Are blogs for women bad?

On Forbes, I examine whether or not blogs for women are doing more harm than good: "Why Blogs for Women Are Bad for Women."

Feeling disempowered? Great. There’s a blog for that. They will tell you that it’s not you. It’s the patriarchy. Didn’t get that raise, make less than your male coworkers, can’t figure out how to negotiate your way into the salary you want? Don’t worry. There’s a blog that will explain to you this is due to male sexism, that it has nothing to do with you, that there are other sisters here who have gone through what you’ve gone through, and, (wo)man, do they feel you.

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I'm a winner

Want to know how to become an award-winning blogger like me? In my latest post on Forbes, I share the wisdom that has made me a household name and an overnight billionaire.

The other day, someone asked me how I became an award-winning blogger. They asked me this because I had mentioned that in 2008, my blog, which, at that time, was The Reverse Cowgirl, was named one of the best blogs of the year by TIME.com.

I was stumped. Usually, I am not without an answer. Most of the time, any answer is better than no answer at all. There is nothing stupider sounding than someone saying, “I don’t know.” Also, it suggests you have no ability to think on your feet.

So, how did I end up an award-winning blogger?

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The journalist who wore cat ears

I offered $100 to a young female journalist to write a guest post on my Forbes blog PINK SLIPPED. This is her story.

I just served three men their dinners, and now they want me to pose. My feet hurt from waiting tables all day, but I respect their wishes and curtsy in my ruffled petticoat. One man takes his camera out and I have to remind him that photos are a dollar. He hands me a sweaty bill and asks if he can be in the photo, too. I straighten my cat ears and stretch my face into a smile.

Just two more hours, I tell myself.

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Molly does me

The awesome Molly Crabapple is doing a series called "Sixty Six: Portraits of Sixty Six Friends Who Awe Me," and I am thrilled to be included.

I think of this portrait as I'm debating whether or not to punch someone in the eye, but I'm not sure I have the time.

Thanks, Molly!

The secret to job interviews

This week's most popular post on my Forbes blog PINK SLIPPED was: "How to Fail at a Job Interview."

People tell themselves their “experience,” their successes-filled resume, and their above-par interviewing skills are what will get them the job. That’s simply not true. It’s what people want to believe because if that were true, they could quantify why one person gets hired and why another does not.

Interviews are like two dogs sniffing one another’s butts. Either you click. Or you don’t.

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I get email

What is the fucking point of this story? I need to look around more often; I had no idea this was what journalism was becoming. How is your own father relevant to anything? Even on Father's day, the notion is simply silly. And your writing is now commonplace? Some Organizations' Editorial sections are one thing, but my how sickening the world has become when people have to "figure out" that the covert thesis of nearly every work of written (keyed) self-endulging journalism is "and that is why I am right." And the way you have been taught frightens one:

- So Sublime. Use Small Sentence. Emphasizie "." to Emphasize "." to Emphasize "point", which is by speaking slowly, but longly, you may impress greatly, but only do so subtly or you may be found out as one that "tries" that is "attempts", perhaps even "succeeds."

Eat Lead and Die Cunt!

Dinner

Portrait of Stripper Tweets with a soft-boiled egg.

Change your life

I'm all about radical change in "Why Radical Change Is Better Than Slow Change."

TIP #1: Moving is good for you.

In 2003, I was living in Los Angeles. I was appearing on TV regularly and supporting myself as a freelance journalist. But I was burned out on Hollywood, and I wanted to try something new. On a plane ride returning to Los Angeles from a trip, I pulled the flight map out of the seat pocket in front of me and stared at the United States. About 10 minutes later, I decided I would move to New Orleans, Louisiana. I had never been to New Orleans. I had never been to Louisiana. I had never been to the South. Two weeks later, I was in the back of a cab driving into a city where moss and beads hung from trees, where they buried the dead above ground, where macaroni and cheese was one of the basic food groups.

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I am my father's daughter

On Forbes, I write about "My Father, the Writer."

It’s been 15 years since my father died, so the pain that rolls around every Father’s Day is more like a phantom limb. You know it’s there, you feel it there, you find yourself wincing from the injury sometimes, but the fact of the matter is it’s invisible, it’s gone, it’s there and not there at the same time.

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I get email

Dearest Susannah - You seem quite easily surprised. We all have pubic hair, so why would anyone consider it offensive? We humans produce many substances, including pubic hair, that some may less fit for discussion in Forbes. May we soon be treated to discussions of the many textures and aromas produces by human feces? These are human universals as well. I wonder if the porn starlet in question had chosen to market her book with a personalized bookmark made from her used bathroom tissue, would you have found that a touch offensive? And speaking of tissues, let's not forget "facial" tissues, which we all know are used primarily as depositories for mucous, or in the vernacular...well you know the vernacular. Wouldn't a cover made from used and recycled facial and toilet tissue been a novelty? Imagine the joy a purchaser might receive from finding his own bit of freshly congealed bit of nasal mucous wiped personally on the flyleaf and sign by the "actress."

News flash! Susannah Breslin is not the arbiter of all things socially acceptable...nor is her editor. That we all have different tolerances for such things is a matter of diversity, is it not? If we all had the same tastes, the world would be a boring place would it not? If you find that concept surprising or amusing, then I am both surprised and amused...highly so.

Do you suffer from neck trouble? One suspects that your constant invitations to yank your chain would leave you with a severe case of whiplash.

