and men who see open discussion on an eclectic array of subjects is a thing of normal intelligent multidimensional people do. The ideas that the voices speaking to us through the media should reflect that. Anna and. Editors have put together a collection of those voices in a new book called the book of jezebel and illustrated encyclopedia of lady things. Its not a reprinting of the web site post but an original cultural review in alphabetical order in the state of womens lives today. Please welcome the founder of the web site jezebel the editor of the book of Jezebel Anna Holmes is interviewed by john matlin. [applause] thank you. Its a pleasure to be here and a pleasure to be with a fellow new york writer. Talking about the book of jezebel we can talk about this until we talk about the web site. Jezebel and is no longer working there this month celebrates its seventh anniversaanniversa ry of jezebel so talk to us about why you started this web site and what you hope to achieve . I had forgotten it would be seven years this month. I think it was launched on may 21 of 2007. Normally i would remember this and counting the days but i have forgotten it in seven years. To answer your question why i created it . I was asked to start a site for the Parent Company gawker media that was a womens web site out of the cover of celebrity insights and fashion and i had worked in a number of womens magazines. Throughout my career until that point. This was in 2006 that i started talking about starting a site for them. I have been working with that since i graduated from college in 1995 so a little over a decade. He also worked with about her of celebrity celebrity magazines for it and never enjoyed working at celebrity magazines to make a living but it was writing and editing that got me excited. Often it got me very angry because i thought it was quite patronizing, these magazines for patronizing to the leaders. Most of them that were female and tended to have a narrow definition of what it meant to be female and they assumed womens lives revolves around a few things namely shopping the acquisition of a mate, a male, dieting makeup etc. And gossip. Thats not to say that there are women you arent interested in those things that we are a lot more complex than the magazines. But i was working forward giving us credit for it. So when i was asked to start a web site for gawker media it would be a womens web site that covers topics and because gawker media is known for publishing sites that kind of punch up at institutions. So for example their sports sites tend to go after espn quite a bit. Their tech site has a history of going after apple. Some of the sites are somewhat scrappy and telling the truth in many ways about histories that have been kind of glossed over. It felt like it would be a perfect opportunity for me to do a womens web site that would go out to womens magazine that i have worked for but also to present an idea of what it meant to be a woman that was more complex and diverse and more reflective of 21st century america. That was another complaint of mine with regards to a lot of these magazines that they tended to be overwhelmingly they tended to feature over women played white very thin 22yearolds. None of the women far away from being 22 but most of them did not at that description and were much more diverse ethnically and in terms of their Sexual Orientation than the media was again representing. It felt like the perp benefit to do a site that would go after magazines and be its own womens magazine and the one that i would have love to read. I wouldnt call it a womens magazine. It was a blog posting 50 or 60 things that they. It was very high metabolism metabolism. We were also aggregating things that appeared elsewhere. We did do original stuff but for the most part you are reactor in tube things in the more traditional Mainstream Media and the ways in which the Mainstream Media talked about women thought about women critiqued women. They basically wanted to have fun doing a very spirited but also serious site. Yeah shall he going to read this is from the book of jezebel and this entry is cosmopolitan magazine. Pioneering frustrated womens magazine that began advocating for female sexual freedom in the 60s under editorinchief Helen Miller Brown and then defaults into sex advice mediocre fashion spreads and paranoid articles that tell you your man may be cheating if he talks to much doesnt talk much much talk enough or briefs. That is kind of the voice of jezebel and anna is responsible for that voice. You brought up an interesting point. You are putting out 50 to 60 pieces a day. There are a lot of people that their dream is to start a web site into started blog but then when they started or they started and they find success like you have. Talk a little bit about what thats like. That sounds to me like a dream job that would be a huge grind. Job was was not my dream job. At the time that i agreed to do it i worked for in style magazine which was not one of the womens magazine that i hated working for. It was pretty straightforward. It wasnt giving diet tips or instructing its readers on how to keep a man by being good in bed. It was here are some outfits for spring that my dream was not to start a blog. This was 2006 and on my friends who were in the media were working on the web. They were all working on magazines. I started working in magazines. It certainly was a consumer of the internet. I read blogs. I used the internet to buy things. I would read the New York Times on line or cnn. Com but i was not someone who saw it as a career opportunity. I think a lot of it was because that then web sites were not paying very well. I was not making a lot of money but i certainly didnt want to be making 18,000 a year slaving