The Web's Womanly Advice
Jan. 2 -- Here's what this is not: It's not another end-of-the-year, look-where-we've been, 2001-was-a-very-bad-year column.
It's not the musings of a smirky journalist (OK, so I'm definitely smirky, but this hardly could be called musings) telling you what you already know: 2001 was one for the record books, and not in any way we'd care to repeat.
You can get that someplace else. Most every place else, in fact. So you're not going to get it here.
(You're welcome.)
Instead, here you're going to get good things. You know: Good Things. Like evergreen bobeches. Cranberry flower frogs. And easy napkin folds.
You're going to get tips on how to be a holiday hottie; how to brighten your home with do-it-yourself potpourri even while you're feeling spiritually uplifted and emotionally in charge; how to dress thin (it's all about tulip skirts; who would have guessed?); and how to resolve — in 50 different ways — to make him happier.
In fact, you're going to get the best advice on being a woman the Internet has to offer — straight to you from the biggest women's sites on the Web.
Donna and Laura, Meet Martha and Oprah
All right, so first a few true confessions: I wouldn't know an evergreen bobeche (is that the singular for bobeches?) if it wrapped itself around my head. I am particularly averse to frogs, cranberry or otherwise. And there is no easy way to fold a paper napkin into anything but a triangle.
That much I know.
I also know this: Bobeches, etc., are the cultural trappings of femininity that simply refuse to go away and leave us alone. Betty Friedan was documenting — and despairing over — them in the 1950s, when Donna Reed and Laura Petrie were the media icons of womanhood. Today, decades later, we've replaced Donna and Laura with Martha and Oprah. But the message is the same.
Well, almost.
As we head into 2002, we're still supposed to be thin, beautiful, domestic doyennes who smell good, fold a fancy napkin, anchor our bouquets with cranberry flower frogs, and whip up an evergreen bobeche like it's something a normal person would do.
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