The magazine is Cosmopolitan, from that almost unrecognizable halcyon age of women's magazines when Mademoiselle was publishing Truman Capote's short fiction and Joan Didion was working at Vogue. (That story about "modern psychiatry," grandma's common sense, and the vexations of motherhood sounds kind of familiar, though.)

Meet Tippi "Hedrin"! The best part about this page is that she is holding a lobster.

Do you hear that? Hedren loves everything about modeling. Even the scratchy-looking "removable dickey" on that sheath dress.

By 1953, Hedren had already gotten her first film role, in The Petty Girl. The Birds would come ten years later — and after her divorce from Peter Griffith, pictured. (Apparently the love of animals was lifelong.)

See what you can do with a good wardrobe of stoles?

I just learned that Tippi Hedren was apparently partly responsible for Vietnamese immigrants to California taking up the manicurist trade. Hedren met some Vietnamese refugees in the mid 1970s, and they remarked upon her nails. "I noticed that these women were very good with their hands," Hedren told the Los Angeles Times. "I thought, why couldn't they learn how to do nails?" So she organized training for that particular group of women. Their relative success motivated others, and now California nail technicians are 80% Vietnamese. The more you know!

The Model Life [ModernMechanix]
A Mix Of Luck, Polish [LATimes]

For someone who's so good because she understands that the personal in itself isn't worth a damn and that emotional clouding's for amateurs, Joan Didion has inspired a lot of gushing. V.L. Hartmann touches on this in a lovely essay today, acknowledging that while the incisive Didion is not "the most maternal of literary idols", for all that

I am not alone in my generation in thinking of her as a sort of mother figure. In 2006, she had a public conversation with then Paris Review editor Philip Gourevitch at Summer Stage in Central Park, and the crowd was filled with over a hundred people in their twenties and thirties, many gazing at her with adoration. She read from The Year of Magical Thinking and tears streamed down the faces of girls who clutched copies of her books.

When I've seen Didion read or talk (I wrote about one such instance here) - and it's something you do, if she's reading, and if you can, because she's a bedroom saint - it's kind of like that. The disconnect between what she's saying and writing and the palpable veneration is always kind of jarring. Ironically, for all her detachment, we all feel we know her. She has transcended her work and become a figure of tragedy and a national treasure. As a keen student of hero-worship, Didion herself must find it fascinating.

Hartmann adds that for many young women, Didion is the spectrum through which we view our mothers' generation as well as the model for female writers. Of course, there are those who would argue that in many ways Didion's voice was heightened and sharpened by the necessity of writing in a man's world, that like many women of her generation her fiction needed to be brittle to avoid sentimentality. Didion lovers might find that a strength, but she of all people would surely want the historical pointed out with due detachment. But, see? I'm falling into it too. Although the most idiosyncratic of voices and frank of literary personalities, a lot of us have made her a figurehead and projected on our own qualities and wishful qualities. The author was prompted to write her tribute when she saw Didion on the street, tiny and fragile-looking, and found reality and mythology colliding. She concludes, "I grew up with her writing, but she wrote none of it for me. It was enough to know on that cold afternoon that I was there and she was there." I'd add, at this point she hardly needs to be, because we all have the idea. (And no, I'm not talking about the erotica...which was, it should be said, for an erotica contest at a Valentine's Day party. Still.)
Joan Didion Crosses The Street [The Morning News]
Related: Joan Didion Is Kind Of A Downer About The Election

[New York, October 26. Image via Getty]

NEW YORK - OCTOBER 26: Actress Vansessa Redgrave performs during the benefit performance of 'The Year of Magical Thinking' at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on October 26, 2009 in New York City. (Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images)

• The LAPD has arrested four women in connection with break-ins at Lindsay Lohan and Audrina Patridge's homes.

