Jessica Lee Jernigan: Work

"I Like Being a Foreigner": A Conversation with David Sedaris

As a boy, Sedaris desperately wanted to belong. As an adult, though, he has embraced the role of outsider. Much of his recent work has chronicled his experiences as an American expatriate. He lived in France for several years, and he's in London now. I asked him if he imagined himself living in the U.S. again.

"No. No, I don't," he answered. "I like being a foreigner."

"Why?"

"Because there's so much to wonder about—there's so much you don't understand…." He paused for a moment, considering. "I mean, there should always be so much you don't understand. You could spend your whole life in your hometown and there would still be a lot you don't understand." Read more…

Mark Kurlansky on a Year That Rocked the World

The French movement in 1968 was, to a considerable degree, fueled by satire. De Gaulle was such a caricature of himself. He really made himself an easy target for witty revolutionaries.

MK: You know, I've been thinking about that. My Italian publisher asked me to write an introduction to their edition, and I've been wondering why the world paid so much attention to, and remembered, the French movement, but not the Italian movement? The Italian movement did more over a longer time; they shut down Italy, they lasted longer, but they didn't have de Gaulle as a foil.

I mean, you know, there is no Left in France anymore. There's no anything because they're all bored with their leaders. But de Gaulle, whom you could criticize for many, many things, was not boring. He just could really piss you off. Read more...

A Practical Kind of Hero: Caroline Alexander on William Bligh and the True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty

Which of the men who took part in this journey and its aftermath intrigued you the most?

Caroline Alexander: I was intrigued by William Purcell, the Bounty's carpenter, because he reminded me so much of Chippy McNish, Shackleton's carpenter on Endurance. Both were bloody-minded sea lawyers, utterly fearless of authority, both gave their commanding officers a hard time—and both at the end of the day proved loyal to them. Read more...

Female Trouble: Barbara Seaman Tells the Truth About Estrogen

Marketing has always had a role in hormone-replacement therapy for menopausal women. Some of the ads you describe in your book are shockingly misogynistic—aging doesn't just make a woman unwell, they suggest, but actually unwomanly. The tone of this message changed over the years, certainly, but did the content?

Barbara Seaman: By 1947, estrogen products were among the leading advertisers in gynecology journals. At first the ads depicted happy and stylish mid-life women waltzing the night away with their adoring husbands or beaux. The simple message was that patients no longer needed to suffer from hot flashes and sweats at menopause. Now they could enjoy a good quality of life during this transition. As time passed, the manufacturers changed their tune. They came up with profit-boosting slogans such as "Keep her on Premarin." They switched to scare tactics, depicting troubles that presumably called for long-term treatments. Now the models were shriveled and bent. They were losing their tempers, losing their minds, losing their urine, even losing their sex drive and their husbands—all because they had "outlived their ovaries," and were suffering from a "deficiency disease like diabetes." Read more…

Of Monkeys and Men: Steve Jones on the Science of Maleness

Did you find out anything in researching this book that particularly surprised you?

Steve Jones: [Sighs.] The general wimpishness of men, the rather pathetic nature of manhood, is what surprised me most, I think.

[Laughs.] Well, I'm sorry. Was that a particularly upsetting discovery?

SJ: Well, no. Almost all of us—myself, most of your male acquaintances, I'm sure—fail, thank God, to live up to the conventional pictures of manhood. I mean, I've never been to a sports event in my life and I have no plans of going. I've never hit anybody—well, almost never, only when I've been hit myself. The realization of how little biology says about being a man was startling, but it was also the most comforting thing I discovered.

I spend most of my time with beta males myself.

SJ: Yeah, well, that's for the best, really. Although I don't talk about it much in the book, if you look even at things like gorillas, when you've got an alpha male, this guy goes around being a goddamn nuisance and banging his chest and so on, and—so we assume—passing on his genes. But if you do paternity tests it turns out he does no better than all these wimpish little gorillas who are going to the library and all that kind of stuff. As it turns out, there is an alternative strategy in all kinds of animals. There's the alpha-male strategy, but this other strategy—named the "sneaky fucker" strategy by John Maynard Smith—that is much more quiet and surreptitious, but just as effective. It's actually very comforting to know that we sneaky fuckers do just as well as the alpha males, if not better. Read more…

What You Have Will Save You: Elaine Pagels on the Gospel of Thomas

As you explain in your book, Jesus, for John, is a uniquely divine being—the way, the truth, the water of life—and salvation requires belief in Jesus. What is Jesus for Thomas?

Elaine Pagels: Well, you see that in Thomas belief is never asked for and the only time it's mentioned—when the disciples seem sort of desperate and they say, "Tell us who you are so that we may believe in you"—Jesus doesn't answer them. So, this gospel comes from someone or some group for whom believing in Jesus is not the point. 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...

Maps of Resistance: Carol Gilligan on The Birth of Pleasure

You just mentioned the inclusion of gay and lesbian voices in collective cultural discussions. I know that, in your couples therapy practice, you work with heterosexual couples. In In a Different Voice and The Birth of Pleasure, there's a two-gender model of desire and identity. How do homosexuals, transsexuals, and the intersexed fit into your vision?

Carol Gilligan: The question I'm raising in The Birth of Pleasure is, "Is there an intrinsic tension between love and patriarchy?" To look at that, I wanted to look at the form of love that's sanctioned by patriarchy. I say this in the book. It seemed to me you could easily identify gay love or lesbian love as a site of resistance in itself, so I wanted to look at love that's culturally sanctioned to see if, even here, there's a fundamental tension between love and patriarchy. Read more…

Mama Says Yes

I read this quotation in a New York Magazine profile: "When women use the word pussy, it sets them free. They flush, they get all crazy. They feel all wild. It snaps a woman into her sassiness." This is a provocative and exciting concept. May I ask you to expand on it a bit?

Regina Thomashaur: Yes. As the Bible says, "In the beginning was the Word…" What we don't name, does not exist. Most women grow up with no name for the heart and soul of their womanhood. They grow up having their genitals called nothing, or "down there" or some odd nickname. The worst are the "progressive" women who got taught to use the word "vagina" (which means sheath, you know, like, for the sword), a term that does not include any of the exterior genitalia. So we have a world full of women who have grown up alienated from their essential sensual nature, because they have never even had a name for it. We have, basically, a world where women have been taught to be passive receptacles, rather than full, powerful sensual citizens with proud ownership of their bodies and control over their pleasurable experience. Read more…

Introducing Vinnie, the Tampon Case Distributor

I first encountered Vinnie's tampon cases amid the Paul Frank tchotchkes and other hipster ephemera at a shop in the East Village. I was completely unimpressed. I imagined this Vinnie fellow to be one of two types of guys: the guy who minors in women's studies because he figures it's a good way to meet chicks; or the guy who is so sensitive, so in-tune with a woman's needs, that he might as well be a woman—and not the kind of woman I like.

As it turns out, Vinnie is neither. He is, in fact, a very cool guy. Read more…