The PEEP-SHOW presents REINVENTING BEAUTY, CHAPTER IV / Day 2 -- THE RICHER SEX

imagecourtesyindigenousdialogue

Peeps,


Last week, the much anticipated new book from fellow-peep, namely Washington Post writer and author Liza Mundy, was released to critical acclaim.  Through long habit, I turned to the NPR's weekend magazine show (on Sunday), and was fortunate to hear Liza discuss The Richer Sex which focuses on the changing dynamic within households, both here and abroad, where women are, or will become in the very near future, the primary breadwinners of the family unit; this, a sharp contrast to commonly held assumptions about the roles of women within the family structure, and vis-a-vis society. 


 Amazon.com's review of The Richer Sex:  How the New Majority of Female Breadwinners is Transforming Sex, Love and Family, states that Ms Mundy ' goes deep inside the lives of the couples on this cutting edge to paint of picture of how dating, marriage, and home life are changing . . . In whose interest is it to delay commitment? Are men for the first time thinking of marriage the way women used to—as a bet on the economic potential of a spouse? In this new world of men marrying up,  are women learning to value new realms of male endeavor—like parenting, protection, and a margarita at the ready?  The future is here, with couples today debating who must assume the responsibility of primary earner and who gets the freedom of being the slow track partner. With more men choosing to stay home, Mundy shows how that lifestyle has achieved a higher status and all the ways males have found to recover their masculinity. And the revolution is global: Mundy takes us from Japan to Denmark to show how both sexes adapting as the marriage market has turned into a giant free-for-all, with men and women at different stages of this transformation finding partners in other countries who match their expectations.  The Richer Sex is a wild ride into the future, grounded in Mundy’s peerless journalism, and bound to cause women and men of all generations to rethink what this social upheaval will mean.'


Other reviews included the following: 

"Liza Mundy has written a visionary, optimistic, inspiring book about the future of gender relations in America. She writes with verve, rigor and a keen sense for the unexpected. This is the rare book about the future that not only tells you where we're headed by why we should want to arrive" ---Steve Coll

"[Mundy] deftly examines who wins, who loses, and who is left on the battlefields of love, sex, and money." ---Dr. Justin R. Garcia, author and Research Fellow The Kinsey Institute

"Liza Mundy has done something remarkable: she has taken all the major social and economic threads of the past decade, and woven them into a tapestry that explains, well . . . everything." ---Lisa Belkin, author of First, Do No Harm

As I listened to this fascinating study, I couldn't help wondering if recent efforts to restrict women's health rights and reproductive autonomy were intended to thwart this shift in the balance of power--economic, political, and intellectual.  For, as we are all aware, a bare-footed and heavy-with-child woman is infinitely less likely to question the status quo and advocate for equality, a condition most attractive to the snake-charmers and barkers who crowd the campaign trail and profess proximity to the divine.  Copies of the book may be purchased online from amazon.com, or through your local book-shop.  


Happy reading,


Shane








PS:  Today's soundtrack is Lee Jones' THE SECRET