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Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women

3.27 of 5 stars 3.27 · rating details · 2,546 ratings · 217 reviews

No one better understands the desire to be bad than Elizabeth Wurtzel. Bitch is a brilliant tract on the history of manipulative female behavior. By looking at woman who derive their power from their sexuality, Wurtzel offers a trenchant cultural critique of contemporary gender relations. Beginning with Delilah, the first woman to supposedly bring a great man down (latter...more No one better understands the desire to be bad than Elizabeth Wurtzel. Bitch is a brilliant tract on the history of manipulative female behavior. By looking at woman who derive their power from their sexuality, Wurtzel offers a trenchant cultural critique of contemporary gender relations. Beginning with Delilah, the first woman to supposedly bring a great man down (latter day Delilahs include Yoko Ono, Pam Smart, Bess Myerson), Wurtzel finds many biblical counterparts to the men and woman in today's headlines. In five brilliant extended essays, she links the lives of women as demanding and disparate as Amy Fisher, Hillary Clinton, Margaux Hemingway, and Nicole Brown Simpson. Wurtzel gives voice to these women whose lives have been misunderstood, who have been dismissed for their beauty, their madness, their youth. She finds in the story of Amy Fisher the tragic plight of all Lolitas, our thirst for their brief and intense flame. She connects Hemingway's tragic suicide to those of Sylvia Plath, Edie Sedgwick, and Marilyn Monroe, women whose beauty was an end, ultimately, in itself. Wurtzel, writing about the wife/mistress dichotomy, explains how some women are anointed as wife material, while others are relegated to the role of mistress. She takes to task the double standard imposed on women, the cultural insistence on goodness and society's complete obsession with badness: what's a girl to do? Let's face it, if women were any real threat to male power, "Gennifer Flowers would be sitting behind the desk of the Oval Office," writes Wurtzel, "and Bill Clinton would be a lounge singer in the Excelsior Hotel in Little Rock."

Bitch tells a tale both celebratory and cautionary as Wurtzel catalogs some of the most infamous women in history, defending their outsize desires, describing their exquisite loneliness, championing their take-no-prisoners approach to live and love. Whether writing about Courntey Love, Sally Hemmings, Bathsheba, Kimba Wood, Sharon Stone, Princess Di-- or waxing eloquent on the hideous success of The Rules, the evil that is The Bridges of Madison County, the twisted logic of You'll Never Make Love in This Town Again-- Wurtzel is back with a bitchography that cuts to the core. In prose both blistering and brilliant, Bitch is a treatise on the nature of desperate sexual manipulation and a triumph of pussy power.(less)

Paperback, 448 pages

Published May 18th 1999 by Anchor (first published 1998)

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Jun 18, 2007 Beth rated it 4 of 5 stars

Despite this book's many shortcomings, I loved it. Wurtzel is a complete narcissist, and she wrote this book while addicted to Ritalin, and it shows in the book's wild, rambling nature. But, despite the disorganization, I enjoyed her tribute to difficult women who refused to be selfless and submissive, many of whom I really admire (Madonna and Anne Sexton in particular). Granted, many of her subjects weren't exactly good role models, but you have to agree that society punishes women with these q...more

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Sep 11, 2008 Anita Smith rated it 1 of 5 stars

I finished reading Bitch last night, and it was a total letdown. Which is such a shame because it had such great potential and started out so strong. I thought it was going to be a book about how women throughout history have been mislabeled as "bitches"- women like Joan of Arc, Marie Antoinette, Martha Stewart, the like- and how they were quickly branded as "bitches" when they were just trying to live their lives and do their thing- like men do, only women are identified as being "assertive" an...more I finished reading Bitch last night, and it was a total letdown. Which is such a shame because it had such great potential and started out so strong. I thought it was going to be a book about how women throughout history have been mislabeled as "bitches"- women like Joan of Arc, Marie Antoinette, Martha Stewart, the like- and how they were quickly branded as "bitches" when they were just trying to live their lives and do their thing- like men do, only women are identified as being "assertive" and "bitchy" when they do it. I thought it would be liberating and empowering and make me want to burn my bra and swear off men forever.

Instead, it was just this big, rambling mess that hardly talked about women at all! It was more like a 400-page rant of everything that the author hated about society. It was like reading Courtney Love's journal. She gave away plots and endings to so many books and movies, which pissed me off, and there were typos, which really pissed me off! And she spent a significant amount of time on the Amy Fisher and Nicole Simpson cases, which was odd. The author made, like, ten great points throughout the book, but the rest of it was just so chaotic and confusing, that by the end I was just skimming it so I could finish it (plus I was sick of all the book and movie spoilers, so when I saw the name of a book or movie up ahead, I knew to go ahead and jump to the next page.

