(They responded boringly.)

I have some sympathy for Carmen Callil. Her actions are counterproductive, though, because now everyone’s going to be passionately defending Philip Roth’s literary reputation for weeks (well, days) and complaining about sour feminists, when if they’d just given him the prize without any controversy, everyone would have been like, “Roth again? Yawn! Why didn’t they give this one to Marilynne Robinson?”

But I think she just snapped, and we’ve all been there – as a reader, how many times are you told, “Okay. This guy was really messed up about women, but you just have to ignore all the blatant horrifying misogyny, and then, you have to admit, he’s a genius!” It’s constant. And most of the time, because women are great about doing this, because we – and it can’t be said often enough – do it all the time in every form of culture ever, we concede the point. We forgive the constant brutal, graphic rapes and the ‘mothers are manipulative, evil hags’ stuff and ‘I just want to kill my castrating wife’ stuff and the constant reducing of all women to two-dimensional jizz receptacles, and we overlook all that and say, “Yeah, you’re right. If you overlook the 90% of it that’s repeatedly telling us that we better never for a second think we have any power or status in our society whatsoever, it really is an amazing work of art.” (Meanwhile, ask some guys to come with you to see a movie with women in it, or pink somewhere on the poster, and it’s like you’re asking them to lick a public toilet.)

Anyway, eventually every single reading woman (and sometimes, a reading man) reaches that point where she just goes, “That’s it! That is it! I’m done! I do not have to overlook it and admit the genius! I do not have to admit any fucking knob’s genius anymore! I’m done! I am only ever reading stuff by women from now on forever and that’s it! YOU can overlook the dress descriptions and the stupid wedding at the end, and admit that this woman is a genius! YOU OVERLOOK SOMETHING FOR ONCE, DAMN IT!”

And then you have to go off by yourself for awhile and take some deep breaths, especially since you weren’t even talking to anyone specific, but just yelling at the air in front of your face, and you weren’t even reading anything at the moment, but just sitting there, thinking about stuff and seething. Plus, some of your favorite writers are men.

Ideally, you do not throw this tantrum publicly, while you are serving as one of the judges for a major literary prize.

Anyway, we’ve all been there. I can understand how Callil feels, although I don’t have an opinion as to whether or not Roth should have won – I’ve only read American Pastoral (I read it in Vietnam, which I think informed and added to my reading experience¹), and I haven’t read everyone on the shortlist, but most current readers are not all that sad that the days of RothMailerUpdike dominance are ending (although I still plan to get around to reading those dudes some day).

If you ever have a moment of literary despair, it pays to remember that contemporary fiction is absolutely exploding with awesome writers, many of them women. Look at Jennifer Egan! I mean, I didn’t like her book that much, but everybody else loved it, and she won both the NBCC Award and the Pulitzer. Additionally, up-and-coming male writers have finally realized that being entirely dismissive of and confused about half the world’s population rather limits your ability to be a great recorder of the human condition, and literary misogyny is (I really think, though some people will argue with me) on the wane.

Here are some fantastic books I would recommend for anyone who needs a little break from being reasonable and open-minded about offensive content. Not only are these great books about women (I think? Maybe a couple are about men²), but they are not about “women’s issues”. They are not specifically about feminism or stifling marriages or dealing with abuse or anything like that (well, maybe some of them are a little bit, but those are not the elements I primarily remember about them)(and not that there’s anything wrong with books on those topics, but that’s not what we’re after here):

• The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt (Everyone should read this! Why has everyone not read this?)
• Molly Fox’s Birthday by Deirdre Madden
• Bad Marie by Marcy Dermansky
• Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name by Vendela Vida
• Here They Come by Yannick Murphy
• Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen
• Wetlands by Charlotte Roche (warning: look into this before you read it; it is not for everyone)
• Winner of the National Book Award by Jincy Willett (Hilarious! Read it!)
• The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
• Bee Season by Myla Goldberg
• Novel About My Wife by Emily Perkins
• Heir to the Glimmering World by Cynthia Ozick
• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin
• anything by Marilynne Robinson
• Any others? What can you recommend in this category?

And I don’t even know, so many more! Those are just the ones I happened to think of, that I’ve read recently. So never feel like you have to read Philip Roth, and never feel like you have to not read Philip Roth, either. Read everything! There’s enough great stuff out there for anybody in any kind of mood, is all I’m saying.

