The Rebel Deb's Confessions...

4th-Wave Feminism

2011-11-16T18:46:00.000-08:00

Slate.com Agrees with the Rebel Deb

2011-11-03T04:37:00.000-07:00

The Trouble with Generation-Defining Trend Pieces
By J. Bryan Lowder | Posted Monday, Oct. 31, 2011

"When I saw Anna Fields' Daily Beast post, “Marriage, Red-State Style,” over the weekend, I was relieved. Finally, someone had articulated the amorphous discomfort that had been nagging at me since reading Kate Bolick’s controversial cover story in The Atlantic earlier this month: It just doesn’t hold up beyond New York City.

Bolick’s lengthy piece—for those who haven’t yet committed to a long-term relationship with its 20-printed pages—thoroughly explores the increasingly woolly terrain of modern courtship and marriage, noting, in truly fascinating detail, the emergence of various lifestyles beyond coupledom, ranging from committed singletons to cohabitating friends to single-sex compounds to polyamory and beyond. What isn’t so fascinating, though, is the writer’s generalization that, because women are now more openly exploring new options and men are supposedly on the decline, an entire generation or two under 40 doesn’t want to get married anymore.

As Fields points out, this is simply not true in much of the country, especially in our shared homeland down South. I have watched—generally with a mix of disapproval and concern, on a few rare occasions with approbation—as, one-by-one, my high school girlfriends jumped into marriages at the super-mature ages of 22, 23, and so on. Women who had seemed so driven and talented, so capable of achieving things beyond a comfortable small-town, nuclear family existence, are settling into and, in my not-so-humble opinion, for, just that. I frequently worry about many of them, hoping that my admittedly judgmental and unsolicited predictions about their choices will prove wrong. I also feel for those who haven’t yet succumbed to the pressure of family members who nag and question to the point of tears and self-doubt about marriage prospects before their daughters have even finished college.

Fields has it right: Marriage is definitely still alive in the South, if not in all cases well.

Of course, reading Field’s piece, you’ll notice that she participates in the same reductive reasoning and anecdotal extrapolation that she’s criticizing (for that matter, so am I). The truth is, we could all have been spared a lot of trouble and embarrassing logical fallacy had Bolick avoided making such a grand and necessarily controvertible claim in the first place. That kind of proposition demands that the reader either agrees and praises or, like Fields and myself, disagrees and balks; worse, it distracts from all of the fantastic reportage and storytelling that the rest of the article contains. When I can practically smell the insular Park Slope dinner party where the whole thing was cooked up (“My goodness girls, isn’t it funny how we’re all middle-aged and single and still fabulous?”), I have a hard time trusting the genuinely revelatory stuff.

Bolick isn’t the only offender. Noreen Malone (formerly of Slate) recently had a poignant piece in New York Magazine that describes the terrifying problems facing our “Millennial” age group, including wealth disparity, overwhelming student loan burdens and generally dimmer prospects for a prosperous future. All very worthy stuff, but unfortunately, Malone chose to go with the personal experience-based, generation-defining frame: According to her, we’ve basically given up on the relatively comfortable life we were falsely promised by our “everyone gets a trophy” upbringing and have instead found solace by pickling things in a Bushwick loft. I suspect, however, that most of us, including many of the Occupy Wall Street protesters, actually just want a decent-paying job. Or maybe I’m wrong, too.

Can we just agree it’s time to have done with these “My Generation is this Way” trend pieces altogether?"

CLICK HERE for more of J. Bryan Lowder's work

Check Out My Front-Page Piece in Today's "The Daily Beast!"

2011-10-30T07:34:00.000-07:00

Marriage, Red-State Style
by Anna Fields
Oct 29, 2011

The Atlantic says women are hitting 40 and opting not to wed. Not so, says writer Anna Fields, a single lady from the South, where, she says, the race to the altar begins at 20.

There’s yet another manifesto about unmarried women on newsstands this month. This time it’s a splashy 13-page cover story in The Atlantic called “All the Single Ladies.” The story is about how smart, successful women are approaching age 40 and deciding not to marry—especially if the man earns less money than the woman.

“American women as a whole have never been confronted with such a radically shrinking pool of what are traditionally considered to be ‘marriageable’ men—those who are better educated and earn more than they do,” says writer Kate Bolick, who is single and 39. She blames the lousy economy, which has been harder on men than on women. Because men are falling behind in their pay while women are powering ahead, she concludes, many women are opting out of the whole marriage thing altogether.

Well, I'm here to tell you, this may very well be the case in New York and Los Angeles, the land of the alpha woman. But here’s a dispatch from America—the real world, the red states—where marriage is not so much an option as a goal that’s hammered into women’s heads since birth. It doesn’t matter how successful you are in your career—or how unsuccessful your man is. If you’re not married, you’re a loser.

I grew up in North Carolina, where I live today. For me, the "get married" drumbeat began when I was a teen. “Watch your figure, because you’ll never catch a husband with a big fanny!” my grandmother advised me. Words of wisdom such as these continued through my high-school years and on into college. When I graduated from Brown University with a degree in cognitive neuroscience, it was time to get serious. That meant catching a man. Never mind my plans to get a master’s degree at NYU. When I went home to visit, the question on everyone’s lips was “When are you getting married?”

My high-school friends had their priorities straight: they knew not to become an “old maid” or an “old mom.” They were recent college grads too, but they were busy racing to the altar. Since sex before marriage is still frowned upon in many corners of the South, there's added incentive: get married so you don’t have to live in sin. After all, this is the land of the “purity balls,” in which women as old as 25 attend a formal dance as their dad's date and promise him to stay “pure” until marriage.

Kelly Clarkson knows what I’m talking about. Last week on The View she said, “I’m from a small town, so everyone’s married with children or about to have children. It’s a little hard when you go home and people are like—and that’s why people think I’m gay—because they’re like, ‘Why aren’t you married?’” The Texas native and globe-trotting rock star said she feels like an “old maid.”

No wonder. She's 29—past her prime. The average age of marriage for women in America is 26.5, according to the Census Bureau. For men, it's 28.4. Better get busy, Kelly!

“Birthin’ babies is where it’s at,” my uncle informed my boyfriend when the two first met. My uncle uttered these words while patting my belly. It happened to be my second date with the guy. Luckily, he was from the South, too, and wasn’t in the least bit alarmed. He and I have been seeing each other for four years now, which makes me, at age 30, an unmarried old maid myself. My parents like to encourage my boyfriend to “be a man” and pop the question. When I ran into a high-school teacher recently, she suggested he and I go down to City Hall to “do the right thing.” We continue living in sin.

At least we know we're not the only ones under the gun. Our friends Brandon and Sarah dated for six months before both their parents decided enough was enough. Her mother told her, “You had better catch a keeper before you get too old to get caught!” His mother said the same. Again and again. Brandon and Sarah just celebrated their second wedding anniversary.

It’s important to note that it’s not just the women who are pressured to wed in the South—it’s the men too. Some guys marry women they can’t stand, simply because that’s easier than listening to their parents carry on. Don’t believe me? My boyfriend took a male friend out recently to celebrate the guy’s engagement to his high-school sweetheart. Three beers in, the guy said, “I’m so not even attracted to her anymore.” Here comes the bride!

I'm just saying, the editors of The Atlantic, along with Ms. Bolick (who lives in both New York and L.A., according to her bio), might want to pay a visit to America. Women aren’t waiting around till they're 40 out here, deciding they’ll forgo marriage because the guy is not some moneyed power broker.

I’m not saying this is the way it should be. But it is the way it is.

At least my parents are beginning to accept my own state of nonmarriage. They have moved on to more important matters. As my mother announced one recent morning at breakfast, “Oh, would you just go get pregnant?”

Anna Fields is a North Carolina–based public speaker and author of the memoir Confessions of a Rebel Debutante. Her second book, Chasing Meridian, will hit shelves soon.

For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com or CLICK HERE to see the article online.

Come Hear the Rebel Deb share her newest story -- "The Curse of the Teeny-Weenie" -- at The Monti next Monday, October 24th @ Triad Stage!

2011-10-14T08:09:00.000-07:00

DATE: Mon, Oct 24th, 7:30

TYPE: The Monti

LOCATION: Triad Stage

THEME: Love Hurts

STORYTELLERS

DESCRIPTION

The Monti is our original and signature format. It debuted in Chapel Hill on April 22, 2008 to a SOLD OUT crowd in a private room upstairs at Spice Street. Typically, there are five storytellers for every show, and tellers are invited in advance to tell stories.

All stories are true.
All stories are told without the use of notes.
All stories adhere to the twelve minute time limit.
All stories must revolve around the theme, Love Hurts.

Tickets on sale NOW! Click HERE for details!

The REAL Barbie Doll.

2011-06-02T12:38:00.000-07:00

I just found this floating around Facebook and HAD to repost...

"This was an ad made by bodyshop. But Barbie INC. found out about it and now it’s banned. Repost if you think this ad deserves to be seen."

Can I get an "Amen?"

Take a long look at the kinds of toys we SHOULD be advertising to little girls -- instead of fake, silicone-injected aphid-looking dolls -- so they won't look in the mirror and hate themselves...

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

At CBS, Sexism is Alive and Well

2011-03-07T14:14:00.000-08:00

The privilege afforded wealthy white men may not be a particularly new point, but it’s an important one nonetheless. Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears are endlessly derided for their extracurricular meltdowns. Their careers have all suffered, and understandably so. Meanwhile, Charlie Sheen's behavior has been repeatedly and affectionately dismissed as the antics of a “bad boy." - Anna Holmes, Jezebel.com

The Disposable Woman
By ANNA HOLMES
Published: March 3, 2011

FORTY-THREE minutes into his “special live edition” with Charlie Sheen on Monday night, Piers Morgan finally got around to asking his guest a real question. Before that, Mr. Morgan and Mr. Sheen had mostly traded chuckles and anecdotes about multiday benders, inflated network salaries and meet-ups in Aspen, Colo. But then, after three commercial breaks, Mr. Morgan inquired, “Have you ever hit a woman?”

Two minutes later, with Mr. Morgan apparently satisfied with the actor’s answer that no, women should be “hugged and caressed,” that line of questioning was over.

That Mr. Morgan didn’t press the issue of domestic violence shouldn’t have come as any surprise. CBS executives, not to mention the millions of viewers of his “family” sitcom “Two and a Half Men,” have consistently turned a blind eye toward Mr. Sheen’s history of abusing women. Part of this, of course, is about money. The actor’s F-18 of an id — to borrow a metaphor from Mr. Sheen himself — had long provided the show a steady stream of free publicity. It also helped make Mr. Sheen the highest-paid actor on television, at $1.2 million an episode.

But it’s also about apathy. Even now — after Mr. Sheen began carpet-bombing his bosses in radio rants, prompting CBS to shut down production on the show — observers still seem more entertained than outraged, tuning in to see him appear on every talk show on the planet and coming up with creative Internet memes based on his most colorful statements. And while his self-abuses are endlessly discussed, his abuse of women is barely broached.

Our inertia is not for lack of evidence. In 1990, he accidentally shot his fiancée at the time, the actress Kelly Preston, in the arm. (The engagement ended soon after.) In 1994 he was sued by a college student who alleged that he struck her in the head after she declined to have sex with him. (The case was settled out of court.) Two years later, a sex film actress, Brittany Ashland, said she had been thrown to the floor of Mr. Sheen’s Los Angeles house during a fight. (He pleaded no contest and paid a fine.)

In 2006, his wife at the time, the actress Denise Richards, filed a restraining order against him, saying Mr. Sheen had shoved and threatened to kill her. In December 2009, Mr. Sheen’s third wife, Brooke Mueller, a real-estate executive, called 911 after Mr. Sheen held a knife to her throat. (He pleaded guilty and was placed on probation.) Last October, another actress in sex films, Capri Anderson, locked herself in a Plaza Hotel bathroom after Mr. Sheen went on a rampage. (Ms. Anderson filed a criminal complaint but no arrest was made.) And on Tuesday, Ms. Mueller requested a temporary restraining orderagainst her former husband, alleging that he had threatened to cut her head off, “put it in a box and send it to your mom.” (The order was granted, and the couple’s twin sons were quickly removed from his home.) “Lies,” Mr. Sheen told People magazine.

The privilege afforded wealthy white [Julian's note: his ethnic heritage is also Latino] men like Charlie Sheen may not be a particularly new point, but it’s an important one nonetheless. Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears are endlessly derided for their extracurricular meltdowns and lack of professionalism on set; the R&B star Chris Brown was made a veritable pariah after beating up his equally, if not more, famous girlfriend, the singer Rihanna. Their careers have all suffered, and understandably so.

This hasn’t been the case with Mr. Sheen, whose behavior has been repeatedly and affectionately dismissed as the antics of a “bad boy” (see: any news article in the past 20 years), a “rock star” (see: Piers Morgan, again) and a “rebel” (see: Andrea Canning’s “20/20” interview on Tuesday). He has in essence, achieved a sort of folk-hero status; on Wednesday, his just-created Twitter account hit a million followers, setting a Guinness World Record.

But there’s something else at work here: the seeming imperfection of Mr. Sheen’s numerous accusers. The women are of a type, which is to say, highly unsympathetic. Some are sex workers — pornographic film stars and escorts — whose compliance with churlish conduct is assumed to be part of the deal. (For the record: It is not.)
Others, namely Ms. Richards and Ms. Mueller, are less-famous starlets or former “nobodies” whose relationships with Mr. Sheen have been disparaged as purely sexual and transactional. The women reside on a continuum in which injuries are assumed and insults are expected.

