I am so thrilled about this big article about “Supergirls” in the Daily Mail. I did the interview with the writer last Wednesday when I was in Washington, and I really like how the article came out.

One of the many, many lessons that I learned while promoting Supergirls Speak Out was to avoid the comments on articles about me like the plague.  I did a lecture at American University last Wednesday and it was the first time, short of this Ypulse piece, that I’ve publicly talked about the criticism I get online.  I luckily don’t get much of it: 90% of the feedback I get is overwhelmingly positive, but the 10% of negative, contemptuous, below-the-belt kind of criticism rings louder and longer in your head.  So my policy is that I don’t read the comments on articles about me.  I make a real effort to avoid doing it.  But I cheated and took a peek at the comments on the Daily Mail piece, and it seemed like the commenters were lashing out at each other and not at me, which isn’t a good thing, but it’s better than people taking on my weight or whether I’m “sufficiently perfect” to speak on behalf of the perfect girls.  Whatevs…

When I was at AU, which is a school overwhelmingly populated by aspiring politicians, journalists, and other Washington movers-and-shakers, I talked a bit about how obscenely unfair it is that women public figures are expected to have the looks of beauty queens, even if the reason why they got in the limelight in the first place has nothing to do with their looks, like being a writer, for example.  To put it extremely simply, to combat this problem, I’m going to keep doing what I do.  And that’s writing.  (And eating cupcakes and buying conditioner).  And writing.  And not getting preoccupied with the unimportant stuff.

There is this wonderful passage in the book Bird By Bird where Ann Lamott talks about how one day, she went shopping with a particularly sage friend of hers.  Ann Lamott was trying on a minidress and she asked her friend if the dress made her ass look big.  Her friend simply said, “Annie, you don’t have time for this.”

Isn’t that delightful?!