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OUT
OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'Maybe
she'll be the first woman to go gray on the evening news. If Katie
was brave enough to get a colonoscopy on camera, then she's brave
enough to get a wrinkle on television.”
—Jennifer Drechsler, a director of the marketing and consulting firm
Just Ask a Woman, commenting in
The New York Sun
on Katie Couric’s
next gig, as the first solo anchorwoman of a network evening news
show,
and
the pressures on female journalists to look good on camera.
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OUT
OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'I
remember, walking back to my place after lunch, that he asked if he
could come up, just one last time. I found myself answering with a
line my mother had used in another context: "Sorry, but the last
time was the last time."
—Advice
columnist Margo Howard on how to end an affair, from the April 9,
2006
“Modern Love” column (“I Was Between Husbands, He Was Between
Cupcakes”)
in
The New York Times. Howard writes the "Dear Margo" column for Yahoo!
News and 200 newspapers. Her latest book is
"A Life in Letters: Ann Landers' Letters to Her Only Child.” |
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OUT
OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'Remember.
Women don’t start out desperate. They don’t start out a bitch. Women
do not start out with compulsions and eating-disorder suicides. They
don’t start out insecure, afraid and self-loathing. Women aren’t
born jealous, drunk, loud, overbearing, or angry. They don’t start
out dependent or pitiful victims. They don’t start out shamed and
abused. And they don’t start out destined to become a Divorced Rich
Beverly Hills Lady. They start out glorious.’
—From actress/comedienne Kathy Najimy’s “Divorced Rich Beverly
Hills Women.”
For
more wisdom out of the mouth of this babe,
who
was Ms. Magazine’s“Woman of the Year—2004,” visit
http://kathynajimy.com.
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OUT
OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'In
those faraway, long-ago days of feminism, there was talk about equal
pay for equal work. Now there's talk about ‘girl money.’ A friend of
mine in her 30's says it is a term she hears bandied about the New
York dating scene … “Otherwise intelligent men, who know women still
earn less than men as a rule, say things like: 'I'll get the check.
You only have girl money". '
—From “Are Men Necessary: When Sexes Collide,” written by New York
Times columnist
Maureen Dowd and scheduled for publication in November by G.P.
Putnam's Sons.
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OUT
OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'Empty
nest" has always been such a mournful phrase, evoking
droop-feathered mother crows keening in some bedraggled tree. The
dirty little secret is that for women who have struggled to do
justice to their love for their children at the same time as their
ambition, there's a heady, cackling joy to being free of guilt at
last.'
—Tina
Brown, commenting on women’s newfound sense of confidence after 50,
in her
syndicated column in
The Washington
Post. |
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OUT
OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'There's
been a dearth of women writing serious opinion pieces for top news
organizations, even as there's been growth in female sex columnists
for college newspapers. Going from Tess Harding to Carrie Bradshaw,
Dorothy Thompson to Candace Bushnell, is not progress.’
—New
York Times Op-Ed columnist Maureen Dowd, in a column
decrying the
fact that there are so few female
columnists. |
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OUT
OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'If
you really want to do something, you can.
I
just happened to want to do it in a boat.’
—Ellen MacArthur, the 28-year-old Englishwoman who broke the world
record for sailing around the globe solo. She made the trip in 71
days, 14 hours 18 minutes, and 33 seconds—beating the previous
record by more than 32 hours, and was named a “Dame” by Queen
Elizabeth for her efforts.
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OUT
OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'To
be a doll today is not the same as being a doll then. To be a doll
today is to be a people-pleaser, a woman who will never reveal that
she is too capable or too strong, because she doesn’t want to
emasculate the man she is with. We women are playing the same game,
only we do it a little differently.’
—Swedish actress and director Liv Ullmann
on the
character of Nora in Ibsen’s 1879 play “A Doll’s House.”
Ullmann
will direct Kate Winslet in an upcoming feature movie of the play.
Ullmann talked to Robert Emmett Long for a book of interviews that he is editing. |
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OUT
OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'No matter how much we
fail, we must recognize that there is hope—especially in my region,
with all the recent slaughter in Rwanda, for even there, the sun will
rise, and we continue to hope that we can overcome our suffering.‘
—Dr.
