Jezebel: Emily Gould

Emily Gould And The Rejection Of Personal Growth

Anna North — Tue, 04 May 2010 16:00:00 EDT

In And The Heart Says Whatever, Emily Gould set out to flout the traditions of many women's memoirs. Her book is the antithesis of personal growth narratives like Eat, Pray, Love — and she may like it that way. More »

Am I Dating A Werewolf? And Other Questions For Francesca Lia Block

Emily Gould — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:40:00 EST

You may scoff at the mere idea of a dating guidebook. You may almost certainly scoff at one that matches people by their mythological creature -type. I did too at first, and I have a professional astrologer on speed-dial. More »

The Female Blogger Deficit: Are We Too Nice, Or Not Nice Enough?

Anna North — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:20:00 EDT

Despite hopeful stats from a few years ago, men now outnumber women in the blogosphere by two to one. So why don't more women blog? One blogger thinks it's because we're too sweet — but we have some other ideas. More »

Salon Offers A Last, Well-Put Word On A Week Of Women Writers

Anna Holmes — Thu, 29 May 2008 13:30:00 EDT

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"We are mired in a repetitious pattern of hate, jealousy and resentment toward those who are plucked by media powers and come to stand — however inefficiently — for the rest of us in the cultural imagination, securing the top spots, the best exposure, the prime media real estate in exchange for opening veins of feminine vulnerability." That's Salon's Rebecca Traister, weighing in on the publishing world's ghettoization and fetishization of the female experience by women writers both real (Emily Gould) and imagined (Carrie Bradshaw). Traister, in a little over 1,400 words, perfectly sums up this writer's inner conflicts over Sex and the City, the nasty, knee-jerk reaction to Emily's NY Times magazine piece, and the aesthetically prejudiced, commercially-limited and critically loathed space occupied by many contemporary female writers. Here's more: More »

Washington Post Magazine Runs Livejournal-y Cover Story By Unemployed Male Blogger. So Where's The Sultry Photo Shoot?

Moe — Wed, 28 May 2008 12:00:00 EDT

Washington Post Magazine Runs Livejournal-y Cover Story By Unemployed Male Blogger. So Where's The Sultry Photo Shoot?" alt="Click here to read Washington Post Magazine Runs Livejournal-y Cover Story By Unemployed Male Blogger. So Where's The Sultry Photo Shoot?" src="http://cache.jezebel.com/assets/images/39/2008/05/f9/9d/small_f9908194a0dd6c3f21be38da14f63c03.jpg"/>

Because one can never get one's fill of first-person newspaper Sunday magazine stories by unemployed people in which nothing much happens, I read a cover story in the Washington Post Magazine called "Terminated," wherein a man named T.M. Shine — and, you will be shocked to learn, he blogs! — gets laid off from his job and watches life collapse into a long malaisey mope-rock montage involving blueberry pancakes, paperwork, tear-inducing episodes of Extreme Makeover, and feeling like a john while meeting his old office manager in an abandoned Krispy Kreme parking lot to pick up the possessions the corporate overlords wouldn't give him time to pack. Unlike Emily Gould, Shine is not pictured in revealing loungewear, or at all. We learn he is: "a little older than Prince and not nearly as old as Jerry Seinfeld." We also learn that Laura, the office manager, is concerned his age/looks make him somehow unappetizing as a prospective hire. More »

5 Things About That Times Magazine Piece On Masturbatory Blogging

Moe — Fri, 23 May 2008 15:00:00 EDT

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Maybe you heard but there's a big story out about our generation's compulsive confessionalism written by my ex-colleague, former Gawker editor Emily Gould. Emily is also my friend, though there were times during the Year Of Magical Linking (cf. Xian) I wished she could just get a lobotomy. She was pretty and clever and adored and in the throes of an infatuation with a terribly self-centered young dude she spent wayyyyy too much time IM-ing everyone about. Whatever, she's back. And she's written something that should resonate with anyone who has ever dealt with his or her self-absorption by airing it all online, becoming a character in the lives of strangers, and pondering the morality of the need for an audience and whether morality is stupid when human existence is just one epic display of aggregated service to self. Yeah, I have a few miscellaneous, hangover-affected thoughts! More »