I say no to the pink ghetto

I proclaim lady blogs over in my latest post on Forbes: "How to Get Out of the Pink Ghetto."

I looked but I did not find the section called ForbesMan in which men write a lot of blog posts about what it’s like to be a CEO and a man, what it’s like to work and be a man, what it’s like to be an entrepreneur and a man. Men take their CEO/work/entrepreneur status and write about that, not their genitals’ relationship to that.

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I go long

Slate has a round up of some of the best long-form stories on the adult movie industry, including mine, in "The Longform.org Guide to the Porn Industry."

They Shoot Porn Stars, Don't They?
Susannah Breslin • They Shoot Stars • October 2009
A self-published snapshot of the industry following the Great Recession:

"Three years ago, Powers shot four to five movies a week. Nowadays, he's lucky if he shoots two a week. Like many other businessmen, he's been forced to cut corners. Ergo, the 'life support system for a penis' of yesteryear has been replaced by the lower maintenance RoboCock."

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Are you a slutrepreneur?

That's the penetrating question I ask in my latest Forbes post: "Anthony Weiner and the Rise of the 21st Century Slutrepreneur."

I’ve been watching Weinergate unfold and the women with whom he sexted and sexbooked crawl out of the woodwork, and I’ve been trying to think of a name for the growing number of women who are making money by selling their stories of having sex with, having sexted with, or having otherwise gotten sexual with a famous man.

Slutrepreneur, perhaps?

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Carrie Bradshaw, 2011

At Minyanville.com, I wrote about how the ladies of "Sex and the City" would do if they were living and working in New York City in 2011: "Yesterday's TV, Today's Economy: Sex and the City."

Airing on HBO (TWX) from 1998 to 2004, 'Sex and the City' came to embody the travails of the modern workingwoman. Torn between love and sex, the single life and marriage, kids and career, the show’s four main characters reflected the struggles of a post-feminist generation trying to have it all. When we meet the ladies in New York City, Carrie Bradshaw is a struggling thirty-something sex-and-dating columnist for the New York Star. Miranda Hobbes is an ambitious lawyer who spews feminist politics and has plans to make partner. Samantha Jones is a successful publicist who spends her free time having sex with anything that moves. And Charlotte York is a WASP-y art gallery curator willing to give it all up—for the right rich husband.

So, how would Carrie and co. fare in today’s economy?

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America's next Lois Lane

I put out a call for a young female journalist, and I picked a winner and five runners-up.

In hindsight, I would say that I was looking for several things: someone I wanted to work with, someone who wasn’t merely talking but doing, someone who was talented, and, I think above all else, someone who was passionate. If you asked me what was missing in the bulk of the pitches I received, I would say it was passion. If you asked me what I think journalism schools are not teaching their journalists, it’s how to pitch. As newsrooms shrink and disappear, one can imagine the ranks of freelancers will rise, and the jobs will go to those who know how to sell themselves.

I had a great time doing this. Here's why I did it.

I was depressed. Nothing was helping. Then I remembered something I read somewhere that said if you do something for someone else, it will help you.

I wanted to give something. I read a post in which someone apologetically asked for something. I thought it would be better to unapologetically give something.

I could. Sometimes people do good things because they can, and sometimes people do bad things because they can. It's better to do the former.

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No men need apply

Over on my Forbes blog PINK SLIPPED, I'm offering a young (18 to 25) female journalist $100 to write a guest post.

As a journalist, I hear regularly from young journalists looking for advice on how to get started in journalism.

Jobs are hard to come by, the medium is changing, and who wants to work on a content farm?

Most of those young journalists I hear from are young men.

Where are all the young female journalists?

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I get comments

"Frankly, I'd rather hear from the Iraqis and Afghanis whose land we've occupied and are slaughtering"

Thanks, goldmineguttd. I was wondering when some anonymous Boing Boing reader who almost certainly has never dared a single moment of physical bravery or dedicated himself to a higher cause (say, swearing to protect the Constitution with his life) would from the comfort and safety of his home or office cubicle besmirch his bettors with a simplistic, lazy, and irrelevant-in-this-context political statement. And here it is RIGHT ON SCHEDULE. -- Boing Boing

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War is in our genes

I've got a new interview up at The War Project. I interviewed Staff Sgt. Jason Deckman, a combat engineer who's been deployed to Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, and Iraq twice and is heading to Afghanistan for his sixth deployment.

Every time we went out that serpentine, where you’re going from inside that protective area to you’re outside the wire, in that little transition, there was very few times that I didn’t have that little quick catch in my chest, where your heart kind of skips a beat, and you think to yourself, OK, here we go. It’s that little adrenaline rush.

There was very few missions that I would roll up to the gate and didn’t have that catch, because it was telling myself, OK, now you’re in combat, and now there is someone trying to kill you.

In a new post my Forbes blog, I talk about why I created The War Project.

At the fundraiser, I met a young man who had accidentally driven a Humvee over an IED in Iraq.

He was really a great kid. I interviewed him, and we hit it off. He had been burned over most of his body when the IED had detonated and he was trapped in the vehicle. He’d endured countless surgeries. When I met him, he had what turned out to be a breast implant embedded under the skin covering his skull. It was stretching the skin so that skin could get graphed onto other scarred parts of his body. I joked that when he was done with the implant, he could donate it to a stripper who had only one breast implant and was in need. He laughed.

[The War Project, Forbes]