Snow White Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Laughter, pleasure, malice, and the pursuit of adult fun

by Regina Barreca, Ph.D.

How Good Girls Turn Into Hot Women

As women wipe perspiration from their brows, fearing that their mascara will melt and that their bras will dampen and become terrarium-like from the condensation formed beneath their moist cleavages, they're all asking each other in fluty voices the eternal question that the first female protozoan asked the second female protozoan, "Is it hot in here, or is it me?" Read More

Another Mother's Story: For a Friend Whose Child Has Epilepsy

Over a million people in the country have epilepsy, and so she is confused by the idea that all of these people must have mothers and that there are a million other women who know how she feels.

Treatments in the past for this disorder (never call it a disease, they told her) included drilling holes in the skulls of fifteenth-century children in order to release humours and vapors and fluids. That any child lived through this procedure astonishes her. During the next few centuries, castration was performed on males because it was believed that epilepsy was brought on by excessive masturbation. Arms that shook were cut off; feet and legs were bound.

Days when those with the disorder were institutionalized treated as deviants, treated as deranged, as deeply defective, are over.

Aren't they? "Get off the couch," says her husband to her son. "Now." Read More

Happy Birthday Emily Bronte: Sex & Romance Expert!

It's Bronte's birthday! So what have we learned from Wuthering Heights? 1. You shouldn't marry only for money; 2. You shouldn't marry only for passion; 3. You shouldn't depend only your significant other for self-definition; 4. You need to get away from the moors, out of the rain, and into a warm circle of good friends who will laugh you out of your depression before you start yelling somebody's name in the middle of the night. Read More

Smart Women Keep It Where It Is--Most of the Time

A number of men think they resemble financial gods but in fact are more "like Kramer from 'Seinfeld' or Ralph Kramden from 'The Honeymooners,' always alert to a get-rich-quick scheme and always looking for this year's sure-fire investment. It just doesn't work that way. You have to educate yourself and stay the course, not just grab for the hottest piece of information." Read More

Why Smart Women Don't Trade Around

Guys trade around, apparently looking over their shoulders for any fresh, tantalizing, practically nubile investment possibility, eager to embrace it, tossing logic and rationality aside in one cavalier gesture of welcome.

In contrast, women cleave to what is established and proven. Big shock, right? Maybe this sounds far less sexy or stimulating, but it turns out to be far wiser in the long run. Read More

Are Women Priests As Bad As Child Molesters?

Here's what the Vatican's internal prosecutor, Msgr. Charles J. Scicluna, said from the news conference in Rome, when asked to explain why ordination of women was included alongside of rulings concerning sexual exploitation of children and the disabled by male (of course male-what other kinds are there?) priests: "Sexual abuse and pornography are more grave dealings, they are an egregious violation of moral law. Attempted ordination of women is grave, but on another level; it is a wound that is an attempt against the Catholic faith on the sacramental orders." Read More

You're Just Jealous

Jealousy is self-sustaining; it feeds on itself, chewing on details and imagination the way you tear at your cuticles and draw blood but somehow find the act satisfying. Don't wave self-esteem around as if it is a solution, either, however well-meant. I have whole closets-full of self-esteem, right behind my winter clothes and my self-respect. Read More

Why Everything is Different When It's Over

Realizing that someone who once loved you loves you no longer is like getting the measles: go through it when you're young, and you'll probably get a mild case.

If it happens for the first time when you're older, it can be devastating. Read More

Elena Kagan Proves Women Are Funnier Than Men

Having watched Kagan get the last laugh at the expense of South Carolina's Republican Senator Lindsay Graham was a landmark moment for women's humor. Read More

5 Fantasies—and 5 Truths—About Your Former Love

I have a friend who is suddenly longing to get back in touch with an old boyfriend. This guy was rotten to her when they were going out—a long time ago—but this otherwise sensible woman has convinced herself that he's magically turned into the man she always hoped he would become. Read More

When Your Husband Betrays You, Do You Blame The Other Woman?

Do the wives of chronically adulterous men think along the lines of Jane Welsh Carlyle, wife of historian and writer Thomas Carlyle, who, when she was asked about her husband affections for another woman, responded, "People who are so dreadfully devoted to their wives are so apt, from mere habit, to get devoted to other people's wives as well"? Read More

A Woman With A Good Father Is an Heiress

If your mother teaches you how to love, then your father gives you permission to succeed; if learn from your mother how to walk carefully around trouble, then it is from your father that you learn how to face trouble when it comes. Read More

Five Ways to Keep Good Marriages Good

#5: Happy couples are happy people who bring it home. Laughing together is sexy, celebratory, intimate, and fun-it's the very definition of what makes a marriage happy. Read More

T.V. Adds 10 lbs.--and Lots of Humility

Okay, I did The Joy Behar Show last week, and I didn't embarrass myself, at least not entirely. Yes, I wore a Ferragamo scarf that made me look like I had a peach colored tablecloth around my neck.