Fighting Off Wig-Stealing Drag Queens At 'Night Of A Thousand Stevies'

Emily Gould — Tue, 13 May 2008 15:00:00 EDT

"Sometimes, the most beautiful thing, the most innocent thing — and many of those dreams — pass us by." Well, my friend Bennett Madison and I were determined not to let the 18th Annual "Night of A Thousand Stevies" (NOTS) pass us by, and if you recognize the quote above as a line from the (best) Stevie Nicks song (ever), "Angel," then you already understand why we were motivated to attend an event that brings Stevie Nicks impersonators from around the country to perform in front of an audience full of...Stevie Nicks impersonators. If you don't understand, read on: you just might learn something about one of the greatest artists of all time, and the bizarre, semi-sad, hilariously gay and nerdy and over-the-top cult that has sprung up around the singer. More »

Maybe It's Time To Stop Hating On America's Scary Sadshaws

Anna Holmes — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 12:30:00 EDT

When I began conceiving of Jezebel, one of the first "Don'ts" on my list concerned one Julia Allison, sex columnist, media figure and self-promoter extraordinaire. Not only was Julia amply covered by Jezebel's big brother site Gawker, to me, she represented everything that was wrong with young women in the 00's. Called "Scary Sadshaws" by former Gawker editor Emily Gould, these ladies worship at the altar of Manolo Blahnik, regard writer Candace Bushnell as some sort of saint, and, of course, take instruction from a certain HBO series that bore no similarity to how life is lived by the majority of single women. Scary Sadshaws are NYC's version of the stars of Girls Gone Wild, except that Patrick McMullan is their Joe Francis, and they substitute luxury goods for bare breasts. In my mind, they were not only ruining New York, but ruining what it means to be a serious young woman with ambition in the turn-of-the-century America. They were ruining everything for all of us. More »

Alanna: The First Adventure: For The Crossdressing Knight In Every Girl

Emily Gould — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 16:20:00 EST

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Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wrinkled look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. Today, YA author, former Gawker editor and 'Fine Lines' guest-writer Emily Gould rereads 'Alanna: The First Adventure', Tamora Pierce's 1983 novel about about how much tougher puberty is when no one knows you're a girl because you switched places with your twin brother in order to train to be a knight.

What Can We Learn From Men Who Claim They Have "Learned"? (Hint: "That They Need To Be Schooled" Is Not That Off)

Moe — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:00:00 EST

A few weeks ago, a talented writer named Emily Gould submitted a review of a "lad lit" anthology called Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me. The editor of the book is Daily Show/Colbert co-creator Ben Karlin. Wow! I thought upon reading the review. Men sure are jerks! In fact, I ventured further, maybe the men who would seem not to be jerks are the biggest jerks of all! I tucked the review away, wondering if maybe Emily could do something to "advance" this argument. Well, guess what happened in the intervening weeks? Well, for one, Emily's ex-boyfriend wrote an incredibly terrible essay about her in Page Six Magazine. The story was exactly like something out of Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me in that purported to convey how the author learned some sort of life lesson from a failed relationship but actually just made him look like a more self-obsessed prick than anyone thought he was in the first place. (But: it was also really bad.) And then! The editor of the anthology in question, Ben Karlin, turned out to be a really big jerk, according to this New York Observer story about how he screwed this guy* who moved into his building. You know what? I thought. Fuck it, my argument just advanced itself. Things Emily learned from Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me after the jump. More »

Weetzie Bat: The Book For Girls Who Ended Up Taking A Gay Dude To Prom

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 15:00:00 EST

Weetzie Bat: The Book For Girls Who Ended Up Taking A Gay Dude To Prom" alt="Click here to read Weetzie Bat: The Book For Girls Who Ended Up Taking A Gay Dude To Prom" src="http://cache.jezebel.com/assets/images/39/2008/02/small_weetziebat020108.jpg"/>

Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wrinkled look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. Today, YA author, former Gawker editor and 'Fine Lines' guest-writer Emily Gould rereads 'Weetzie Bat', Francesca Lia Block's 1989 novel about a punk Los Angeles alternafamily.