“Gold diggers,” “prostitutes” and “sluts” are just some of the epithets lobbed at the women Mr. Sheen has chosen to spend his time with. Andy Cohen, a senior executive at Bravo and a TV star in his own right, referred to the actor’s current companions, Natalie Kenly and Bree Olson, as “whores” on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program on Tuesday. Arianna Huffington sarcastically tweeted that Mr. Sheen’s girlfriends “symbolize modesty, loyalty and good taste.” Mr. Sheen’s own nickname for Ms. Kenly and Ms. Olson — “the goddesses” — is in its own way indicative of their perceived interchangeability and disposability.

It’s these sorts of explicit and implicit value judgments that underscore our contempt for women who are assumed to be trading on their sexuality. [Julian's note: Let's be clear. Charlie is doing little else other than trading on his sexuality and his fame, which is largely currently due to him trading on his sexuality.] A woman’s active embrace of the fame monster or participation in the sex industry, we seem to say, means that she compromises her right not to be assaulted, let alone humiliated, insulted or degraded; it’s part of the deal. The promise of a modern Cinderella ending — attention, fame, the love and savings account of a rich man — is always the assumed goal.

Objectification and abuse, it follows, is not only an accepted occupational hazard for certain women, but something that men like Mr. Sheen have earned the right to indulge in. (Mr. Sheen reportedly once said that he didn’t pay prostitutes for the sex; he paid them “to leave.”) One can’t help but think that his handlers might have moved more quickly to rein in their prized sitcom stallion if his victims’ motivations weren’t assumed to be purely mercenary. (Or if they enjoyed parity and respect with regards to their age, influence and earning power.)

These assumptions — about women, about powerful men, about bad behavior — have roots that go way back but find endorsement in today’s unscripted TV culture. Indeed, it’s difficult for many to discern any difference between Mr. Sheen’s real-life, round-the-clock, recorded outbursts and the sexist narratives devised by reality television producers, in which women are routinely portrayed as backstabbing floozies, and dreadful behavior by males is explained away as a side effect of unbridled passion or too much pilsner.

As Jennifer Pozner points out in her recent book “Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty-Pleasure TV,” misogyny is embedded within the DNA of the reality genre. One of the very first millennial shows, in fact, “Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire,” was notable in that it auctioned off what producers called the “biggest prize of all”: a supposedly wealthy B-movie writer named Rick Rockwell — who was later revealed to have had a restraining order filed against him by a woman he’d threatened to kill. According to Ms. Pozner, the reaction of one of the producers of “Multimillionaire” was, “Great! More publicity!”

On reality television, gratuitous violence and explicit sexuality are not only entertainment but a means to an end. These enthusiastically documented humiliations are positioned as necessities in the service of some final prize or larger benefit — a marriage proposal, a modeling contract, $1 million. But they also make assault and abasement seem commonplace, acceptable behavior, tolerated by women and encouraged in men.

Which brings us back to Mr. Morgan, who, like many of Mr. Sheen’s past and present press enablers, showed little to no urgency in addressing the question of violence against women. “You’re entitled to behave however the hell you like as long as you don’t scare the horses and the children,” Mr. Morgan said at one point. Scaring women, it seems, was just fine.
During the interview, a series of images played on a continuous loop. One of them was a defiant and confident-looking Charlie Sheen, in a mug shot taken after his 2009 domestic violence arrest.
Anna Holmes is a writer and the creator of the Web site Jezebel.

Win a FREE Copy of "CRD" at TheDiviningWand.com!

2011-02-28T13:29:00.000-08:00

Click here to be routed directly to The Divining Wand and enter for a chance to win a free copy of yours truly's book! Or just keep reading for deets... :)

February 28, 2011
By: larramiefg

Successful playwright, television writer, and comedienne, Anna Fields dishes out a Southern-fried memoir about growing up too smart and rebellious for her North Carolina small town in Confessions of a Rebel Debutante.

During childhood the author claimed the “tomboy” label, only then to describe her adolescent self as being “outspoken” and “bookish” rebelling against the strict rules at her private all-girls finishing school. Anna tried to be a proper Deb, even making it through the first Cotillion. Yet, when viewed as too “liberal” and “uppity,” she didn’t make the cut for the ultimate Debutante Ball.

That’s the backstory and this is the synopsis of Confessions of a Rebel Debutante:

A strict regimen of Southern-belle grooming should have prepared Anna Fields for a lifetime of ladylike behavior.

But it didn’t.

As it turned out, Anna—a smart, outspoken, bookish girl—was a dud at debbing. After being kicked out of cotillion classes, the “Rebel Deb” left North Carolina to seek her fortune. Her first stop was Brown University —right in the heart of Yankee-land—and then the crazy world of Hollywood talent agencies and celebrity-packed restaurants. After a disastrous stint as Diana Ross’s personal assistant, Anna headed off to the Big Apple, where she worked for one of Bravo’s Real Housewives. It’s a rollicking, unlikely success story from a natural-born storyteller.

Sharp, sweet, and sassy, Confessions of a Rebel Debutante proves you can take the girl out of the South, but you can’t take the South out of the girl!

Please take a look at the glowing Press.

The South is known for its storytellers and Anna Fields is another talented one as she writes her “rags-to-riches,” almost Cinderella-like story. Of course there isn’t a wicked step-mother or even step-sisters in this tale, but all of Anna’s quirky relatives are much more entertaining and — more importantly — they’re real!

Written in a chronological format, this memoir has a distinct stream-of-conscious feel as the rebel deb’s voice delights with humorous details or becomes serious in relating past problems. For this book applies to every girl — living below or above the Mason-Dixon line — who didn’t quite fit in and was proud of it.

As Anna shares her sweet, bittersweet, and deeply poignant tales, she often refers to her role model of Scarlett O’Hara and frequently asks herself, “what would Scarlett do?” The answer is usually anything that will maintain the rebel deb’s strong confidence in herself. Because, when interviewed by BUST Magazine in May 2010, the author defined a rebel debutante as:

“She’s a woman who will bake a cake, clean a rifle, and drive a stick shift with a smile. She’s a mix of masculine and feminine, strong and soft—like all real women.”

However one strong tenet, revealed in the memoir, is that a rebel deb will not be content to simply stay home and birth babies. Oh no, she’s first destined to be true to herself. And where does that energy and determination come from? Within that same BUST Magazine article, Anna admits:

“I keep my eye on the ball. I stop worrying about what bad things can happen and start taking risks. I consider these to be investments in myself and in my happiness, instead of in fear. I stop competing with others, wondering what others are thinking about me, or what they’re doing. My self-love, my self-confidence, does not depend on others—it comes from God, and it lives within me. With that in mind, I know that I can overcome anything.”

Indeed she can and does, proving herself time after time by coming out on top. And, for the most part, the author accomplishes it all with her polite southern charm intact. For as the book’s description explains:

You can take the girl out of the South, but you can’t take the South out of the girl!

With her homespun tales and smart, experienced wisdom, Anna Fields’ story, though rooted in North Carolina, can resonate with any reader, anywhere. Every region of our country has its own distinct identity passed down by generations of ethnic family traditions. Unique, eccentric, and larger-than-life lovable relatives can be found at almost any holiday gathering. Embarrassing secrets are shared and scorned as younger generations seek to rebel against their past if only to say they can succeed on their own.

Confessions of a Rebel Debutante takes readers on the author’s journey, while nudging out our own personal, growing-up memories along the way. So travel down south with Anna who never took that final deb curtsy but realized that “You can’t bend the rules without learning them first.”

This Week's Celeb Rebel Deb: Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA)

2011-02-18T15:42:00.000-08:00

Just listen to Representative Speier responding in opposition to the Pence Amendment. Makes you want to shout, "Go, Jackie, go!"

‎"... the American people at home are wondering, 'What does this have to do with getting me a job?' It doesn't. It has nothing to do with that at all. Last time I checked, abortion - whether you like it or not - is legal in this country. But then again, so is Haliburton. They're guilty of fraud, embezzlement and 10 other felonies. But are we up here trying to pass amendments making them illegal? No."

Thank you, Congresswoman Speier, for reminding us why Feminism is still relevant today and will be necessary to protect women's reproductive choices forevermore.

And in case anyone is wondering "Why is this even an issue? Isn't Roe v. Wade on the books already? Why isn't this dead on the Hill? Isn't freedom of choice here to stay?" A little info to answer and, I hope, to enlighten:

The central holding of Roe established that, before a fetus becomes viable, a woman's right to abort was considered "fundamental." After Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1993), however, women's rights to abortion via the viability standard were reclassified as "liberty interests." Which means that any statutes to restrict access to abortion can be upheld as constitutional under a slightly less rigorous standard called "Rational Basis" review. Casey held that states can require 24-hour waiting periods, parental consent forms, and can make access to abortion much more difficult and expensive -- so long as that access isn't cut off completely, and it's not considered an "undue burden" on the woman seeking one.

So, yeah. Nothing is here to stay. I agree that it would be difficult to reverse Roe in one fell swoop, but that's not what the Republicans are trying to do. The Pence Act need not reverse Roe v. Wade directly in order to take away women's rights to abortion. They can simply regulate it to death, little by little. Like ancient warriors used to say of their enemies, "Why fight something you hate when you can simply starve it to death?"

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

The Diving Wand's Interview with the Rebel Deb!

2011-02-16T14:59:00.000-08:00

The Revealing of Anna Fields
February 16, 2011
By: larramiefg

According to Anna Fields’ momma: “Every one of us starts off a debutante, then becomes a rebel, but when we finally grow into our own…we’re a little bit of both.” And this is what the author proves in her debut memoir, Confessions of a Rebel Debutante recently released in Trade paperback.

Here is a one sentence description: A fond, funny Southern-fried memoir about growing up a proper young lady…or not.

And the following praise:

“…Fields takes what should be an oxymoronic state of mind and makes it work for her like some crazy hybrid confection: soft on the outside, hard in the center…. Fields shows how a rebellious southern belle can survive almost anywhere.” – Carol Haggas Booklist

“…all about empowering the hearts and minds and spirits of young women…” – Jennifer Brett The Atlanta Journal-Constitution 

“…This is by far the best memoir I have ever read. Anna is my kind of chick! This hilariously true tale is better than any reality TV show. I think that this is the type of book that would interest any reader. Four stars!” – Bridget McNeill Barnes & Noble

The Divining Wand has scheduled a presentation/review of Confessions of a Rebel Debutante: A Memoir for Monday, February 28, 2011 but, for now, let’s meet the author through her “official” bio:

Anna Fields was born in Burlington, North Carolina, and attended Brown University. A former scriptwriter for As the World Turns, Guiding Light, and One Life to Live, she is also a successful playwright, screenwriter, and performance artist. Anna lives in New York City.

Now for even more revealing confessions from the “Rebel Deb:”

Q: How would you describe your life in 8 words?
A: From debutante to rebel and back, my dear.

Q: What is your motto or maxim
A: Eat well, sleep well, dream well, play hard and get along.

Q: How would you describe perfect happiness?
A: I’m religious, so I tend to think of happiness as closeness with God. The lack of want. Looking inward for happiness instead of outward for ambition. Being kind, for we are all fighting our own, silent battles. Practicing forgiveness in all its forms. Letting go of the past — something I never seem to be able to do, but I know leads to happiness, if not perfection.

Q: What’s your greatest fear?
A: Not realizing my potential. Running out of time before I write the eight or nine books that are stuck inside my head. Dying without letting my family and friends know how much I love, need and yet hate them at the same time — a three-part emotion that I often explore in my work.

Q: If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would you choose to be?
A: Right where I am.

Q: With whom in history do you most identify?
A: Eleanor of Aquitaine

Q: Which living person do you most admire?
A: My mother… and possibly either Erica John or Anne Rice

Q: What are your most overused words or phrases?
A: “Right?”
“like”
“indeed”

Q: If you could acquire any talent, what would it be?
A: To write children’s stories. I have so many ideas for them, and yet whenever I try to write for younger people I end up writing for older people.

Q: What is your greatest achievement?
A: Surviving.

Q: What’s your greatest flaw?
A: Taking life too seriously — and sweating the small stuff, which I believe no one should ever do.

Q: What’s your best quality?
A: Generosity — I want to adopt every animal I see, and help everyone who needs it. I end up being a guidance counselor to almost everyone I know.

Q: What do you regret most?
A: Putting my career over my friendships, back in my early twenties. Then again, where would I be today without my writing?

Q: If you could be any person or thing, who or what would it be?
A: I’m pretty happy being myself, but it might be nice to go back and be myself at 17 again. If not that, I’d love to be a man, just for a week or two. Just to see what it felt like on the other side of the glass ceiling.

Q: What trait is most noticeable about you?
A: My extremely blond hair and pale skin.

Q: Who is your favorite fictional hero?
A: Tough question! In the literary world, probably Lestat or Lady Chatterly… but mostly, my favorite fictional heroes come from television shows I adore. Dexter, anyone from Absolutely Fabulous or Six Feet Under. And Joan from Mad Men, for sure.

Q: Who is your favorite fictional villain?
A: Probably Richard III — then again, he was a real person… but Shakespeare makes him sound so much worse that I imagine he really was.

Q: If you could meet any athlete, who would it be and what would you say to him or her?
A: “Hi, Michael Vick. Or do you prefer, ‘Heartless, arrogant, self-righteous animal-hater?’”

Q: What is your biggest pet peeve?
A: Entitlement. Enough said.

Q: What is your favorite occupation, when you’re not writing?
A Running, drinking coffee or playing with my boyfriend and our dog, Jax.

Q: What’s your fantasy profession?
A: Hmmm. I’m pretty sure I’m living it.

Q: What 3 personal qualities are most important to you?
A: Generosity, kindness and loyalty.

Q: If you could eat only one thing for the rest of your days, what would it be?
A: Chocolate!