away on a blog like some of the bloggers i heard were doing. A lot of them were a lot younger than me so it all into my lap. When i was hired to do to this site i was told that it would be matched to my salary at that at style. Blogs and web sites and i hate to use both those terms because they think they can be very interchangeable. Media Company Started investing more money in the internet and paying their employees. Error rates. I just wanted to make sure that i had never dreamed to working on the web that i dreamed of working on magazines but once a site launched in may of 2007 so we have six months to work on it to plot it out and planted out. I hired two people and we test blog and it launched. I wanted it to be successful but i think i was taken aback by how quickly, how strong the response to it was and how quickly that response came. With him i would say two months there were people on this site readers who were in the comment sections referring to themselves as jaycees which made me very and comfortable. I hadnt predicted this would happen. I dont want to say i was flattered. I was excited at their loyalty and their devotion but i was also terrified by it because i had not expected they would be such a media embrace of the site and what we were doing. I had no clue as to whether was going to work out. The fact is the site had not existed before. There were sites that took a critical view of pop culture and gender politics and they tended to be labors of love. They were not funded by a larger company. They were notforprofit. The women who worked on them were not being compensated very much if at all. So i didnt really have a model other than what ive wanted to see and a lot of my frustrations that it will to to that point by working in womens media. I didnt know for but was going to succeed. There was an abs web site editor that looked at an early version of the site before it went live our test site and express some concern as to whether it was succeed. On one hand i was grateful for his honesty. On the other hand it did light a fire in me to prove them wrong. So i felt like we had a lot to prove but also had a lot to lose because i had no indication it would be successful. If ive been asked to start a web site for women about celebrity sex in the fashion and more straightforward way if i copied in style magazine and put it on the web i would have felt confident there would have been readership for that because it was a good track record in the marketplace for that content. But to go after that content or to talk about politics whether gender politics or racial or electoral politics and talk about that at length and with such consistency i wasnt sure there was going to be a big enough reaction. I knew there were other women interested in these things but i decided the audience was bigger than i might think. You are not with the web site anymore but its growing. The readership has grown. How quickly you to see that growth when he started . Its almost expected when youre with gawker media to get that growth quickly. I think the site had launched independent of gawker media i dont think it would have run as quick as it did. There were web sites that were beloved and work very well now and we were able to at times to content and post it on sister or brother sites when it related to the content that they published. That would bring in and expose a hole at the readership to what we were doing. I do think if it hadnt been part of the gawker media we would have had a harder time building an odd is that quickly. I could be wrong though. Maybe we were the first to do something in a particular space at that level. But its hard for me to remember exactly the audience members back then and how they grew. It grew pretty rapidly but i think the more successful the site got which is to say not only the amount of traffic it was getting but the amount of feedback both in the comments by the readers and by outside media the bigger it got a more positive feedback, the more terrifying it was. If you worked at an even a highr level, we would get an even better result. And i think there was also the fear that it was all going to be taken away. So that the success didnt lead to complacency. And im not saying it should have. I think we were very competitive, and there started to be sites that were popping up within about a year, year and a half that were very obviously meant to compete with jezebel and that made me feel even more competitive. And, again, these are not, im not making judgments. These are not good or bad things, but there was never a moment when i sat back and thought, wow, were successful, and i can relax. Or felt that i think it was only in retrospect, i think it was after i stopped running the site that i was able to look back and maybe enjoy some of the narrative that had been playing out for threeplus years. And not all the feedback was positive. So you guys have been, the writers have been called everything from lesbian shit asses to hijackers of the feminist movement. Im going to read this is a quote from a review in the daily caller called angry ladies of jezebel. This is about the book. When reading the book of jezebel, you are confronted not just with humor, but deep, deep rage. Not anger, rage. It goes much deeper than politics, although this is where this rage finds its expression. Thats okay. Pollen. Pollen, yeah. Whats your reaction . Why are you so angry, and why are you so full of rage, anna . [laughter] i love that review so much. I really do. It was, i actually told jon on the phone before this event that if youd asked me to write a review of the book by the daily caller, like a parody of what they would write, that would be it. [laughter] so when it came out, you know, i started sending it to all of the