Posted on 09/09/2009 3:08:57 PM PDT by nickcarraway
When Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of the mega-best seller "Eat, Pray, Love"—and the world's most lauded singleton since Jill Clayburgh in 1978's "An Unmarried Woman"—spoke at Washington's National Cathedral one Sunday last spring, more than 2,000 of Ms. Gilbert's, er, worshipers showed up at the shrine.
The size of the crowd caused the cathedral's dean to observe wryly that he doesn't usually do that kind of business on Sundays. But a huge turnout was nothing new for Ms. Gilbert, a genuine phenomenon: "This has been going for three years," the Washington Post reported. Ms. Gilbert has customarily drawn such crowds since her Oprah-endorsed saga of finding self-empowerment after divorce by traveling solo to Italy, India and Indonesia turned her into an icon of female independence. The writer of the Post piece opined that the message of "Eat, Pray, Love" is "You can do it, sister." When Ms. Gilbert and writer Annie Lamott shared a stage at UCLA, a reporter for the National Catholic Reporter gushed that it was the most historic literary encounter since Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal traded insults in 1971 on "The Dick Cavett Show." In the "distaff version," she notes, two "wry, witty women known for sharing their stories of self-discovery . . . hug [and] extol each other's talent and footwear," all the while "bathing their audience in a warm glow of good feeling."
But now there is a twist in the Gilbert voyage of feminist selfhood. The New York Times carried a story last month with the intriguing headline "Eat, Pray, Love. Then What? Get Married." It seems that Ms. Gilbert, a woman capable of roaming the globe with no male protection (beyond an ample publisher's advance), a heroine who had vowed, according to
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Iron my shirt
“But she is a giddy girl with lots of giddy girlfriends. And they are, in the way that feminists always seem to be but hate to admit, boy crazy and sex crazy.”
Maybe, just “crazy” period.
parsy, who says women are nice, but serenity is nicer.
Any icons of male independence out there?
but serenity is nicer.
That’s one of those woman problems,
they always want YOU to be doing something,
they always want YOU describe your “feelings”.
It’s why I have a dog.
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