What Do Women Want? Bread, Roses, Sex, Power

I love Erica Jong.  I don't always agree with her, but she always gives me a good kick in the ass when I need it most. 

This book came out in 1998 and I'm only getting around to reading it now.  It is a collection of essays centering around the essential question of what women most desire.  And the truth is, as any lover worth his (or her) salt knows: we want everything!  Drawing on such varied figures and topics as Anais Nin, Nabokov, Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband's penis, Princess Di, James Joyce, pornography, plastic surgery, and Viagra; Jong skewers politicians, porn stars and virgins alike.

Though not always an engrossing read (I skipped around from chapter to chapter depending on my current attention span), the book has its memorable moments.  My favourite being when Jong recalls throwing a glass ashtray at the television in her hospital room after enduring a painful C-section with the birth of her daughter.  The program?  An anti-abortion diatribe by a priest and male politician; people without a uterus who have the nerve to tell us what to do with ours! 

The book is full of great Jong one-liners: "You were born to breed and die and the heart breaks either way."

The best chapter, for personal if not political reasons, is The Perfect Man.  Because, if we are going to be frank, and Jong always inspires frankness, is that is what almost every heterosexual woman is in search for, resenting, frustrated with, or completely given up on.  Keep in mind Jong has been married four times, so I consider her to be quite an expert on the relentless search for "getting it right."  As she admits, sometimes the man who is perfect for one stage of your life, say the stable provider, is not who you need twenty years later, when you want a passionate best friend.  As Jong points out, for years women had to sell their beauty and sexuality in order to acquire social status and financial stability.  Now that we no longer have to give up our sexuality (I can live in my own house and sleep with whom I please thank-you-very-much!), why should we?  Most men certainly don't!  Three cheers for freedom of speech and freedom to choose!