I finished it last night and went on goodreads to see what other people thought of this book, and it got extremely mixed reviews. But something I read in a lot of the reviews is that the author confesses in a later rant manifesto that she wrote a lot of Bitch when she was strung out on drugs, namely coke, and the sad thing is, then it made more sense. The book definitely is a ranting and confusing muse and once I heard she was coked out for most of it, I was like, ohhhhh, okay, I get it now. But it still was not a very good book.

I gave it one star for the few good points she managed to make amidst the chaos. (less)

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Nov 23, 2008 Lani rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: chicklit, own, non-fiction, feminism

Good sweet Jesus this book is... strange. I have read this at least once before and really enjoyed it. Since then I have read more by Wurtzel - specifically More, Now, Again, which basically outlines her breakdown while writing this book.

Reading this for the second (possibly third) time was suddenly eye-opening. The writing is frequently rambling, the references are repetitive, and the arguments are totally incoherent. I'm not entirely sure what ties the book together other than Wurtzel's own ex...more

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Feb 12, 2009 Satia rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: feminists, women's studies

I think the audience for this book is either very narrow or I am either not old or young enough to appreciate it. Here is my full review:

http://satia.blogspot.com/2009/02/bit...

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Aug 23, 2012 Kelli rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a great paean to "the bitch" which I have alternately heard called: the bad girl, the prima donna, the bombshell, the muse, etc. Outspoken ladies who either get what they want, are punished for wanting what they want, or both. Plus, they should be pretty. This is a good early-90s primer for any young ladies who want to learn about pop culture up until that point with specific focus on: Nicole Brown, Gennifer Flowers, Amy Fisher, and various Bible figures.

Reading the book so long after it...more

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Mar 30, 2012 Marsha rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

The subject matters bothered me because, although the author claims this is in praise of “difficult women” the women she chooses for her examples are baffling, to say the least. She picks the felon, et al., Amy Fisher whom she describes as being nothing better than an undereducated walking bundle of hormones and Nicole Brown Simpson, a co-dependent beautiful but blank cipher of a woman who made headlines for being nothing more than a murder victim. Huh?

I expected her to laud women who’d made it...more

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Dec 03, 2011 Diann Blakely added it

Perhaps the less-than-rapturous reception of BITCH had to do with its timing: the proliferation of memoirs was already appearing on various literary pundits’ “Ten Worst Things About the Nineties” lists. Some argued that the form’s renewed popularity proved how pandemic contemporary America’s “culture of narcissism,” to use Christopher Lasch’s phrase, had become. Others point accusingly at a population of readers—and writers—who’ve grown too dimwitted or lazy to bother with fictional constructs l...more Perhaps the less-than-rapturous reception of BITCH had to do with its timing: the proliferation of memoirs was already appearing on various literary pundits’ “Ten Worst Things About the Nineties” lists. Some argued that the form’s renewed popularity proved how pandemic contemporary America’s “culture of narcissism,” to use Christopher Lasch’s phrase, had become. Others point accusingly at a population of readers—and writers—who’ve grown too dimwitted or lazy to bother with fictional constructs like character development, plot, and complex points of view. But I think there's something different at work: our quest for authenticity. And as Wurtzel makes clear by her title and cover photograph, except for a few highlights in her coiffeur, no artificial ingredients are allowed here.

The form and structure are one with their subject: the push-pull created by cultural misogyny. Even Wurtzel--obviously--wants to appear in a public embrace of her own beauty and sexuality, but she's aware that the photograph is a "cover" in the most literal sense. She's highly unlikely to end up like Nicole Brown Simpson or Margaux Hemingway, two of her subjects, the former too-long complicit in her abuse at the hands of her famous husband, and the latter's fall into madness, various forms of what Louise Kaplan called "female perversions," and finally the decision to end her own life.

BITCH's construction and the aforementioned melding were wildly misunderstood; in fact, fresh fusillades--anti-memoir, anti-Wurtzel, and, most to the point if unrecognized, anti-female--were fired off immediately from reviewers who slammed the book as “self-indulgent," as many had PROZAC NATION. But this renewed criticism seemed odd, since BITCH deliberately and obviously expands the concerns of Wurtzel’s earlier chronicle of her own depression to include the intellectual and social forces that shape the female self. Others misunderstood the book as a cultural study and thus found the subjective experience annoying. Yet one of the major links between the author’s capacious, intricately connected meditations on “difficult women” is provided by Wurtzel’s own life; and the book's shape conforms precisely to post-feminist theory, which argues that the rising action / climax / falling action / denouement is patterned not on universal truth but on male sexual response.

