"[Jackson] Browne had approved [Wes] Anderson's use of 'These Days,' but had forgotten about it completely by the time he bought a ticket..."

"... to see it at his local theater. 'When the scene started and the song came on, I thought, "Wow, I used to play just like that,"' Browne said, laughing. 'Then I realized it was me. I think the song had already taken on a life of its own, but it was definitely amplified by that movie.'"

From "The Song That Connects Jackson Browne, Nico and Margot Tenenbaum/Browne wrote 'These Days' at 16. Now 75, he and some famous admirers reflect on his unexpected mainstay: 'If a song is worth anything, it’s about the life of the listener.'" (NYT).

Here's that scene from "The Royal Tenenbaums":

 

The song, written when Browne was 16, seems to be from the point of view of someone who's lived through many phases of life. It ends: "Please don’t confront me with my failures/I had not forgotten them."

The article quotes Jimmie Fadden, "a co-founder of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band — which Browne briefly joined": "I don’t know what his failures were at that time — maybe it was his report card, or school credits or the authorities at Sunny Hills coming down hard on him. All these years later, it’s a perfect song for any of us in our 70s.”

"My interests were moving out of this idea of self-optimization. I think what happens in the wellness world is this desire for control and certainty...."

"I don’t think the answers are deep inside myself. If anything, the answers are in the collective, in recontextualizing ourselves and realigning ourselves with other women."

 
Said Elise Loehnen, out of wellness world but still speaking the mystifying lingo of wellness world, quoted in "She Outgrew the Wish to Be Perfect/For years Elise Loehnen peddled wellness for Gwyneth Paltrow. Her new book explores 'the price women pay to be good'" (NYT).

Notice that she's saying that being inside Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop made her too individualistic, and she needed to leave the cult to become more of a collectivist. What?!

ADDED: I think what's really going on here is that Loehen is trying to establish her own business, parallel to Paltrow's, and the rest is nonsense. She's still "peddling wellness."  

"As she has evangelised about chakra healing and $75-per-month vitamin supplements, Paltrow's high-end 'yoga mom' spirit has overshadowed her film career."

"Even her exceptionally trim body, at 50, is another part of the brand: recently, she has spoken about a bone-broth diet which has been widely criticised as 'dangerous.' (She subsequently insisted that she has many days of eating 'whatever' and 'french fries.') There is something so absurd about Paltrow's image that it seems almost to transcend the disdain you might expect to be levelled at her for such flagrant unworldliness. To many, she's such a caricature of privilege, doing things that are so glossily removed from ordinary life.... inconceivably wealthy, hyper-fixated on things that most have never thought about (vaginal steamers, anyone?).... [I]n today's relentlessly critical social media discourse, many find her schtick so over-the-top that they can't help but find it entertaining."

BBC explains, in "Gwyneth Paltrow verdict: Why she divides, and fascinates."

Side note: She won the case. 

I trust that the jury ascertained that she and not the optometrist was the one who told the truth. 

Does that make her a less ridiculous figure in our pop culture?

"In gold jewelry and luxe-looking riffs on traditional businesslike silhouettes like the suit, cardigan and turtleneck sweater, her hair loose and makeup modest..."

"... Paltrow has effectively split the difference between demure propriety and power glam. She has simultaneously telegraphed two messages that very well could have been at odds: 'Look, I’m just a mom who tried to take her teenagers on a nice ski vacation,' and 'Yes I am wealthy and famous, and I shan’t be wasting my time on this.'... Paltrow’s soft, gentle silhouettes also presented a subtle contrast to the allegation that she had crashed into another skier and then bolted away. On Thursday, Paltrow wore a soft-looking relaxed-fit gray double-breasted suit over a thin scoop-neck shirt of the same color. Friday, when Paltrow sat listening to witness testimony in a collared, dark long-sleeved top with slight puff sleeves, lips pursed and cheekbones jutting, she looked pleasant and non-threatening — if also mildly annoyed to be missing a Goop staff meeting, or a farm-to-table vegan lunch reservation, or a crystal sound bath...."

 
Such are the subjective observations of Ashley Fetters Maloy, writing in WaPo, in  "At trial, Gwyneth Paltrow is dressing for where she’d rather be/The Goop founder’s clothes have telegraphed two messages at once: She was just a regular mom on a ski vacation, and she is too famous to waste her time on this." 

The question in the case is who skied into whom — that is, who was uphill. The plaintiff sued Paltrow for $3 million, but it got reduced to $300,000. Why didn't she just settle? She counterclaimed for $1 plus attorney's fees. I think it's because she's telling the truth.

I watched this clip of her testimony on TikTok, and I predict she'll win — as one commenter says, "I'm with bone broth lady":

"[T]he most preposterously priced mattress, a king-size Grande Vivius, costs $539,000...."

