Are you there, God? It's me, [name]

I was checking my blog stats over the past month, and whoa! My visits and page views are increasing though still meager. But the overall trend is increasing!

Since none of you leave comments, I'm curious - are you lurkers or do I know you? I'm pretty confident most of you must be acquaintances, friends or family since I really haven't done any blog promotion of any kind.

So, I hope you'll indulge this little request - please post a comment upon reading this. Share your favorite movie quote, tell me your favorite book, discuss this article on Mourning the Death of Handwriting, heck, simply say "I'm here!"

Thanks! And stay tuned for more chunkiness and August grab bag...

Putting the "I" in inane

I love it when obviously childless women criticize other women for *gasp* being a mother and, in the process, prove that it's not the man keeping us down, but other women. 

NYU professor Katie Roiphe has this to say about women who post their kids as their Facebook profile pictures ("Get your kid off your Facebook page," May 13) over at DoubleX:

If Betty Friedan were to review the Facebook habits of the over-30 set, she would turn over in her grave. By this I mean specifically the trend of women using photographs of their children instead of themselves as the main picture on their Facebook profiles...

The choice seems to constitute a retreat to an older form of identity, to a time when women were called Mrs. John Smith, to a time when fresh scrubbed Vassar girls were losing their minds amidst vacuum cleaners and sandboxes... These Facebook photos signal a larger and more ominous self-effacement, a narrowing of our worlds.

 

I don't know where I should begin to address my ire, the fact that Ms. Roiphe has a PhD and is teaching today's young women, the absurd opinions she expresses, or that she feels the need to disparage other women for exercising the choice Friedan could only write about. Needless to say, there are a lot of colorful comments posted below the drivel.