If Mary Karr is an example of why we should write memoirs, Lori Gottlieb is the poster child for why we shouldn't. Especially since yesterday, when Jezebel published an interview with one of Gottlieb's exes. It's almost deliciously vindictive, albeit unfair—"Tim's" facts are uncheckable. Gottlieb's spurned lover makes her sound like pretty much the worst girlfriend anyone has ever had. If he's telling the truth, though, she may be getting what she deserves.  In addition to providing a quintessential example of Internet revenge, Tim against Lori and Jezebel against the woman who just told us all to settle, the interview accuses Gottlieb of making writing an act of exploitation:

Every book or article Lori writes has nothing to do with the subject of the book: they're all about making Lori look more attractive ... And this book is no different: it puts forward the persona of Lori Gottlieb as a famous anti-feminist writer of best-selling books and controversial Atlantic essays, which is a much more attractive persona than the 40-something single mother who could never commit to any of her boyfriends. And she'll tell her husband-to-be that she thought she had to settle, but is glad she didn't have to after all. And then that book will be Lori's version of Elizabeth Gilbert's "Committed." Then there will be a book about her soccer-momhood, and how she does it better than the other moms or her own mother. Maybe even a book like Sandra Tsing Loh's about leaving her husband for a more exciting guy after that. Not necessarily because there's something wrong with her husband, but because it would make a much better movie deal if there was conflict and an arc...

... she broke multiple promises to me, then makes up stuff about me to self-aggrandize herself, then is unapologetic about it [and doesn't] give me a heads-up...

But this is what she does with her writing to everyone in her life: her parents; her classmates from two different schools; her co-workers at two different jobs; her lovers; her son, Baby Book Deal Gottlieb. She's eventually going to run out of bridges to burn.

Again, this is just Tim's assessment of Gottlieb's motivations. And unlike some other DoubleXers and Jezebel commentors, I don't think he comes across as a totally great guy. Engaging in complete character assassinations of your exes on the World Wide Web, to quote DoubleXer Noreen, "doesn't really strike a come-hither chord." But even if Tim is wrong about Gottlieb, he's reminded us of memoir's moral pitfalls. Tim's retribution is a writer's cautionary tale.

Tags: Committed, Elizabeth Gilbert, lori gottlieb, marry him, marry him: the case for settling for mr. good enough, memoir, revenge

Hot of the heels of his quasi-hilarious February Rolling Stone interview—you know, the one where he was all too pleased with his tweet-esque middlebrow taglines about his hard-knock dating life ("Blowing me off is the new sucking me off")—John Mayer is logorrheaic again in an interview in April's Playboy where he rehashes his misery (This time: "Turning me down is the new sleeping with me") and attempts to refute his reputation as a douchebag. His explanation: "I'm just very. V-E-R-Y. And if you can't handle very, then I'm a douchebag."  Does this make sense to anyone? Or has Mayer been inside the house too much, substituting human interaction with a full-length mirror and a high speed Internet connection? In all honesty, I kind of wanted to like Mayer's whole deliberately unfluffed media persona (his Twitter account IS funny), but it's starting to wear on me mostly because it reads like either 1) a stream-of-consciousness rant on some form of speed when the narrative voice should be on anti-depressants or 2) a painfully constructed persona of a funny, I-don't-give-a-fuck-celebrity, rather than an actual funny, I-don't-give-a-fuck-celebrity.

I'm sure we will all be hearing much about this line in days to come:

PLAYBOY: Do black women throw themselves at you?

MAYER: I don’t think I open myself to it. My dick is sort of like a white supremacist. I’ve got a Benetton heart and a fuckin’ David Duke cock. I’m going to start dating separately from my dick.

Breaking news: John Mayer's penis is racist! (Though note: his heart loves people of all races hot enough to be in a Benetton ad.) I mean, Jesus, John Mayer, where is your publicist?

Tags: john mayer, Playboy, racist

Kathleen Parker today in the Washington Post hails the fact that the endless snow of this Washington winter has allowed men to be men and do what nature intended them to do: shovel. She says women shovel out of need, not desire. It's true that an inability to open one’s front door provokes an irrepressible desire to start shoveling, but I disagree that this is a trait linked to having a Y-chromosome. I am a snow lover who has never even been skiing. So why do I love it? Shoveling! I’ve already been out in today’s mess to clear off the front steps. Not because it made any sense, but because I wanted to shovel. I shovel neighbors' walkways not out of altruism, but out of a love of moving mounds of snow. The rest of the year I reluctantly endure workouts at the gym, but I can’t wait to spend an hour exhuming a snow-covered car. The other day I dragged my 14-year-old daughter off her computer and made her help me shovel a path to our back fence. By the end she was exhilarated. She said she couldn’t wait to reshovel it after this storm ended. She observed, rightly, that this was so much better than exercising for exercise sake: “When you shovel, you’re not just getting exercise, you’re also accomplishing something.”

Hanna, your post on Lindsey Vonn’s “Olympic girl drama”—the familiar quadrennial narrative of brave athlete betrayed by her body but triumphing by dint of superhuman persistence and pluck—and especially the question in the title bar, “Is Lindsey Vonn really injured?” strikes me as too cynical. I’m a total sucker for the Olympics, so I prefer another stock story: the athlete who sacrifices normalcy (school, siblings, and a social life) for the crazy dream of Olympic gold. The Games and their spotlight come around just once every four years, and Vonn’s sport, downhill skiing, is one where a bump in the snow or an ill-starred time slot can render all that preparation useless.