Wangari Maathai, Kenyan environmentalist
and women’s rights activist,
who won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, becoming
the first African woman to win a Nobel Prize in any category,
quoted in
The New York Times recently. |
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OUT
OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'My right to speak my mind, to have a voice, to be what
some have called ‘opinionated,’ is a right I deeply and profoundly
cherish. My only hope is that, one day soon, women who have all
earned the right to their opinions, instead of being labeled
opinionated, will be called smart or well-informed, just as men are.
. . . It is time for the world to hear women’s voices. ‘
—Teresa Heinz
Kerry, in her July 27 Democratic National Convention speech,
commenting on
reports that she is considered “opinionated.” |
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OUT
OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'These girls are quite
serious about finding an A.T.M. An A.T.M. is a rich boyfriend. New
York girls have a code they speak in. When they say they have to
find an M.I.T., they don't mean they have to go to college. They
mean they have to find a mogul in training.’
—Author Plum
Sykes, describing the wealthy New York women
she writes about
in her new novel, “Bergdorf Blondes.” |
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OUT
OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'Change is good...
Nickels, dimes, quarters always come in handy.’
—Comedian Ellen
DeGeneres, on her syndicated talk show
The Ellen DeGeneres
Show.
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OUT
OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'When
I was 12 and on welfare with my mother, I was told we weren't
going to have a Christmas. Some nuns showed up at the last minute
and brought food and presents. And I never forgot that. Now I am
working on building schools [in South Africa]. I understand what
it means to be poor and not have your possibilities revealed to
you. So I feel like if I can do that for as many young girls as I
can reach, I would have served part of my purpose here.’
—Oprah Winfrey,
in an interview with Richard Zoglin for
Time magazine.
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OUT
OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'I know you all are worried about the economy in
California, but I want to assure you that it's bad all over the country.
In fact, in Texas the price of gas has gone up so high that women
who want to run over their husbands are
car-pooling.’
—Former Texas Governor Ann Richards at a Democratic women’s
rally in support of California Governor Gray Davis in late September. |
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OUT
OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'Spoken
Like a Pragmatist:
‘I didn't set out to write the great American novel. I wanted to
write the type of book that could be made into a movie. I wanted to
write the type of book that people would read on the beach.’
— Romantic
suspense novelist Suzanne Brockmann
at the
Romance Writers of America’s 23rd annual national
conference in New York City in July. The award-winning author’s
novels center around military men and the women who love them. Her
latest, “Gone Too Far,” is available as a downloadable digital
edition, as well as in print, from
www.amazon.com. For more information on how to make money
writing a romance novel, read “Ooh-la-la!
Want More Romance
in Your Life? Try Writing a Romance
Novel!” in our Subscriber-Only section.
Click here
to try a trial subscription.
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OUT
OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'The
abducted Utah teen Elizabeth Smart, Laci Peterson, the unsolved
mystery of who killed the Washington intern Chandra Levy, and the
biggest single American news story of the Iraq war — the rescue of
Private First Class Jessica Lynch—have provided the most obsessive
narratives of American TV in the past couple of years. Why is cable
news so addicted to missing girls and women? Is it because so much
of the audience consists of boiling white males who feel stomped on
by the economy and their wives, and girls in peril make them feel
protective and virile? The rescue fantasy has never been more
potent.’
—Former
Talk
magazine editor Tina Brown, from one of her recent Times of London
columns. MAKING BREAD points
out that while some men may be caught up in “White Knight in
Shining Armor” fantasies, men are also most commonly the
perpetrators of violence against women. Visit
www.vday.org for more information about this issue, including
how to report violence,
where to get help
if you are a victim, and what you can do to campaign
against
women-directed violence, both locally and globally. |
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OUT
OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'A woman
is like a tea bag. You never know how strong she is until she gets
in hot water.’
—Eleanor
Roosevelt, First Lady of the United States
from 1933-45.