Q: What are your 5 favorite songs?
A: Anything from Mozart’s “Requiem for the Dead’
“All I Want is You” by U2
“Pictures of You” by The Cure
“Heart and Soul” by some 80’s band I loved in high school but now can’t remember its name
“Norwegian Wood” by The Beatles

Q: What are your 5 favorite books of all time?
A: “The Queen of the Damned”
“Confessions of a Shopaholic”
“The Vampire Lestat”
“Silas Marner”
“The Great Gatsby”

Multi-talented, honest, and most thought-provoking, Anna Fields — as a Rebel Deb — will entertain and enlighten if you follow her on Twitter, become a friend on Facebook and visit her blog, Rebel Debutante.

Why is Feminism Awesome? Because It Lets You Be a PERSON, Not a Random List of "Womanly Job Qualities"

2011-02-08T06:20:00.000-08:00

OMG! Whatever will we do? Women have been so busy educating ourselves and becoming productive members of society that we've neglected to do our "real" jobs, like cooking and cleaning! Boo-effing-hoo. Australia? YOU SUCK, MATE.

According to theFrisky.com...

"Whatever will the menfolk do?! Us modern hussies not only paint our lips and wear britches, but we’re losing our valuable lady skills too. There’s a study out of the Courier-Mail newspaper in Australia about how women under 30 are losing “female” skills, like cooking, cleaning and sewing. Only 20 percent of women under 30 surveyed said they could bake a cake and only 51 percent could cook a roast. Women of the Baby Boomer generation, however, said 85 percent could cook a roast and 45 percent could bake a cake.

I have never in my life needed to bake a cake or cook a roast. You know what? I don’t care to learn. But here is a list of more modern “womanly” skills the women of The Frisky do possess, which are a helluva lot more important:

I can pay my bills on time.
I can find a job.
I can multi-task.
I can keep my cool in stressful situations."

And most importantly, I'M NOT STUCK IN SOME STEREOTYPICAL IMAGE THAT SHOULD'VE DIED IN THE 1950's.

So there, Australian Courier-Mail Newspaper. Suck on THAT, you sexist freaks.

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

Yay for Tuscon :)

2011-02-02T15:52:00.000-08:00

Hey, ya'll! Just got another review in from Tuscon, AZ:

Read the whole article here... or just keep scrolling down for the juicy bits. :)

Confessions of a Rebel Debutante: A Memoir by Anna Fields

I haven’t found much amusing about debutants since the days of Brenda Frazier. (Brenda who? Google it.)
Anna Fields is as Southern as corn bread and grits and probably would have made a terrific debutante if she hadn’t been such a rebel. She grew up in North Carolina but was more at home hanging upside down from a dogwood tree than learning to curtsy and the finer points of Southern high society.
While trying to learn the basics by wearing talcum powder in her hair to “keep the curl,” wearing kid gloves, and dancing with middle school boys in their big brothers’ tuxes, she realized quite quickly that becoming a deb simply wasn’t in her DNA. After rebelling at her private all-girls finishing school, she enrolled at Brown University which was followed by a disastrous short-lived acting career in L.A.
This is a laugh-out-loud memoir that is as comforting and refreshing as a frosty glass of sweet tea — the table wine of the South — consumed on a shady porch during a hot summer day.

Time You Ran for the Border, Taco "Grade 'D' Worm Meat Still Counts... Right?" Bell!

2011-01-28T12:56:00.000-08:00

Remember the section of my book where I talk about the worm-farmer's daughter? Well, according to her father, his best customer was.... you guessed it! Taco "We use Grade D Beef" Bell!

According to articles all over the web (and this one below from Socialife.com), Worm-Meat Bell is now being sued. And they're claiming the allegations are false and they use 100% ground beef. Riiiiiight. Like a worm-farmer would lie!

An Alabama law firm has filed a class action lawsuit against Taco Bell that claims the chain is falsely calling its taco filling “seasoned beef” and “seasoned ground beef” when allegedly the mixture, which would be more properly called “Taco Meat Filling,” only contains 36% beef. Um, WTF!?

Hmmm…so what the hell is in this filling? Hopefully not soylent green. Interestingly enough (or disgustingly enough) it includes…

Water
Wheat oats
Soy lecithin
Maltrodrextrin
Anti-dusting agent (?)
Autolyzed yeast extract
Modified corn starch
Sodium phosphate
Isolated oat product
The USDA defines “Taco Meat Filling” as 40% meat, so if the lawsuit is correct, it seems like Taco Bell would have to up their beef levels to even qualify for that. Anyway, please feel free to continue eating our gordita while I munch on my nacho bell grande. Because you know what, that shit still hits the spot.

It's About that Time, Folks!

2011-01-27T16:54:00.001-08:00

Hey, ya'll. :)

Sorry to have been so MIA lately, but I've been getting ready for the paperback release of "Confessions of a Rebel Debutante!"

Fresh new purdy pb's will hit stores on February 1, 2011. In the meantime, my friend "Girl from the Ghetto" is giving away two free copies on her blog. Check out her site to enter or keep reading a bit of what she has to say...

Confessions of a Rebel Debutante Book Giveaway

I’m thrilled to announce that I have 2 copies of Confessions of a Rebel Debutante by Anna Fields to giveaway!

Anna Fields, you had me at "You can take the girl out of the South, but you can’t take the South out of the girl!" I love nothing more than reading a story set in the south, or devouring a good memoir. Anna deliciously describes her childhood and what life was like going through (and eventually getting kicked out of) cotillion was like, beginning at age eleven, all the while making fun of everything about debbing including herself down to her big butt. After seeing her photo on the back of my book, I had a hard time believing she was ever fat, because she reminds me a little bit of Reese Witherspoon. But she forces me to believe it with tales of being a tall girl who wore glasses and had bad skin and a white girl ‘fro after reading her hilarious cheerleading tryout story to the tune of Too Legit to Quit.

Who would have thought a Winston-Salem girl could escape society by getting an Ivy League education, move to New York and LA and work for major celebrities such as Diana Ross and Jill Zarin, let alone act alongside the best of young hollywood in a major motion picture called Mona Lisa Smile, and eventually become a successful playwright, standup comedian and writer for As the World Turns? I can, after reading this book. I cracked up when Ms. Fields starts her memoir off with this line – I’ve only got one good story: How I became a Rebel Debutante. She’s got more than a hundred good stories in this book alone and I can not begin to cover most of them.

As much as I enjoyed hearing what life was like behind the scenes of debbing, I found the heart of Anna’s story in her own personal story, and not the story of the other rich and often drunk debutantes. Things really get rolling in the book when she began writing about her life at boarding school, the prestigious Wellington Academy run by a woman named Miss Freeze. Anna never fit in to begin with, but once she became best friends with her wild roommate Alma who was a fan of public ladyscaping, known as the campus queer for her unladylike and non-deb ways, and who told outrageous tall tales that even involved the Playboy Mansion, well, fun and adventures began that were even better than attending cotillion-related events. Alma, needless to say, was a bad influence on a Anna to begin with, but the two of them together had them both on some crazy adventures. They got caught drinking at a college fraternity party, and once stumbled across a girl from school who had just been raped, but they still were the ones who got in trouble because they were caught vacationing on the wrong side of town in Myrtle Beach, let alone their biggest adventure that included a tragedy I’ll let you discover on your own.

Who would have thought a Winston-Salem girl could escape society by getting an Ivy League education, move to New York and LA and work for major celebrities such as Diana Ross and Jill Zarin, let alone act alongside the best of young hollywood in a major motion picture called Mona Lisa Smile, and eventually become a successful playwright, standup comedian and writer for As the World Turns? I can, after reading this book. I cracked up when Ms. Fields starts her memoir off with this line – I’ve only got one good story: How I became a Rebel Debutante. She’s got more than a hundred good stories in this book alone and I can not begin to cover most of them.

You would be absolutely bonkers not to read this book, because not only would you not get to learn all about her very interesting and entertaining life, but you would miss out reading all of the celebrity dirt she has collected through the years. My god, the things she has written in this book and didn’t even hint at on the cover or in the press! An unnamed female Grey’s Anatomy star telling her they loved anal and want to make out with her, her interview with Dr. Ruth that had the famous sex counselor personally offended, and her time spent working a private waiting gig at Calabasas home for three sisters (who, to me, had to have been Kim, Kourtney and Khloe Kardashian) which ended in a FBI drug bust.

Visit Indiebound to purchase a copy of Confessions of a Rebel Debutante for yourself.

Contest ends Saturday, February 5, 2011 at midnight. Good luck to you all!

This Week's Celeb Rebel Deb: Elizabeth Edwards

2010-12-07T15:05:00.003-08:00

"The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered," she wrote. "We know that. And yes, there are certainly times when we aren't able to muster as much strength and patience as we would like. It's called being human. But I have found that in the simple act of living with hope, and in the daily effort to have a positive impact in the world, the days I do have are made all the more meaningful and precious. And for that I am grateful."

RIP, sweet lady.

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

This Week's Celeb Rebel Deb: Susie the Dog

2010-12-02T15:40:00.000-08:00

RALEIGH – Among the new state laws taking effect this week is one called Susie's Law. It creates stiffer penalties in animal cruelty cases.

Beginning Wednesday, it will be a felony to starve, torture, mutilate or disfigure an animal. Offenders could be sentenced to 8 months in prison.

The law is named after Susie, a Greensboro dog who was set on fire and left to die. She put her paw of approval on the bill in June when Gov. Bev Perdue signed it into law.

Lashawn Whitehead was convicted and sentenced to probation for hurting her.

Susie is now happy and healthy with her new adopted family.

Simply fyi: Rep. Nick Mackey, a Charlotte Democrat, attempted to water down the measure and voted against passage. An organization that has fought regulations on puppy breeders also spoke out against the bill.

“I’m asking you not to spend money on something that’s not needed,” said Henri McClees, speaking on behalf of the N.C. Sporting Dog Association. “North Carolina already has strong laws.”

So, for all you folks who live in Charlotte, if you ever get a chance to vote against Nick Mackey, go for it! And kudos to anyone who eggs Henri McClees' house. :)

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

National Novel Writing Month - Winner!

2010-11-27T16:22:00.000-08:00

I just finished the first 50,253 words of my next book, ya'll. It's called "Thin." Fingers crossed for the next 50,000! I expect this baby will top out around 300 pages. Wish me luck!

xoxo
Rebel Deb

This Week's Celeb Rebel Deb: Norris Church Mailer

2010-11-22T18:23:00.000-08:00

Sorry I've been a bit MIA lately, ya'll. I've been devastated by the loss of my good friend and proclaimed "surrogate mother," Norris. The last time I saw her, we ate tempura and sushi and talked about how much we had in common. She was an only child who grew up in the South. I was an only child who grew up in the South. She's been exposed to big cities and big celebrities and all the nonsense and hoopla that goes with both at a young age. Guess what? So had I. She loved powerfully; so have I. She worshipped the written word. So do I.

And now, the woman who got up in from of 950 people at a conference we were both invited to this past summer in Indianapolis and called me her "would-be daughter," who wanted me to meet her son, John Buffalo, because I "would love him and want to marry him," who told me all the secrets and stories she'd left out of her memoir about Norman, "A Ticket to the Circus"... is gone. She's gone and I'll never see her high-cheekboned, beautiful face again.

The least I can do is make her an official Celeb Rebel Debutante and pray with all my heart that wherever you are, Norris, you've got all the happiness life owed you. I love you and always will. You are remembered, sweet lady. With or without the circus surrounding you.

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

NEW YORK (AP) — She was half the age of Norman Mailer when they met and their bond was as fast and fateful as a mortal's coupling with a god.

Norris Church Mailer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author's sixth and final wife, would enjoy and endure the ride of her life.

An actress, Wilhemina model, author and painter, Mailer died at her home in Brooklyn on Sunday. She was 61. Her passing was announced on the website of the Norman Mailer Society, which in a statement said she passed away "after a long and valiant struggle with cancer." A longtime family friend and assistant, Dwayne Raymond, said he and her two children and some close friends were at her home when she died.

As Norris Mailer wrote in her 2010 memoir, "A Ticket to the Circus," she was a single mother in her mid-20s when she met the then-52-year-old Norman Mailer at a 1975 cocktail party in his honor in Russellville, Ark. Their attraction was immediate, even if he was breaking up with his fourth wife and seeing the woman who would become his fifth. Norris Church became No. 6 in 1980. A son, John Buffalo, had been born two years earlier.

The new Mrs. Mailer discovered the consequences of fame. The macho Norman Mailer was charming, callous, wise and infuriating. Through her husband, Norris met Jacqueline Kennedy and Imelda Marcos, Woody Allen and Fidel Castro. Norman Mailer could talk about anything; she likened their banter to the rapport between Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. A sign of destiny: The Mailers both were born on Jan. 31.

But even as the author publicly rhapsodized over her auburn-haired beauty, he discouraged his wife's work, avoided her when he learned she had cancer and had affairs with several women, some of whom were referenced in his books and even showed up at social functions, at his invitation.

The tension became public by the early 1990s through gossip columns and in an ABC television interview when she told newsman Sam Donaldson that "one day Norman is a lion, the next day he's a monkey. Occasionally he's a lamb, and a large part of the time he's a jackass."

They drifted. She threatened to leave. He resisted. She stayed.

"I knew I was going to be with him for the rest of my life, and I think he felt the same way," she wrote. When the author died, in 2007, she was at his side and remembered his final moments: "His mouth spread in a huge smile, and his eyes were alive with excitement, as if he were seeing something amazing. Then he was gone."

A road worker's daughter raised in Little Rock and Atkins, Ark., she was born Barbara Jean Davis (a name not unlike Norma Jean Baker, the real name of Marilyn Monroe, subject of the only Norman Mailer book she had read when they met), and by age 3 had won a contest as Miss Little Rock. Popular in high school ("I was at the center of everything"), she attended Arkansas Polytechnic College and dated a childhood acquaintance, Larry Norris.

