I’ve been writing a lot recently for AOL’s fantastic women’s lifestyle web-site Lemondrop.com, edited by the marvelous Carrie Sloan.  I published a piece on Lemondrop last week about Glamour magazine’s incessant self-congratulating on being pro-body image that’s generating some buzz.  Initially, I wrote in January for Lemondrop about how it was a wee bit insulting that Glamour hires decidedly svelte “plus size” models and uses a lot of mixed messages regarding how they portray curvy women’s bodies.  As mentioned above, I just did another piece for Lemondrop on how this month’s issue of Glamour has three models on the cover and Glamour is touting the women as representing body diversity–one is “curvy” and “athletic,” one is a mom and was the token “curvy” model on the Prada runway this spring, and one is an up-and-coming plus-size model.  Only, it’s near impossible to tell who’s who… and you’d have no idea that their cover photo was supposed to represent diversity if Glamour didn’t tell you that’s what they were going for–it’s just three beautiful, toned, busty women with flowing long hair in bikinis.

I got a little extra fired up today at these pictures of Brooklyn Decker, who was the “curvy” model on Glamour’s cover; there’s nothing subversive about this woman’s physique… she’s just straight-up gorgeous and conventionally beautiful.

On a positive note, I’m hugely grateful to be writing for Lemondrop, a really dynamic and exciting web-site that lets me write with a feminist touch about the issues that modern women think about.  I also did an interview with Leora Tanenbaum last week on her new book, Bad Shoes and the Women Who Love Them, that I’m really psyched about, too. 

It’s March, and you know what that means!  Winter is almost over, and it’s Women’s History Month.  I’m really excited to have a busy speaking schedule for Women’s History Month this year, kicking off this Friday at Cornell University.  I’ve also never been to Missouri, Arizona, or Illinois… so I’m excited to see these new places!  I have a few more events pending, so I’ll post those when they’re confirmed.

Events:

March 5th: Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

March 8th: Hollins University, Roanoke, VA

March 11th: Hudson Valley Community College, Troy, NY

March 13th: University of Missouri–Women’s Leadership Conference keynote speaker–Columbia, MO.

March 15th: University of Missouri–Women’s History Month keynote–Columbia, MO.

March 17th: Lock Haven University, Lock Haven, PA

March 18th: Emerson College, Boston, MA

March 20th: SUNY-Oneonta, Oneonta, NY

March 22nd: University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, FL

March 24th: Siena College, Loudonville, NY

March 25th: Boston University, Boston, MA

March 26th: Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ

March 31st: Molloy College, Rockville Center, NY

April 14th: College of Lake County, Grayslake, IL

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?!

I took the summer off.  Actually, I took seven months off.  Just from blogging, that is.  After the publication of Supergirls Speak Out, which was a delightful whirlwind of publicity, travel, and lots and lots of learning, I needed to take some time off and think about what kind of writer I was.  (I also needed to take my own advice and get some sleep.)  I was told by other authors that you should always wait awhile after your first book comes out before getting the gears moving on your second book because you learn so much.  And while I resisted that idea at first, I completely understand it now.

Since my last March blog post, I have completed a 95,000 word novel about college students on Long Island.  I would categorize it as “chick literary” or “chick lit with a cause” or an “issue novel.”  It’s a somewhat frilly novel for young women with more than a few social messages and lots of fun descriptive writing.  I finished it on a plane back to Albany from Washington, D.C. on October 16th (one day after the deadline I had given myself) and I’m letting it rest for six weeks, which is what Stephen King says to do after you’ve finished writing something of length.  Then I’m going to give the manuscript one more edit and then I think it’ll be officially “done.”  And then who knows?  I’m 98% sure that I want to pursue publishing the novel, but the 2% straggler likes the idea of having a novel that I wrote that I absolutely love and is completely untainted by the opinions of people who don’t love it.

I spent a lot of time this summer studying writing in the process of writing my novel.  I read like crazy this summer: Brick Lane, Should I Do What I Love, the Quarterlife Crisis, Save the Cat, and the first half of Special Topics in Calamity Physics.  I also re-read the God of Small Things about five times and have pronounced it in my top five favorite books of all time.  And I re-read the Corrections and Strong Motion–my two favorite Jonathan Franzen novels–at least 1.5 times.  The nice thing about books you get really familiar with is that you can pick up them up and start reading at any point in the novel and know what’s going on so you can just focus on the words and how the book was crafted rather than keeping up with the plot.