Yet memoir is often less than compelling when its author plods on that already worn-down road of tradition narrative or dramatic structure. (How, pray, does Shakespeare avoid it?--subplots and characters so paradoxical in their humanity that they travel switchbacks or undergo, in the case of other characters, sea changes.) Forcing BITCH's copious material, which ranges from biblical hermeneutics to grunge, into any other pattern would have been, at best, a case of date-rape. In fact, it's interesting to note that a significant majority of the aforementioned criticized memoirs have not only been written by women but stray beyond the predictable literary parameters. And BITCH brings with it a number of other problems endemic to the author and her stylistic treasons: the probably-unsettling-to-some erudition (she's a girl!, after all); the blazing scorch of her intelligence; and the disavowal of any flattering shadows to fall across any of the darkness some would prefer to remain gently draped across our cultural misogyny.

Wurtzel’s training for the task includes not only 12 years of orthodox Jewish schooling but also a prize-winning early career in music journalism, which began during her undergrad days at Harvard. Nevertheless, BITCH would be a substantially lesser accomplishment if Wurtzel’s intellect weren’t complemented by an enviable gift for metaphor. Tropes—“The Blonde in the Bleachers” and “There She [the Crazy Woman] Goes Again,” to name two—become archetypal sources from which spring each chapter’s complexly associative patterns of thought. Their characters include Delilah, Courtney Love, Anne Sexton, Amy Fisher, Lot’s daughters, Liddy and Hillary, Sylvia Plath, Ingrid Bergman, Joyce Chopra, and Stevie Nicks, to cite a handful. The author joins them neither because of narcissistic lapses, nor simply because she feels equally vulnerable to the cultural forces that damaged, and in some cases destroyed, these women. Nor does she hold herself any less accountable for using whatever power she retains to combat these forces and to give meaningful shape to her own life.

(originally published, although in a slightly different form, in the NASHVILLE SCENE)
(less)

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Mar 02, 2013 Ҩ wanker; rated it 5 of 5 stars

I loathe to say I wouldn't call myself a feminist, because then people assume that you're ashamed of feminism (I'm not, I just know far too many feminists who give feminism a bad name), but while I'm not going to go out and preach woman's rights, I don't think I have ever agreed with Elizabeth's words more than I do in this book.

From 'Prozac Nation', to 'More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction', Elizabeth has always spoken the truth and it was always right from the heart. I love that she does th...more

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Sep 06, 2012 Chris rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: dnf, feminist, literature-criticism

So okay, I need to tell you right now and upfront, I couldn't finish this and am giving it a one star rating based on one section of the book that lasts a page.

When I first started reading this book, I found Wurtzel's narrative voice to be a little confusing. She was all over the place, but then you get use to it. I have to say, that Wurtzel's look at the how Amy Fisher thing was very good. Not that I spend any time thinking about Amy Fisher, but Wurzel does really bring a good new light to it....more So okay, I need to tell you right now and upfront, I couldn't finish this and am giving it a one star rating based on one section of the book that lasts a page.

When I first started reading this book, I found Wurtzel's narrative voice to be a little confusing. She was all over the place, but then you get use to it. I have to say, that Wurtzel's look at the how Amy Fisher thing was very good. Not that I spend any time thinking about Amy Fisher, but Wurzel does really bring a good new light to it. Her reading of Sexton and Plath is pretty good.

So, you say, what's the problem and aren't you being awfully judgemental considering that you liked what you read before you got to the infamous place?

No, I'm not. So Wurtzel takes a look at Hillary Clinton, and considering that this book was written when Clinton was still the President, she can't take in Clinton's post White House Career. Every so, I think Wurztel's theory about why people didn't like Mrs Sec of State was interesting, and was wondering how Wurztel would change it if she could.

And then Wurtzel pulled out the Tudors. She mentioned Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots of examples of women in power because they had the power. Then she mentioned how neither one got beheaded.

Now this is NOT a small mistake. An accidently slip of date, it really isn't. And to be frank, I never really would think of Mary Queen of Scots as some type of pre-feminist movement role model. Okay, she had a more violent in-fighting to deal with than Elizabeth, but she did some awfully stupid things -think her marriages and her fleeing to Elizabeth. Why not mention Catherine de Medici? Then it occured to me that perhaps Wurtzel meant Mary Tudor (aka Bloody Mary). But even that doesn't work considering how Mary viewed herself in marriage and she wasn't a success.

And that's when the how book feel apart. I think I could get by a difference in a opinion of the characters of the two Marys, but to say that Mary Queen of Scots kept her head is a HUGE mistake. And this book was published long enough ago that the error could have been fixed. Take for instance the small error in The Fall of Anne Boleyn: A Countdown, an error that the author acknowledges and corrected. Yes, I guess it is easier to do that with ebooks, but how many years ago was Wurtzel's book written?(less)

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Sep 05, 2012 Pamela rated it 1 of 5 stars

In theory, I should have loved Elizabeth Wurtzel's Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women.

I consider myself a difficult woman—I am a feminist and a human-rights supporter, and I am individual with unique, valid opinions I'm not afraid to voice.

I even have been called a bitch from time to time, and at least some of those times I've deserved it. I own it.

And, hey, who doesn't like praise?

By all accounts, then, I'm three for three. I should have liked this book.

