Jezebel: Self Help

Gloria Allred's Pundit Daughter: Celebrity Culture Makes Young Women Dumb

Irin Carmon — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 17:20:00 EDT

Your following Kim Kardashian on Twitter is the reason we don't have a female president yet. Or something. More »

Why Steve Harvey Is Only Giving Women Love Advice

Irin Carmon — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 16:16:00 EST

"Unless men change, I will not write a book for men, because I don't want it just sitting on the shelves," he told Latoya Peterson. Also discussed: The media's obsession with black women's love lives as well as interracial dating. More »

The Secret Is Now The Power

Sadie Stein — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 17:28:00 EDT

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Bestselling author Rhonda Byrne is at it again! Says USA Today, "The Power, like The Secret, is a guide to positive thinking, how 'everyone is meant to have an amazing life.'" And, like The Secret, it's presumably pseudoscientific malarkey! More »

Self-Help In The 1960s

Jessica Coen — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 15:03:00 EDT

This collection of the best-selling self-help books of the 1960s demonstrates just how remarkably, er, far the self-help industry has come. We're much better off now that we know the secret. More »

Teri Hatcher's Awesome Site For Awesome Women Who Want To Feel More Awesome

Dodai Stewart — Tue, 11 May 2010 13:00:00 EDT

Teri Hatcher's new website, Get Hatched (a chick's guide to life) is up and running. In a video clip, she claims the site "is not the Teri Hatcher reality show." No — it's more like a self-help book on uppers. More »

Charla Krupp Will Help Camouflage Buddha Bellies, Big Butts And Thick Thighs

Jenna Sauers — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:00:00 EST

Charla Krupp, having told women how to age, is back to tell us how to dress. Her "secret"? Giving women knowledge of what Krupp calls "fattening clothes." Which you should avoid, because they are like so bad, like cookies! More »

Who Moved My Cheese, The Movie: We Hand Hollywood Its Next Big Blockbusters

Sadie Stein — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 14:00:00 EST

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They're making a movie out of What to Expect When You're Expecting. They've already made movies out of French Women Don't Get Fat and He's Just Not That Into You. Here, we give Hollywood its next batch of self-help blockbusters: More »

"Declining Female Happiness" May Be Just Another Way To Sell Shit

Anna North — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:00:00 EDT

In an LA Times editorial, Barbara Ehrenreich writes that all the hue and cry over modern women's unhappiness may be just a ploy to sell us self-help. More »

Shoes, Self-Help & Catfights: What Women Want In Movies

Sadie Stein — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 16:00:00 EST

This was the year, we're told, that Hollywood started making movies for women... as long as they were totally inane. And next year, as Self-Help Cinema launches, they'll be even more vapid! More »

Self-Help Books Are Not Just For Desperate Twits

Jessica G. — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:00:00 EST

Jessica Simpson is self-help book enthusiast. "I am the first person to go to Barnes & Noble and buy the new self-help book," she says. You're shocked, we're sure, that J. Simp perpetuates the concept of self-help reader as sad sack single girl desperate for a man/learning the meaning of life through shoe purchasing. But, not all self-help books are for mindless simpletons. It's more about the attitude you take towards the advice of these books that makes all the difference. More »

The Mary Kay Way To World Domination

Sadie Stein — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:20:00 EDT

For those who think of Mary Kay cosmetics as nothing more than a pink Cadillac full of mauve lipsticks, think again: when the company's handbook, The Mary Kay Way, came out 20 years ago, Mary Kay Ash's culty brand of get-rich-kinda-quick consumer marketing made it a bestseller. Or, as the blurb would have it, "it was Mary Kay’s goal in 1963 to build an organization that was guided by the Golden Rule and dedicated to giving women unlimited opportunities for success. She considered caring and kindness to be the building blocks of a highly motivated workforce—and the forty-five year success story that is Mary Kay Inc. has proven her right." More »

How The He's Just Not That Into You Guy Actually Helped Me Get Over My (Married) (Strip Club DJ) Ex-Boyfriend

Moe — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:30:00 EDT

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Tormented? Driven witless? 99 problems but therapy bills ain't one? Welcome to "Save Your Life, Cheap!" in which we write about the dumb things that get America's uninsured through hard times. AA meetings, James Joyce, Ani di Franco, suicide hotlines…anything nonalcoholic can apply, the more embarrassing the better. Which brings me to: self-help. In our first installment, Sephora Spy's Loren Hunt reviews the $1 book that got her through the worst breakup ever.

