Gina > Recent Status Updates

The author mentions that there was an open arrest warrant in South Korea for Mark and Sheryl and that several Facebook execs were called before Congress but expresses absolutely no engagement about how Facebook was perceived and talked about in the wider world. The narrative remains stubbornly focused on how hapless Wynn-Williams is as she unwillingly cavorts around the globe with the team leading the company.

Either Wynn-Williams was extremely naive to the point of stupidity or there's a lot of reflection being left out of this book for the sake of appearing non-complicit in a multitude of societal issues.

Very similar to Acts of Service in presenting a supposedly self-aware woman hanging onto a man who actively telegraphs his fuckboy status. It feels past "unlikeable female character" to have someone this aggressively dumb not even flagrantly burn down her life, but instead just waste time on this hamster wheel watching this man stay just in sight.

More a general comment, but I'm longing for a story of a fucked up woman who doesn't have the calming salve of being super hot and fuckable to cover for a malaise and stable drug addiction. What happens when you actually have to work to be charming and convince others not to dismiss you to a hellish existence of pain and maladaptive coping mechanisms?

"Takashi [Murakami] worked so hard on this painting that several staff quit" - doesn't that imply the staff were the ones working hard? I'd much rather be hearing from them.

"This process of procreation exists in all industries, but it is considerably stronger in the innovation sector, in part because employees of innovative firms tend to be a very special group of people. They may be nerds to an outsider's eyes, but they are exceedingly creative and entrepreneurial." Yes, only tech people are creative and entrepreneurial, okay.

"Hear women define themselves through pain, or rage against the assumption that they do, which still places pain front and center. Hear the strange sense of satisfaction when they talk about the men who have hurt them—the unspoken subtext of it being because I am a woman." Shit!!!

How much is this woman gonna talk to this random suicidal man about her divorce???? Does the author really think any of this dialogue, especially Tallie's therapy questions, are any way close to believable?

The corporate praise is THICK here, oh my god

It'd be one thing if this book were making a compelling argument for being more open with children's curiosity about sexuality, but Anna is so passive and Leo so generally sleazy that the situation does just show off Anna's incompetence.

Ugh I wanna stop and just write a review so badly, but I'm going to finish. Still, wtf Elsa?????

Really trying to give this book the benefit of the doubt despite the thoughtful critiques I've read since it first came out. But how do you cite the growing number of households led by a single mother and then completely ignore that to only address women who will get married to men and have children? Sandberg didn't need to address every type of women, but be clear about your intentions at the outset.

Havrilesky's main thesis seems to be annoyance at people having interests she disapproves of. An entire paragraph describes her ex fidgeting around as if it's a moral failing to go get a lumbar pillow. The section on foodie culture decries foodies for being uppity by talking about local food, ruining the planet by eating imported food, and being useless because food choices ultimately don't matter. Gahhhhhh.

The framework of the main character looking back at dangerously constricted social expectations decades ago makes me wonder what sort of received wisdom will look ridiculous (or terrifying) to me when I'm 50. The part about the feminists is reminding me of The Beauty Myth, as much as I hated that book...

Gahhhhh

I thought the comparison of beauty rituals to religious ones would be interesting, but then she just ends up comparing beauty to Catholicism, Lutheranism, Episcopalians, and Orthodox Judaism in shallow analogies.

Okay this is going to be the month that I actually sit down with a translation dictionary for a couple of hours and finish this.

I just read the description to find out that the wife gets half of the narrative, but right now it's kind of ridiculous how the wife is basically every kind of crazy at once.

"It says something about my maturity level that I ignored their feelings, good and bad, and defined the world based on my own little bubble of experience." and yet all these columns are still about Havrilesky and her bubble of experience

Question: who cuts off their friend for dating someone they broke up with 10 years ago?? Unless that ex was abusive, there's no reason to be so petty and insecure.

I'm not broke or doing cocaine, but damn is this collection making me feel cliché for being a girl with literary ambitions (or at least a girl who wants to work in publishing) who is a little in love with New York.