I didn't.

Perhaps it's because I don't...more

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Feb 20, 2011 Hava Buchanan rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

I wanted to like "Bitch". I really did. The biggest problem with Wurtzel's book is that it gives up on its premise halfway through. It promises to dig in and give a hard cold look at why women get labeled "bitches", and she never follows through with it. She starts off strong with an analysis of the Delilah/Sampson bibilical story, but in the next chapter she devotes nearly 75 pages to Amy Fisher, who while certainly a victim, isn't anyone's idea of a bitch. She's a 13 year old girl who got swin...more I wanted to like "Bitch". I really did. The biggest problem with Wurtzel's book is that it gives up on its premise halfway through. It promises to dig in and give a hard cold look at why women get labeled "bitches", and she never follows through with it. She starts off strong with an analysis of the Delilah/Sampson bibilical story, but in the next chapter she devotes nearly 75 pages to Amy Fisher, who while certainly a victim, isn't anyone's idea of a bitch. She's a 13 year old girl who got swindled and criminally taken advantage of, but it's a leap of the imagination to try and equate her with Elizabeth Taylor, Gloria Steinem, or other examples of "difficult" women that Wurtzel attempts to equate her with. While it is evident that Wurtzel is a good, capable writer, she still has a tendency to diverge from the point she's trying to beat into our heads. She seems like she's going to have a breakthrough but then she rambles off on her own tangent- again and again and again. It's really messy, and you wonder why Wurtzel's editors didn't have a crack at her. She sent herself off to drug rehab immediately after this book was published, so that explains the messy, psuedo-stream of consciousness babbles. Utimately, this book is more about Wurtzel's own worldview than it is a book about difficult women. She inserts so much of her own personal dramas, complaints and rants about her personal life into the book, it becomes irritating and self-indulgent.

I hesitate to call her a feminist because she has such a bleak and negative view of feminism. In her view, feminism didn't do any real good for anybody. The chapter she devotes to Sylvia Plath and Ann Sexton, while greatly written, is disturbing in its glamorization of suicide. Wurtzel clearly identifies with them- and in the chapter before she ends with this feel-good bon mot: "And when the time is right, if it comes to that, you can drive that car into a garage, turn on the engine, feel the air fill with carbon monoxide, feel the onset of asphyxia, feel your breathing slow, feel your body stop feeling, feel the only real freedom you will ever know". Basically the equivalent of sticking your head in an oven is the only way you'll be free. Not to mention the passage where she ticks off a list strong women-- which includes Leni Reifensthal. Really Liz? "Bitch" exhausts the reader- and did she really need to devote nearly 100 pages to Nicole Brown Simpson? Her examination of the mindset of abused and battered women, and how they are complicit in their own abuse is fascinating and great reading...but it belongs to another book. It would make an eye-opening thesis of its own, but it's out of place in a book like this. I kept wanting to yell "okay, okay, I GET IT". I wish Liz had cut out the fat, or that her editors cared enough to do it for her. A mixed bag.(less)

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Jul 27, 2009 okyrhoe rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: bookcrossing, u-s-a

The title of this book is substantially misleading. It is not about 'bitches', not even by Wurtzel's concept of the term, and there is not much praise of her subject matter - the depressed and/or victimized women the author has selected for commentary and analysis. These women are not to be admired or imitated; they are far from the 'bad-girl heroine' status that the title claims Wurtzel is writing about.
Furthermore, this book is not a manifesto or tract, as some of the blurbs state, nor an 'op...more The title of this book is substantially misleading. It is not about 'bitches', not even by Wurtzel's concept of the term, and there is not much praise of her subject matter - the depressed and/or victimized women the author has selected for commentary and analysis. These women are not to be admired or imitated; they are far from the 'bad-girl heroine' status that the title claims Wurtzel is writing about.
Furthermore, this book is not a manifesto or tract, as some of the blurbs state, nor an 'operating manual', as Wurtzel claims in her introduction. Rather, it is a compendium of observations on the limitations of female consciousness & actualization in contemporary American culture, despite of the advances achieved by the feminist movement. And, as Wurzel says, the condition of women in the Great American Dysfunction is a complex and multifacted one, which cannot be summarized or limited to a single, unifying conclusion.
If Wurtzel is unable to come up with a central thesis regarding the state of women and the state of the feminist movement in the 1990's, I have to say it's not the fault of the author. This is just the way things are, and the attempt to write a well-ordered, single-focused treatise would be beyond most writers' abilities (and/or intentions).
I had just read Ariel Levy's "Female Chauvinist Pigs" prior to starting "Bitch", and the contrast in content and writing style is revelatory. Wurtzel's arguments often go off on various tangents - making for a possibly frustrating but in no way confusing read. But that's an accurate reflection of the situation. On the other hand, Levy's perception of the current trends in American culture are in many ways simplified and limiting, and that is reflected in the less demanding concentration Levy's book requires of the reader.
Often Wurtzel writes feverishly, her thinking is overactive, wound up, and one is ready to stop reading and imbibe a stiff drink to calm down. That's not to say Wurtzel's line of reasoning is muddled, or any way incorrect. On the contrary, her analysis is sharp, thoughtful, and honest, and there is very little to disagree with in her commentary. I appreciate the way she uncovers the complex realities of Amy Fisher, Hillary Clinton, Nicole Brown Simpson, Margo Hemingway, etc., hidden behind the media-constructed narratives of these women's lives.
My primary objection to "Bitch" is the choice of Delilah as the starting point for her argumentation. As literary or historical analysis, Wortzel's comments are fine, but it really is beside the point to include what is for all intents & purposes a fictionalized (or even a suspect) narrative of a historical character as the basis for actual contemporary attitudes towards 'difficult' or 'bitchy' women. For me, that connection is tenuous. (less)