One of the women, 19-year-old Rachel J. Lee, may also be involved in last year's jewelry heist at Paris Hilton's house, and her team may have also targeted Orlando Bloom. Teen cat burglars? I smell a screenplay! [People, TMZ, TMZ]

• Meanwhile, Lindsay says it's okay for her 15-year-old sister to party because "She's tougher than I am." And: "She has a good head on her shoulders. Maybe it was different for me because I didn't know what to expect and it just happened really fast. I didn't have a big sister." [E!]
• A club that had banned Lindsay Lohan has allowed her back in. [Page Six]
• Word is Rosie O'Donnell's marriage is over for good and Kelli Carpenter actually moved out months ago. [Radar Online]
• Someone dared David Cross to snort coke at the White House Correspondents' Dinner (which was not held in the White House) so he did. "Maybe 40 feet from the president of the United States!" [Newser]
• The United States has officially asked Switzerland to hand over Roman Polanski to authorities in California. [AP]
• Katherine Jackson has changed lawyers in the Michael Jackson estate case. [USA Today]
• Kenny Ortega, the choreographer working with Michael Jackson on the This Is It tour, says he wanted MJ healthy: "Michael had sleepless nights and we had to look after him. [I'd say to him], 'Stay hydrated, have a protein shake - Did you eat today before you came?'" But Ortega doesn't believe rehearsals were wearing MJ down: "Working on this show was invigorating, was nourishing." [AP]
• Alex Rodriguez dabbled in Kabbalah when he was dating Madonna and now he's getting into Buddhism, thanks to Kate Hudson. [Gatecrasher]
• A source close to Balloon Mom Mayumi Heene says she is "totally subservient to Richard and the boys. Whatever they want, they get" And that Mayumi will "go down with the ship." [NY Daily News]
• A pharmacist testified in the Anna Nicole Smith case, saying that when he received a request for drugs from her doctor, he said: "This is crazy. This is pharmaceutical suicide. The dosages are way out of whack." And: "I said I wouldn't fill it, and no pharmacy in California would." [NY Daily News]
• Awesome: Jay-Z and Will Smith are backing Fela!. [NY Post]
• Matt Damon is dealing with a "serious" family emergency. Stay tuned. [E!]
• Denis Leary and his wife Ann have a house in the country with three dogs and two horses; they're profiled in the Times today and also, Ann blogs about their picturesque rural life. [NY Times]
• Pamela Anderson is living in a trailer because construction on her house in Malibu is not going as planned. She says: "I am $3million over budget and I should have moved in over a year ago. I'm tiling the whole pool in platinum - that's expensive!" She also claims: "I'm going to sell [the house]. I hate it. People commit suicide over constructions. Relationships break down over constructions and I can see why. It rips your heart out." [Daily Mail]
• Oliver Stone is using "his uptown friends" as extras in Wall Street 2. Authentic! [Page Six]
• At the link, the amazing Mira Nair — who directed Mississippi Masala, Monsoon Wedding, The Namesake and Reese Witherspoon's VanityFair, talks about her latest, Amelia: "So much about Amelia [Earhart] is so undeniably modern. If she were to walk into a room today in her jodhpurs and her aviation jackets, [with] her ideas about marriage or men and women, she would still be considered an iconoclast." [NPR]
• Is there a backlash against Precious? And is Oprah to blame? [LA Times]
• Vanessa Redgrave is doing a one-night-only performance of The Year Of Magical Thinking — which is based loosely on the Joan Didion memoir and about dealing with unexpected death — mere months after Redgrave's daughter Natasha Richardson died. [WSJ]