Read more inspirational quotes by the former First
Lady at historian James MacGregor Burns’ Academy of Leadership (http://www.academy.umd.edu/publications/Eleanor/ER-Leadership.htm)
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OUT
OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'Trust
me, I can put on a $15 pair of shoes with a $1,500 dress and look
like a million dollars. It's about putting it together. If you're a
fashionable person, people expect you to pay a lot of money, but
that's stupid. It's about style and taste. Smart women know you
don't have to spend a lot of money to have style.’
—Star Jones, co-host of ABC’S
The View and spokesperson for Payless shoes, in an interview with
The New York Times recently. |
OUT
OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'Upstairs:
The CEO’s of 23 large companies under investigation by the SEC and
other agencies earned 70 percent more than the average CEO, banking
a collective $1.4 billion between 1999 and 2001.
‘Downstairs: Between January 2001 and August 2002, the market
value of these 23 companies nose-dived by over $500 billion, or
roughly 73 percent. And since January 2001, these companies have
laid off more than 160,000 employees.
‘Upstairs:
Between 1990 and 2000, the average CEO's pay rose 571 percent.
‘Downstairs:
Between 1990 and 2000, the average worker's pay rose 37 percent.
‘For more
information about the disturbing disparity in wealth and privilege
between the top 1 percent and the bottom 80 percent, open up the
business section of your newspaper. Or, grab some cake and turn on
Court TV.’
—Syndicated
columnist and author Arianna Huffington, quoting statistics
from the latest Census Bureau report on poverty and income in a
recent column of hers.
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OUT
OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'There’s still
a lot of old-fashioned, anti-woman sentiment that causes people to
interpret women’s behavior differently than they would interpret the
same behavior from a man. So a man selling his stock might be a good
forecaster of the stock market. A woman selling her stock is
unscrupulously taking advantage of insider information.’
—Vicky
Lovell, a study director for the Institute for Women’s Policy
Research in Washington, D.C., quoted in
The New York
Times in an article examining the rush to judgment of Martha
Stewart’s sale of ImClone Systems stock as possible insider trading.
As Christopher Byron, author of the recently published ‘Martha,
Inc.,’ comments, ‘Everybody . . . wants to be the person to bag
that babe’s blond scalp.’ |
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OUT
OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'A lot [of celebrities] live in very modest circumstances. Ed Begley,
Jr. lives in a small little two-bedroom, because that's his theory.
. . .You live in a place like that so that you don't need to take
the job that you don't want to take.’
—Donna
Hanover, actress and host of the syndicated television show Famous
Homes and Hideaways. The ex-wife of former New York City mayor Rudy
Giuliani was interviewed recently by The New York Times about her
transition from Gracie Mansion to a more modest four-bedroom New
York City flat. |
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OUT
OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'We have the
power, we of the affluent societies, we who are causing the most
environmental damage. For we are the consumers. We do not have to
buy products from companies with bad environmental policies. To help
us, the Internet is linking small grass-roots movements, so that
people who once felt they were on their own can contact others with
the same concerns.’
—Noted
anthropologist and environmentalist Jane Goodall, from an essay in
the August 26 issue of Time magazine. For information on
Goodall’s ‘Roots and Shoots’ international environmental and
humanitarian program for young people,
as well as links to other conservation-related, volunteer and
business resources, visit
www.janegoodall.org. |
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OUT
OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'I
wanted to show that if we stick together, there will be no limit to
the things we can accomplish.’
—Kenya
Jordana James, 13-year-old founder of
Blackgirl magazine (www.blackgirlmagazine.com),
describing the cover of the current issue, which shows six girls
sitting on a bench under a wall of graffiti that reads: NO LIMIT.
James started Blackgirl because ‘I was angry that I couldn't find a
single magazine that I could read cover to cover and feel good
about.’ |
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OUT
OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'Most women's magazines started out as catalogs. They put a few
articles in to get the readers to purchase the catalog. . . .You buy
them as consumers looking for products, but not as magazine readers.
. . To get ads for food, they put recipes with the articles. To get
ads for shampoo, they put in articles about how to wash your hair.
Ms. readers don't need articles about how to wash your hair."