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Mar 15, 2012 Tiffany rated it 2 of 5 stars

I'll admit, when I first found this book, I thought it was going to be something different. I was excited to read about women misbehaving badly, the movers and the shakers who have made the world what it is today. Instead, I got a tome of size nine (or smaller) font, that read to me like one woman's gripe about everything that could possibly be wrong with the world. And to me... it felt like one gigantic contradiction. I was never really certain whether or not Ms. Wurtzel was batting for the men...more I'll admit, when I first found this book, I thought it was going to be something different. I was excited to read about women misbehaving badly, the movers and the shakers who have made the world what it is today. Instead, I got a tome of size nine (or smaller) font, that read to me like one woman's gripe about everything that could possibly be wrong with the world. And to me... it felt like one gigantic contradiction. I was never really certain whether or not Ms. Wurtzel was batting for the men or the women when it came to "feminism". Was she in favour of women with mental illness shoving it in society's face by killing themselves, or seeking the help they desperately needed (but often refused to get...)?
I can honestly say that, despite the tiny font and the paragraph upon paragraph of ideas that I just felt conflicted from one idea to the next, I wanted MORE from this book. I wanted to hear about women who were empowered, not beleaguered by their lives. I wanted a celebration of women who behaved badly and got away with it, not the sad stories about the ones who didn't make it... I wanted the women whose death wasn't their notoriety, whose LIFE is what made them special... I feel like I didn't get any of that.
Wurtzel made me feel that wanting to get married and have children is a bad thing. That I should instead stay single and fuck around and feel empowered that way. I have never looked at marriage as enslaving myself to a man (and I've watched my parents be happily married for nearly forty years without thinking that my mom is remotely a slave to my father), but instead as a partnership with someone I love and respect. Because, ultimately, the delirious love fades, and what has to be left is a commitment to one another. Is it respectful for wives to stay with their husbands despite the fact that one or both has cheated? Or is it more empowering for the woman to walk away from the marriage, to tell her husband that she will not be cheated on? Or, if she is the cheater, to give him the dignity that he deserves to tell him that she's not interested in him anymore?
This book read to me like a woman who had been slighted one too many times by a guy. Likely because she shoved her feminism in his face like dirty laundry. She's likely the type who gets mad at a man holding the door for her, because she can hold her own damn door (when I tend to find it just polite to hold the door for anyone, regardless of their gender). Everyone gets hurt, everyone finds themselves in a relationship that knocks them off of their feet and makes them feel ruined for a bit. But is it the MAN who did it to you, or the situation? I don't begrudge how I act in any relationship. Although I have been hurt before, I still remain myself and I know that if it were not for the commitment I have, and the love I feel for this other person, I could walk and be on my own any time. I can still get married and be a woman.
The only thing that I did agree with Wurtzel is her suggestion that some women invite abuse upon themselves. Of course, that does not mean that in any circumstance abuse is okay, but "hit me once, shame on you, hit me twice, shame on me." I strongly believe that bad things happen every day that are entirely beyond our control, but some people simply invite them upon themselves. They let themselves be degraded and abused by people, because they don't think it's a "big deal." That it's simply the way their relationship is and no one else would understand. And so, when something truly horrific happens, it's hard to feel entirely sorry for them, because they just... should have known better. They should have stayed away. If your life is starting to feel like shit, and you're starting to act like shit, then get rid of the shitty people in your life! You don't HAVE to be abused. It's never love when someone really, really hurts you. And when you're unable to recognize that, or you even invite that in, well... I hope someone gets the message through to you before it's too late.
I'm sorry, Ms. Wurtzel, but this is just not what I was looking for. I'm sure there is an audience out there who wants to have every sad tale of women's defeat dropped on them, but I was certainly hoping for celebration. It is only at the very end of this book that Wurtzel even sheds the tiniest bit of positivity. She indicates that women who choose to forgive and rise above whatever horrible thing that has happened to them are true heroes. I believe this strongly. I have never been victimized or abused, so I don't know what it feels like to be truly beaten down. But to those women who are able to rise above it, to continue to forgive and love to not give the bastards the satisfaction of knowing that they brought you down... good for you. You are all an inspiration to little girls everywhere. Keep encouraging the world to rise above the ashes and rebuild.