• In this video, Tom Green and Tony Hawk have lunch and Tom talks shit about his ex-wife, Drew Barrymore: He has opinions about her photoshoot with Ellen Page and her behavior during their marriage. [Shred Or Die]
• "Magic Johnson blames former friend Isiah Thomas for spreading rumors that Johnson was gay after he announced he had HIV in 1991." [Newser]
• Bronson Pinchot made some… intense statements about Tom Cruise's homophobia and Denzel Washington's unpleasant character, and at the link, he clarifies. [WSJ]
• Earlier this year, Spike Lee slammed Tyler Perry's sitcoms, saying, "I think there's a lot of stuff out today that is coonery and buffoonery. I'm scratching my head. We've got a black president. Are we going back?" Now Perry say: "You know, that pisses me off. It really does. Because it's so insulting. It's attitudes like that that make Hollywood think that these people do not exist and that's why there's no material speaking to them. I would love to read that to my fan base." [CBS News]
• RIP Soupy Sales. [Reuters, CNN]
• "If you took the top five of my CDs and just put 'em away and then you have children, 10 years later, you break these out and put 'em on… you'll be laughing. And your kids will be laughing. ou put The Cosby Show on - there won't be any cellphones and people might be wearing funny sweaters - but that same human behavior will still connect with people." — Bill Cosby, who will received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor on Monday, and believes good comedy has no shelf life. He also says he doesn't watch TV anymore: "I'm not thrilled with the deliberate onslaught of the public by the major networks in terms of the sitcoms. They still don't get it about race. They still don't get it about gender. Jokes are still about jerks and body parts and sex." [USA Today]
• "I think women really responded to that initially." — Patricia Arquette, on what this column calls her "more womanly, post-childbirth frame" on Medium. She also says: "They'll bring me new outfits, and I'm like, 'No, I need to repeat those pajamas again. And again.'" And! "I'm not one for spending a lot of money on this show, but these people need a new comforter!" [Variety]
• "I cook OK — I cook every night, so every night is not great. I am really not that adept a cook as [Julia Child] was, especially with that rapid-fire knife. If I did that in my kitchen everybody would run because there would be a lot of blood probably." — Meryl Streep. [Mirror]
• "It depends on the kid.  There are parts of it that are pretty intense. When I was 7 years old, I could not have seen this movie.  It would've scared me.  But my younger brother, who's now 7, could've seen this a year ago.  It depends on the kid." — Max Records, who plays Max in Where The Wild Things Are, on whether the film is too scary for young children. [LA Times]
• "Motherfucker took me out of the ghetto. That's my dude, man. He's been like a dad to me. I remember when I was on Saturday Night Live my first year and I wasn't getting much. I was down; I was ready to quit. It was three o'clock in the morning, man, I'll never forget. Makes me want to cry sometimes when I think about it. I love that man. I love that man. [long pause; starts to cry] I'm sorry, man. Excuse me. [another long pause] Son of a bitch… motherfucker's good. I remember one time Lorne took me to his office, and he said, 'Tracy, you are here not because you're black. You're here because you're fucking funny, man.' [bursts into tears again; wipes face with shirt] Changed my whole perspective.... They say every Jewish man is supposed to love one black motherfucker in this life. I'm glad Lorne Michaels chose me." — Tracy Morgan hearts Lorne Michaels. [Playboy via NY Mgaazine]