(Image via)
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¹I know, aren’t I tiresome?! If we were at a party, you would have just spotted someone you had to go talk to over there.
²Actually, two of these books (Atmospheric Disturbances and Novel About My Wife) are about men searching for their mysteriously missing (and not actually missing) wives. Weird!

More than 90 percent of the health care provided by Planned Parenthood is preventive. Every year, Planned Parenthood doctors and nurses carry out nearly one million screenings for cervical cancer and 830,000 breast exams. Planned Parenthood health centers also provide affordable birth control to nearly 2.5 million patients, and nearly four million tests and treatments for sexually transmitted infections, including HIV testing for women and men. The funding that PPFA receives from the federal government goes toward this basic care, and accounts for roughly one-third of Planned Parenthood’s $1 billion annual budget. These funds come from local, state and federal sources, but 90 percent come from Medicaid and other federal sources. Federal funds pay only for cancer screenings, birth control, family planning visits, annual exams, testing for HIV and other STIs, and other basic care.

Moreover, 73 percent of Planned Parenthood health centers are in rural or medically underserved areas. Planned Parenthood provides primary and preventive health care to many who otherwise would have nowhere to turn. According to the Guttmacher Institute, six in ten patients who receive care at a family planning health center like Planned Parenthood consider it their main source of health care.

Yes, what happened to Lara was horrible, by all accounts. There’s no question. And when I was in Libya, I was groped by a dozen men. But why is that more horrible than what happened to Tyler or Steve or Anthony — being smashed on the back of the head with a rifle butt? Why isn’t anyone saying men shouldn’t cover war? Women and men should do what they believe they need to do.

I don’t think it’s more dangerous for a woman to do conflict photography. Both men and women face the same dangers.

Addario is one of four NY Times journalists who were recently captured and released in Libya.

Women: in case there was any doubt in your mind, the media this month would just like to remind you that men hate you. Reading my usual feeds over the last couple of weeks has been one installment after another of victim blaming and rape apology. As far as journalists assigned to cover these things go, it’s like the 20th century never even happened. Women victims are pushed off the page, relegated to the margins, and, when they are mentioned at all, insulted and blamed for their own abuse.

The most egregious example is the NY Times coverage of the lengthy and premeditated gang rape of an 11-year-old girl in Cleveland, Texas. James McKinley, who wrote the article, chooses to focus the piece on the devastating effect this crime has had…on the Texas community. He includes three quotes for the article. The first is a quote about how all those poor boys (the 18 males, from middle-school-aged to 27, who gang-raped an 11-year-old over a period of hours in two different locations, and taped it, the better to brag about it later) were going to have to live with this the rest of their lives. The second quote is about how the child dressed like a young tart. And the third quote is about how the child’s mother let her run around by herself.  To be fair to the reporter, it looks like the town of Cleveland truly is entirely populated by horrifying shitheads.  Still, the way the article was framed did not question the residents’ interpretation of the events:  ”…how could their young men have been drawn into such an act?”  he muses.

Of course, other media outlets have reacted strongly to this mind-blowingly backwards coverage, but the Times has not apologized or taken the article down. They did publish a single, rather mild letter that rebukes the reporter for his victim-blaming, though it doesn’t mention the bizarre ‘oh, those poor boys,’ slant to the story.

As always, The Onion is not so much a parody of the actual news as it is a parallel.

Also in the Times, Anna Holmes writes that the Charlie Sheen fiasco is notable (or par for the course) in that before, when Sheen was merely physically and psychologically abusing women, he was a celebrity in good standing, but now that he’s going around bashing his employers, coworkers and Hollywood generally, something must finally be done about him.

Finally, the New Yorker’s Talk of the Town section features a sympathetic, humanizing profile of Mike Tyson, pigeon trainer. Mike Tyson is often the subject of these sorts of cuddle-fests, because the contrast of a violent, meaner-than-spit boxer enjoying various gentle, emotional activities or fake-crying or whatever is a hilarious juxtaposition that requires no effort to think up. Mike Tyson’s most notable violent act is that he once bit Evander Holyfield’s ear during a boxing match. People don’t gloss over this about him – it is always referenced when he does guest cameos in movies, and is dutifully mentioned here in the pigeon profile.

Oh, Mike Tyson is also a convicted rapist. But nobody ever mentions that. It wouldn’t be fair to Mike.