I also read two spectacular books about writing: Bird by Bird by Ann Lamott and On Writing by Stephen King.  They are must-reads for any writer.  Bird by Bird was important for me to read because it covers a lot of the emotional issues that go along with being a writer, and some of Lamott’s advice literally changed my life.  The book can be a little pessimistic, but the ranting is worth wading through to get to these shining pieces of advice that Lamott hands out, especially towards the end of the book.  On Writing was important for me to read because King covers, step-by-step, how to construct a novel, how to write a novel, and how to let it marinate for awhile before going back and re-writing or editing.  It was also important for me to read On Writing because it’s also very much a memoir of King’s writing career, and I had made the mistake of screening the Shining over the summer and I couldn’t stay home alone for more than fifteen minutes without getting scared (little known Liz Funk trivia: I can’t watch horror movies.  I get terrified.  Before watching the Shining in June, I hadn’t watched a horror movie since 2003).  So it was nice to see Stephen King personified in his book and understand that his stories are simply the brainchild of a sweet, docile creative genius with an extremely active imagination.

I give both books, Bird by Bird and On Writing an enthusiastic TWO-THUMBS-UP.

I have no idea why I’m not better at blogging here.  During the height of my blogging for the Times Union, I blogged every day, but closer to every 20 hours.  I was on top of it.  And now I am blogging once a week at most!  Embarrassing.

Anyway, in the past two weeks, I’ve spoken at Russell Sage College, did a book signing/reading at the Albany Barnes and Noble, did a book signing at the Wall Street Borders in New York City, guest blogged at Jewcy.com, guest blogged at the Washington Post, guest lectured at Rice University (I am officially in love with Houston, Texas and I think it is one of my favorite places I’ve been to), gave interviews to a few different excellent blogs, taught at the Columbia Scholastic Press Association conference at Columbia University, saw the movie I Love You Man, saw the movie Brick Lane, finished the final paper for my anthropology class, and celebrated that I’m 59 days away from graduating from college.

Woot.

Anyway, I’ll try to be better at blogging for the next few weeks, because I have a lot of quirky stuff I’ve been thinking about.

I guest blogged today at Feminist Law Professors about the irony that the smartest girls and the girls who are the most conscious of feminism and the pressures on young women still end up being Supergirls.  Check it out!

In addition to doing a college lecture tour for “Supergirls Speak Out,” I’ll also be cruising down the information highway, doing interviews and guest blogging about “Supergirls Speak Out” at a variety of parenting blogs, writing blogs, feminist blogs, and young adult fiction blogs.  I’m really excited for this, and I thank the writers of all the participating blogs in advance for helping me spread the word about my book!

Here’s the schedule of where I’ll be:

March 1st: Writing Porch

March 3rd: Feminist Law Professors (I’ll be guest blogging!)

March 4th: Shaping Youth and Stephanie Kuehnert’s Life, Words, and Rock’n'Roll

March 5th: The Girl Revolution

March 6th: Feel Good, Girl!

March 7th: Equally Shared Parenting

March 9th: Working Girl

March 11th: Moms in a Blog

March 12th: Julia Barry/ In Her Image

March 13th: 4th Wave Feminism

March 14th: Teri Brown Writes

March 15th: Paula Yoo

March 16th: Young People For

March 17th: Every Woman Has an Eating Disorder

March 18th: Teen Book Review (I’ll be guest blogging!)

March 19th: Sara Hantz

March 20th: That’s My Bix

March 21st: Sara Ryan

March 23rd: Viva la Feminista

March 25th: Susan Juby

March 27th: Linda Gerber

There might be more blogs to come, so I’ll update the schedule to include any others!

Because today is March 1st, I’m excited to have kicked off the blog book tour with a Q&A at the Writing Porch blog!  Check out my interview with J. Louise Larson at the Writing Porch!

I’m so thrilled to announce that the “Supergirls Speak Out” lecture tour is off to a great start!  I kicked it off yesterday while visiting the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga.  I taught a workshop in the afternoon about finding your intrinsic worth to the amazing women of the the UTC Women’s Center’s flagship women’s leadership program, and at night, I was amazed to see that 150 people–many of them sorority women–came to see me give a lecture about my research for Supergirls Speak Out.  I had an amazing time–Chattanooga is SO beautiful–and I’m completely in love with the south now.  I ate dinner at a riverfront Italian restaurant with the Women’s Center regulars and I stayed in this beautiful bed and breakfast that made me wistful for early 20th century Tennessee.  So, thank you to the UTC Women’s Center for a great time!