• Kanye West has been charged with battery, theft and vandalism stemming from that incident last September in which he smashed a paparazzi's camera at LAX. He's planning a fly courtroom outfit right now. [TMZ, Mirror, Gatecrasher]

• Here is piece about Natasha Richardson's life and death, including who visited her before she was taken off of life support (Joan Didion; Meryl Streep.) [NY Post]
• Vanessa Redgrave, Natasha Richardson's mother, played Joan Didion on Broadway, and the play was about losing a daughter. [Fox 411]
• Rihanna's "mentor" (?), producer Evan Rogers, says all the attention from Oprah and Tyra Banks makes matters worse: "I think that everyone has good intentions and means well, but it turns up the heat in terms of it seeming like the whole world is telling her what to do." Eh, she needs to listen. [MSNBC]
• Rihanna's car was pulled over last night in Hollywood for having tinted windows and no front license plate. She was in the backseat, not driving. [TMZ]
• A judge has issued a restraining order against Britney's ex, Adnan Ghalib. It's in effect until 2012, and there's no way he can wait that long. [NY Post]
• Uh-oh: Jessica Lange fell in her home, suffering a broken collarbone and a small cut on her forehead. Be well! [Daily Mail]
• Oh snap! LeAnn Rimes is not denying that she's having an affair with Eddie Cibrian, (as noted in Midweek Madness.) She says, "This is a difficult time for me and my loved ones." [NY Daily News]
• Jason Segel brought a date to the premiere party of I Love You, Man and she passed out by the pool and had to be carried out on a stretcher. Must have been an awesome bash! [Page Six]
• Katie Holmes: Not on a special Scientology diet; not pregnant. Despite everything we've heard. [E!]
• Sad face: One of Oprah's cocker spaniel puppies died and the other one is sick. Sadie the puppy is fighting a life-threatening disease called parvovirus. Hope she pulls through! [NY Daily News]
• Shocker: "Kate Moss Parties For The Third Night In A Row." [Daily Mail]
• Prince William has a "Harry Potter scar" but no magical abilities, as far as we know. [Yahoo News via AFP]
• Here is a picture of Gwyneth Paltrow picking off of Madonna's plate. [Janet Charlton's Hollywood]
• Some phone billionaire paid Leona Lewis £1 million to sing at his daughter's 21st birthday party. In this economy! [Telegraph]
• The Colbert Report will spend a week taping on a USO tour in the Persian Gulf; Comedy Central is claiming this is the first TV series to shoot more than ep in a combat zone. Colbert says: "I can't tell you where I'm going, but the fact that I can't tell you where I'm going should tell you where I'm going." [Variety]
• Did Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell kiss?!!?!?! [E!]
• More rumors about Liz Hurley's marriage: "He keeps flying off to India. There's no sign of that longed-for baby. And gossips whisper about her terrible temper..." [Daily Mail]
• Gossip Girl spinoff news: Josh Schwartz says the new show will focus on Lily, played by Brittany Snow. "Brittany and Krysten Ritter have amazing chemistry as these mismatched sisters and Andrew McCarthy plays their father, which is incredible. We also got No Doubt to record a cover of Adam and the Ants' 'Stand and Deliver' for the show. They're going on tour and they don't have an album, so this is the only new song that they've done. They performed it on the show and everybody, Gwen [Stefani] and the band, were just super into it." [E!]
• As previously posted, Project Runway's Kenley Collins assaulted her now ex-fiancé with a cat yesterday and was arrested. She says: "It was a miscommunication. Fights happen, and that's that." But… what about the cat?!?! She also threw her laptop and three apples at the dude. [NY Post]
• Taylor Momsen tops this list of "Worst Celebrity Mullets." [ONTD]
• You know what's cool? How the new Real Housewives Of New Jersey — Italian ladies with mob ties — isn't stereotypical. At all. [NY Post, NY Daily News]
• Girls have "figured out his schedule" and are now stalking James Franco outside of his classes at Columbia University. At least they're learning something? [Page Six]
• Are the final four American Idol contestants already chosen? [E!]
• Kate Bosworth is single again; she dumped hot boyfriend James Rousseau. [Star]
• A folk singer is accusing Lil Wayne of copyright infringement. What a world. [NY Daily News]
• Alex Rodriguez is suing over a real estate deal. [TMZ]
• Chow Yun Fat will play Confucius in a new film, which is a pretty big deal, no? [Yahoo News via AFP]
• Thank Zeus: VH1 is bringing back Behind The Music. Lil Wayne and Scott Weiland have signed on; expect sex and drugs and drama! [Yahoo News via Hollywood Reporter]
• Actor Stacy Keach was hospitalized Tuesday after suffering a mild stroke. [Variety]
• "She was a wonderful woman and actress and treated me like I was her own. I didn't see much of her over the years but I will miss her. My heart goes out to her family. This is a tragic loss." — Lindsay Lohan on Natasha Richardson, who played her mother in The Parent Trap. [E!]
• "It was my responsibility as a kid to regulate her pills. I remember sitting in hotel rooms, opening capsules, emptying out the drugs and filling the capsules with sugar…I was taught to never, ever call an ambulance, no matter what happened. I was to call my father or someone else never an ambulance because it would get into the press. I was taught at a young age to lie, to deceive, to manipulate." — Lorna Luft, on her mother, Judy Garland. [Page Six]
• "He's been in touch a little. The apologies come, and he was like, 'I made a big mistake.' And I'm like, 'Yeah, yeah, I know. Go ahead and say what you need to say to feel better and to sleep at night.'" — Dita Von Teese on Marilyn Manson, to Inked magazine. [Page Six]
• "When I got the call, I was playing pool with Scott. I remember picking up the phone and someone started asking me how the Veterans Day parade was. At first I didn't even recognize who it was, but it was my brother. He just sounded so down in the dumps, I had never heard him like that! He told me he got the letter I'd been dreading and everything just changed. My mind was going a mile a minute. Everything disappeared, Scott, the cameras, I was just absorbed in that phone call. At first I wanted so bad for my brother to say he was joking, but he wasn't." — Ryan Conklin, of The Real World, who was called back to serve in Iraq. [LA Times]
• "When me and my dad played pool, he'd always beat me. I'd like be putting 'em quickly. But he'd be really slow and methodical and then just wait for me to mess up. And as soon as I did, he'd be like this [swishing noise]. So when I decided to take that method, and really take my time and take one careful shot, I'd always beat him. Always. I just know now that if you take your time with something, things just seem to work out best." — Idris Elba. [USA Today]