In 2010, I kept a record of all of the movies I watched. I watched 69 movies total, and here’s how they break down across various categories:

Year Released:

Of the movies I watched this year, by far the majority (49) came out in the 00s, and most of those came out in 2009. I watched:

• 5 movies that came out in 2010 (Robin Hood, Exit Through the Gift Shop, Inception, True Grit and The King’s Speech)

• 23 from 2009 (Fantastic Mr. Fox, Up, In the Loop, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, Sherlock Holmes, Bright Star, The Invention of Lying, An Education, Broken Embraces, Up In the Air, Whip It, The Informant!, Crazy Heart, A Serious Man, Inglorious Basterds, The Hangover, Coraline, Precious, (500) Days of Summer, Invictus, Adventureland, Nine and A Single Man)

• 5 from 2008 (Synecdoche, NY, The Hurt Locker, Baby Mama, The Happening and Anvil: The Story of Anvil)

• 4 from 2007 (Sweeney Todd, Atonement, Year of the Dog and The Diving Bell & the Butterfly)

• 2 from 2006 (The Fall and Children of Men)

• 4 from 2005 (Me and You and Everyone We Know, Happy Endings, Kingdom of Heaven and Brick)

• 2 from 2004 (The Bridge of San Luis Rey and Melinda & Melinda)

• 2 from 2003 (Visitors and Secondhand Lions)

• 1 from 2002 (Dirty Pretty Things)

• 1 from 2000 (Bring It On)

Otherwise, I watched 20 movies:

• 9 movies that came out in the 90s (Boys Don’t Cry (99), The Truman Show (98), Chasing Amy (97), Dead Man (95), Pulp Fiction, Swimming With Sharks and Heavenly Creatures (all 3 from 94), Strictly Ballroom (92) and Without You I’m Nothing (90))

• 3 movies from the 80s (The Burbs (89), Women On the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (88) and Ran (85))

• 2 movies from the 70s (All the President’s Men (76) and Maitresse (75))

• 3 movies from the 60s (Vivre Sa Vie and L’Eclisse (both from 62) and Through a Glass Darkly (61))

• 2 movies from the 50s (The Night of the Hunter (55) and A Place In the Sun (51))

• 1 movie from the 30s (Blue Angel (30))

Venue:

This year, I watched 6 movies in the theater (1 by myself and 5 with other people), 14 at other people’s homes, 12 at home with friends or family and 32 at home by myself (well, that’s a little embarrassing to admit).

Bechdel Test:

I define the Bechdel test a little more narrowly than the standard definition. My criteria are not only that the film contain a substantial conversation between two or more women that is not about men, but also that it take place when no male character is on camera. Of the 68 movies I watched (one, Without You I’m Nothing, was exempt from this test because it is a one-woman show), only 10 pass this test unambiguously (Atonement, Heavenly Creatures, Boys Don’t Cry, Whip It, Year Of the Dog, Visitors, Baby Mama, Coraline, Precious and Bring It On). Since the majority of the movies I watched were made and released in the last few years, this is a particularly pathetic number. There are a number of additional movies with strong female leads (True Grit, for example), but there is never not a male character on screen (usually with the movie taking place from his character’s perspective). It’s very rare for movies to be made that do not take place primarily through a male lens – this is because women will obligingly turn out to see movies that deal entirely or mostly with men and/or “male” issues (even if those movies also largely feature women being insulted, beaten, raped and/or shot to bits), but many men are dismissive towards movies featuring women (even if they are not “romcoms” or otherwise “feminine” in subject matter). Apparently, Hollywood thinks that men are so unable to identify with women as their fellow humans that they will be unwilling to attend a movie with a mostly female cast, regardless of subject matter or merit.  Note that movies such as Women On the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown also do not pass the test as I define it, because, while this movie consists of a mostly female cast that often speak to each other when there is no man on camera, they are always talking entirely about their boyfriends (which isn’t to say it’s a bad movie – I liked it, actually, but it still doesn’t pass this test).

