Prick Flicks

There is a really interesting article by Gloria Steinem here which proposes that, just as we label "women's media" as chick-lit and chick flicks, perhaps we should group all male-oriented media under the heading "Prick Flicks." Here's my favorite quote:

"Think about it: If Anna Karenina had been written by Leah Tolstoy, or The Scarlet Letter by Nancy Hawthorne, or Madame Bovary by Greta Flaubert, or A Doll's House by Henrietta Ibsen, or The Glass Menagerie by (a female) Tennessee Williams, would they have been hailed as universal? Suppose Shakespeare had really been The Dark Lady some people supposed. I bet most of her plays and all of her sonnets would have been dismissed as some Elizabethan version of ye olde "chick lit," only to be resurrected centuries later by stubborn feminist scholars."

That's it: from now on, I'm calling myself Nancy Hawthorne.

***

It occurred to me this morning while reading Andrea Levy's Small Island that part of the novel's genius is that it doesn't limit itself to depicting the racism of Britons during World War II -- Levy devotes herself, almost equally, to showing how class snobbery still played a role, even when London was under heavy bombing. The middle class still sniffed and complained over the lower classes taking refuge on their respectable streets -- even when these people had nowhere else to go! This book really does deserve all the praise it has received -- in addition to being extraordinarily well-written, it maintains distinct character voices with a wonderful fluidity, and it covers a very broad range of human experience.

That being said, I've got to finish it before Harry Potter arrives, or I'll have to put it down to read that first. (I'm only slightly kidding.)