John Prescott's Ugly Common Person's Guide To Coping With Eating Disorders

Moe — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 13:00:00 EDT

Remember that deputy Prime Minister who resigned two years ago with Tony Blair only to resurface a year and a half later with a memoir about his decades-long struggle with bulimia? The British press sure does! And while coverage of this confession has generally fallen into the category of "merciless mockfest", an interview in the latest British Esquire convinced me he was doing bulimics of the world a service. Because while writing about your eating disorder isn't really a British thing to do, John Prescott's method of dealing with his eating disorder is kind of hilariously British, starting with the way his wife caught wind of the problem: she noticed symptoms she'd learned about from Princess Di. Which is, of course, the grand irony: the kids all assume eating disorders are the path to looking like Di and Nicole Richie when, ha ha ha, Prescott pukes his food too! Herewith, John Prescott's Stiff Upper Esophagus Guide To To Coming To Terms With Your Puking Problem, culled from Esquire. More »

25 Things All Women Should Learn To Do Already

Moe — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:00:00 EDT

In honor of its 75th anniversary the May Esquire has a big pullout feature called "75 Skills Every Man Should Master." The premise — Magazines! Lists! — is not exactly revolutionary, and the "skills," such as practicing "brand loyalty to at least one product" and "making three different bets at a craps table" are not exactly universally vital, but I'm writing about the feature precisely because it's so classically Esquire. Esquire is a magazine about "how to be a better man" or some John Wayne shit like that. Esquire doesn't try and tell its readers they are fine just the way they are. Esquire likes rules, definites, moral "absolutes" to substitute for the old moral absolutes in which modern society is so woefully deficient. Glamour would, for whatever reason, never tell its readers they needed to know how to deliver a eulogy or install a thermostat without asking for help, because they are too busy telling their readers to not feel guilty about being too emotional to deliver the eulogy without breaking down, or ask a dude for help installing the thermostat. Thank the nonexistent moral authorities that I don't get paid Glamour rates to write this stuff, right? More »

"Quarterlife" Vs. The "Return Of Saturn": Which Existential Crisis Is More Stupid?

Moe — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 12:00:00 EDT

I will never forget the first time I noticed the term "Quarterlife crisis." I was about to turn 25 and I had just left a big-time newspaper job in Los Angeles to try magazine writing (and phone sex!) in Philadelphia. I was in the throes of a really really wise platonic-romantic entanglement with someone twenty years my senior. We had just seen the movie Lost In Translation. And the movie, something about it...spoke to me. I started doing that thing where you reverse-read all the movie reviews of the movie you just saw to try and figure out what it was... and some critic referenced ScarJo's Quarterlife Crisis. That's it! A crisis. See, I mean, it wasn't like I assumed, after dropping out of college and entering one of the nation's more tumultuous industries, that it was going to be, like, easy. It's just that...well...what was "easy", anyway? It's not like I was joining the workforce following a two-year stint in the Navy SEALS. What did I know of "hard"? I didn't even know what the Navy SEALS really do; I don't even know anything; nothing! Ohh, how I hated myself. More »

Auntie Anne Has More Secrets Where That Pretzel Recipe Came From...

Moe — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 17:20:26 EST

Auntie Anne just wrote a memoir. Why the fuck would you want to read a book about the life of Auntie Anne? Well, see, she's a centimillionaire motorcycle enthusiast who grew up a Mennonite in Amish country. She met her husband through a youth group, and married as a teenager. Her second daughter was run over by a tractor and killed when she was a toddler. The death filled her and her husband with grief so immense it nearly ended their marriage. Then they healed their wounds by confiding in their Evangelical pastor and a counselor. It changed them so much they started counseling other Amish country couples. They started a little pretzel business. Her loving and dutiful husband Jonas mistakenly added a "secret" extra ingredient that made them taste awesome. They loved their pastor so much they uprooted their lives and the business to Texas to follow him. And six years later, it turned out Auntie Anne was leading a twisted double life! More »