Additionally, there are a few movies that I wasn’t sure passed or not, because I wasn’t keeping track of this the entire year, and some movies I couldn’t remember clearly in retrospect. So, I think L’Eclisse kind of passes – there’s one scene where the protagonist and her friends are having a party and it’s all women, but I don’t remember what they talk about. They do dress up and do some sort of bizarre tribal dance to bongos (in blackface!), so, you know, maybe that sort of counts? I can’t remember if there are any conversations between only women in Me and You and Everyone We Know that aren’t about men, but I don’t think there were. The two women in Up In the Air have a conversation that is sort of more about age and opportunity windows than it is about men, but it’s really short and George Clooney is there for it, too, so it doesn’t count. I think there’s a brief conversation in The Night of the Hunter between the woman who takes in orphans and one of her charges about good behavior (mostly, but not entirely, defined by not running around with men). That might sort of count if we’re really reaching. I can’t remember clearly if Vivre Sa Vie, The Bridge of San Luis Rey or Happy Endings have any brief snatch of conversation between two women about something other than men, but I don’t think they do.

For more on the Bechdel test, see this great Twisty post on Toy Story III, and also Geena Davis on the dearth of girls in children’s movies.

Race/Ethnicity:

My breakdown for this is less reliable than the other ones, because I didn’t start keeping track of this until rather late in the year, so I might be forgetting some black, Hispanic or Asian actors, but for the most part, good roles for non-white actors that are not specifically about their race or ethnicity seem to be even slimmer than movies with female protagonists. I don’t really count movies in which the race or ethnicity of a character is essential to the role. So, for example, Precious has an entirely black cast, but the movie is about being poor and black. What I am looking for are nonspecific roles in which the director has cast non-white actors. This almost never happens. For example, the character played by a black actor in Melinda & Melinda is a pianist and a love interest – it’s not essential to the plot (or even mentioned) that he is black, so that movie passes.

Such a casting decision was made only 6 times out of these 69 films: Up (the little boy is Asian and his being Asian is not specific to his character [the actor who voices the part is Japanese-American]), The Hurt Locker (one of the three main stars is black), Broken Embraces (Penelope Cruz), Pulp Fiction (Samuel L. Jackson), Melinda & Melinda (see above) and Nine (Penelope Cruz again). Otherwise, Dirty Pretty Things has a black male lead, but he plays a Nigerian immigrant, so his being black is part of his character; Baby Mama has a black doorman, but he’s a racist caricature; Inglorious Basterds has a black character, but his being black is part of the plot; The Hangover has a horribly racist Chinese character; half the cast of Invictus is black, but it’s about South Africa after apartheid; and Bring It On has a black v. white storyline, which is also racist, although one of the cheerleaders on the “white” team is played by an Asian actor; and I’ve already mentioned Precious. So, even if we counted these movies, that’s still only 13 out of 69 movies with even one non-white actor in a major role (more movies than pass the Bechdel test, but still a pretty poor percentage).

Again, I could really be missing a few, because I thought about this only in hindsight, but I don’t think I’m missing any really principle characters, and the fact that I might have overlooked one or two minor roles in a few films doesn’t really improve the numbers much.  UPDATE: My roommate pointed out that Penelope Cruz should not count, because she is Spanish, so if I count her, I should count Marion Cotillard and other white Western Europeans in American films.  She also pointed out that foreign actors do have this problem, in that, say, Italians are always cast as mobsters, French women as seductive vamps, etc.  But that’s an entirely different issue – my point here is the rare casting of non-white Americans in American films (and non-white Brits in British films, etc.), so Cruz should NOT be counted, so that makes only 4 – 4! – films that pass this test!  I’m not updating the chart below, but those pie slices should be thinner.

Naturally, movies filmed in other countries feature casts almost entirely from their country of origin (for example, Ran is a Japanese movie with a Japanese cast), so they’re not included in this breakdown, though I should mention that as far as I can remember, none of the European movies featured any meaty roles cast with black or Asian actors. Also, there are a few movies that should be exempt from this test, because they are specifically about white people and so couldn’t have been cast with non-white actors (for example, The King’s Speech).

Rating:

Oh, so, did I actually like any of these movies or not? Looking back over the list, here are the ones I definitely really enjoyed (or, with some, didn’t enjoy necessarily, but thought were really very good) and would recommend:

Fantastic Mr. Fox, Atonement, The Hurt Locker, Up, The Fall, Heavenly Creatures, Boys Don’t Cry, Through a Glass Darkly, In the Loop, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Sherlock Holmes, Bright Star, An Education, Whip It, The Night of the Hunter, Exit Through the Gift Shop, Pulp Fiction, The Informant!, Strictly Ballroom, Brick, A Serious Man, The Diving Bell & the Butterfly, Inglorious Basterds, Coraline, Invictus, A Single Man, All the President’s Men and True Grit. (28 out of 69)

Here are the ones that I thought were terrible and would advise you not to watch:

Robin Hood, Year of the Dog, Chasing Amy, Secondhand Lions, The Happening, Precious, The Burbs and Nine. (only 8 out of 69)

The rest are either forgettable; or they’re mostly bad, but have one or two redeeming elements; or I can see that they are objectively good, but I personally couldn’t get into them, or was offended by them in some way; or they were clearly good when they were made, but they maybe don’t really hold up.

