Deborah Siegel

It's actually quite staggering how out-of-date this book already is, 15 years after it's publication.

Everything you need to know you can learn by just reading the Conclusion section at the end of the book. In this Siegel finally shows her hand, she is of the Second Wave and has a lot to say about what she thinks Third Wave Feminists are doing wrong. The clues were there in the preceding chapters, but for a book that is structured to set out a basic history of Second Wave and Third Wave, it reads a lot more like "Second Wave Feminists made a few mistakes but changed the world. Third Wave Feminists don't have any respect and only care about sex."

Other than the briefest mention, Siegel fails to touch on the intersectionality of oppressions that Third Wave feminism rallies around (this is truly a book about white women, for white women). This was not a far-out concept in 2007. I was there. We were talking about it ad naseum.

Perhaps most shocking to me - though this is incidental - is the moment in the conclusion where Siegel snipes at BUST editor Debbie Stoller by mentioning "[she] has since published a series of books about knitting". Exactly how feminist is it to imply that another successful woman is less-than for having an interest outside of feminism?? Had this moment been earlier in the book, honestly I probably would have DNFd. Alas it came in the last 10 pages. Not long after this Siegel graciously definies feminism for us - with extremely binary and gender-essentialist language.

There are a lot of pillars of feminist writing that have inspired people, hundreds of pieces that still hold up today. Unfortunately, this is not one of them.… (mere)

I can't claim to have really read this, because some of the essays were so insufferable I skipped over them. They could have been subtitled: "Affluent people whine about their childhoods."
There were a few really standout essays--the one by John Hodgman (which was why I read the book) about why he feels he must have a second child due to his singleton childhood is absolutely hilarious. Teller's is also a nice look at a very close knit family as the parents age and begin to need his help more and more. Luckily, he had the financial means to deal with this on his own.
All in all, this wasn't really a must read collection for me.… (mere)