What happened is my friend Janet emails and says, hey, there's a reporter that just called me and she wants to know about motherhood. For an article about Desperate Housewives. I thought she should talk with you.
The next thing I know, I'm on the phone with Sharon Jayson from USA Today, and for a half hour we talk about whether I think Desperate Housewives is good or bad for women (my answer: not as good as it needs to be). I tell her as eloquently and vividly as I can about the catch-22's mothers are in. We want to work, we want to take time with our kids, we want all these things and more (as the ole Lucinda Williams song goes), and we don't want to be penalized for them. I gave her stories. I gave her statistics. I tell her that I know lots of stay at home moms who find the housewife term fairly retrograde. In a moment of sisterly solidarity, I give her the name of a women in my neighborhood who sells "Housewife T-shirts," as in, housewives, value our labor.
The next thing I know, this is what's being paraded on the doorframes of hotels throughout America: USA Today, February 3d Hip, Happy Housewives. I'll leave the commentary to you. The good thing: my amazon numbers soared from 740,000 to 60,000, at least for the moment, and the book won't even be out till April. Thank you, USA Today readers!
More later. After telling her that it's not about domesticity, I need to go down and make some dinner.....
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