other writers in the book and the staffers and my friends, because it was so funny. It was predictable. Women who are full of rage or i think theres something in his review about daddy issues. Yeah. It goes for a long [laughter] i mean i just read a little bit. It gets into it. Its very predictable, you know . I wonder whether the writer of that review wasnt having some fun in some way, just kind of hitting all the notes youd think hed hit when talking about women of opinions. Who he, obviously, doesnt like. But its funny that he would describe the book that way because i think the book is very pointed and very upon nateed just like the opinionated just like the site was. There are definitely things for women and men to be irritated, frustrated, outraged about. And some of those are, you know, there are topics in the book that definitely touch on some of those things. But i wouldnt, you know, like my reaction to that review is that hes kind of selectively reading it or i mean, i think he did say it was funny. He complimented it. It was a backhanded compliment. Yeah, thats okay. He said its intelligence, but theyre so angry. I dont know that i would describe the they, meaning the staffers on the site and the writers of the book, as being angry. I would describe, i would say a lot of us are probably frustrated by the lack of discussion up until very recently about issues like pay equity, the assault on abortion rights. I mean, you know, i can tick off a list of things. But, yeah. I guess i also kind of reject the idea that theres something wrong with being angry, and i dont think that angers a permanent state. I think you can be irritated and frustrated and angry about things but also not live your life in which youre Walking Around curled up into a ball of fury, which is what i think he was kind of accusing us of. So im not really sure how else to respond to that, because it was a somewhat predictable sort of review, and i was kind of tickled by it. Also weve heard that stuff so many times before that it doesnt bother yeah, of course. You know . I mean, my perspective of if you havent read book, my perspective of it is i didnt know if it was going to be for me, but i found myself laughing through a lot of it. Its almost an encyclopedia of pop culture with an edge. And i wouldnt say rage, i would say it has an edge to it because youre talking about issues that are dear to everyones heart, and you have a very pointed, you know, you have a point of view that youre expressing. Just, you know, part of the point of the site or what i wanted to do was to use pop culture as a entry point to talk about gender politics. Because i was born in 1973, so i was an adolescent in the 80s, and certainly pop culture was important in the 80s. We all watched john hughes movies, but it didnt seem to have as much power over me and my peers as celebrity and pop culture do today. And i do think that a lot of celebrity culture is very disturbing in the messages that it sends to young women. Again, i didnt grow up ignorant of the fact that young women are expected to be so many things to so many different people and that in many ways sometimes their sexuality is valued above all else. But i feel that it got, it became a somewhat insane level in the early part of the 21st century. And it was very disturbing to me to think of 14yearolds whose only content and only content that they were subsisting on was celebrity gossip that reveled in pointing out cellulite, you know, on a 40yearold actress. So in a way we could attract young women as readers with Celebrity News or discussion, but in a way that wasnt denigrating of females. But also in a way that would kind of expose them to Media Literacy and gender politics. Then we could have some substantive discussions about superficial things. But also just have, you know, serious discussions about sub instant i things as well substantive things as well. These things could coexist. So thats what we were trying to do with the site, and i think its what you see in books a well. I dont know that id call it a pop culture book. I guess i feel theres lots of womens history in there too. There is a lot i shouldnt have i havent actually counted up number of entries in the book that fit into one category versus another. I think pop culture is definitely the driving force behind the book, i think its definitely the driving force behind the site. Well, talking about that, when youre trying to put together the book of jezebel, how do you decide as the editor, how are you deciding what goes and what stays . Because theres so many varied things, and one of the things i admired about the editing process is that youre linking, youre linking Something Like the movie dirty dancing to ayn rand. And how you do that is, its really interesting because i actually, you know, as youre reading through this stuff, i had to google what the fountainhead had to do with dirty dancing, there was a connection, but i wouldnt have known about that. Well, i cant take credit for that. I oversaw the book, and i but the individual writers of those entries were, you know, they share a sensibility with me, but their sensibility is also very independent of mine. I just happened to admire their sensibility. And so, for example, that entry which i believe was written by a former staffer she was very obsessed with the film dirty dancing and its commentary about, you know, all sorts of things, class, race, abortion, politics, and theres a scene in the book in which one of the sharkier characters is toting around an ayn rand book. So, you know [inaudible] yeah. It was the collective, it was the collective intelligence and wisdom of the writers of the book and on the site who brought owl those little nuggets in there. I mean, certainly i asked them to not just