"Four decades
after the sexual revolution, nothing has worked out
the way it was supposed to. The sexes are circling
each other as uneasily and comically as ever, from
the bedroom to the boardroom to the Situation Room,
and now the New York Times columnist who won a
Pulitzer Prize in 1999 for saucy and incisive
commentary about the dangerous liaisons of Bill,
Monica, Hillary and Ken Starr digs into the Y and X
files, exploring the mysteries and muddles of sexual
combat in America.
In a new book filled with chapters that surprise and
amuse, Dowd explains why getting ready for a date
went from glossing and gargling to Paxiling and
Googling; why men are in an evolutionary and
romantic shame spiral; why women have reeled
backward in many ways; why men may be biologically
unsuited to hold higher office, given their diva
fits and catfights, teary confessions and fashion
obsessions; why women are fixated on their looks
more than ever, freezing their faces and emotions in
an orgy of plasticity that makes the Stepford Wives
look authentic; why male politicians and male
institutions get tripped up in so much monkey
business; why many alpha women, from Martha to
Hillary, can have a successful second act only after
becoming humiliated victims; and why the new
definition of Having It All is less about
empowerment and equality than about flirting and
getting rescued, downshifting from "You go, girl!"
to "You go lie down, girl."
In addition, Dowd, who has reported on historic
moments on the sexual battlefield, from Geraldine
Ferraro's vice-presidential run to the Anita
Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings to Hillary Rodham
Clinton's reign as copresident, explores not only
how many of these shining feminist triumphs
backfired on women but also how Hillary, a feminist
icon busy plotting her campaign to be the first
woman president, delivered the final blow to female
solidarity herself.
Women's liberation has been less a steady trajectory
than a confusing zigzag. Feminism lasted for a
nanosecond and generated a gender tangle that has
bewitched, bothered and bewildered men and women for
forty years. Now comes a woman to cut through the
tangle and tickle Adam's rib. The battle of the
sexes will never be the same."
