So Penelope Trunk, author of the forthcoming Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success, isn’t particularly impressed with the recently published The Feminine Mistake, the first title from Hyperion‘s Voice imprint. Fair enough; there’s plenty of room for healthy debate about Leslie Bennetts‘s ideas about why women should reject the role of stay-at-home-mom, including the economic reality that denies most women a choice in the matter, as well as the generational differences that Trunk underscores. All well and good so far. But then Trunk decided to take the low road, ridiculing Bennetts as “INCREDIBLY FAT!!!” (All caps and exclamation points hers, of course.) “This woman is walking around telling people you have to have a career while you’re raising kids in order to take care of yourself,” Trunk fumes, “and she is obviously not taking care of herself. Look, I wouldn’t be harping on this if she weren’t so fat…” Which isn’t even true, but that’s so besides the point that I’m aggravated to even mention it.
(UPDATE: Once Trunk realized that she was about to be featured in the Wall Street Journal, “and I really don’t want those people to think the blog is about personal attacks and controversy,” she wiped the entire original post and replaced it with something like an apology, suggesting, among other things, that the blog format revealed her impulsiveness. Unlike her book project, where “my editor took out two fat references and told me that no one wants to hear me writing about fat.” Got that right. Eagled-eyed readers will note, however, that as of Sunday night the post still retained its original URL, unflattering reference to Bennetts included.)
Sorry, I’m just finding it hard to believe that it’s 2007 and people are still attacking the credibility of the female intelligentsia based on their looks—and since Trunk originally diagnosed Bennetts with “a mental problem” based on a single photograph, it absolutely was an attack on her credibility…except that it’s Trunk whose reputation was diminished, and we weren’t the only ones who noticed (and that’s not counting the dozens of comments Trunk deleted when she rewrote her blog’s history). One can only hope—and the rest of the blog at least gives one cause to do so—her book isn’t as boneheaded and crass as this attempt to differentiate herself from the competition.
(And, yes, I understand that you may be tempted to view this as somewhat ironic, given that I just launched a search for hottie book reviewers, but I hope that the difference between a playful celebration of people we already recognize as professionally and intellectually brilliant and a mean-spirited attack on someone’s credibility is clear.)