Elizabeth Wurtzel is totally hot
by Michael Maiello

A few nights ago, I met Elizabeth Wurtzel, who wrote the book "Prozac Nation" and is now touring to promote her new book "Bitch: In praise of Difficult Women." She's smart, funny, feminist, and hot.

Yeah, she's hot. Which puts our young progressive hero in a difficult position. No, I didn't ask her out for coffee, but I kind of wanted to. "Hi, I really respect your opinions and political beliefs, and you're a great prose writer, and I really wanted to say that you're hot."

Like Naomi Wolfe, who was labeled as a "do me" feminist because she was, shudder, pretty, and she shudder, liked sex, and she, gasp, talked about liking sex and thought sexual freedom could be, my lord, part of feminism, Wurtzel is being blasted by women's studies majors for her new book.

They think it's not feminist. Never mind that she talks a lot about "pussy power" and admires women who do the unexpected, express themselves freely, and use their sexual wiles as weapons. It's not feminist.

Because feminism has basically sold out. What started as an effort to change the consciousness of the nation has become a vehicle by which women can get high paying corporate jobs. Which is fine, everyone should be allowed to get high paying corporate jobs and not be sexually harassed while doing it. But this goal has been taken on at the expense of other goals.

The goal to be proudly feminine. To be sexually active, and to enjoy sex. To worship the body. To do all those naughty things which make society great. Camille Paglia, who people like to claim isn't a feminist, often points out the absurd bedfellows made by modern feminists, especially in the pornography wars.

Religious conservatives don't like naked bodies because they're smutty. They want to censor the nudie mags, stifle the movie industry, keep butts off television. Now, it is part of their dogma to fear the body. Souls are good, bodies are bad.

Anti-porn feminists find themselves on the same side as their enemies in such debates. They think pornography is exploitative (sure it is), and that it encourages rape (somehow, I doubt this). They think it encourages objectification. Probably, it does. So do politics and commercials for tooth paste.

Wurtzel isn't from that 70's generation of feminists who have since grown up and taken to making appearances on Charlie Rose to discuss the life of Bella Abzug. She just turned thirty. She's tempestuous and beautiful. She poses nude on the cover of her new book. She holds literary motifs and tidbits of pop culture on the same level of importance. So, they don't like her.

"Most people say she's not a feminist," said a woman's studies student at Berkeley who I met the night after meeting Wurtzel. She also told me that feminists are "slamming" Wurtzel's book.

Well, damn. Those women have become as sterile and dogmatic as a G.O.P. convention. Wurtzel is worth reading by anyone who has ever been called a "gen X" person. "Bitch" is funny, offbeat, and pretty well thought out. "Prozac Nation" is a better read than Plath's "The Bell Jar." And yeah, she's a feminist. A progressive thinker who truly wants to empower young women, and herself.

She's also hot. And that's a compliment.

Michael Maiello is enjoying his sojurn in San Francisco, working his ass off for the pleasure of picking up the tab.

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