Ps. Ms. Wurtzel... do you really think responding a question such as, "Why aren't you married?" with "Why aren't you thin?" is truly encouraging empowerment? If you're so empowered and proud of how amazing you are, then why wouldn't you rise above a statement that rubs you the wrong way and be proud of yourself? Uttering a retort that a junior high "popular" girl would come up with is just... sad. (less)

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Jun 06, 2011 Danielle rated it 3 of 5 stars

I don't remember what the introduction said, but I remember it made me want to stop reading. I kept it up, and by part two I was enjoying it and learning things. There is a lot of information and a lot of good points. However, I am frustrated by the 90-page long chapters that at some times simply meander and at others kind of rant, so that I don't really know what the point of most of the chapters are. Also reading about 40-pages of victim blaming battered wives was sickening and her wistfully s...more I don't remember what the introduction said, but I remember it made me want to stop reading. I kept it up, and by part two I was enjoying it and learning things. There is a lot of information and a lot of good points. However, I am frustrated by the 90-page long chapters that at some times simply meander and at others kind of rant, so that I don't really know what the point of most of the chapters are. Also reading about 40-pages of victim blaming battered wives was sickening and her wistfully sharing her desire to be in an abusive relationship ("the deep engagement of this sick love sounds comparatively appealing to me"), especially in a book that's supposed to be 'feminist.'

I am planning to reread it eventually to see if some familiarity will transform what now feels like a meandering stream-of-consciousness rant into something with a point.

33 - "I do get the feeling that Alanis Morissette has achieved a great deal more dignity by being true to herself, her impulses, however idiotic, than any of us are by staying in control."
70- "The problem is, everybody has their reasons." - Jean Renoir
110-111 - In recent years, theorists of female development seem to have declared detente in the fight with Freud over penis envy, and redirected those efforts toward extending his models - the Oedipal struggle, phallocentric but still useful - to encompass the very different maturing phases in girls' lives. Their main conclusion is that (surprise!) adolescence is a period when girls go underground, when their personalities are muted, when they lose sense of what they want and who they are, then they begin to scurry desperately to maintain relationships, often at the expense of their own integrity, of being a self.
112 - The conclusion Gilligan and Brown come to is that girls react to the changes by entering a trancelike dissociative state they call "going underground": [S]eparating themselves or their psyches from their bodies so as to not know what they were feeling, dissociating their voice from their feelings and thoughts so that others would not know what they were experiencing, taking themselves out of relationship [with themselves] so that they could better approximate what others want and desire, or look more like some ideal image of what a woman or what a person should be. Open conflict and free speaking that were part of girls' daily living thus gave way to more covert forms of responding to hurt feelings or disagreements within relationships, so that some girls came to ignore or not know signs of emotional or physical abuse. And relationships correspondingly suffered.
113 - Girls who try to turn sex into a weapon (I'm tempted to say that this would be like Iraq deciding to welcome SCUD missiles)
118 - ...don't know how to say no because they don't know how to say yes. THey cannot for the life of them register what their desire level is against what they think they should or shouldn't do. How many girls are taught that if it feels nice, don't think twice? ... How many are lovingly instructed, as Anne Sexton wrote in a poem addressed to her preteen daughter, that "there is nothing in your body that lies"? How many believe in their bodies? Men want or don't want. Women think they maybe want to, but only if he feels the way she hopes he feels, and blah blah blah.
148 - As Amy points out, the prison she is in seems like a purgatory for women in trouble because of their dependencies on men. Let's face it, if men's prisons are full of guys who are in because they killed their wives as self-defense against getting beaten or who sold their bodies on the street because their girlfriends forced them to, no one is telling.
180 - "I can remember an evening at dinner at Arthur Freeman's house when Sexton, who smoked continuously, struck a match and seared her hand with a fragment of phosphorus. For the next two hours her pain was a presence in the room larger than that of any of the guests: ice was brought, her hand was immersed in a plastic bag full of ice water, her ululations rose and fell, her husband comforted her again and again. The guests tried to speak of other things, but it proved impossible: it was the pain that governed."
283 - ....when the four female characters, after describing bleak lives of poverty, abuse, rape, racism and really bad hair days, finally say, "i found god in myself / and i loved her fiercely."(less)

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Nov 30, 2008 Bridget rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: feminists, coke heads, feminist cokeheads

By contrast to Prozac Nation, this book is a coke binge of great ideas about feminism and class and big ideas that was apparently ummm written on a coke binges. I thought it was fascinating and it is de facto responsible for my addiction to (the now defunct... le sigh) crimelibrary.com.