They married in 1969, and had a son, Matthew, two years later. But, as she recalled, they were too different — he preferring solitude, she preferring company. They divorced in 1974. As she began a modeling career, she changed her name to Norris Church, the last name suggested by Mailer because she attended church often as a child.

Tall and long-legged, the newly single Church enjoyed "a string of boyfriends," including Bill Clinton, then a candidate for Congress. He had a well-stocked staff of female admirers, she wrote, but clearly favored a plainly dressed blonde named Hillary Rodham who "had an intelligence none of the prettier girls in the room had."

"I would have so liked to be able to talk to him about world affairs and politics, or art or literature, or anything, frankly," Mailer wrote. "But we frankly never talked much."

Norris Mailer never considered herself in Norman Mailer's class as an author, but she did have a broad interest in the arts. Her paintings were featured in several one-woman shows. She was a member of the Actors Studio, appeared in the television adaptation of Mailer's classic "The Executioner's Song" and had a brief part, with her husband, in the film version of "Ragtime." She also wrote two novels, "Windchill Summer" and "Cheap Diamonds."

"I'd had a career. Family. I once had ambitions and dreams that had nothing to do with Norman Mailer," she wrote. "Norman changed my life and the ripples from that first meeting in Arkansas have spread through many others. I wouldn't trade with anybody in the world. And who knows what he's doing on the other side? I'm curious to catch up with him and find out."

The Rebel Debutante Shop - Now on Etsy!

2010-10-30T14:44:00.001-07:00

Click HERE to check it out, y'all. :)

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

So... You Want to Get a PhD in the Humanities, Eh?

2010-10-26T12:42:00.000-07:00

Click on the picture BELOW to view this hilarious short film, y'all!

This Week's Celeb Rebel Deb: Jimmy "The Rent is Too Damn High!" McMillian

2010-10-20T15:41:00.000-07:00

Crazy "Rent Is Too Damn High" Candidate Steals the Show at NY Gov. Debate
by Matt Cherette

We told you that tonight's New York gubernatorial debate—with seven participants!—would be crazy, but we could have never anticipated this level of it: watch as Jimmy McMillan, of the "Rent Is Too Damn High" party, uh... introduces himself.

"Confessions of a Rebel Debutante," Now Available FOR PRE-ORDER in PAPERBACK!

2010-10-15T08:17:00.000-07:00

Yep, that's right: We're. All. Doomed. And Here's Why...

2010-10-05T17:24:00.001-07:00

Why We're Doomed

— By Kate Sheppard

| Tue Oct. 5, 2010 10:00 AM PDT

— Flickr/bastardo! (Creative Commons).

I don't typically weigh in on green consumer products or environmental marketing. But I'm making an exception given today's troubling news that Frito-Lay is ditching the biodegradable SunChips bag it unveiled 18 months ago because consumers have complained it was "too noisy." Seriously? The company is bagging the bag because American couch potatoes can't hear their TVs over the sound of their chip sack?

I don't necessarily blame Frito-Lay. It's a corporation and its job is to keep customers happy (and make money), so I can forgive them a little timidity on the issue, given that SunChips sales were apparently plummeting. What miffs me is that a little noise was apparently too much for Americans to handle. SunChips sales have reportedly declined more than 11 percent in the past 52 weeks because of the bags. The bags are made from plant-based materials and are 100 percent compostable, which was a pretty big deal—that means you can keep your chip habit without producing a ton of landfill waste. But due to the noise complaints, the company is pulling them immediately, USA Today reports:

The company is returning them to their former bags that can't be recycled — but won't wake the neighbors — while it works frantically to come up with a new, quieter eco-friendly bag.

The noise of the bag — due to an unusual molecular structure that makes the bag more rigid — has been compared to everything from lawnmowers to jet engines.

The article notes that there's a Facebook group with more than 44,000 members called "Sorry But I Can't Hear You Over This SunChips Bag," further evidence that the bags aren't all that popular. Actually, there are at least 153 different SunChip-themed Facebook groups, for whatever that's worth. For now at least, the company still has up its website touting the wonders of the bag, which notes: "Although our compostable bag is a bit louder, we hope you'll appreciate its environmental benefit." There's also a video showing how the bags break down in 14 weeks that concludes with the tag line "Change is irresistable" (which, um, apparently isn't the case).

I'll admit that the bags are certainly a lot louder than your regular non-biodegradable type. The noise is certainly enough to alert your living companions to your snack problem. (Maybe Frito-Lay should re-market it as a diet product if the noise is enough to discourage constant munching.) But is that really impacting Americans' ability to enjoy their chips? Is this what it comes down to—we want our chips crunchy but our bags have to remain silent?

I can't think of a more absurd example of how resistant to change Americans really are. It's not unlike the never-ending debate over compact fluorescent light bulbs; now that all of the other dumb arguments against the more efficient bulbs have been refuted repeatedly, the only one opponents have left is that they simply don't care for the way they look.

Of course everyone is entitled to have opinions about the relative aesthetics of consumer products, but should those really trump the environmental benefits? In the grand scheme of things, this is the absolute, bare-minimum level of sacrifice Americans are asked to make. They still get to eat the same chips, they just come from a different bag; they still light their homes, but with a slightly different bulb. But apparently that's still too much. Even worse is the fact that Americans can't muster the support to pass a climate bill, but a bunch of angry couch potatoes can successfully mobilize to force Frito-Lay to drop their innovative packaging. If the sound of a crinkly eco-chip bag is too much to handle, then the human species really is screwed.

This Week's Celeb Rebel Deb: Tony Curtis

2010-10-01T00:08:00.000-07:00

"At 17, I dreamed of seeing the world. At 19, I had been around the world and back."

- Tony Curtis

RIP, Spartacus.

xoxo,

Rebel Deb

The Rebel Deb on "Reading with Robin" - WHJJ 920

2010-09-29T18:13:00.001-07:00

I was up in Providence, RI, last Saturday, being interviewed by the lovely, adorable Robin Ringer (and her cutie daughter, Emmie!) at WHJJ 920. Her live show, "Reading with Robin," promotes all things books, and she regularly interviews some of the heaviest hitting authors of our age. I felt privileged to become one of them.

Click HERE to listen to my interview. And HERE to check out Robin on the web!

xoxo,

Rebel Deb

Happy Roald Dahl Day, Everyone!

2010-09-13T10:22:00.000-07:00

I, for one, will be celebrating by reading "The BFG," followed by "The Vicar of Nibbleswick," all while devouring a sugar-sprinkled peach. :)

xoxo,

Rebel Deb

a HA! "I knew those Thin Mints tasted ungodly!"

2010-09-09T14:39:00.001-07:00

The Girl Scouts are selling you lesbian, baby-killing feminist militia cookies

By VANESSA | Published: SEPTEMBER 8, 2010
Seriously, just look at that logo. SO gay.
"We’re a wee late getting to this, but it’s just too good not to mention. And no, this is not an Onion headline.
When the Girl Scouts aren’t helping young girls become confident and productive members of society, they’re apparently serving as a feminist training ground for godless, man-hating, pro-abortion lesbianism — at least according to Hans Zeiger, Republican candidate for Washington’s House of Representatives.
That’s right, this GOP candidate thinks that the nearly century-old organization has been brainwashing your children by feeding them lesbian abortion cookies, according to a statement that was found from earlier this decade:
One might wonder why the Girl Scouts have been spared the painful attacks that have been launched upon the Boy Scouts by the Left in recent years. The reasons are simple: the Girl Scouts allow homosexuals and atheists to join their ranks, and they have become a pro-abortion, feminist training corps.… If the Girl Scouts of America can’t get back to teaching real character, perhaps it will be time to look for our cookies elsewhere.”

I knew those Thin Mints tasted ungodly! While Zeiger has tried to cover his tracks by having the statement removed (along with a number of other problematic remarks found), the media beat him to the punch. So what was his response? That he removed them because the statements don’t represent his values anymore, adding that they would be a “distraction” from the campaign. Yeah, no shit — well, at least a distraction from the campaign he’s trying to put forth. Because I’d consider this pretty eye-opening information regarding the campaign, not a distraction, if you ask me."

By | Published: SEPTEMBER 8, 2hed: SEPTEMBER 8, 20

The REAL Rolling Stone Magazine "True Blood" Cover!

2010-09-08T18:38:00.001-07:00

You're welcome. :)

xoxo,

Rebel Deb

More Food For Thought: "5 Stupid, Unfair and Sexist Things Expected of Men," by Greta Christina

2010-08-29T14:05:00.000-07:00

We know the many ways sexism hurts women. But we don't talk as much about how sexism hurts men.

by Greta Christina

Petition »

If you have a scrap of progressive politics in your bones, it's no surprise to you that sexism hurts women. Like, duh. That's kind of the definition of the word.

But we don't talk as much about how sexism hurts men. Understandably. When you look at the grotesque ways women are damaged by sexism -- from economic inequality to political disenfranchisement to literal, physical abuse -- it makes perfect sense that we'd care more about how sexism and patriarchy and rigid gender roles affect women, than we do about how they affect men.

But men undoubtedly get screwed up by this stuff, too. Not screwed up as badly as women, to be sure... but not trivially, either. I care about it. And I think other feminists -- and other women and men who may not see themselves as feminists -- ought to care about it, too.

I care about this stuff for a lot of reasons. I care because I have men and boys in my life, men and boys who matter to me: I see how they get twisted into knots by gender roles that are not only insanely rigid but impossibly contradictory, and it makes me sick and sad and seriously pissed off. I care because I care about justice: fair is fair, and I don't want to solve the problem of gender inequality by making things suck worse for men.

And I care for entirely pragmatic, even Machiavellian reasons. I care because I care about feminism... and I think one of the best things we can do to advance feminism is to get more men on board. If we can convince more men that sexism screws up their lives, too -- and that life shared with free and equal women is a whole lot more fun -- we're going to get a lot more men on our side. (Like the bumpersticker a friend once had on her truck: "Feminists Fuck Better.")

So I've been looking more carefully at the specific ways sexism hurts men. In particular, I've been looking at our society's expectations of men, our very definitions of maleness. I've been looking at how rigid and narrow many of these expectations are, creating a razor-thin window of acceptable manly behavior that you'd have to be a professional tightrope walker to navigate. (Which would be a problem, since "professional tightrope walker" is definitely outside the parameters of acceptable manliness.) I've been looking at how so many of these expectations are not only rigid, but totally contradictory, creating a vision of idealized manhood that's not just ridiculous but literally unattainable. And I've been asking the men in my life -- friends, colleagues, family members, community members, guys I know on the Internet -- what kinds of expectations they get about Being A Man and how those expectations affect them.

Here is a list of five:

1. Fight, fight, fight! When I did my informal, unscientific poll of the men in my life and asked what was expected of them as men, this one came up a lot. Like, a lot a lot. Like, an amount that took me seriously by surprise. My slice of society -- and the slice shared by most men I know -- is comfortably middle-class: educated, chatty, civilized to a fault, and mostly very peaceful. We resolve our conflicts with words, with glares, with strategies, with the law as a last resort. Even raised voices and insulting language are considered somewhat outre. Not counting sporting events, I could count on one hand the number of physical fights I've witnessed in the last decade. Or even threats of physical fights.

And yet, man after man that I talked to brought this one up. The willingness to, as my friend Michael put it, "actually, physically, with fists or other weapons, fight" -- to defend one's honor (or the honor of one's lady, or country, or sports team, or whatever) -- is more central to how men are taught to see manhood than I had any notion of. Even if conflicts never get that far -- even if you never actually have to pound anyone with your fists -- being both willing and able to do so is a weirdly high priority in the Penis Club. As Adam said, "You would rather get a concussion than be called less than a man." And Damion told me this story: "I'm in the passenger seat when my (relatively butch) sister-in-law flips off some guy in Baltimore traffic. He jumps out of the car, enraged, and my first thought is 'Great, now I've got to beat the shit out of this guy.'"

Which puts men in a nasty conundrum. The laws and expectations of our civilized society are designed to keep physical violence to a minimum. And for good reason: physical violence is, you know, destructive. So men are expected -- indeed required -- to avoid and deflect confrontation, and to resolve conflicts without resorting to violence.

And when they do, they get called pussies.

Nice.

2. Be a good husband/partner/lover -- but don't care too much what women think.

This one falls squarely into the category of "not just insanely rigid but logically contradictory" -- a damned if you do, damned if you don't conundrum that ensures a lifetime of self-conscious anxiety if you let yourself take it seriously. Being a good husband and father -- a good provider who cares for his family and treats women with respect -- is central to the male mythos. And being good in bed has become a crucial part of this mythos as well. It's no longer enough for a Real Man to nail a lot of women: he has to get every single one of them off. Performance anxiety -- it's not just for hard-ons anymore! Not that I have any problem with the idea that women's sexual pleasure ought to matter to men who have sex with them. The problem lies with the notion that women's sexual pleasure is entirely men's responsibility; that pleasing women ought to be completely instinctive; that women's satisfaction is a victory to be achieved instead of an experience to be shared; and that this satisfaction has to be accomplished entirely with the man's hard dick, and not with his hands or tongue or toys or mind. (But that's a rant for another time.)

Yet at the same time, men aren't supposed to care too much what women think. Years ago, when I was married to a man, we were trying to make some difficult decisions together about how to arrange our careers and lives (would he work full-time and maybe even overtime to help put me through grad school?). When he asked the guys he worked with for feedback and advice, he mostly got a load of derision for involving me too much in his decisions about his job. "Pussywhipped," I believe, was the charming terminology being used. Yes, he was supposed to be a good provider and build the financial foundation for our life... but he was somehow supposed to accomplish this without asking me what kind of life I wanted, and without any willingness to compromise about what kind of life he wanted. For himself, or for the two of us. I guess he was supposed to be The Decider.