While I can’t pick the overall best movie I saw this year, I can state with total confidence that the worst was The Happening (followed very closely by Year of the Dog).

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Image via.

So, we start out with ‘sexy Halloween costumes are unoriginal and dull,’ and then, like magic, a mere hundred and fifty-seven (or so) comments later, we arrive at ‘what a bunch of stupid f-ing whores.’  Which, of course, is where we were clearly headed, all along. 

Anyway, people are talking about this again, and someone finally said, ‘Hey now, let’s calm down.‘

Related Articles

• We Want To See Your Least-Sexy Halloween Costumes! [Announcements] (jezebel.com)
• Is Your Halloween Costume Racist? [Guides] (gawker.com)
• Sexy costumes for dogs (newstatesman.com)
• In Defense of Slutty Halloween Costumes (thedailybeast.com)

Inequality is especially marked in political life. Despite the high profile of a few female leaders — including Ms. Gandhi and the president of India, Pratibha Patil — fewer than 11 percent of members of Parliament are women.

By contrast, the panchayats stand as bastions of female representation. Academic studies suggest that the quotas have not benefited upper castes at the expense of more impoverished groups. Women are as likely as men to come from lower castes to serve on the panchayats.

And the quota seems to be benefiting both sexes in more tangible ways. One study, by Esther Duflo, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, found that panchayats led by women provided more public services, from wells to roads, over all.

NY Times

1. Gail Collins. The New York Times was long overdue for a female columnist who wasn’t Maureen Dowd, and Gail Collins is more than the Times deserves: tart, smart, funny and perceptive, her takes on the issues of the day are both informative and cathartic. I just checked out one of her books, America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines, but have only read the first chapter so far. I’ll let you know how it is. Also, in addition to her columns, Collins’s conversations with David Brooks are a treat. I have to confess, in the past, I have occasionally liked David Brooks, but he’s been heinous lately, and as his tenure at the Times goes on, he contradicts himself ever more blatantly. I dearly love a good journo fight, and Matt Taibbi (an occasional guilty pleasure for me, I’ll admit – his reportage may be spotty, but sometimes you just need a good, unapologetic rant) has lately been picking Brooks’s columns up in his teeth and shaking them back and forth until their necks snap.

2. The public library. I like to write in my books, dogear them, and read them in the shower, so for years, I insisted on buying books and keeping them in piles along my baseboards. But I don’t make that kind of money these days, and have finally learned to make good use of the public library. Yes, the inability to write in the books is a serious handicap, but otherwise, I am a total library convert. There’s a small branch near my house, and I can order whatever I want through the system to be delivered there, and they notify me by email when my holds are ready. Best of all, you can renew your books on the computer, and as long as nobody puts a hold on them, you can renew them indefinitely (I’ve renewed one 12 times already). And all for not one red cent (not counting city taxes). Beat that, Kindle.

3. Susan Schorn’s McSweeney’s column. I go back and forth on McSweeney’s, and particularly on their columnists. Some are good, some are boring, many have long outlived their original gimmick, good for only a post or two, but weirdly extended. But one of their new columns, Susan Schorn’s meditations on martial arts, self-defense, anger, weakness, and related topics, is fantastic – and not just because I’m into karate lately. I agree with Schorn about everything, and wish she lived next door to me, so that I could bother her all the time (and all of her other humor pieces are great, too). Speaking of karate:

4. Shotokan karate. I have been training at a local dojo since August (I’m currently a yellow belt), and I am obsessed. Fantastic exercise, and a wonderful outlet for pent-up aggression, karate is sport, art form, self-defense training and a study in focus and discipline, all in one. I try to make three classes a week, and, while I still couldn’t beat up a four-year-old, my kiai has deepened from Chihuahua to Rottweiler.