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Nov 10, 2012 May rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: ebooks, non-fiction, read-2012

I think it's a sign that after reading the introduction of this ebook, I ended up setting my Kobo aside to read a 6-month old Macleans magazine that I had already skimmed through.

Seriously this book had the potential to be so good but it's one big rambling mess! At first, I though the formatting of the ebook was off until I started some Goodreads reviews and realized that no, it's the author's writing style. I could have sworn that the average length of her sentences were 7-8 lines long. Findin...more

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Sep 13, 2011 Chantay rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: feminist-literature, sufferable-reads

Ah the ramblings of a 20-something never get old. I wanted to like this book and stand behind the bitchiness of it. I kinda of outgrew the cattiness within this book into a more refined, subtler, feminist bitch.

It was interesting reading about the apparent downfall of stars who know have great comeback careers and are hotter then they were in their youth. Wurtzel name-checks Portman, Barrymore and shields. Barrymore and Shields we all know led tumulus lives. One of them even had Tom Cruise snap...more Ah the ramblings of a 20-something never get old. I wanted to like this book and stand behind the bitchiness of it. I kinda of outgrew the cattiness within this book into a more refined, subtler, feminist bitch.

It was interesting reading about the apparent downfall of stars who know have great comeback careers and are hotter then they were in their youth. Wurtzel name-checks Portman, Barrymore and shields. Barrymore and Shields we all know led tumulus lives. One of them even had Tom Cruise snap at them for not being crazy. Portman was apparently added on to this list to use that her over the counter date was might be-up soon. That her career as an ingenue was going to fade away as she got older. Which is hilarious once you think about all the smart moves made by Ms. Portman, she's still incredible beautiful and a risk taker with her career. going to college and now recently winning an oscar.

Not all actress that made movies as children or teens are bound for the chopping block. Now we expect our youth to be commodified before their due-dates. They are making millions of dollars (with the exception of a few whom are losing it. Oh Lilo, I am still rooting for you) these kids are suave and smart. Trying to forge their own way and stamp their names on everything like the boys.

Speaking of which... I only picked up this book for the reference of Amy Fisher. Poor, little, Amy Fisher. Whom was recently on Celebrity Rehab, the last thing she needed was to be on that show. What she truly needed was some real help and not more money and hype for "Dr." Drew. It's heartbreaking for me, because the trauma of Joey and the scars he left on her are still visible. I'm supposed to perceive her as a young girl trapped in a man's game. I can see that to a point. Only to a point.

Amy is a child that didn't have proper guidance and was left to her own devices. Something should have ticked off in her young head that was being feed to her and how she was being treated was degrading. Or maybe it didn't, maybe the attention from men was a heady thing. They made her feel like an adult, like she was finally being respected and someone saw her. Yet looking at her now on Celebrity Rehab I wonder how much of her was stunted because of that man and the media. How she won't take responsibility for her own actions is beyond me.

I'm sorry for Amy Fisher, I'm sorry for Mary Jo. Both of these women stood behind this man rather then simply each leaving him in the past. As he should be, left alone to die.

I would also like to point out, it took too long for Elizabeth to reach her point. She throw a lot of filler in, and then eventual wandered back to her first point in her narrative. Was slowed up the book and made it quite boring.

I'm also a big fan of Courtney Love's persona, But jesus praising her for not having healthy relationships is damaging to herself and to her daughter. Yes, I love that Love is so ballsy. No, I don't love her for all the relapses and unstable things that she does. (less)

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Sep 19, 2011 Beth rated it 1 of 5 stars

Okay. No. That's it. I'm done.

I have spent three weeks of my life slogging through this book, patiently deciphering its murky arguments, wrinkling my brow at Wurtzel's occasional bursts of hypocrisy, hoping and hoping and hoping that all would be redeemed in the end.

But when you start in with the victim-blaming, when you cannot differentiate between domestic violence and consensual BDSM, when you write things like, "Eventually I realized, through Chrissie Hynde's example, that there was no incon...more

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Jul 11, 2012 Heather rated it 4 of 5 stars

A brilliant presentation of the feminist viewpoint. Although there were some points that I didn't agree with completely, and sometimes the author would go on in-depth tangents, this book caused me to walk away with the realization that as long as men and women are viewed in separate spheres of expectations, social standards, conditioning, limits and values, feminism--although it has caused us to come a long way from where we've been--has not yet come to its zenith. There is still much more that...more

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Nov 02, 2011 Erin Tuzuner rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, non-fiction

It will difficult to be objective writing this review. I wish people I knew had read this book, so I could discuss more of the salient points.

I feel I could have written this book if I were born 10 years earlier. Whether this arrogance on my end or a slight at the author, it seems the blend of highbrow allusion and celebrity critique are up my alley even if I did not matriculate at Harvard.

That being said....