write entries that would sound like theyd been pulled off wikipedia, you know . Somewhat dry and overarching. But that had a point of view. But, yeah, i cant take credit for, like, those little gems so much as id like. A lot of that was really the brilliance of individual writers. Now, you dont, i describe this as a pop culture book, and you corrected me, you know . Its, but its, you know, its the me, a coffee table book, something that i would keep out and look at similar to like what the daily show has done. They have books yeah. Same publisher. And also mcsweenys does this, and i collect all of this stuff. And i keep them around. And its not something i would sit down and necessarily read the way i would read a novel, but i would keep it around and read it. How do you describe this book . I just describe it as a kind of very opinionated reference book. If opinionated and noncomprehensive reference book because it doesnt cover everything. And, actually, that goes back to your earlier question. How we decided what was going to go in the book was really, it was, it wasnt a particularly, it wasnt a particularly great way to go about it, but it was really the only way i knew how to go about it because id never edited an encyclopediatype book before. So what i did was make a list of people and things and ideas that should be in the book. I put them in alphabetical order, and i asked all the writers who were going to be working on the book to tell me what i might be missing in that list, and they suggested things. And then i read the dictionary, literally opened the dictionary and went through it to make sure we werent missing words or ideas. But we missed a lot of things. In fact, after the book came out i was the recipient of me mails. Some of them many emails. Some of them mildly annoyed, most of them friendly just asking why this wasnt in the book, why that wasnt in the book. There were readers that were confused as to why taylor swift wasnt in the book. And this is where my biases begin to show, because taylor swift is not someone who i pay a lot of attention to. Even though i know shes a big star. At the time the book was being written and edited, she was less of a big star. She was still a star, but she just wasnt really on my radar that much. And i didnt think that she needed to be included in the book. But, you know, there are readers who felt differently. So a lot of the pop culture you find in the book really feels somewhat specific to, id say, an age rage of between mid 20s to early 40s. Certainly, there are john hughes movies references in there, theres also a reference to clueless, but a lot of the pop culture, i think if you look at it, it does seem very firmly rooted in the nostalgia of a certain generation. Women who are older than me, you know, would probably read the book and wonder why there arent certain movies that were so informal or so important to their development and their, and the fond memories they carry of adolescence. So its a biased book in that its, you know, from certain women and the certain point of view that they carry. But to go back to the other question about i see it as a coffee table book, i see it as the sort of book, someone told me that she keeps it in her bathroom which i didnt find to be insulting at all because its the sort of book that you flip through, you dont read it front to back, although my sister did. [laughter] i did. I read it front to back. You did read it front to back . I never thought anyone would actually do that. I figured they would kind of browse thats how i think. But, yeah, a couple of people have read it from beginning to end. And, you know, ideally therell be another edition of it someday that, in which the entries that weve overlooked are put in there. And then there are also people or things that happened as the book was in production that couldnt make it in the book that now seem like kind of obvious choices, for example, wendy davis whos now running for governor of texas. You know, her filibuster on the state senate floor happened when this book was already being copy edited, but she seems like she would be a natural fit into the book in terms of what she did and what shes doing currently. So, you know, unlike a blog which you can update whenever you need to, a book is really a more the sixth object, and that can be somewhat frustrating when you want to keep up with the times. Yeah. We talked a little bit about theres a lot of references to movies and tv. A couple shows that i havent thought about about in a long time are rhoda and murphy brown. Even cheers is something i was brought up on. These are all movies and tv with Strong Female leads. But as im thinking more about movies, what about, you know, you took a web you took a blog, and you turned it into a book. What about taking a book and turning it into a movie or a tv series . This book, you mean . This book, yeah. Someone else asked me that. Im not sure how that would work, honestly. But, you know, there have been plenty of other books that you cant imagine being turned into films like what to expect when youre expecting, you know . I think the only reason i havent seen the movie, so maybe its really is it out . Is that movie out. Oh, yeah, its been out for, like, a year and a half. Maybe its very close to the pregnancy guide. I doubt that it does. But it was a brand name, and im sure thats part of why the producers bought the rights to it. U f book would be turned into a film. Its almost like sex and the city with rage. [laughter] but i would almost see it as it would have to follow the development of a character, being you, and starting this blog. Ah. Yeah, okay. Well, maybe you should write the script for it [laughter] i think i just got offered a job. I think you did. I kind of blanch at that