—Gloria
Steinem, from an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle
on the rebirth of Ms. Magazine, scheduled to begin
publication again in October, with a 100- page issue, and only 15
ads—from nonprofit organizations. The 30-year-old magazine, which
has struggled to sell ads in previous incarnations, has decided not
to accept commercial advertising this time around, relying instead
on subscription sales and private funding. |
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OUT
OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'Gratitude is the
foundation for all Inner Vacations. You can do that right here,
right now. Start by really noticing what you are grateful for in
your life at this moment. TAKE THIS EXERCISE: Make a list of all
that you have currently in the different areas of your life. Make
nine columns on a piece of paper. Label them: Friends, Primary
Relationships, Money, Career, Health, Material Items, Spiritual
Life, Fun and Hobbies, Personal Gifts and Attributes. In each
column, list everything you can think of that you are grateful for
right now in that particular area of your life! Then spend time
daily looking at these lists and feeling true appreciation.’
—Wendy Mackowski,
CPCC, MA, Certified Professional Co-Active Coach,
Inner North
Coaching (
www.innernorth.com)
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OUT
OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'As
a banker’s daughter, I’d have to say, “Never let anyone else ‘take
care’ of your money for you.” My father taught me to balance my
first checkbook in high school. Know your own business and take
responsibility for where your money is invested and how it is
spent.’
—Singer Trisha
Yearwood, quoted in the savvy new money-management book ‘It’s Only
Money! A Primer for Women,’ by Allison Acken, Ph.D. (available at
www.womentalkmoney.com )
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OUT
OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'What
can a girl do to let her dad know that he’s more than a breadwinner?
Here’s something that happened to me in my own life. My father had
written poetry, but no one in our family knew about it. When he
died, the desk from his office was sent to me, and I found short
stories and poems in the drawers.
'Real men don’t do that,' his own family had taught him. So
he kept them hidden.
“Every gift I gave my father had to do with Daddy, the Worker. Pen
sets or a briefcase. I was reinforcing, unknowingly, that the office
is where he
belonged. I wish I’d given him a book of poems, a box of crayons,
something that played to the part of him that he felt he had to keep
hidden. I wish I’d treated him like I want to be treated. Any girl
can do that for her father.”
—Linda
Ellerbee, award-winning TV producer (Nickelodeon’s Nick News, among
other programs) and author of the sassy, savvy, empowering
‘Get Real’ series of books for young girls. |
OUT
OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'Women
should start saving money in their 20s. It’s easy to get started.
You just take a dollar out of your wallet every day and put it in a
jar. What do you spend a dollar on that’s so important? Two packs of
Life Savers or gum, if that. Ladies, take that same dollar and sock
it away. At the end of the month, take it out of the jar and put it
in a savings account. At the end of five years, with interest and
the money compounded, you could have as much as $2000 saved up. That
money could turn into a small fortune if you do this faithfully
throughout your life. By the time you’re 50, the money you have on
hand could be astronomical. It’s the key to independence that every
woman needs, and it starts with one dollar.’
—Judge Judy
Sheindlin, in the introduction to ‘How to Hide Money from Your
Husband . . . and Other Time-Honored Ways to Build a Nest Egg,’
by Heidi
Evans |
OUT
OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'If Karen
[Hughes] can do the work she loves in the place she wants to live,
while making her family happy and the President happy, isn't that a
breakthrough? Let's not say, ‘Woe is us, we are victims.’ Look what
[working mothers] get to be a part of. Look at what our kids get
exposed to. [My daughter] Matty knows who Osama bin Laden is and
[her sister] Emma asks if Arafat is a bad man."
—Mary
Matalin (above left, with her husband, James Carville), aide to Vice
President Dick Cheney, commenting on the decision of Bush adviser
Karen Hughes to leave her high-power job so that she can spend more
time with her family, as quoted in a recent
New York Times Op Ed piece
by Maureen Dowd. |
OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'What is the single biggest thing a father can do for his daughter?
Pay child support, if he’s
divorced. He shouldn’t make the law track him down and he shouldn’t
let his child sit there thinking, ‘Why
doesn’t he pay support for me?’
According to the U.S. Government, more than half
[of men who owe child support] don’t pay it.
“The other thing a man can do is love the mother of his
children and let them see that he values their mother and the work
she does—particularly the work of taking care of children.”