Dinsale was raped by her father from the ages of 6 to 13, when she ran away from home; after raping her, he would often bribe her with money. Her mother knew about the abuse, and even started sleeping in her daughter's room to protect her. However, the secret was regarded as so shameful that Dinsale didn't come forward until after her mother's death. As she said to Daily Mail, "In the end I felt that the only way I could really move on was to face up to this, and ensure that the person who caused all of my pain would pay. That day has arrived today and now I can look forward to Christmas, and to the future." Dinsale also hoped going public with her identity would encourage other victims of abuse to come forward.

As the Daily Mail's headline attests, this openness - "Abuse victim waives anonymity to reveal her ordeal as tormentor is jailed" - is noteworthy. But why? While one can certainly understand anyone being publicity-shy, there has always been something which Joan Didion, in a 1991 essay on the rape of New York's "Central Park Jogger" called "quite specifically masculine assumptions." Rape is, after all, the only case in which identity is treated so gingerly.While, as she says, the practice "derives from the understandable wish to protect the victim, the rationalization of this-special protection rests on a number of doubtful, even magical, assumptions."

The convention assumes, by providing a protection for victims of rape not afforded victims of other assaults, that rape involves a violation absent from other kinds of assault. The convention assumes that this violation is of a nature best kept secret, that the rape victim feels, and would feel still more strongly were she identified, a shame and self-loathing unique to this form of assault; in other words that she has been in an unspecified way party to her own assault, that a special contract exists between this one kind of victim and her assailant.

Is this practice doing women a disservice, "self-fulfilling, guiding the victim to define her assault as her protectors do" as Didion would have it? Does it stigmatize the victim, tacitly identifying the crime as something to forget quickly, swept under the rug, because of women's fragility? If, after all, Dinsale's openness can serve as a positive example, is not the converse true? That said, wouldn't it be equally fraught to expose their identities at will? It would be disingenuous to suggest that rape is not a fraught and particularly horrible violation. And there is a certain arrogance in suggesting a unilateral commonality of experience: the sad truth is that cultural concerns also make rape a more complicated issue.

When I was in college, a young woman in my dorm from a very conservative religious background was raped near the urban campus. Her family found the incident so shameful that they repudiated her, and not long after, she committed suicide. Such awful things happen, and we can't pretend such a family would have taken kindly to her name being made public, even if they should. Women like Dinsale coming forward is indeed empowering, and it should be applauded. But whatever the legal ramifications, it's an act of courage and should always be treated as such.
Raped by my father: Abuse victim waives anonymity to reveal her ordeal as tormentor is jailed [Daily Mail]
New York: Sentimental Journeys [New York Review of Books]

• Picture it: the Jezebel nursing home, the year 2068. We'll turn on our headchips to watch the disembodied skull of Oprah host her show, and Jennifer Aniston, having been cryogenically frozen, will have been unfrozen just to make an appearance. Oprah will still ask Jen how she feels about Angelina Jolie and Jen will still think that what Angelina did was "very uncool." We may die, but this story will live on forever.
• We found out the hard way that putting garlic up your nono is a no no.
• Did we earn our yeast infections the same way Bikini Cory earned her nickname?
• Joan Didion: officially more depressing than the mere existence of Bikini Cory.
• Not depressing at all: this almost unbearably cute precocious French toddler. We just want to hear lil' Amelie say "crocodeeel" all day long.
• Maybe she should have a cute-off with Maru, the box loving kitty from Japan.