I don’t know why Vonn went on the Today Show this morning. (Though in a sport that only gets widespread attention during the Olympiad, who can blame her. She’ll only get on the Wheaties box if she wins gold, but after a few sit-downs with Matt Lauer, we’re more likely to recognize her there.) It could be about lowering expectations, it could be a mind game she's playing with her rivals (given the way she talked about her secret workouts in the New York Times profile, that’s a good possibility), or she might really be injured. I favor the last explanation, and even knowing it might be a ruse or a psychological crutch, it still breaks my heart. She has spent her whole life skiing, training, and skipping dessert, and now a deep muscle bruise might rob her of a chance at gold. That’s harsh.

Photograph of Lindsey Vonn via screenshot of Today Show clip.

Tags: Lindsey Vonn, Lindsey Vonn injury, olympics

The bible of psychiatry, the DSM, is undergoing its first revision since 1994. Binge eating disorder and hypersexuality will likely gain entrance into America's encyclopedia of mental illness, redrawing society's line between normal and sick. [New York Times, Washington Post]

Is the media unsure how to handle successful female athletes? From the Sports Illustrated cover of a provacatively bent-over Lindsey Vonn to the New York Times profile of the Olympic skier on Sunday, sports journalists often resort to sexist tropes when dealing with a lady athlete. [Feministing]

A study shows that there's no link between how much television programming a child watches and his or her risk of obesity. The real predictor of weight is how many commercials children are exposed to. The colorful televised parade of cereal, fast food and candy affects their food preferences. [Well Blog]

A Gallup poll showed that Sarah Palin is the Republicans' top presidential pick in 2012. But to really be a feasible candidate Palin needs to ignore the strategists, explain why she quit and send Tina Fey a bunch of flowers. [The Daily Beast]

Researchers investigate aphrodiasics and rethink some of our common lore. Chocolate? You'd have to eat 25 pounds of it to feel an effect. Donuts and pumpkin pie can trigger a sexual response, but only when paired with licorice and lavander, respectively. [New York Times]

Tags: aphrodesiacs, childhood obesity, chocolate, commercials, kids television, Lindsey Vonn, mental health, mental illness, Sarah Palin

Via Lisa Belkin's Motherlode blog, ForbesWoman and the Bump have a survey out that asks if there's a "'perfect time' for a working woman to have her first baby." In her discussion of this survey, Belkin also talks about the new autism findings that show both parents' ages at the time of conception have an effect: While older mothers are more likely to have autistic children, according to Belkin, "when the father was over 40 and the mother under 30, the increased risk was especially pronounced—59 percent greater than for younger men."

Belkin asks her audience if there really is a best time to have children. There are definitely comments from smug parents who had babies in their 20s."People wait too long to marry and have kids nowadays. If you are 22 or 23 or so, you are old enough to dive in; younger even if you are especially mature," writes one commenter, who then adds, idiotically, "You can't starve in this society—there's always plenty of hamburger and chicken!" The problem with discussions like this is that they always devolve into judgment from both sides: Some say younger parents aren't emotionally ready to have kids, others say older parents have fertility problems and their children have greater chances of birth defects.

Stasistically it is undeniable that the rates of autism, down syndrome, and other developmental disorders go up with older parents (not just mothers). But instead of blaming individual women for their "selfishness" and career ambitions (like NYT commenter Bruce who says, "Children dont need resources beyond the basics, raising a child is more important than any career, and we cant have it all...womens bodies in particular are designed to have children while in their 20's up to early 30's"), the more logical complaint is more far-reaching and truly obvious. There is no societal safety net for the majority of men and women who have children young before they have built up careers. What's more, there is evidence that being a mother can be a roadblock to promotions. If there were better support in place for parents, then a question like, "Is there a perfect time for working women to have kids?" might elicit emotionally interesting responses. But under the current cultural circumstances, the perfect time isn't about age—it's about when you can support them without going broke.

Tags: autism, best age to become a mom, motherhood

This morning U.S. Olympic skier Lindsey Vonn went on the Today Show to say she has an injury—some kind of “deep muscle bruise” or contusion that hurts even when she puts on her boot (video embedded at the bottom of the post). As always with such things, it’s hard to tell whether this is an injury injury, or a prelude to a fantastic drama in which Vonn triumphs over hardship to clinch the gold (insert sports metaphor). The Times profile of Vonn played her crash of 2006 as if she had almost died, and then she was crouched in the start house 48 hours later. In this case, it felt to me like Vonn, who is sometimes radiant and sometimes nervous and subdued, felt the need this morning to lower expectations and take some pressure off.

The bios of Olympians, like James Cameron movies, tend to align with certain archetypes, usually "warrior struggles against hardship and then rises." Feministing complained this week that the one assigned to Vonn in the New York Times magazine last weekend—pawn caught between domineering men—was sexist. There was something striking in the vast differences between the way the two Olympians singled out for profiles were portrayed—Vonn, uncertain, emotional, ruled by her relationships and then skater Shani Davis—cocky, steady, alone.

But my reaction to the Vonn profile was different. I was touched by the way Vonn seemed to have remade the usual young female athlete/domineering father-figure coach relationship (Williams sisters, Celine Dion). After being ruled by her father for many years, she did the classic woman thing—married an older skier, Thomas Vonn, who became her coach. But their relationship seems full of love and deep understanding. When she insists on doing push ups in the aisle of the plane, he said, “I’ll let her do it for a while. But then I usually have to say, ‘Hon, please come sit down. People are trying to get to the bathroom.” He makes fun of her because she never eats ice cream. And in the critical moments, when she freezes up, he whispers just the right thing in her ears.

Tags: Lindsey Vonn, Lindsey Vonn injury