Of course, while it was horribly unmanly for him to be guided by his wife, it was perfectly fine for him to be guided by the guys he worked with at the auto shop. As Scott said, the TV show "'King of Queens' is a good example, I think because though he tries to be a good husband and companion, he often finds himself in conflict with what his friends want or with his own sense of what should be considered masculine." Men's definitions of manhood are supposed to come from other men -- not from women. They're just not supposed to care all that much what women think of them.

You see this a lot in fashion advice for men. Men aren't supposed to look like dorks or slobs, of course... but they can't look like they care about their looks, either. Men -- straight men, anyway -- have to achieve that perfect, razor's edge balance between good grooming and carelessness. You're supposed to look good -- but those good looks have to seem effortless. Looking like you care how you look makes you look like a woman. Or a gay man. (More on that in a tic.) Women are supposed to be the ones prettying themselves up into objects of desire. Men are not supposed to be the objects of desire. They're supposed to be the subjects. And subjects aren't supposed to care what their objects think of them.

Except when they're trying to get those objects to come.

[facepalm]

3. Be hot to trot. Always. With anybody.

This is another expectation that came up with striking (although hardly surprising) frequency. Men are supposed to want sex -- and be ready for sex -- all the time. With pretty much anyone of the right gender who makes themselves available for it. In his evaluation of male gender roles, Michael T. says, "To be a man you must use sexual conquest as a gauge for manhood." Jraoul quoted a song, Lou Christie's "Lightning Strikes," with lyrics that go, "When I see her lips begging to be kissed, I can't stop, I can't stop myself... When I see a sign that she wants to make time, I can't stop, I can't stop myself...." And in his litany of male gender expectations, my friend Michael listed, "Have sex with any woman who says yes, or who offers herself. If not, I must be gay, right?"

It's weird. An intense, even predatory sexual desire is a big part of the Manly Man picture. And yet that picture doesn't allow for men to have preferences. Or rather: They're allowed and even expected to have preferences -- as long as those preferences conform with social norms. I vividly remember an article from a late '60s Playboy, analyzing men's personalities based on what kind of female bodies they liked: liking big breasts made you cool, while liking big butts or legs meant you were immature. And that's hardly a relic of the '60s: even today, lots of men feel pressured to date women who meet the current standards of female attractiveness. Lots of men, for instance, feel pressured to date fashionably thin women: even if they personally prefer women with more meat on their bones, they feel embarrassed introducing them to their buddies. Like dating a fat chick is a slam on their ego. Like it means they're not high enough on the primate status ladder to acquire a high-status mate.

So yes, men are allowed to be hotter for some girls than others. But they're still supposed to get it on with anything that moves and spreads its legs. Anything female and not grotesque, anyway. Men are expected to have sexual desire... but that desire can't be their own. It can't be idiosyncratic. Or even all that personal. It can't belong to them.

And for the sweet love of Loki and all the gods in Valhalla, it can't be based on emotion.

4. Stiff upper lip.

Because for men, nothing at all can be based on emotion. Generic sexual desire, and the desire to punch someone's lights out, are pretty much the only emotions men are supposed to experience. And if they have the gall (or the lack of self-control) to experience their emotions, they bloody well better not let on about it.

This one is so common, it's almost ubiquitous. At least half the men I talked to made a point about it... and a bunch of the ones who didn't mention it explicitly alluded to it in other ways. David B. says he learned that men are supposed to be "reserved emotionally. Apparently men are only supposed to be passionate about sex, cars, sports and beer. And even then, passionate is not the 'appropriate' way for a man to describe his feeling about something."

David M. got the same memo: "No whining, no complaining, and no crying." Michael T., got it, too: "To be a man you must be non emotional and disconnected." And the other Michael: "Have no emotional intelligence / don't show too many emotions." Andrew says he learned that a man "is supposed to be hard as nails and is to show no emotion." Jason learned that being a man means "not showing emotion, being 'tough' so to speak -- and that one is from peers, family and all of the above." Dean points out "the usual messages about big boys don't cry (yes, we do) and how a real man doesn't complain (yes, they do)." Scott also points to "the boys-don't-cry mantra." Ben T. says, "I hate the fact that men can't be scared of anything." James says he learned to appear emotionless so effectively that "I did not shed a single tear when my dad died during heart surgery." And Georges points out, "It always amazed me how brave I had to be to allow my feelings to show."

This one, I would argue, is more crippling than all the rest combined. I, personally, might be able to manage a life where I always had to be willing to fight or fuck; where I had to walk an impossible tightrope between caring what my partner thought without caring too much; where I had to twist myself into knots to avoid any hint that I might be attracted to people of the same sex. (See below.) But a life where I had to deny my most basic animal emotions -- love and fear, passion and grief -- just to not get treated as a gender freak? That would send me screaming 'round the bend. (More than I already am, I mean.)

5. Fear of being perceived as gay.

This is kind of a funny one. Acceptance of actual homosexuality has increased by a staggering amount in the last few decades. In less than 40 years, the LGBT rights movement has gone from fighting for our right to not be put in mental institutions and lobotomized, to fighting for our right to get legally married. (And, okay, the right to not be fired from our jobs or kicked out of the U.S. military... but still.) And social acceptance of queers has paralleled our political acceptance. If you actually are a gay man, the "Don't be even a little bit gay" message is being replaced, more and more every day, with the message, "Well... okay."

But if you're a straight man? It's a very different story. In TV shows and movies, homosexual panic is still a reliable source of comic hijinks. Wacky situations in which straight men are mistaken for gay -- Chandler and Joey on "Friends" being out together with a baby, the "Not that there's anything wrong with that" gag on "Seinfeld" -- these are a staple of modern comedy. And that staple is usually stapled to the assumption that, for straight men, being mistaken for gay is a humiliating blow to their masculinity. You see it in fashion/ dating/ etiquette advice for men, too, which often focuses to an almost hysterical degree on walking that razor- thin line between looking like an urbane, sophisticated man of the world... while still, for the sweet love of Jesus, not being mistaken for gay.

And you definitely see it in some very common male sexual fears. I've read way too many letters to way too many sex advice columns from way too many straight men saying they like -- how shall I put this delicately? -- being on the receiving end of anal pleasure... but don't want to explore this eminently delightful activity, because they're afraid it means they're gay. Or because their female partners are afraid it means they're gay. (Somewhat testy note to straight men and their female partners: No, it doesn't. Wanting a woman to fuck you in the ass does not make you gay. Any more than wanting a woman to suck your cock does. Please.)

Now, I will say that these attitudes are beginning to change. The advances of the LGBT movement have freed things up for straights as well as queers, and the younger generation is a lot more fluid and casual about sexual orientation than mine ever was. As my friend Ben pointed out, "The loosening of roles that accompanied feminism and the gay rights movement probably benefited straight men at least as much as it did women and gay men... Witness metrosexuality: now that being mistaken for gay isn't a disaster, men have more fashion leeway." And Adam, who describes himself as "effeminate, though heterosexual," says that being assumed to be gay "gave me a pass on some of the more restrictive rules of masculinity. After all, nobody really bothered to tell me to 'man up' when I sounded 'fruity' anyway."

But at the same time, as gay visibility has increased, the likelihood of being mistaken for gay has gone way, way up. And as a result, the number of opportunities for anxious, gay-panic freakouts has gone up as well. Being mistaken for gay isn't as disastrous as it once was -- it's more of a laugh line and less of a petrifying threat -- but it also happens a lot more often. And the anxiety it still creates for a lot of straight men is a lot more constant... even if it isn't as severe.

So What Now?

And I've just barely started. I don't have nearly enough space here to write the full-length novel I could write on this subject. I've skipped some of the biggest and most important gender expectations of men: the expectations of competition, of status consciousness, of financial success, strength and athleticism, leadership skills, mechanical skills, easy erectile functionality, a dehumanizing attitude towards women, giving a crap about sports. Heck, men get a clear social message that, in order to be manly, they have to be tall. What the heck are you supposed to do about that?

What the heck are any of us supposed to do about any of this?

Well, having unloaded all this depressing crap, I think it's important to deliver some good news: There are ways out of this, and around it, and through it. A lot of men I talked about this said that yes, they were certainly aware of the rigid expectations held of them as men... but they didn't personally feel hugely constrained by them. Sure, they were aware of these expectations. But they also felt comfortable rejecting them. Or embracing the parts they liked, and rejecting the parts they didn't. Or subverting them, in creative and fun and sexy ways.

And many men pointed out that, while they're certainly getting a super-sized serving of narrow, stupid cultural messages about How To Be A Man, they're also getting a decent helping of smarter, broader messages about Not Listening To That Stupid Shit. Plenty of men have gotten spiffy, role-modely lessons and examples about being non-violent, respectful of women, emotionally honest, sexually honest, and just generally their own best selves... from sources ranging from pop culture icons to their own fathers and mothers. As jraoul pointed out, "Do I think men are given rigid and/or narrow expectations about maleness? Well, sure! And we are also given fluid and/or wide ones. Depends on who's doing the giving."

Admittedly, because of my own personality and proclivities, the men in my life tend to be -- how shall we put this? -- outside the mainstream of conventional American society. ("Big nerdy pinko freaks" would be another way to put it.) And a lot of them are gay or bi, which skews the sampling even more. But just like lots of feminist women are able to laugh off the sitcoms and billboards and women's magazines and live however the frack we want, lots of feminist men are able to unload the John Wayne/Cary Grant/"What kind of man reads Playboy" crap they got loaded with -- or, depending on their generation, the Rambo/Tom Cruise/Maxim magazine crap -- and just get on with their lives.

Different people feel more affected by gender expectations than others. Some of us -- women and men alike -- still hear these voices in the back of our heads, still feel them shaping our reflexes, still see a need to consciously drag these messages into the light so we know how to recognize them and have an easier time tossing them overboard. And some folks -- again, both women and men -- feel like this is really not that big a deal. Yes, they say, society wants men to be one way and women to be another. Who cares what society wants? For some people, it takes years of introspection and therapy and processing to unload this junk. Some people never unlearn it, in fact; some people let their whole lives be run by it. And other people seem to unload it just by deciding to do it.

So I don't know what to tell you about how to do that.

All I can tell you is that it's totally worth it."

xoxo,

Rebel Deb

Happy Birthday, 19th Amendment!

2010-08-26T17:49:00.001-07:00

Ninety years ago today, women finally won the vote.

After over seven decades of organizing and fighting in every state in the union, the 19th amendment was ratified on August 26, 1920.

Women have never taken the right to vote for granted. In fact, women repeatedly turn out to the polls in larger numbers than any other population in this nation.

And, today, not only are more women serving in our state legislatures and in Congress, but we have the first woman Speaker of the House in history.

We salute you, suffrage! Even though not all of us appreciate you as much as we should... :)

And btw, you look great for 90!

xoxo,

Rebel Deb

Food For Thought. Today's Topic: "10 reasons Why Gay Marriage is Wrong," by Mitchell Sturges

2010-08-25T12:51:00.001-07:00

"1) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.

2) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

3) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

4) Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can't marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.

5) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Britany Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

6) Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn't be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren't full yet, and the world needs more children.

7) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

8) Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America.

9) Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

10) Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven't adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans."

So... is it love or gender that makes a marriage? Thoughts, anyone?

xoxo,

Rebel Deb

Happy Birthday to the Rebel Deb!

2010-08-13T21:16:00.001-07:00

Today, I didn't feel so pretty. Today, I woke up already dreading the night. And why? Because at 8:25pm - on the dot - I would turn 29. The big 2-9. The death knoll sounding the final year of my youth.

I spent a good 10 hours roaming the beautiful, immaculate streets of Charleston, SC. I must say, this is one of the best and brightest cities I've ever visited. The first coffee shop I went into was full of smiling workers and managed by an amiable owner who offered me directions to the nearest public bathroom (I'd drunk about three cups of iced coffee by this point), simply because he didn't have one. Apparently, the closest ladies room was at City Hall (?!), which scared me at first -- I immediately imagined seedy, grimy facilities covered in seedier, grimier visitors, but no! When I got down to Meeting Street, only about three blocks on foot, it was beautiful! And the bathroom were the best part! The walls and structure were made of clean, black and white marble. The lighting was soft and pleasant. The toilets were well-kempt and profession. The whole building made of sculpted architecture that reminded me of an 18th century church. And then a nice, little ole lady came in to wash her hands and said, "Hey there, dear! How pretty you are!"

What more could a girl ask for on her 29th birthday?

xoxo

Sea turtles are listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act, and the 80 or so volunteers with the Emerald Isle Sea Turtle Protection Program patrol the town’s 12.5-miles beach strand from May 1 through the end of August to identify nests and monitor them through the time that they hatch.

All nest sites are roped off in a 10-foot-by-10-foot square and marked with red flagging. A large metal post includes the nest number and a sign indicating it’s a federally protected species.

Craig said they see a small number of problems every season but they are typically minor and often unintentional, such as damage from someone passing by in the dark or children playing and chasing after something that goes in the nest area.

But what they’ve seen recently has included stakes pulled up, flagging torn down and one of the large sign posts removed and found several blocks down the beach.

“We don’t know who, we don’t know why, we just know it has happened,” Craig said. “Every year we see a few things torn down -- maybe someone stumbles across a stake during the night -- but when poles are being pulled up and flagging is being taken down, this is not accidental anymore.”

Craig estimates that five or so nests have been disturbed in some fashion. At this point they don’t know if any walking or trampling over the nests caused any physical harm to the eggs yet to hatch.

“We’re trying hard to protect these sea turtles, and we don’t want anything to happen to the nests,” Craig said.

It is a federal crime to tamper with the nests, he said.