• Speaking of kitties! We said Hello, Blingee Kitty at the Sanrio Luxe opening.
• We searched at home and abroad for for broads in our booze cabinets.
• Obama may have been elected, but as long as fugly shoes clog up our stores, the national nightmare will continue.
• You guys, it's Friday. So indulge in some hot food porn and have a good weekend!

While people tossed off cheap jokes about Palin and Rove — the past eight years and McCain's campaign were reduced to a gently farcical in-joke — Joan Didion was different. As anyone who's seen her speak knows, she's as physically self-contained as she is in manner: tiny, yes, but also uninterested in taking up much space with force of personality. When she speaks, it's flat, slow, straightforward: she never seems to enjoy hearing herself speak much. Unlike the other panelists, she'd prepared a written statement. Characteristically, it was detached, even cold. She started by describing the "unexpressable uneasiness" she and some others had felt early on in the campaign. Why? "We were getting what we wanted," she continued, meaning, a smart, qualified, decent candidate the Eastern elite could get behind. And yet the frenzy surrounding Obama made her uneasy — both the sense that he was a young person's candidate, "a generational thing we couldn't understand" and the unthinking embrace of "naivete transformed to hope, partisanism as consumerism." Didion bridled at the wanton use of "transformational" and said she couldn't count the number of times she heard the 60's evoked "by people who apparently had no memory that the 60s" didn't involve decking babies out in political onesies.

Didion was at pains to say that she did not think any of this was Obama's doing, nor to his tastes. He would, she speculated "welcome healthy realism" and achievable expectations. In our frenzy, we are doing him a disservice, expecting miracles "at a time when the nation can least afford easy answers." She recalled, the day after the election, an overexcited newscaster declaring that we now possess "the congratulations of all the nations." She likened this to the naivete of thinking we'd be regarded as beloved saviors in Iraq. But, she ended, "in the irony-free zone that our country has become, this is not what people wanted to hear."

Clearly, no one really did. At once, the other panelists were back to comparing Obama's election to the fall of the Berlin Wall (Pinckney), evoking Lincoln (Delbanco), celebrating "the passing away of religious tyranny" (Wills, I believe.) And they weren't wrong, of course, but the palpable self-congratulation in that room by some very fine minds was worrisome and uncomfortable and lacking in humility, and so Didion's measured caution was more reassuring than all the other rhetoric combined.

Afterwards I saw someone I knew slightly. She'd loved the event, found it wise, felt the panel had put into words all her feelings. "Joan Didion was kind of a downer, though," she said. The thing is that Didion, studying current euphoria with such a distanced eye but still able to feel moved, made me feel more optimistic then than anyone else.

Related: What Happens Next? [NYPL]

The women included in the list — Joan Didion, Martha Gellhorn, Susan Orlean and Simone de Beauvoir among them — are certainly impressive, but Esquire does not include any female writers from the past decade, and the representative passages they chose from these literary lionesses are pretty insulting to women as a whole.

For instance, here's the passage Esquire chose to emphasize from a January, 1950 essay called "About Shorty":

I have always thought there is a secret basis of pity in the friendship of most women, and that is a crumbling rock to build on.

That's it. Just that sentence. Of the 20 or so books and countless articles Gellhorn published throughout her storied career, Esquire has decided that this vaguely sexist commentary on female friendships was meant to be called out, without context whatsoever. There is not even a hint to the subject matter of "About Shorty."

And here's what they chose to emphasize from Simone de Beauvoir's contribution to Esquire:

Brigitte Bardot is the most perfect specimen of these ambiguous nymphs. Seen from behind, her slender, muscular, dancer's body is almost androgynous. Femininity triumphs in her delightful bosom. The long voluptuous tresses of Mélisande flow down to her shoulders, but her hair-do is that of a negligent waif. The line of her lips forms a childish pout, and at the same time those lips are very kissable. She goes about barefooted, she turns up her nose at elegant clothes, jewels, girdles, perfumes, make-up, at all artifice. Yet her walk is lascivious and a saint would sell his soul to the devil merely to watch her dance.

