Jessica Lee Jernigan: Work

New Frontiers in Flirting

About a year and a half ago, I paid $24.95 to a company called Spring Street Networks, and I filled out a form asking for my height, weight, age and other personal information.

Then I started looking for men.

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Can I Supersize That for You? Ellen Ruppel Shell on the Obesity Industry

One of the things I found rather eye-opening in your book was in your profile of Nancy, the woman getting weight-reduction surgery. You make it very clear that this woman is not obese because she's lazy or weak; you point out that in other areas of her life—in her job, with her family—this woman demonstrates considerable strength of will.

Ellen Ruppel Shell: If we think about it, we've probably all seen examples of this in our life. We've seen ourselves or our friends, people we know and love, radically change their eating habits after a significant event. For example, a friend of mine just went through a very difficult divorce. She had been really thin for her entire life, but she put on about a hundred pounds in less than a year during this difficult period. Nothing changed that person's character; her weight gain wasn't an issue of willpower or morality. The suggestion is that severe shocks and stress can affect the way our brains work, and scientists feel now that these changes in brain chemistry can affect, among other things, appetite regulation. I mean, we've never found the locus of willpower in the brain; it's a kind of philosophical construct. It's a useful construct—it's nice semantically, but it doesn't have any real scientific meaning. If I can do anything with this book, I would like to set the record straight about the role of willpower in weight gain or weight loss. To assign blame in this area—to make obesity a moral or character issue—is distinctly unhelpful. Read more...

Are You a Real Woman? Consulting the Experts with Lynn Peril

So, fighting communism isn't just about keeping the house clean, but it's about sexuality, too—the right kind of sexuality.

Lynn Peril: The history of sex education in the United States is really interesting. In the 1840s and the 1850s, you'll see sex manuals that talk about how important it is for both partners to have pleasure. And then there was a big religious revival, and after that it's all about reproductive sexuality. I have some absolutely killer sex manuals from the turn of the century that talk very, very specifically about when and how married couples—of course, only married couples would be having sex—should have relations. Sex is all about breeding the healthiest, most beautiful, most intelligent children possible. Read more...

Resetting the Regency: Dara Joy's Feminist Romance

How do you see Ritual of Proof fitting into your growing body of work? How does it fit into the evolution of the romance novel?

Dara Joy: My readers have come to expect the unexpected from me. I've never followed the conventional path. My first four books were in four completely different subgenres. At the time, most writers were not allowed to do this. Publishers believed that writers needed to stay within their own established genre to keep the numbers up. But all of my books were bestsellers—which allowed me to break through that glass ceiling. I've always liked to push the boundaries; so in that regard, Ritual of Proof fits into the body of my work. Read more...

Women on Top: Cheryl Benard's Utopian Vision

Do you think that there is such a thing as politically correct sexuality and romance?

Cheryl Benard: I left that question open because it's not going to be resolved in our lifetime. To answer that question, you need "two consenting adults," and you're never going to find them as long as one side generally has more money, more opportunities, more status, etc. We have to unmix sex and power, which will be quite a project; fortunately, it's a project that can be fun to work on, as Lisa is beginning to realize. Read more...

Identity and Gender, or, My Dad is a Woman

Your descriptions of your own high school years and young womanhood—your experiments with makeup and clothes and social personae—are rather poignant illustrations of what you're talking about. You were trying to be a girl by dressing in girl drag.

Nicole Howey: Yes, exactly! [Laughing.] I still feel that way now, at 29. And I think that's why people are frightened by cross-dressers and transsexuals and the transgendered—not because they're this scary other that people can't relate to, but because they remind us of ourselves in ways that might make us uncomfortable. It's not that they're unfamiliar, but that they're too familiar. I think we're all in drag, you know? Read more...

Arts & Crafts

Art as we experience it today is largely the invention of modern art history. As Western art became more abstract, more arcane, art historians became translators, high priests who could mediate between the heroic, omnipotent artist and the mortals who visit galleries and museums. In order to sustain this art that only a minority of people could appreciate, art historians spilled a lot of ink defining art by what it is not: It is not decorative; it is not nostalgic or romantic; it does not tell a story; and it is not useful. Thus, most of the work that women create is not art, nor is it valued as highly as art: When Claes Oldenburg sculpts a giant BLT from fabric, it's art; if a suburban housewife were to create a giant BLT as a Halloween costume for her child, it would be craft. It's worthwhile to note here that some art historians believe that, while Oldenburg designed his soft sculptures, his wife did most of the sewing. This dichotomy is not solely the creation of modern art historians; rather, they codified an already existing hierarchy, a system in which a man's work often has symbolic, distinctive, public value, while similar work by women—no matter how well-crafted or inspired—remains almost invisible, never to emerge from the domestic sphere. And, even when women paint or sculpt or engage in some type of work recognized as art, they seldom gain the same kind of recognition available to their male peers. Seventeenth-century painter Artemisia Gentileschi created canvases that demonstrated consummate skill, originality, and personal expression. In her lifetime, though, she was mostly appreciated as a novelty act: What could be more absurd and sensational than a woman painter? Read more…

The Heroic Love Story: An Interview with Rosemary Sullivan

In your book, you describe the love story as the heroic myth for women. I agree that it is the female analog, but there are crucial differences between the two narratives.

Rosemary Sullivan: That's absolutely right. I think it was Elaine Showalter suggested that we read women's literature—particularly literature of the 19th century—with that idea in mind. Look at Jane Eyre: Charlotte Brontë wants to write the heroic story, but she can't. Jane can't go off to war. She can't become king. What can she do? She can fall in love. She can save a man. If you look at that novel carefully, it's really quite wonderful the way Brontë builds challenges and temptations for Jane. Jane is the center of the story, but the only ending for her is marriage. That's the female archetype: The heroic love story. Read more…

Tragic Love: Rosemary Sullivan on Romantic Obsession

In your book, you describe the love story as the heroic myth for women. I agree that it is the female analog, but there are crucial differences between the two narratives.

Rosemary Sullivan: That's absolutely right. I think it was Elaine Showalter who suggested that we read women's literature—particularly literature of the 19th century—with that idea in mind. Look at Jane Eyre: Charlotte Brontë wants to write the heroic story, but she can't. Jane can't go off to war. She can't become king. What can she do? She can fall in love. She can save a man. If you look at that novel carefully, it's really quite wonderful the way Brontë builds challenges and temptations for Jane. Jane is the center of the story, but the only ending for her is marriage. That's the female archetype: the heroic love story. Read more...

Reconsidering the Corset with Valerie Steele

Do continental feminists have different views on fashion?

Valerie Steele: Oh, yes. In Britain and America, Protestant, middleclass culture—shaped, in part, by Puritanism—has always said that fashion, by its very nature, is elitist and duplicitous, that clothing should be simple and utilitarian, a mirror of the individual's true self. Historically, fashion has been vilified—like theater and art—as something false. Whereas in Catholic Europe—in France, in Italy—and in Russian Orthodox culture, it's much more accepted that fashion is a mask. Fashion is part of a persona that you put on and present to the world—something like what the Italians call la bella figura, when you're obviously trying to put your best foot forward. The fact that clothing may exaggerate how beautiful, how rich, we are, that it might lie—it's just one aspect in the construction a public self. Read more...