Along Emerald Isle’s beach strand, 22 loggerhead nests have been identified so far this year, which is the highest they’ve seen in 10 years, Craig said.

He said there’s still the potential for a few more nests before the season ends. They saw their first hatching on July 23.

With both nesting and hatching occurring at the same time, Craig said this is a particularly active time for sea turtles on the beach, with adults and hatchlings potentially in the area at the same time.

Anyone who sees suspicious activity around nesting sites should contact the Emerald Isle Police Department at 252-354-2021.

Why Seals (and Persnickety Authors, Like Myself) Get Clubbed

2010-08-02T11:10:00.000-07:00

nataliedee.com

This Week's Celeb Rebel Deb: BioDiesel Guy

2010-07-30T06:29:00.000-07:00

... for reminding us all that investing in cleaner, 21st-century energies instead of clinging to destructive 20th-century greed will help us to:

1) End our reliance upon foreign oil, and with it our

2) Collective funding of potential terrorist/extremist groups; thereby,

3) Reducing the proportion of our tax dollars reserved for federal acts of wars, and -- oh YEAH! I almost forgot...

4) Save our planet from certain destruction and ALL OF US -- Democrats and Republicans -- from DEATH.

Because, really, who cares about keeping party lines when we have no fresh water left to drink and no clean air left to breathe? Apparently no one. At least, no one in Congress or any commentators on FOX news.

And now back to what Americans really care about: Lindsey Lohan's obvious alcoholism...

My New Kitten, Poe, and Her Crazy Addiction to Sucking on Earlobes. Enjoy!

2010-07-28T16:20:00.000-07:00

Ah, to Be Loved.... :)

2010-07-26T20:01:00.001-07:00

monday, july 19, 2010

Considering that The Love List's subtitle reads "Southern living for the rebellious debutante," reading Anna Field's Confessions of a Rebel Debutante was imminent. I admit that I began the book with a touch of a bias, expecting it to be one of those self-important, "too cool for school" autobiographies. I was definitely off in my judgment. Sure, Anna tells her fair share of defiant tales, but the book left me wishing I was a little less inhibited and had a touch more of her courage and spunk. One of my favorite parts on the book was in the very beginning, when Anna listed life lessons learned by a local waitress. A few of them include:

Be kind. Everyone you know is fighting her own silent battle.
If you stop accepting "no" in life, you might start getting a different answer.
You won't find any answers in a bar, but if you stay a while and drink enough, you might just forget the questions.

Overall, the book is a lighthearted, entertaining read, but watch out for a couple of crushing parts. (I won't spoil it here!) A perfect poolside companion, Confessions of a Rebel Debutante will leave you wishing you could have been Anna's partner in crime, shaking the pretentious world of Cotillion school and debutante balls with style. -Katie Diaz

All Hail Paul, the Oracle Octopus!

2010-07-12T13:32:00.000-07:00

Paul the Oracle Octopus goes eight for eight, is amazing

By Brooks Peck

Eight picks, eight correct, eight tentacles. Paul the Oracle Octopus is clearly the biggest winner of the World Cup after recording a perfect prognostication record whether he knows it or not (he probably doesn't).

The big question was whether Paul's predictive superpowers would translate to the final - the first match he was asked to predict that did not involve his native Germany. But such piddly concerns did not bother Paul. Mostly because he's an octopus. Just as he predicted, the European champions Spain became world champions for the first time with an Andres Iniesta goal in extra time. And as the Spanish celebrated, Paul floated in his tank, sure of his genius and probably craving a fresh clam.

Since Paul is an international celebrity of the highest order now, everyone wants a piece of him - both literally and figuratively. Italy is trying to claim that he was caught in Italian waters, Spanish businessmen are trying to buy him for €30,000 ($38,000), and Dutch priests tried to dismiss him.

But in Spain, Paul is an icon. The Spanish prime minister has already spoken of his desire to protect "Pulpo Paul" and the mock up of a new version of Spain's flag could be dangerously close to becoming real.

So what becomes of Paul now? Well, he'll probably continue to live out the remainder of his days at the Sea Life aquarium in Oberhausen, Germany, no longer forced to pick his food out of flag-covered boxes while surrounded by an obscene number of media types. He will swim at his leisure and continue to be oblivious to the existence of sports. He will retire a winner and a global sensation - what every other octopus (and even a few pundits) wishes they could be.

All hail Paul.

Happy Birthday, (Kevin) Bacon!

2010-07-08T08:24:00.000-07:00

Right now, KB's thinking, "Wait... you actually take time out of your busy life to celebrate my birthday? Who's got two thumbs and an a*#hole? This guy!"

Everything tastes better with (Kevin) bacon! So happy birthday, Senor Footloose. My thumbs have never been better employed. :)

xoxo,

Rebel Deb

All NEW Rebel Debutante Merchandise!

2010-07-03T21:30:00.000-07:00

Check it all out at the Rebel Deb Shop!

xoxo,

Rebel Deb

The Rebel Deb Gets Some SKIRT! (Magazine) :)

2010-07-01T17:19:00.000-07:00

Anna Fields – Rebel Debutante

By sLogan, Thursday, July 1, 2010

Stephanie King

Magnify

I’m a Feminist because…

“…I’m asked "Why do we need Feminism anymore?" by women so comfortable in their present that they forget our past. Because my great-grandmother couldn’t vote. Because my grandmother couldn’t get a legal abortion. Because watching Entourage makes me want to stop writing for television. But most of all, because I’m a Rebel Debutante.”

Anna is a television writer, author, and former personal assistant to Diana Ross and “Real Housewife of New York,” Jill Zarin. Her first book, Confessions of a Rebel Debutante is available now. rebeldebutante.com

Print this Coupon, Get a Discount :)

2010-06-29T11:53:00.000-07:00

Heavy Rebel Weekender! July 4th Weekend SALE!

2010-06-28T14:47:00.000-07:00

Hey, errybody!

The Rebel Deb will be manning a booth at this weekend's Heavy Rebel Weekender -- a kick-ass music and art festival happening this Friday, July 2nd - Sunday, July 4th at the Millennium Center in downtown Winston-Salem.

I'll be there from noon till 1am all weekend long, selling cool NEW Rebel Deb t-shirts, shorts, books (both hardcover and paperback) and women's lingerie! I'll also be posting all my new merchandise on the Rebel Deb shop starting this THURSDAY.

And guess what?! Ya'll get a discount just for reading/commenting/following my blog! Just print the coupon (pictured above), come by my booth and get 20% off your choice of any Rebel Deb books or clothing!

So come over to the MC and check me out! I love meeting and greeting new Rebel Debs of any age, shape or size. Give me a holler, ya'll :)

xoxo,

Rebel Deb

Tool of the Month: Prince Albert of Monaco

2010-06-23T12:30:00.000-07:00

Who the hell would want to have sex with this guy? He looks like my middle-school bus driver.

Yet, according to the Associated Press:

Albert acknowledged that he had fathered a boy, Alexandre, out of wedlock by a former flight attendant. The following year, he acknowledged an American daughter, Jazmin Grace Grimaldi, now a teenager, born to a California woman. Neither can assume the throne because they were born out of wedlock. Pringle suggested that Albert's advancing age, and the long time since his mother's passing, meant that the time was right for him to give up bachelorhood. "He's 50-something. It's time," she said.

Hey, ya'll.

Today, I visited the sixth grade girls at Flat Rock Middle School. I was a special end-of-the-year speaker, who was supposed to talk to them about careers, boys, and female empowerment. All topics I LOVE to discuss, and all of which I could go on and on (and on) about, right? And in the past couple years, I've done TONS of public speaking, literally all over the country. In Indianapolis, I charmed a crowd of 950 women and men -- most of them much older than me, and many of them predisposed to think of me as a sarcastic, over-sexed "whippersnapper." And yet, I sold them 350 (!!) copies of my book... every single copy I had on me that day. After that, you'd think I could face down anyone...

And yet, there I was this morning: Nervous. A bit shaky. Wondering how in God's green earth I was going to entertain (and hopefully help) these young girls, all of them caught right in the midst of hellish adolescence.

There were about 50 girls in the room when I walked in. All the usual suspects... the cliches of preppy, pretty, fancily-dressed cheerleaders. The angry loners. The shy, quiet, studious types who had their notebooks open and pencils ready as they attempted to capture my (supposed) pearls of wisdom. At first, I wasn't sure how to begin. There was SO MUCH I had to tell them:

1) Don't get pregnant!
2) Go to college
3) LOVE (and stop being so hard on) yourself
4) And that goes for others, too. Stop being so mean; you're only eleven!
5) Remember to stay true to who you are -- not who others might want you to be, and
6) Did I mention the "don't get pregnant" part? Well, don't. (Please?)

Looking around the room, taking a beat to really examine their different faces, I saw myself as a sixth grader: Insecure. Lonely. Scared. Hurt. But most of all: Wanting to feel like there was something better awaiting me. A light at the end of horrible tunnel of middle-school.

And that's when all my fears evaporated.

I'd prepared to speak for about 45 minutes -- long enough to teach them something about choosing a career path that makes you happy (instead of simply making you money), but not long enough to lose their attention altogether. But instead, I ended up staying almost two hours. I told them all about myself as a sixth grader -- how I felt chubby and unpopular and weird and loserish -- and, somehow, I reached them. They could all relate somehow -- even the preppy, pretty ones felt ugly and alone sometimes. I could feel their enthusiasm rising, and they started asking questions, and I felt myself changing (in some small part) their feelings about themselves. Got them thinking about how to help one another to achieve instead of tearing each other down. Started them on the path towards empowerment instead of pettiness. Encouraged them to believe in their potential.

This, more than any other speaking engagement I've done or any book signing I've taken part in, was my favorite Rebel Deb event. Because instead of the world getting to meet the Rebel Debutante, the Rebel Debutante got to meet the world... of the future, that is. The best part of today: When you move past all the negative influences (bad parenting, biased media, hormones and peer pressure, etc etc etc) that these girls are facing... it looks pretty bright. And full of future Rebel Debs.

xoxo,
Rebel Debs

This Week's Celeb Rebel Deb: Rue Macclanahan

2010-06-04T13:20:00.000-07:00

A classy, sexy, outspoken Rebel Deb then...

And now...

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

Get Your Daily Candy - Right Here!

2010-06-03T07:55:00.000-07:00

Check it out! Daily Candy's Weekend Events gave the Rebel Deb a holler :)

READ
Confessions of a Rebel Debutante Author Signing
What: Anna Fields’s hilarious memoir covers everything from tutoring the daughter of one of the women from The Real Housewives of New York City to advice she received at the Woolworth’s counter in her small Southern hometown.
Why: See what duking it out with sass looks like.  
When: Sat., 1 p.m.
Where: Borders, 3637 Peachtree Rd., Buckhead (404-237-0707). Admission is free.

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

The Rebel Deb's Summer Reads!

2010-05-17T11:30:00.001-07:00

Hey, ya'll. Since I've spent the last four weeks flying all over the place, I've had time to compile a list of my FAVORITE books, just in time for this summer's beach trip... check out these hot titles, sure to satisfy all your wordie (kinda like a foodie! You like?) cravings!

1) FEAR OF FLYING by Erica Jong -- one of my all-time personal favorites. Get ready to be stimulated, empowered and excited, ladies!

2) ARE YOU THERE, VODKA? IT'S MY CHELSEA by Chelsea Handler -- hilarious! I couldn't put it down! A great read!

3) A MERCY by Toni Morrison -- beautiful, poignant, powerful. Need I say more? It's Toni effing Morrison, folks. Read it. NOW.

4) A TICKET TO THE CIRCUS by Norris Church Mailer -- a personal friend and all-around great lady!

5) MY HORIZONTAL LIFE by Chelsea Handler -- ditto my comment above from "AYTV, IMC?"

6) THE HEIGHTS by Peter Hedges -- the writer/director of What's Eating Gilbert Grape and another friend of mine!

7) TWENTIES GIRL by Sophie Kinsella -- not nearly as annoying as some of her other titles, although the whole ghost thing is kinda... well, yeah. You get it.

8) CHELSEA CHELSEA, BANG BANG by you-know-who -- maybe not as good as her first two, but still very funny! And I love the touching parts about her Mom and her doggie, Chunk.

9) SOMETHING BORROWED by Emily Giffin -- an oldie but a goodie. Extra brownie points: Emily's a fellow Wake grad and Southern girl. :)

10) THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO by Alexandre Dumas -- hey! It's an amazing read and considered classic literature for a reason, folks! I know it's a hefty for summer reading by the pool, but trust me (like all good investments in life) it's WELL WORTH the wait.

Happy reading errrybody!

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

The Rebel Deb Takes On Atlanta

2010-05-11T20:40:00.000-07:00

Check out my headliner in this month's issue of SKIRT! Atlanta...

Confessions of a Rebel Debutante Signing

By skirtySteph

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

"Confessions of a Rebel Debutante" author Anna Fields will be in Atlanta at the Borders in Buckhead at 2 pm for a reading/signing. After being kicked out of Cotillion classes in her hometown of Winston-Salem, NC, Anna went to a yankee school, headed to L.A. where she had a disastrous stint as Diana Ross's personal assistant, came back east to the Big Apple, where she worked for one of the Bravo Real Housewives and realized you can never take the South out of the girl!

Sunday, May 30, 2010 - 2:00pm
3637 Peachtree Rd. NE, Ste. C
Atlanta, GA 30319

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

The Rebel Deb Gets BUSTed!

2010-05-06T13:34:00.000-07:00

Check out Alyssa Pinsker's latest review of my book!

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

And the Winners Are....

2010-05-03T18:47:00.001-07:00

Straight off the presses! Here are the winners of the latest Rebel Deb giveaway! And, I think it's pretty cool none of them are from Debutante country, either.