5. Jezebel and The Awl. I am putting these together, because my enjoyment of them is similar. For some reason, when Jezebel debuted, I immediately decided that I didn’t care for it. I can’t remember what about it offended me, because I’ve really been enjoying it lately. In addition to the progressive and feminist news alerts, there are hearty round-ups of celebrity gossip. And while I am not interested enough in celebrity garbage to actually read up on it, I must admit, do I want to know when Brad and Angie finally break it off, or when Lindsay Lohan ODs in a club bathroom, or when somebody has a major weight reversal? Yes! Yes, okay? I do want to know that! I admit it! But I don’t need to know the deets – I just want a headline and a photo, and that’s what Jezebel delivers. Now, The Awl, helmed by former Gawker editor, Choire Sicha (aka the only person who ever wrote for Gawker that I actually liked), is a hilarious, well-written chronicle of all things that would particularly interest…well, Brooklyn dwelling, underemployed pseudo-writers like moi. Plus, it is one of those lovely, rare blogs in which the commenters expand on (and often outshine) the posts. Kinder than Gawker and sharper than The Gothamist, The Awl fits just right.  If I could only read one blog, this would probably be it.

6. Amanda Palmer. The former Dresdan Doll has an awesome solo album. Plus, she’s engaged to Neil Gaiman, and showed up at The Golden Globes with her boobs and her pit hair out. She’s a fucking badass.

7. Small, well-done, original blogs. Tiring of sprawling, massive, constantly updating blogs, I have lately been discovering small, creative, focused sites that do one thing and do it well. Edith Zimmerman writes hilarious very short stories. Tom Oatmeal (who I found through EZ) makes milk come out my nose. And firmuhment is continually brilliant and original – scanned documents that inspire essays, short stories, and humor. I’m not sure if firmuhment is a single author deal or a team effort, but every post has obviously had a lot of work put into it, and I appreciate that.

8. Firefox’s new skins. I spent the lion’s share of my day staring at my browser, so anything that makes it more visually appealing makes me happy. Firefox’s new skins are a small adjustment that, surprisingly, makes a big difference. Currently, I’m enjoying Spring II. Goes well with my igoogle theme.

9. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I resisted getting into this back in high school when everyone was super into it, and haven’t gotten into it since, because I didn’t want to consume seven seasons of TV. But my coworker has them all on DVD. Uncle, okay? I’m through six seasons already, and ready to register as an official member of the Joss Whedon fanbase. In addition to the overall awesomeness of the series, I enjoy identifying basic karate moves in the fight choreography.

10. My new phone. After three shameful years of hitchhiking on my parents’ family plan, I finally ponied up and got my own phone plan, and a phone with a full keyboard and a camera. And man, it makes a huge difference! I no longer wince at the sound of a text message arriving: it doesn’t take me a year to peck out a response anymore, and my phone looks cool and is really fun to use. And yesterday, when my brunch coffee came in a giant bowl with no handle, I was able to document it quickly and easily, no forethought required.

11. My rabbit, Thomasina. Thomasina is so freaking adorable!! And I love having a pet! This was a good move. She’s my little pal, and she does hilarious things and entertains me, and she’s cuddly and fun. Right now, for example, I am trying to write, and she is collapsing her little grass hut on top of her head, and making eyes at the rabbit she thinks lives in my closet mirror! OMG, she’s a gas. I won’t work at all today.

Wetlands is essentially a protest novel. Helen is merely particularly interested in her body; Roche, on the other hand, is furious that Helen’s interests and comfort with herself could be as rare and shocking as they (to many) are. True, all bodily functions are hidden, but some are more hidden than others – specifically, women’s. Roche’s target here is the sanitized woman: society’s obsession with hair removal, its primitive taboos about menstruation and vaginal cleanliness, its commercial tendency to tiptoe around women’s genitalia with cutesy, pink crap, as though vaginas themselves are an inside joke.

Undoubtedly, bodily secretions are nothing to be ashamed of; whether or not they are interesting is another question altogether. As Helen prods, picks at and wipes herself continuously, the book becomes tedious. Other people’s fluids, like their dreams and their college photo albums, are ultimately of no interest to anyone but themselves. Helen also has family drama and a new love interest, and she is scared and alone and putting on a brave face, but these plot points were clearly thought up after Roche settled on her theme. They feel tacked on, and the ending takes a leap into the surreal that is entirely unjustified by the chapters leading up to it.

Which isn’t to say Wetlands doesn’t have something to offer. Helen is an endearing and original character. And as a feminist howl, the book succeeds – Roche’s point is certainly a valid one that needs to be made more often. Still, she probably could have made it just as well in a ten-page short story.