Difficult is an excellent word for women. As far as we've come, in deference to those...more

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Apr 15, 2010 Meika rated it 4 of 5 stars

I think it's easy to dismiss this book as some coke-head nonsense. Crazy bitch ranting about stuff that pisses her off. But as a non-coke-addicted peer in age group and relative socioeconomic status, I have to say she hits the mark. If you take the trouble to follow her, it's relevant.
I read the reviews here before picking this up, so I was prepared for the stream of consciousness blogish ranting that comprised the primary style of this book. She didn't always get her facts straight and made as...more

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Dec 22, 2009 Jaime rated it 1 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jun 10, 2009 Meridith Pushnik rated it 1 of 5 stars

I'm not sure if it's because this book is fifteen years old, but I feel like it's not only outdated, but it's not offering any value as far as feminist prose is concerned. The first 80 pages goes on and on talking about how women in biblical times were oppressed -- to me, this is not new or even enlightening information. I also had a difficult time with Wurtzel's writing style; her use of commas and run-on sentences make it (in my opinion) unreadable. Overall I was disappointed in the content an...more

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Apr 18, 2011 Morgan Bruyneel rated it 1 of 5 stars

Written neither fluently nor translucently. I as yet don't wonder why it took me so long to finish it, rather how and where I found the courage to finish it at all. Where the subject of the book is a point of interest for me, the manner in which the author wants to yet fails to make hers repeatedly doesn't attract me, let alone commends her writing efforts. Of the many things that are wrong with the book I object mostly to the use of casus to illustrate and prove her theses. In normal circumstan...more

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Apr 09, 2010 Brokenshoelace rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Dont actually remember much about this book, it was so long ago. Not nearly as memorable or insightful as Prozac Nation. I do remember I pulled a full sized promo poster of the book cover out of the recycle dumpster of University Bookstore. I affixed the poster to the interior cargo wall of my Postal delivery truck. My coworkers enjoyed the decoration as did I until I was ordered to remove it by the station manager. Poster was unsalvagable, wish I could have saved it.

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Jun 15, 2012 Miranda rated it 3 of 5 stars

I read this book when I was about 18 at a very high reccommendation from a friend. I enjoyed it because I thought it was an interesting opposit oppinion from mine and granted a different perspective. I can't say I agreed with much of it though. I do agree with some of the reviewers that it really isn't about "bitches" as it is about the authors random rants about women and feminism. Still, as long as you don't mind that, it is an interesting read.

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Apr 10, 2013 Allie Comfortably numb rated it 4 of 5 stars

Brilliantly written blistering essays. Some might find it a bit disjointed in places; but if you have read and liked her previous best seller, you will have no problem moving through the pages. The way the society typecasts a woman, the image of a bad woman, the dichotomy of the wife and the mistress are all succinctly and sometimes crudely laid out for the reader to enjoy and rethink about how our society has shaped our ideas of women.

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Mar 22, 2011 Sara rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: psych-womens-studies

I was surprised at how much I disliked this book, because I really liked her memoirs.

Wurtzel is way, way off base with so much of this. She spends the big part of a section ranting about how Hillary Clinton's career is OVER because she's "the wife" and how women who aren't working are all unhappy. HAH. This book was written in the last 90's - I bet she's eating her words now, with Ms. Clinton, Secretary of State, Almost-President.

WRONG-O - some women (like myself) need to work. Some want to sta...more

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Sep 30, 2010 Jessica Lane rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-i-would-never-recommend, non-fiction

This book is awful. Maybe if I had read it when it first came out in the 90's and not in 2008, I could have liked it. I am not sure that would have helped. The concept is good, that being a difficult woman is ok, but she picks some of the worse examples of difficult woman. This wouldn't have been that bad if she had made a better argument. Instead she spent the whole book bitching and didn't make any solid arguments before she was moving on to a new rant.

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Aug 24, 2012 Ace rated it 2 of 5 stars

I picked up this book at a friend's house and despite being appalled at how bad it was, I read it. Plus it was short. I later found out she was on coke when she wrote this. That makes total sense. Think of a deeply insecure narcissist on coke and you'll see how irritating this book is. The second star is just because I liked the concept of this book. Not the execution, which was a total mess.

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About Elizabeth Wurtzel

Brought up Jewish, Wurtzel's parents divorced when she was young. As described in Prozac Nation, Wurtzel's depression began at the ages of ten to twelve. She attended Ramaz for high school and was described as an over-achiever by her teachers, who expected her to become a nationally famous writer. While an undergraduate at Harvard College, she wrote for The Harvard Crimson and the Dallas Morning N...more

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“I intend to scream, shout, race the engine, call when I feel like it, throw tantrums in Bloomingdale's if I feel like it and confess intimate details about my life to complete strangers. I intend to do what I want to do and be whom I want to be and answer only to myself: that is, quite simply, the bitch philosophy...” — 80 people liked it

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