#1 -- Lisa Chamblee of Fort Smith, AR

#2 -- Cheryl C. Malandrinos of Wilbraham, MA

#3 -- Natalie Wadel of Bonners Ferry, ID

Thanks so much for entering to win, ladies! I hope you enjoy reading my book as much as I enjoyed writing it. :)

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

This Week's Celeb Rebel Deb: Cynthia Brian

2010-04-30T08:19:00.000-07:00

According the Net:

Cynthia Brian, "The Oprah of the Airwaves", hosts a show produced by Starstyle® Productions for Be the Star You Are! charity, which focus is on providing authors and experts an arena to empower audiences. This upbeat radio show speaks about preparing to star in your own life while igniting the flame that is already inside you..."

Cynthia's a big fan of authors and celebs who promote courage, self-confidence, self-awareness and literacy. In fact, during my recent interview with StarStyle Radio, that's pretty much all we talked about! How to believe in, trust and support yourself in becoming the gutsy, glamourous Rebel Debutante that you are. And that make *her* a true Celeb Rebel Deb in my book.

So go out and be the stars you are, ladies!

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

Bye-Bye Brett-y?

2010-04-29T17:08:00.001-07:00

According to the gossip rags, maybe not. It's all over the Net that Brett Michaels is in recovery and may even be back on tour at the end of May. Whoa! Unfortunately, according to People Magazine, he'll also walk away with a "side effect" that may lead to seizures. Ouch.

Seems Brett-y may not bite the tour-bus dust after all. But, after all that brain surgery, the question remains...

Will his extensions?

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

Thanks So Much to Christamore House in Indianapolis!

2010-04-28T08:47:00.000-07:00

Because of ya'll, I got to hang out and talk books with Elizabeth Berg, Norris Mailer, Bill Andrews and Peter Hedges! yes, yes, ya'll :)

xoxo
Rebel Deb

Want a Free Copy of "Confessions of a Rebel Debutante?"

2010-04-25T10:08:00.000-07:00

Want to win a free copy of my book? Enter here to win!

Contest ends at MIDNIGHT on April 30th!

Here are the deets... from GirlfromtheGhetto.wordpress.com:

I’m happy to announce that I have 3 copies of Confessions of a Rebel Debutante by Anna Fields to giveaway!

Anna Fields deliciously describes her childhood and what life was like going through (and eventually getting kicked out of) cotillion was like, beginning at age eleven, all the while making fun of everything about debbing including herself down to her big butt. After seeing her photo on the back of my book, I had a hard time believing she was ever fat, because she reminds me a little bit of Reese Witherspoon. But she forces me to believe it with tales of being a tall girl who wore glasses and had bad skin and a white girl ‘fro after reading her hilarious cheerleading tryout story to the tune of Too Legit to Quit.

Who would have thought a Winston-Salem girl could escape society by getting an Ivy League education, move to New York and LA and work for major celebrities such as Diana Ross and Jill Zarin, let alone act alongside the best of young hollywood in a major motion picture called Mona Lisa Smile, and eventually become a successful playwright, standup comedian and writer for As the World Turns? I can, after reading this book. I cracked up when Ms. Fields starts her memoir off with this line – I’ve only got one good story: How I became a Rebel Debutante. She’s got more than a hundred good stories in this book alone and I can not begin to cover most of them.

You would be absolutely bonkers not to read this book, because not only would you not get to learn all about her very interesting and entertaining life, but you would miss out reading all of the celebrity dirt she has collected through the years. My god, the things she has written in this book and didn’t even hint at on the cover or in the press! An unnamed female Grey’s Anatomy star telling her they loved anal and want to make out with her, her interview with Dr. Ruth that had the famous sex counselor personally offended, and her time spent working a private waiting gig at Calabasas home for three sisters (who, to me, had to have been Kim, Kourtney and Khloe Kardashian) which ended in a FBI drug bust.

A special thanks to Anna Fields and her representation for sponsoring this fantastic book giveaway!

RULES:
**U.S. RESIDENTS ONLY
**NO P.O. BOXES, PLEASE
**MUST INCLUDE EMAIL ADDRESS IN COMMENT
**ALL COMMENTS MUST BE SEPARATE TO COUNT

HOW TO ENTER:

+1 ENTRY: Go to Anna Fields website HERE and tell me via your comment below what fun or interesting thing you learned or noticed on her website.

+1 MORE ENTRY: Go to Anna Fields blog HERE. Check out her jewelry and t-shirt shop, and tell me what you liked from her Rebel Deb wear. I’ll even throw in an extra entry for you if you also comment on Anna’s post where she gives me a shout out on her blog.

+1 MORE ENTRY: Comment if you are a loyal follower of hers, either on Facebook or Goodreads, or if you are on her mailing list. Tell me where and how you follow her.

+1 MORE ENTRY: Blog about this giveaway, share a link via Twitter, or post a link via Facebook about my Rebel Deb giveaway and come back here and comment with that link.

+1 MORE ENTRY: Read my full review on Confessions of a Rebel Debutante HERE. Then comment here and tell me why you need to win this book!

Contest ends next Friday, April 30th at midnight. Good luck to you all.

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

Yee HAW! The Rebel Deb Takes on San Antonio

2010-04-24T10:13:00.001-07:00

According to San Antonio Magazine...

Southern belles are supposed to be proper, polite and pretty much perfect. AnnaBelle bucks that trend with her sharp spoken wit and impertinent personality, which explains why she was kicked out of her cotillion classes. Native Southerner Anna Fields’ memoir, Confessions of a Rebel Debutante, is guaranteed to give you a good laugh. Borders Books, 255 E. Basse Road, 828-9496, borders.com.

So come on out and see me, ya'll!

April 24, 2010 2:00 PM
San Antonio - Basse - Borders
255 E. Basse Road, Suite 350
San Antonio, TX 78209

xoxo,
RD

Howdy from Indiana!

2010-04-21T09:28:00.000-07:00

Come over to the Christamore House in Indianapolis and see me, ya'll!

According to the Indianapolis Observer:

"Five authors will talk about their work during the 30th annual Book & Author Luncheon sponsored by the Christamore House Guild. The benefit begins at 10 a.m. with books available for purchase and signing. The luncheon program is 11 a.m to 2 p.m. (although, if truth be told, it usually runs later than that). Diane Willis is mistress of ceremonies for the event, held in the Indiana Roof Ballroom, 140 West Washington Street, Indianapolis.

The authors and books are William Alexander (52 Loaves: One Man's Relentless Pursuit of Truth, Meaning, and a Perfect Crust), Elizabeth Berg (The Last Time I Saw You), Anna Fields (Confessions of a Rebel Debutante), Peter Hedges (The Heights) and Norris Church Mailer (A Ticket to the Circus).

Tickets are $85. For information, contact Jane Kroot, 317:849-5330. Proceeds from the luncheon support the Frances Carter Coburn Scholarship Fund and educational programs offered through Christamore House, 502 North Tremont Street, Indianapolis. Since 1981, more than $1 million has been awarded to more than 570 scholarship recipients from Indianapolis' Haughville neighborhood."

Books! Food! Fun! Norman Mailer's widow! It'll be *spectacular* :)

Check out the rest of the (sorta) star-studded line-up here

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

The Rebel Gets Real... on the Radio, That Is

2010-04-18T16:24:00.000-07:00

Video killed the radio star?

Um... I don't f-ing think so!

Listen to my interview with Paul Nagy @ Carborro Book Beat WCOM

xoxo
RD

A Great Review of "Confessions of a Rebel Debutante!"

2010-04-17T23:21:00.000-07:00

"My review of Confessions of a Rebel Debutante, which in a word, was fabulous" -Girl from the Ghetto

from thegirlfromtheghetto.com

"Anna Fields, you had me at You can take the girl out of the South, but you can’t take the South out of the girl! I love nothing more than reading a story set in the south, or devouring a good memoir. When I heard that a book was coming out that had the best of both worlds, I knew I had to read this book.

I was literally jumping with joy when I got my advanced reader copy of Confessions of a Rebel Debutante in the mail last month. I knew I was going to love it, and love it I did. Anne Fields not only has written a charming, funny and fabulous memoir, but she tells a great story about what happens when a North Carolina society girl gets kicked out of cotillion classes and doesn’t make it as a deb. You can not believe where this Rebel Deb’s life leads her.

Anna Fields deliciously describes her childhood and what life was like going through (and eventually getting kicked out of) cotillion was like, beginning at age eleven, all the while making fun of everything about debbing including herself down to her big butt. After seeing her photo on the back of my book, I had a hard time believing she was ever fat, because she reminds me a little bit of Reese Witherspoon. But she forces me to believe it with tales of being a tall girl who wore glasses and had bad skin and a white girl ‘fro after reading her hilarious cheerleading tryout story to the tune of Too Legit to Quit.

As much as I enjoyed hearing what life was like behind the scenes of debbing, I found the heart of Anna’s story in her own personal story, and not the story of the other rich and often drunk debutantes. Things really get rolling in the book when she began writing about her life at boarding school, the prestigious Wellington Academy run by a woman named Miss Freeze. Anna never fit in to begin with, but once she became best friends with her wild roommate Alma who was a fan of public ladyscaping, known as the campus queer for her unladylike and non-deb ways, and who told outrageous tall tales that even involved the Playboy Mansion, well, fun and adventures began that were even better than attending cotillion-related events. Alma, needless to say, was a bad influence on a Anna to begin with, but the two of them together had them both on some crazy adventures. They got caught drinking at a college fraternity party, and once stumbled across a girl from school who had just been raped, but they still were the ones who got in trouble because they were caught vacationing on the wrong side of town in Myrtle Beach, let alone their biggest adventure that included a tragedy I’ll let you discover on your own.

Who would have thought a Winston-Salem girl could escape society by getting an Ivy League education, move to New York and LA and work for major celebrities such as Diana Ross and Jill Zarin, let alone act alongside the best of young hollywood in a major motion picture called Mona Lisa Smile, and eventually become a successful playwright, standup comedian and writer for As the World Turns? I can, after reading this book. I cracked up when Ms. Fields starts her memoir off with this line – I’ve only got one good story: How I became a Rebel Debutante. She’s got more than a hundred good stories in this book alone and I can not begin to cover most of them.

You would be absolutely bonkers not to read this book, because not only would you not get to learn all about her very interesting and entertaining life, but you would miss out reading all of the celebrity dirt she has collected through the years. My god, the things she has written in this book and didn’t even hint at on the cover or in the press! An unnamed female Grey’s Anatomy star telling her they loved anal and want to make out with her, her interview with Dr. Ruth that had the famous sex counselor personally offended, and her time spent working a private waiting gig at Calabasas home for three sisters (who, to me, had to have been Kim, Kourtney and Khloe Kardashian) which ended in a FBI drug bust."

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

The Biatch is Back! At Least, for Tonight...

2010-04-16T11:21:00.000-07:00

Last night at Lincoln Center was great! Excellent turnout, a welcoming crowd and tons of laughs (mostly at my expense, which I'm totally cool with!)... and tonight? I'm back in Winston-Salem, the town that (kinda) started it all. Where I went to boarding school. Where I gotted "kicked out" (basically just not invited) of debbing. Where I got my first hickey... oh, wait? Was that a teensy bit TMI? Oh, well. Guess you'll have to read the rest in my book. So come on down and getcha a signed copy!

When: TONIGHT! Friday, April 16th @7pm
Where: Barnes & Noble Booksellers Winston Salem
Stones Throw Plaza
1925 Hampton Inn Court, Winston-Salem, NC 27103
(336) 774-0800

Come On Down and See Me, Folks! You'll Be Glad Ya Did!

2010-04-14T12:19:00.000-07:00

Okay... so this isn't me. But I wish it were! And who knows, maybe she'll show up to my opening night book launch at the Lincoln Center Barnes & Noble? And maybe she'll make out with the first fifty of ya'll who buy a book?! (Okay, probs not. But come anyway!)

Confessions of a Rebel Debutante

Author Event, Author Discussion

Anna Fields brings us a delicious, laugh-out-loud funny Southern-fried memoir about growing up a proper young lady... or not. Confessions of a Rebel Debutante proves you can take the girl out of the South, but you can't take the South out of the girl!

When: Thursday April 15, 2010 7:30 PM
Where: Lincoln Triangle
1972 Broadway, New York, NY 10023
212-595-6859

This Week's Celeb Rebel Deb: Anna Paquin

2010-04-09T14:12:00.000-07:00

Though her Southern dialect on True Blood could use some... err... serious work... Anna Paquin still rocks my world. Especially lately. And why? Check out her recent PSA...

EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: True Blood Star Reveals True Self -- Anna Paquin Says She's Bisexual | RadarOnline.com

You have major balls, Anna. And we Rebel Debs salute both of them!

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

The Real Rebel Deb... in Her Natural Habitat

2010-04-05T11:07:00.000-07:00

many thanks to my photographer, Stephanie King!
www.slkphoto.com

This Week's Celeb Rebel Deb: Lassie!

2010-04-02T10:28:00.000-07:00

Hells yes, Lassie is a girl! And though she has an IQ of 14 and only four, non-opposable digits on her massive paws, she still manages to flip a huge bird to gender stereotypes. What's that, Timmy? Only men can be rescuers on circa 1960 television dramas, did you say? Yeah, well. Looks like somebody'll be leaving you locked up for a little while longer...

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

The Rebel Deb's Comin' to Little Rock!

2010-04-01T09:36:00.001-07:00

If you're in the Little Rock area on April 9th or 10th, please join me for Friday's beautiful soiree (did I mention the cash bar?), followed by Saturday's reading and solo discussion with your very own Rebel Debutante!

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

"I Give You Two Kitties Tomorrow for One Kitty Today?"

