Word: dowd
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Despite the pop-culture bent of the book, Dowd avoids the trap of writing in the tone of a half-baked Cosmopolitan column. She artfully weaves together facts, studies, and thoughts from friends and celebrities. She scathingly mocks women who bow to the cult of plastic surgeons, men who cannot admit to themselves that they are intimidated by powerful women, and anything and everything “retro.” Behind the catty banter and constant references to “The Stepford Wives” and “Sex and the City,” Dowd...
Some parts of Dowd’s book might make University President Lawrence H. Summers proud: she accepts that there are innate differences between men and women. Dowd elaborates on the idea that men may not be best-suited for positions of high authority, pointing to “Rummy’s hot flashes” and other Bush administration pettiness as evidence of Y-chromosomal moodiness...
Speaking of the Y chromosome, Dowd smirks, it’s floundering. If modern research is to be trusted, men may soon be as superfluous as an appendix. Dowd uses politics as a lens to examine the evolutionary disadvantages of the Y chromosome, thus getting to the titular topic of her book, even if parenthetically...
...Dowd further dives into subjects ranging from the over-prescription of antidepressants to lying politicos to her experience as a reporter and columnist. What is it, she asks, that has brought women back to their pre-feminist roots—or did the feminist movement itself create the current paradigm? How can a modern woman cope with the conflicting demands of biology, social pressure, and ambition? Dowd may not propose any real solutions, but she does lay out the conundrum with panache, pace, and page-turning...
...course, she is most comfortable when talking politics, but it is her writing on dating and the perplexing rules of attraction that feels the most like a glimpse—or a long stare—at Dowd herself, in all her vulnerability. According to Dowd—and her friends—“disturbing the dating ritual leads to chaos.” Men prefer “malleable” women: “If there’s one thing men fear, it’s a woman who uses her critical faculties...