I give up.

Seventy-Five Years Of Storied History About Women Writing [Esquire]

Earlier: 75 Books Every Woman Should Read

One note about the choices. Of course there are many, many books by men that "should" be read, but just like Esquire's list, most of the extant rosters of must-read classics are full of old white dudes. So our list is going to be mostly women. Anyway, here goes!

• The Lottery, Shirley Jackson
• To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
• The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton
• White Teeth, Zadie Smith
• The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende
• Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion
• Excellent Women, Barbara Pym
• The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
• Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
• The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
• Beloved, Toni Morrison
• Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
• Like Life, Lorrie Moore
• Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
• Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
• The Delta of Venus, Anais Nin
• A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley
• A Good Man Is Hard To Find, Flannery O'Connor
• The Shipping News, E. Annie Proulx
• You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down, Alice Walker

Now you go!

75 Books Every Man Should Read [Esquire]

Though the names and photos of rape victims are not usually published in the media (as any reader of the Joan Didion essay Sentimental Journeys could tell you), Bowen consented to the use of her name and visage because she wants to make a stand for victims' rights. She has already filed suit against the judge for violating her First Amendment rights, and though the federal appeals court dismissed the suit, Bowen plans to take the case to the Supreme Court. Even though the appeals court dismissed it, U.S. District Judge Richard G. Kopf wrote, “For the life of me, I do not understand why a judge would tell an alleged rape victim that she cannot say she was raped when she testifies in a trial about rape."

And Kopf is right. If the argument is about defendant's rights, why is language only carefully guarded in sexual assault trials? Why wouldn't judges be making similar arguments in trials about regular old assault? Shouldn't they be forcing those victims to say, "When my face had a non-consensual interaction with the defendant's fist," rather than use the word "punched"? Bowen, for her part, is not backing down. “The judge took my words away from me," Bowen said. "How can the jury make an educated decision?”

Judge’s Ban On The Use Of The Word ‘Rape’ At Trial Reflects Trend [Kansas City Star]
Sentimental Journeys [New York Review of Books]

For those who have never read it (or have forgotten it), the title essay of Slouching is about the flower children who live in the Haight during 1967's Summer of Love and Yardley says that Didion "she treats these people with the sympathy they deserve, but not a teaspoon more."

Yardley quotes at length from the Didion essay about Joan Baez called "Where The Kissing Never Stops":

Joan Baez was a personality before she was entirely a person, and, like anyone to whom that happens, she is in a sense the hapless victim of what others have seen in her, written about her, wanted her to be and not be. The roles assigned to her are various, but variations on a single theme. She is the Madonna of the disaffected. She is the pawn of the protest movement. She is the unhappy analysand. She is the singer who would not train her voice, the rebel who drives the Jaguar too fast, the Rima who hides with the birds and the deer. Above all, she is the girl who 'feels' things, who has hung on to the freshness and pain of adolescence, the girl ever wounded, ever young. Now, at an age when the wounds begin to heal whether one wants them to or not, Joan Baez rarely leaves the Carmel Valley.

Here, Didion is brutally mocking Baez's perceived earnestness and her palpable emotional responses, and this, in a nutshell, is my problem with the whole Didion lionization. I have the sneaking suspicion that the literary establishment loves her because she's a woman who keeps her feelings close to the vest: She's not messy or weepy or maternal or particularly sympathetic — which is to say, she is not stereotypically "feminine" — and so men can read her without feeling like pussies. Which is not to say that Didion doesn't deserve all the accolades she's received. She just tends to write about "manly" things — California's infrastructure; wildfires; John Wayne — in, well, a way even a man can enjoy.

n a Time of Posturing, Didion Dared 'Slouching' [Washington Post]
Related: Slouching Towards Bethlehem [Amazon]