In other news, my first wisdom tooth started to come in today, which is equal parts overdue, painful, and terrifying.  If I stick my fake nail in the back of my mouth, I can feel the beginnings of an extra tooth and it’s totally creepy.  (I wouldn’t be writing this if I hadn’t been sitting in LaGuardia Airport for the past 5 hours eating crappy food and breathing stale air–major flight delays because of fog ).  Whatever, it’s totally worth it for what I sense is going to be a really excellent book tour!

I love Amy Poehler.  I think she’s one of the smartest, wittiest female comedians around today; whether she’s on SNL, making movies with Tina Fey, or making guest appearances on Arrested Development, I’m always impressed how she makes the scene her own and proves that women can not only be both smart and pretty, but also smart, pretty, and funny!

(Speaking of Arrested Development, I only recently learned the Amy Pohler is married to Will Arnett-who plays “Gob” on Arrested Development and makes frequent cameos on 30 Rock).

Anyway, Amy Poehler can add a new credit to her resume: Smart Girls at the Party.

Smart Girls at the Party is a new web TV series where Amy Poehler chats it up with impressive girls who have bold ideas for their futures. I am in love with this video of Ruby, a “7 and three quarters year old” who loves writing, drawing, skateboarding… and feminism!  She shows Amy Poehler a book about feminism that she “presentated” to her kindergarten class last year and explains that “boys and girls are of equal value.”  She talks about how her mom is single and how it’s a sign of feminism’s successes that a single woman can raise a happy daughter and work!  Not only are the guests on Smart Girls at the Party cute as buttons, but they are so impressive and insightful.  And they’re seven.

The idea of “extraordinary girls who are changing the world by being themselves”–the tagline of “Smart Girls at the Party” is completely revolutionary.  And it has a TON in common with what I talk about in my book, Supergirls Speak Out.  If girls were comfortable being themselves, finding their individuality, and making time for their passions, we wouldn’t have lethally-perfectionistic girls!  The rise of Supergirls happened because of a snowball effect; a few girls appeared “effortlessly perfect” and got attention for it, so other girls modeled themselves after these perfect girls and tried to appear effortlessly perfect, and more and more girls became Supergirls because that was the norm!  But what if the norm was believing in yourself, liking yourself, and being effortlessly unique?!  The girls on Smart Girls at the Party are doing it, and it’s giving me hope for the next generation of teenagers.

Anyway, hats off to Amy Poehler!  And be sure to check out the Smart Girls at the Party blog!

The other night, I sat on the couch and cried.  Cried… because I was laughing so hard!  I was reading F*** My Life, a new start-up where users have three or so lines to write why their lives are, well, effed.  The site was launched by the French twentysomething Maxime Valette, and I think FMyLife is the best web-site since Post Secret to give internet users a window into one another’s lives.

Here are some of my personal favorites from FMyLife.com:

“Today, my 5 year old nephew showed me green martians he’d made with his new Play Doh set. I smiled and said, “Wow! Now, how about some blue martians!” He looked at me and replied, “How about some blue shut the f*ck up!” FML”

“Today, my boyfriend of four months broke up with me via text message. He spelled my name wrong. FML”

“Today, I got my license renewed and the woman behind the desk looked at me and said “guess we need to update the weight, huh?”. FML”

“Today, on campus, these really overly-happy people walking around with big signs saying “free hugs”. When I walked towards them, their smiles faded, and they put their signs down. FML”

What I love about fmylife.com is that it’s a very simple concept that gives users a lot of freedom to vent about what happened during their day and see that everyone has a bad day every now and then.  What I also like about FMyLife.com is that the responses are frequently really creative and hysterical, and that there are very few misogynistic, offensive posts (or at least, not offensive to the reader, but possibly to the person posting the story!)–which can be a problem on user-generated web-sites.

Anyway, I predict that fmylife.com will be my newest online addiction, and it’s wonderful because the content is rolling and constantly updated.  It’s nice to have a little burst of levity here and then during the day!