2010-03-31T10:59:00.000-07:00

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

The Rebel Deb's Gettin' Some Skirt! (Magazine, that is.)

2010-03-30T08:52:00.001-07:00

Read the Rebel Deb's latest write-up in this month's issue of Skirt! Magazine...

They like me! They really, *really* like me!

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

What Would Happen if Women Ran Wall Street?

2010-03-29T16:17:00.000-07:00

Testosterone and Risk

from NY Magazine
By Sheelah Kolhatkar

"Early in the morning on a typical weekday, men can be seen resolutely streaming down lower Broadway, braced against a pulverizing wind. They are preparing to enter their office buildings, put on their headsets, flick on their Bloombergs, and go to war. And if they look miserable—or weary, frustrated, angry, or petrified—it’s because they have one of the most emotionally taxing jobs in the world. Playing the market is a constant ricochet between panic and euphoria. There’s a reason the burnout rate is high. But the formula for succeeding in a high-stress financial environment is simpler than you might think. If you ask a trader, or someone who studies them, what the single most important factor is in determining whether a person will be good at trading, they will say that it’s the ability to control one’s emotions.

The trouble for all those men pouring into the trading desks is that recent studies suggest purely rational behavior may not come as naturally to them as gender stereotypes would suggest. A couple of weeks ago, for instance, the investment-management company Vanguard released data showing that men were more likely than women to sell stocks at the bottom of the market. Could it be that the fairer sex is better able to ride the ups and downs of Wall Street without letting their emotions get in the way?

“There were always very few women on the floor of the exchanges,” says a hedge-fund manager named Henry Lee, who spent years on the floor of the American Stock Exchange. “But the women who were successful at it were unbelievable.”

Lee is sitting at a trading desk with his friend Harley Evans, a derivatives trader at a firm called Mako Financial Markets, talking about gender differences in their line of work. “They never got ruffled, never got upset,” Lee continues. “Losing their temper? Never.”

“I think women can be very emotional, too,” Evans says, not entirely convinced.

“Women respond to stress differently,” Lee says. Rather than throwing the phone across the room, “women cry.”

“Well, I’ve cried, too,” Evans says.

“Not that I’ve seen. You cried alone in your closet,” says Lee.

“I cried in my beer.”

“The notion of taking chances is definitely more male,” Lee says. “Look, men are much more willing to take a shot on something with incomplete knowledge.”

So, I ask, how would Wall Street be different if there were more women making decisions? Lee offers an analogy based on the fact that he’s going through a divorce: “I would say that when you’re married, your life is much more level,” he says. “And when you’re single, you tend to experience many more swings. For example, you might not go skydiving if you’re married, or go out drinking all night with your buddies, or you may not pursue that Ironman.” Having women around, in other words, “prevents extreme behavior—or irrational exuberance.”

Despite what we’ve been led to believe, the market isn’t rational or efficient at all—it’s all about feelings. The major plot points of the crisis largely turned on emotion: Dick Fuld was too egotistical to sell Lehman Brothers when he had the chance, so his pride drove it into the ground; Bear Stearns hedge-fund managers lost huge sums of money on subprime mortgages despite the fact that they suspected the worst (“I’m fearful of these markets,” Ralph Cioffi e-mailed a colleague back in 2007); Merrill Lynch was the “fat kid,” as the investor Steve Eisman has put it, so desperate to be like Goldman Sachs that it barreled into every dumb investment imaginable and had to be bailed out by Bank of America. Almost every single bank chief doubled down on mortgage junk at exactly the wrong moment. Emotions led otherwise intelligent men—because, let’s face it, all of them were men—to make terrible decisions.

According to a new breed of researchers from the field of behavioral finance, Wall Street’s volatility is really driven by our body chemistry. It’s the chemicals pulsing through traders’ veins that propel them to place insane bets and enable bank executives to make risky decisions—and those same chemicals tend to have the same effect on everyone, turning them into a herd of overheated animals. And because the vast majority of these traders and finance executives are men, the most important chemical in question is testosterone.

Here are a few things we know about testosterone: Both men and women produce it, but men make fifteen times as much of it as women, on average. It causes all sorts of physical differences—in body hair, muscle mass, jawlines, and so on. Behaviorally, it does all the things that one would expect: It is linked to increased aggression and dominance, confidence, hostility, violence, sensation-seeking, and the searching out of mates (“I felt like I had to have sex once a day or I would die,” Drew—formerly Susan—Seidman told The Village Voice, after having testosterone injections as part of his transformation from a woman to a man). One of the most fascinating things about testosterone is the way it can be influenced by the environment. A man who stays home with his kids, for example, is likely to see his testosterone level drop over time. Testosterone varies throughout the day, peaking in the morning and gradually ebbing through the afternoon. Perhaps not surprisingly, single men have higher levels than married men. If you eat more meat, it tends to be higher. As it does when a man is in the presence of an attractive woman, or looking at the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Or in a highly competitive environment with other guys, like a rugby game—or the Bear Stearns trading floor."

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

Happy 25th Anniversary, Dollywood!

2010-03-25T10:30:00.000-07:00

Let's all celebrate Dolly's Woods and their emergent quarter-life crisis by retelling one of my favorite blonde jokes...

A college student goes back to her dorm and says to her blonde roommate, “I slept with a Brazilian man last night.” Her roommate replies, “OMG, you slut! How many is a Brazilian??”

And by the way, my old U.S. History teacher went to high school with Dolly and says her "dollies" are completely real... the debate continues!

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

Pullin' a "Kanye" on ObamaCare

2010-03-23T08:45:00.000-07:00

Whether you're for or against the bill, it's still kinda funny... right? I think so. :)

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

Stuff Hipsters Hate: When Their Friends Go to Law School

2010-03-21T13:04:00.001-07:00

from http://lizbert.tumblr.com

"Janelle: Hey dude, Jason is having a fucking awesome party tonight at some loft in Bushwick. Wanna get there early? Like 1 a.m. or somethin’?

Tyron: Sorry, lady. I have to study.

Janelle: What the fuck do you have to study for? You’ve been outta school for five years…

Tyron: The LSATs.

Janelle. Are you shitting me?

Tyron: Naw, I mean, this whole poet thing isn’t really working out. I mean, no one wants to pay me to write, so I figured I would, like, learn a trade.

Janelle: Are you going to be an LSAT tutor…?

Tyron: No, asshole. I’m going to law school.

Janelle: What the fuck? When have you ever expressed interest in the law? You don’t even like motherfucking Law & Order—and there’s like six versions of that show to choose from.

Tyron: Well, lawyers make a lot of money, which is something I don’t have. I can’t shelve books at an indie bookstore and do poetry slams forever, Jan. I can’t. I need stuff like, I dunno, a real bed. A room with walls. Last week I brought this chick home and she took one look at my so-called room—a shower curtain and bed sheets do not a bedroom make—and announced that she had to get up early. She’s a fucking freelancer. How many freelancers do you know who have to “get up early”? I can’t deal with this anymore, dude. I need to eat. I need to get laid. I need cash. I mean, yeah, I would probably have to wear a suit year-round to cover up my sleeve tats, and, sure, I would have to shave more often and probably move to Manhattan and drink with I-bankers at shitty places like Blondies, and I would most definitely have to pretend to get excited about sports and shit—but I can do it. I can suck it up. I’m almost 30. It’s time to get serious.

Janelle: Dude, you’re not going to get into law school. I mean, that’s just a stone cold fucking science fact.

Tyron: Why the fuck not? I got like fucking straight A’s in college.

Janelle: Well, for one, you majored in abstract sculpture and Victorian poetry, and two, the most experience you’ve had with the legal system was that time you got arrested for breaking into that construction site, getting smashed and passing out in your own vomit.

Tyron: Dude. That was like a fucking minor offense. Like, you know, a misnomer.

Janelle: Um. I rest my case."

xoxo,
Rebel

This Week's Celeb Rebel Deb: Sandra Bullock

2010-03-19T08:14:00.000-07:00

OH, yes, Sandra B. Whether you're winning Oscars or kicking your lyin', cheatin' hubby out on his douche-bag dumper... you're always rocking our world. You're a Southern girl (who graduated from my Momma's alma mater, ECU!), a kick-ass, down-to-earth celeb, and we Rebel Debs salute you.

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

The Southern Jewish Wedding Singer, Part I

2010-03-17T08:22:00.000-07:00

From funnyordie.com...

"The Southern Jewish Wedding Singer" : Part One - watch more funny videos

"Shalom, Ya'll! L'Chaim and Eat Up!"

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

Letter from a Redneck Momma

2010-03-15T07:57:00.001-07:00

Just discovered the following... nothing like a little redneck humor to brighten your bleak Monday morning!

"Dearest Son,

I'm writing this slow because I know you can't read fast. We don't live where we did when you left home. Your dad read in the newspaper that most accidents happen within 20 miles of your home, so we moved. I won't be able to send you the address because the last West Virginia family that lived here took the house numbers when they moved so they wouldn't have to change their address.

This place is really nice. It even has a washing machine. I'm not sure about it. I put a load of clothes in and pulled the chain. We haven't seen them since.

The weather isn't bad here. It only rained twice last week; the first time for three days and the second time for four days.

About that coat you wanted me to send; your Uncle Billy Bob said it would be too heavy to send in the mail with the buttons on, so we cut them off and put them in the pockets.

Bubba locked his keys in the car yesterday. We were really worried because it took him two hours to get me and your father out.

Your sister had a baby this morning, but I haven't found out what it is yet so I don't know if you are an aunt or uncle.

Uncle Bobby Ray fell into a whiskey vat last week. Some men tried to pull him out but he fought them off and drowned. We had him cremated, he burned for three days.

Three of your friends went off a bridge in a pickup truck. Butch was driving. He rolled down the window and swam to safety. Your other two friends were in the back. They drowned because they couldn't get the tailgate down!

There isn't much more news at this time. Nothing much out of the normal has happened.

Your Favorite Aunt,
Mom"

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

This Week's Celeb Rebel Deb: Daisy (of Love) De La Hoya

2010-03-12T11:16:00.000-08:00

I don't know why. I just love anybody who reminds me of a Muppet. Oh, and did you hear she was dating the late Corey Haim up until he died? Those muppets are trouble, I tell ya! Trouble!

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

Check Out the Rebel Deb's New Article in This Month's "Marie Claire"...

2010-03-10T10:53:00.001-08:00

Eating disorders, ladies. They're serious (and sometimes deadly) business. Check out my article and read about how I overcame one of the biggest challenges facing young girls today...

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

Happy International Women's Day!

2010-03-08T18:52:00.000-08:00

From then...

To now...

What a way to celebrate, huh? Way to go, Kathryn. You make us proud.

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

In Tim We Trust!

2010-03-05T19:13:00.000-08:00

In the words of my friend, Rachel: "I often ask myself, What Would Tim Gunn Do?"

Well, apparently, he would trash the Dash, referring to her style as having "a cheapness and tawdriness"... Um, yeah:

Needless to say, we Rebel Debs agree! It's *cool* to be sexy, Kim. But flashing your boobs all over Hollywood/the Internet/magazine stands nationwide? That's no way to keep it classy. In fact, that reeks of the kind of desperate, "famous for being me!" attitude made famous by Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie and... well, almost every "socialite" with her own Reality TV show. Read Tim's comments and decide for yourself!

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

This Week's Celeb Rebel Deb: Ellen!

2010-03-05T15:15:00.000-08:00

We salute you, Ellen Degeneres, for braving your first few months as the new sailor on the sinking ship that is "American Idol." This season of AI has gone straight into the toilet. On the bright side, you're here to make us all smile through our Titanic-esque tears. In fact, as a hard-working, ground-breaking celeb Rebel Deb, I consider you to be the best thing to come aboard that show since, well... the last thing that left:

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

The Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse: Forbes Magazine Becomes Just Another Victim of Culture FAIL

2010-03-04T11:30:00.000-08:00

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

The Third Horseman of the Apocalypse: People Actually Caring About Vienna vs. Tenley

2010-03-02T11:17:00.000-08:00

OMIGOD!! Can you believe he picked the skanky one?? *barf*

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

The Second Horseman of the Apocalypse: Facebook Quizzes that Consume Your Whole Day!

2010-03-01T17:33:00.001-08:00

Why, Facebook? WHY must you enrapture me within your all-consuming clutches?? Must... escape... but just can't find the strength!

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

The First Horseman of the Apocalypse: Jessica Simpson's New "Reality" Show, "The Price of Beauty"

2010-02-27T20:07:00.000-08:00

"Dude... I'm so effing pretty... wanna get neck tattoos?" *barf*

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

This Week's Celeb Rebel Deb: Jenny Sanford

2010-02-26T09:25:00.001-08:00

Ya'll already know the story about Jenny and Mark Sanford... according to the 'NET:

"First South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford was born. Later, he pretended to be hiking the Appalachian Trail when in fact schtupping the Argentinian woman. Then his wife wrote a disparaging book. Now their divorce proceedings will be on TV."

I know, I know... sounds like the usual Reality TV, fame-hogging crap. But I, for one, support Jenny Sanford in moving on from Mark's behavior. So she wants to write a book -- who wouldn't want such an opportunity to turn her personal tragedy into triumph? Jenny's still a celeb Rebel Deb based on her past work as a Wall Streeter (in the 80's, no less, when that particular Street was nearly female-free!) and her refusal to stand by her lyin', cheatin' man.

Check out Marie Claire's recent interview with the former SC Governor-ess and decide for yourself.

xoxo,
Rebel Deb

How I Feel Every Time I See Those 4AM "Girls Gone Wild" Commercials...

2010-02-25T13:17:00.000-08:00

Five Things More Interesting to Watch than Tiger Woods' "Apology": #5 - Puppy Succubi from Hell! They're Comin' ta Getcha...

2010-02-24T10:46:00.000-08:00