12
2005
Here's something that's been bothering me for months now. So I decided to keep track.
The Atlantic Monthly, a magazine that styles itself as one of the nation's more thoughtful periodicals, has steadfastly avoided running a major feature by a woman writer since the beginning of the year. I'm not joking. And I'm not over-reacting. I have the past four months – that's the past six months of editorial planning, a half-year, a substantial amount of time – sitting on my desk. I saved them for just this reason.
None of the magazines printed since mid-December carry any substantial written, by-lined contributions by women. What does appear is brief, usually in the back-of-the book critic's section or in "The Agenda" at the front. And to add insult to injury, the magazine's one featured female writer, Sandra Tsing Loh, a self-styled celebrity Mom who you may know from NPR, has dwelled for two months in a row on her kids, on her kids' schools and books about women like her. What's worse, the headline on this month's piece makes a joke about schools and "breast-milk-curdling." Dudes, when your kids are ready for school, most of them have stopped breast feeding.
The Atlantic is a dying institution. And as much as I love and cherish the idea of an intellectually driven, well-written periodical, I'm happy to say "good riddance" to what this once-fine magazine has become. With its run of Big Boy Harvard writers – and Little Lord Fauntleroys on the make – The Atlantic, in its current incarnation, is providing a sad example of what James Wolcott describes below: A self-involved, self-satisfied look at a country that doesn't exist once you drive more than a few miles west on U.S. 50.
The absence of women's voices in our political culture is a bias against changing one of the most powerful aspects of our society. That's why it's happening here on the web. And, girlfriends, it's about time.