idea of it being sex and the city like only because sex and the city which i thought was a fairly fun show much different. Was not realistic. Right. In any way, shape or form. And you get to that in here. Yeah. It may have been realistic to the lives of 700 women who live in manhattan, but thats about it. And in terms of, you know, the whole world that they inhabit which just doesnt reflect reality. And, yeah, theres a somewhat critical entry in the book abour the show which is more of, again, its more of a fantasy than anything. So, yeah, i wouldnt if anyone ever compares the site or the book to sex and the city in any way, i well, i would think it would be almost the way the antithesis of can cosmopolitan magazine, the antithesis of sex ask the city. Okay. But the funny thing about cosmo, and actually i was going to say this when you brought it up earlier, cosmopolitan, as have a number of womens magazines, have become much better over the past couple of of years. I think womens web sites have really challenged them in terms of their relevancy. Cosmo, for example, has become much more explicitly feminist. They just hired a writer and reporter who came from the feminist blogosphere as one of their senior writers. And so that entry about cosmos in the book and all of the kind of pot shots that we took at cosmo on the site in the early years we could never, we could merv do those now because never do those now because it really has gotten much better. The editors or the publishers or a combination of the above have seen by example of womens web sites like jezebel and many others that women dont really need 20 sex tips for, you know, how to get yeah. I just, they, they now see that they can appeal to a broader, more diverse range of women with a broad arer, more diverse range of interests beyond diet tips and sex tips. Theres an entry in the book for yun countryniling gus which just has one word. [laughter] yeah, we didnt really want to be publishing, at least i didnt want to be publishing advice. I felt that which was a mainstay of a lot of womens magazines. And having worked at womens magazines and written stories about sex and relationships and not, you know, i wasnt someone who knew a lot about sex and relationships, i mean, i was well aware of how bogus, bunk a lot of the advice in womens magazines was, so i didnt want to be repeating that on the site. I just didnt think that we had anything of value to say on that front. Since we were all figuring out life as well. We did have one advice column, but it was a fake advice column, and it was called pot psychology. Oh, yeah. Videos, right . The yeah. The conceit was that the two stars of the series, one of them was a writer on the site and one of them was her best friend, were answering reader advice questions on video while stoned. Now, they were not smoking pot on camera, so only they know whether they actually were stoned around, but it was try obviously, but it was trying to make fun of taking advice from anybody else, because why would you want to take advice from a bunch of cheetoseating potheads . And it was a very successful video series and was very funny because they were very funny. And, in fact, a book based on that feature came out about a year before this one did. So that was actually, that was actually the first jezebel book. But it was very much about that conceit of giving advice while inebriated and why no one should really take anyones advice. Nice. You want to read a little bit . From the book . Yes. Sure. Do you have entries you want me to read . Id be happy to. I went through and found some entries that i think kind of give the perspective of jezebel and also the voice that you got, that you and the writers developed both on the web site and also in this book that i think makes it so edgy. Okay. So the first one were going to start with religion is the vatican. Page 273. Some of these i read aloud before, and some of them i havent. So bear with me, because i there were so many entries in this book that ive forgotten a lot of them. The vatican. Governing body of the Catholic Church that resides in a walled, landlocked citystate, population 800, ruled by a Spiritual Authority whos secretly elected on ballots that are burned into white smoke, wears gold shield hats, travels in a glass case on the back of a Mercedes Benz suv and decrees whether billions of women should be forced to carry women against their will. If gay prostitutes should die of aids, how to resolve the energy crisis, etc. See, that would piss a lot of people off. [laughter] well, the next one will too then. Page 274, the virgin mary. Why are are you doing all the religion ones . [laughter] i liked the religion. Okay. Im really going to get it for this. Virgin mary. Physical mother of jesus christ and proud winner of the miss impossible female standards of virtue contest. For the past 2,000 years running. According to the Catholic Church, mary of nazareth was a virgin when god placed a fetus in her uterus. Was accused of promiscuity, most notably by her husband, joseph, after she showed up pregnant. The point being, if even the virgin mary got slut shamed, theres no way youre getting through life without receiving some of the same, sorry. [laughter] and the next one is page 242. This is jezebel takes on the secret series, the series of books called the secret. And ive never really heard, you know, ive never really heard this perspective, actually, but i thought it was kind of an interesting take. [laughter] the secret. Creepy, worthless enterprise run by charlatans trying to use the law of attraction to attract scholars to their finish dollars to their pockets. First gained notice as a 2006 selfhelp book, suggested that if you had fought hard enough about a lamborghini and acted like you