This was unfortunate since it gave me the unnerving appearance of having my head on a platter. All I really needed to be an appropriate entrée at a fine French restaurant was an apple in my mouth. Never mind. Read More

The Real Reason Tipper and Al Are Getting Separated

The end of a marriage is less like a dramatic submarine submersion where frantic crewmembers suddenly start yelling "DIVE! DIVE!" and more like the gradual sinking of a small boat. Read More

Fergie, Duchess of York, Teaches Us How to Pimp Like a Royal

Michael Flamini said "when it starts to get around that Fergie could get $750K for Andrew-Andrew, the most boring royal-others are going to start thinking about how much they can get for their respective spouses." Read More

Spicy Cougars Vs. Sugar Daddies

You know what a cougar is, right? She is a woman between forty and sixty who pursues men in their twenties or thirties sexually.

Obviously she's pursuing them sexually.

What else would you pursue them for?

It's not for conversation, and it's certainly not for fashion advice. It's not because once you're peri-menopausal you have a sudden urge to start playing Frisbee golf or beer pong. Read More

Want to be a Rock Star? A Question for the Guys...

Seriously, guys, why have you all, at some point in your lives, wanted to be in a band? Every undergraduate male - and several of the graduate ones, too, not to mention the aging guys with pony-tails or graying crop-cuts - intends to be a rock star. Why? Read More

Me and Sarah Silverman (Sort of)

"YOU WANT ME TO TALK ABOUT THE FACT THAT SILVERMAN GOT OVER TWO MILLION DOLLARS TO WRITE HER BOOK?" I yelled into the phone to the reporter from The New York Times. Read More

Dream Wedding vs. Dream Man

When I ask, "What will your wedding be like?" young women will often describe weddings that would take more preparation than the coronation of the emperor of Japan. Read More

Why NOT To Marry Your Second-Choice Man

I knew one woman who, having resigned herself to marring a "second-choice husband," then made a career out of belittling any sign of happiness between two other people. "Those love-birds are headed for a fall," she cluck over any new couple, palpably longing for disaster. She couldn't stand the idea that anyone might actually have a relationship based on passion, fun, or even simply the promise of an equal match between the partners. Read More

What Puts the O-O in HOOTERS?

Ranking high in the category titled "Phrases I Never Thought I Would Say"--a category that includes such statements as "Does this dress make me look too fabulous?" and "No thanks, I guess I'm just not in the mood for cheese"--was the phrase "Anybody want to come with me to Hooters tonight?" Read More

What Do You Know About Sex?

I know you know something, but where did you get that information. Where did you learn it? Read More

A Very Personal Hysterectomy Story (Is There Any Other Kind?)

There's an awful temptation to regard this hysterectomy as a kind of punishment, or penalty, or fine, or tax, for being female. Read More

The Mother Without a Clue

Kimberly's mother longs for the hospital because what she really wants is doctors and flowers, male doctors and cut flowers, next to the bed. Read More

Does God Ever Smile?

Drummed into me from an early age was the fact that God was the Father, which lead to my thinking of God as somebody home only at the weekends. Read More

Have Women Learned Anything About Lovers and Husbands?

"Here's my question, doll: do younger women still throw themselves under emotional trains with the same alacrity once exhibited by women of my generation?" I asked. "Or have you all learned better?"
"We're probably worse," she answered, no doubt texting while talking, something she wasn't permitted to do when she was still in my class; you can hear when they do this even though they think you can't."Tell you the truth, we probably do it faster." Read More

The C Word: Commitment-- and What It Means

You can't blame men for being wary. Their use of the "C" word, however casual, will be scrutinized and dragged through endless conversational vivisections until, taken out of context, they might find themselves having agreed to marry a woman with one eye, no formal education, and terracotta teeth because she misunderstood his intentions and because her daddy is part of the local independent militia. Read More

Run By Women, The World Would Be Better and More Fun

History would have been entirely different, more fun, and lots better, if women had been the dominant sex. Read More

10 Reasons To Thank Your Bad Boyfriend

What Your Bad Boyfriend Taught You: #6: You learned that a truly thoughtful lover would not attempt to arouse you with the subtlety of a chimp trying to dial a rotary phone Read More

Gina Barreca, Ph.D., is Professor of English at UConn, and author of It's Not That I'm Bitter: How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Visible Panty Lines and Conquered the World.

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