—Linda Ellerbee, award-winning TV
producer (Nickelodeon’s Nick News, among other programs) and author
of the sassy, savvy, empowering ‘Get Real’ series of books for
young girls. |
OUT
OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'We confess
everything else in our society—sex, crime, illness. But no one wants
to reveal what they earn or how they got it. The money taboo is the
one thing that employers can always count on,” says Twin Cities
job-market analyst Kristine Jacobs in Barbara Ehrenreich’s book
“Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America.”
Ehrenreich, who
spent several months working as a low-wage worker, then wrote about
the experience in “Nickel and Dimed,” comments: “I suspect that this
‘taboo’ operates most effectively among the lowest-paid people,
because, in a society that celebrates its dot-com billionaires and
centimillionaire athletes, $7 or $10 an hour can feel like a mark of
innate inferiority. So you may or may not find out that, say, the
Target down the road is paying better than Wal-Mart, even if you
have a sister-in-law working there.”
Ehrenreich goes on
to point out that The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 makes it
illegal to punish people for revealing their wages to one
another. So start talking!
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OUT
OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'There are 13
women in the Senate—it’s not good enough. We’re 52 percent of
the population; we ought to be 52 members of the Senate. We need
women to move into the business world. There are two or three CEO’s
of Fortune 500 companies. It’s time for 52 percent of the Fortune
500 companies to have women CEO’s. Child care, ageism, sexism—these
things have got to change, and they will as more of us get into the
political process."
—Erica Jong, groundbreaking author of ‘Fear
of Flying’ and ‘Fear of 50,’ speaking to 700 women (and Senator Joe
Biden, who happened to be in the audience) at the Delaware Women’s Conference
in Newark, Delaware, on March 2. Her latest book, a series of essays
titled ‘What Do Women Want? Bread Roses Sex Power,’ explores women’s
progress in society. A new novel is due out this year. For more
words of wisdom from Ms. Jong, visit her
Web site, www.ericajong.com .
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OUT
OF THE MOUTHS OF ‘BABES’
'Giving new meaning
to the phrase “shop till you drop,” when asked, “If you were
pregnant, would you want to know the sex of your baby?” 20-something
co-host of the ABC morning show The View Lisa Ling answered
with alacrity: “Yes!”
“Why?”
“So I can shop for
it.”
No dis on Lisa, who could probably afford to buy the
contents of both Toys “R” Us and FAO Schwarz on any given day, but
her answer prompts us to wonder, “Does having children give some
shop-aholics a convenient excuse to spend even more?
If you are one, ask
yourself: “What money lessons am I teaching my kids when I take them
to the store with me?”
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OUT OF THE MOUTHS
OF ‘BABES’
'The
two most expensive words in the English language…It’s ONLY: As in “It’s ONLY 20 dollars,” or “It’s ONLY $99.95.”
Used by consumers to
justify purchases they want but don’t really need and often can’t
really afford; and by advertisers to entice consumers into buying
their products.
True, it’s ONLY money, but we ONLY have so many years
to save for our kids’ college and our own retirement!
—The
Editors |
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OUT OF THE MOUTHS
OF ‘BABES’
'I see business as a
Renaissance concept, where the human spirit comes into play. It does
not have to be drudgery; it does not have to be the science of
making money. It can be something that people genuinely feel good
about, but only if it remains a human enterprise. . . .
'How do you ennoble the
spirit when you are selling something as inconsequential as a
cosmetic cream? You do it by creating a sense of holism, of
spiritual development, of feeling connected to the workplace, the
environment and relationships with one another.
'It’s how to make Monday to
Friday a sense of being alive rather than a slow death.’
— Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop, from her
book ‘Body and Soul.’ |
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OUT OF THE MOUTHS
OF ‘BABES’
“Question:
What is the biggest
mistake women make
when they squirrel away money?
"Answer:
They don’t realize
the power of compounding. I always tell young people: If you put
$2000 in an IRA for five years, that’s $10,000. If you are in your
20s and never put another penny in, by the time you retire 40 years
later, with 10 percent compounding, that $10,000 will become over
$450,000. WOW!”
—From “How to Hide Money from Your Husband…and Other
Time- Honored Ways to Build a Nest Egg, “ by Heidi Evans
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