had one, that a lamborghini would literally appear in your garage. Which means people could change their lives, but they just dont want it enough. Haha, suck it, poors. The author of the secret once implied that Natural Disaster victims are losers who could save themselves if they knew how to attract rescuers. Ignore, ignore, ignore. Nice. Feminism, page 99. Hes picking all the ones ive never read aloud before. Feminism. According to merriamwebster, one, the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes. Two with, organized activity on behalf of womens rights and interests. Period. That should be it. In reality, the word feminism and the mood it represents has a bunch of con no nations. The 1970s stereotype of the manhating bra burner persists today even though it was always bull. Well, not always the hairy legs, but, seriously, thats what were going to get hung up on . Yet legitimate criticism of second wave chiefly that it centers on white, straight, middle class women at the expense of everybody else still goes ignored all too often. And fashion week, page 96. How come you picked these . Im curious. You read and then ill okay, okay. Fashion week. Semiannual trade show for the Garment Industry that currently takes place over four successive weeks in new york city, london, milan and paris. And throughout the year in other cities. Fashion week is probably more exciting than spending a week at the dmv, although the lines are just about as long, and the people behind the desks just as skeptical. But only because theres often free champagne and very expensive drugs. Basically exists so that designers can display their new seasonal collections to an inviteonly crowd; critics and reporters, runway photographers, buyers for major retailers, Event Sponsors and their closet closest celebrity friends [laughter] when they pay to show up. Seating is based on a guests position in the industrys archaic, yet constantly shifting pecking order. Dozens of shows take place each day. New york fashion week, for example, plays host to over 900 shows, and every 300 showses, and every night there are parties where the same celebrities step and repeat and drink cocktails with the sponsors logo pacing outwards like facing outwards. It sounds horrible, isnt it . It kind of is. And i used to go to fashion week shows a long time ago for a job i had. I picked those because, you know, the secret and fashion week are big topics in the magazines that, you know, your web site is kind of a different brand. Uhhuh. And i thought that they were very unique takes on those topics. Yes. Yes, yes. Theres another unique one in there that they actually talk about mrs. Claus. And its kind of, its just an interesting thing to me because it sort of gave a new face on a holiday that is predominantly male, you know . That santa claus rides in and saves the day, but nobody really ever talks about mrs. Claus. What are your thought on that . On mrs. Claus . Yeah. [laughter] i can read the industry. It might be under claus, mrs. Its right here. All right, here it is. Its a short one. Longsuffering wife of a man who takes all the credit. Wasnt even featured in the movies until the 1960s. We picture her at night kicking away anxious elves and listening to tammy wynette. [laughter] i like that. I like her. Now, i mean, do you think that theres, are there more, you know, folk tales or myths in our culture that you would have a different perspective of or the jezebel january voice would kind of look at differently . Yes, although i cant think of any off the top of my head. But i, you know, part of what we wanted to do when we talked about culture whether it was contemporary culture or ancient history or religion or really anything was to look at it critically which isnt to say to be critical in a negative way, but to look at the gender politics of it. So even santa claus is not immune to that. Im not even sure who wrote that industry, and i feel like it was probably one of those entries that was more, more interstitial to provide some breathing room and some humor between more serious entries. I dont really think that anyones trying to take christmas away from santa claus, just in case [laughter] and, you know, you did mention this, but there is a lot of womens history and a lot of very serious entries. The ones that i brought up are kind of, you know, shorter ones that are easy to read and easy to joke about and have fun with. But that brings us into your writing. Uhhuh. And what youre doing now and what youre, where your life as a writer has expanded. A lot of what you do online has nothing to do with whats in this book or its just a different, different tone, and its a lot more essay writing and, you know, really talking about gender politics. Yeah. The thing about the book and i think the thing about the site as well when i ran it was that i was good at directing the writers and finding good talent and nurturing them, but i dont know that i could have done what they were doing. I work dreary hard in a different way than they did, but that was not the sort of writing a am able to do. I cannot just have an opinion expressed it. Well, not in writing. So from the writing is something thats is of much slower process. And i dont have a problem with the word blogger. Use in the pejorative. I was not actually given that sort of heavy lifting in that particular way. In the same thing with te. O years to do it, but we have some breathing room. I was not as talented at riding injuries in this book as a lot of the writers work in terms of distilling things down to their essence in keeping facts and humor and so on and so forth. I think i am much better to follow would not say long form wire, but when i went to weigh in on something after think that i have something unique to say about it, especially in the kind of hyper reactive internet world the we are now. Something happening. That is not something that i can do. Something that we should have. I dont know that i have an opinion about it. Hello, i personally find it tiring and nothing that it will continue at the level that is right now. I think a lot of people is finding it tiring. Even when i am fascinated by story, for example, last week, the dismissal of joe abrams from the time at this point i read, i dont know, 12 to 15 pieces on it. I still find the story fascinating. I dont think i quite understand everything that went on. I dont need to hear another five peoples take on one of all means. I feel like were in this time right now off perpetual oped or hastily written of bed. I am as a writer not so much interested in executing hastily written opeds. When i write of eds are essays are criticisms i like to take a little time with them which is to say maybe a couple of days which seems like an eternity in the media economy that we are in right now. And i think that even though oftentimes i wish i was a faster rider, i would get a lot more done if i could white stuff out. You know, a lot of this because i am a bit older than some of the writers that i was ever seen. Came of age in a more in an era that had to hire metabolism for this sort of stuff. It is easier for them than it is for me. 19951 weekly magazine things like a crazy place to work that because it was so busy. And that did it was so busy and i did work at the magazine but i could not have ever imagined blogs which dates back to it would be my dream job. It was an great job i wouldnt have dreamt it would ever happen. I wish i could have rejected the internet and i would have locked Facebook Stock or something. Talk about some of the writers you admire so much not so much a store for writers but writers that are doing the same thing you are doing. They mostly tend to be other women because i Pay Attention to female writers more than male writers because it was my job for a long time and so this is not a list of people in any particular order and im not going to think of people and i will be mad at myself that i forgot to mention people but rocks and gay who just had a novel come out last tuesday and has a book of essays coming out in august called that feminists. Which i read which was great ann freedmen who contributed to this book. Actually the list of women in the book are in many ways the list of writers i really like. Amanda hess who was one of the main writers in the book who works for slate kate harding who was one of the main writers in the book who is writing about rape culture so the writers i they tend to be attracted to our writers who are doing a little bit of what i wanted to do with the site that we did in many ways which is to talk about culture and a critical way and again not negatively necessarily but sometimes negatively. And who represent voices that have been kind of historically marginalized whether women or women of color. Those are the sorts of writers i am interested in reading. Im not particularly interested in reading the musings of lets say david brooks. I feel like that has been played out so i am really excited i the ways the internet has offered and given platforms to writers. I dont think we word have heard from necessarily this was 10 years ago and some writers that i admire arent doing necessarily essays or criticism. Emilyness bomb writes for the new yorker. Some writers are doing hilarious stuff on twitter. It isnt always in the pages of a magazine or a newspaper. Oftentimes its on peoples tumblr or twitter. I dont look at facebook that much so im not sure whats going on there but those are some. I think if you look at the list of writers on the table of contents you will see its pretty reflective of a lot of writers that i admire. We have about 10 minutes left and in asking my question so if anyone has a question from the audience just use a microphone in the back for people at home listening. Could you use the microphone . That train has gone by five times. How do you think your writing has influenced saying newspapers or tv, more of a mainstream sources that people are listening to to cover the issues sometimes i get the sense that it has. I wouldnt say my writing that the sort of stuff you find on jezebel and sites like it. There are times when i get the sense that its something thats been happening. I have no proof of that but i do trust my intuition after many years of not trusting my tuition i do feel i am seeing conversations reflect did on television and by television i mean both cable news shows but also scripted narrative halfhour sitcoms. There seems to be, there seems to have been in opening up that i find very exciting but i dont know that it has anything to do do i cant prove it has said anything to do with sites like jezebel and the fact that sites like jezebel reflects that. A lot of the writers i admire the most came from blogging and who are extremely talented and have gotten much deserved attention now there are places they might get asked to write for or in the case of the woman i mentioned earlier a staff job at cosmopolitan writing about reproductive rights and politics. Whereas 15 years ago she would have been writing about a number of subjects i have already gone over. I think there has been an effect but i can prove it and so i mise hesitant when i get asked that question. I dont know that i can draw a direct line from one point to another but i do feel like there has been. Knowing that we are here in gaithersburg and we have gaithersburg is that im hoping people are around here hearing this and thinking they could add some more diversity of content to our local paper which need some of that. Another thought i had was you did this forwardthinking perspective of the womens views at a time when we werent really getting the kind of attention we needed need it and now i kind of feel there is to meet me potentially a group of men out there who are playing more of the roles of the homemaker childrearing men out there who maybe arent getting the focus from the male writers and they are not fitting the stereotype of the typical male. Could you see yourself or you know have you heard people driving to try to reach that audience . I guess i have seen somewhat anemic attempts at that in different places. Its not something that i would take on because i wouldnt feel feel i wouldnt feel informed enough or interested enough which isnt to say those are legitimate issues but i think i do my best work when i follow things that make me passionate and that i feel that i know something about. Womens issues are womens issues and womens issues are mens issues. I think its hard to divorce them but could i write a source for men . Snow. Its not something i would be able to do well. Thank you. I may have missed your comment about what you are doing now. Did i miss that . Since i left the site i have been freelance writing and ive been working on the book so i was working on the book for a couple of years and writing for the Washington Post and the times freelance. I write a column for the book review which comes out about once every month or so about whatever subject they want to throw at me so thats always a challenge. Sometimes i feel like i have to dig deep to find something i think is worth sharing with the world and writing. For the most part i am freelancing in trying to decide if i want to start another web site at some point which will not be anything like jezebel. I feel like i did that already. Any other questions . Thank you for being here. I was born in the 50s so my adolescence was a little earlier than yours but what i recall are things that one might talk to younger coworkers they have no clue that when im going to school that the girls to comac and the boys took shop in the girls took typing. If a boy took he was obviously one of those. They dont know how you got a job if you read the classified ads in the classified ads for employment was under womens jobs in mens jobs. Believe me there were no engineering positions in the womens jobs. They have no idea that this happened and i was surprised. My generation i think we had actually a very positive view of the feminists and the feminist movement. The young ones of code thats not for me. I dont agree with that. What would can we do to make sure they understand this history and you think its something that should be brought up because i think they are missing a lot when they dont realize what it was like before and god forbid tv again. I think there are more young women who embrace feminism then you may think there are. Certainly women like who is the recent celebrity who said something . I think it was she said no i like men. Which was kind of a ridiculous answer. I think there are a lot more young women who embrace feminism and call themselves feminist than you might think. There sure seem to be many more now than when i was younger and i was frustrated by the fact that they found the concept of gender equality to be abhorrent even though they believed in it. It was like the f word as they called it. But i think theres something that happens when you are young like when i was in my 20s. I may have been somewhat socially aware and i certainly didnt have a problem with feminism. I had grown up in a feminist household but in terms of comprehending a history and what my parents and their parents went through to get to a place where i could be born and thrive it all feels very far off to you when youre a teenager and even in your 20s. I feel when you get older you start to realize how quickly time passes and how recent a lot of history is. You begin to depend on your elders for the wisdom that they have learned and the things that i have experienced. When i was 22 i couldve pretended i was interesting in marrying a woman 40 years my senior and what it was like growing up but like many 22yearolds i was too selfinvolved in terms of do i have a boyfriend in whats my next job going to be and really things that are not specific to 20yearolds. I do feel that young people may seem disinterested in the history around them but we get older and we mature and there is an embrace of that. Im not pessimistic about the younger generation. Not with regards to their embrace of feminism and their interest in womens history. I think that develops as you get older. And im living proof of someone who has developed issues got older. I think that was always personally a curious person but i think of it a lot of it is being easily distracted and not realizing how easy things really were. When i was a kid, i was born in 73. Some things in life seem like they had happened 100 years prior but they only happened six years prior to my birth. Its just going to take some time to get perspective on how short life really is and how it isnt that far away. Very well said. I think we are out of time. Thank you all and thank you anna. [applause] he some people in the movement decided to take the cause of equality to the United States Supreme Court and thats what i chose to write about. The New York Times college days in langley intimate story and thats what i set out to do. I wanted to know what would it feel like to be in a major civil rights litigation case one that was incredibly highprofile and controversial and what did that feel like . Whats was the judge thinking as he was considering as it turns out and mazie many crazy twists of the story. What does it feel like . Ultimately what i really wanted was to portray is what it feel like