"When Drake bought one, in 2020, it was merely $400,000. For non-Grammy winners, there’s a waiting list. Handcrafted by a team of artisans in Sweden, each mattress takes up to six hundred hours to assemble and stitch and is wrapped in checked cotton ticking....  Gwyneth Paltrow partnered with Avocado on the Goop x Avocado mattress... which starts at $24,000 and is available on demand.... While I waited for the couple chilling out on the Eco Organic model to move on, I asked a sales associate named Desi (long hair, leggings) if customers ever fall asleep. 'All the time,' she said. 'The longest was four and a half hours. He was so embarrassed that he bought the mattress.'... The Casper Nova Hybrid ($2,295) is awfully cozy, and I also like the Casper Original, both the all-foam ($1,295) and the hybrid foam with springs ($1,695). Staring at the ceiling in Bloomingdale’s, listening to the Four Seasons sing 'Oh, what a night' over the sound system, I wanted to answer 'Both' to the salesperson’s question: Which is more comfortable? Some of this confusion is deliberate....  Amid all the shadiness and hyped marketing, how to choose?"

 
From "How to Buy a New Mattress Without a Ph.D. in Chemistry/The disrupter economy has set its sights on your bedroom, offering gel capsules, ice fabric, green-tea memory foam, and copper-infused toppers. Will they help you get a better night’s sleep?" by Patricia Marx (The New Yorker).

"Go ahead, have a laugh, even if it is just for the camera.... Do something for others, but don't forget about #1. Yes, that is a vibrator. Gaze into your soul, but also stare into the abyss. That's joyful too."

(That was great, in my opinion.)

"Toward the end of the book, Kantor and Twohey devote two chapters to Christine Blasey Ford and her decision to air her sexual-assault allegations against the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh."

"This, and the book’s finale, 'The Gathering,' seem appended, an anticlimactic climax. In 'The Gathering,' the reporters assemble 12 of the sexual abuse victims they interviewed (including a McDonald’s worker, Kim Lawson, who helped organize a nationwide strike over the fast-food franchise’s failure to address sexual harassment) at Gwyneth Paltrow’s Brentwood mansion to talk, over gourmet Japanese cuisine, about what they’ve endured since going public with their charges. The testimonials inevitably descend into platitudes about personal 'growth' and getting 'some sense of myself back.' At one point, Paltrow starts crying over the way Weinstein had invoked his support for her career to get women to submit to his advances, and Lawson’s friend (a McDonald’s labor organizer who came with her so she wouldn’t feel alone in a room full of movie stars) hands the actress a box of tissues. These therapeutic scenes paste a pat conclusion onto a book that otherwise keeps the focus not on individual behavior or personal feelings but on the apparatuses of politics and power."

From Susan Faludi's review of "SHE SAID/Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement" by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey. (Kantor and Twohey are NYT reporters, and the review is in the NYT.)

Interesting detail about Paltrow, the tissues, and the McDonald's workers.

"Bragging rights for 'Howard Stern Comes Again' really do go to Donald Trump, who is far and away its most arresting subject.

"Stern has interviewed him many times, and the conversations leap out as if in neon. Some have already been well publicized, as when Trump remarked that dating in the age of AIDS was his personal Vietnam. But there’s so much more. His extreme richness; his treatment of the 'girls' he dates; his easily debunked lies; his excitement about hot new projects (Trump World magazine, Trump University): All are matters of record here. And the transcript of his 2001 radio brawl with the gossip columnist A. J. Benza, with Stern presiding 'like Solomon,' must be read to be believed. Trump: 'I won your girlfriend, A. J. You know it.' Benza: 'He sends things to her, newspaper clippings with him mentioned, circles his name and writes "billionaire." You have no idea. He’s out of his mind.'"

From "Howard Stern Can Talk. This Book Shows He’s Also a Good Listener" by Janet Maslin (NYT). The book, a collection of interviews, is "Howard Stern Comes Again" (available May 14th). Maslin likes the book but warns you not to read it straight through: "That will make it seem long and repetitive, with Stern frequently hitting on his favorite themes — which is to say, the ones that have the most to do with him. He likes asking about masturbation, money, making it big and psychotherapy, all of which demonstrate more narcissism than curiosity."

In NYT fit-to-print style there's this sentence: "[Gwyneth] Paltrow’s helpful hint on how to quiet an obstreperous husband will be one of the book’s big takeaways, even though these radio interviews aren’t technically news." The quote in the book — as I know from reading about it just about anywhere else — is: "One of the things you can do to make your man happy, ladies, is, like, sometimes in the middle of a fight, I just blow him. It ends everything."

ADD: Here is audio of that A.J. Benza/Donald Trump interview. Incredibly entertaining. Thanks to J. Farmer (in the comments) for pointing to that. I don't know how it looks in the transcript (in Stern's book), but in the audio Trump dominates brilliantly and hilariously and Benza is reduced to a pool of beta. Maslin presents it as if maybe Benza got the better of Trump. That's what you call fake news.

"The 72-year-old retired optometrist claims that [Gwyneth] Paltrow, 46, was 'skiing out of control' when she hit him from behind, 'knocking him down hard, knocking him out'..."

"Instead of staying to help, 'Paltrow got up, turned and skied away, leaving Sanderson stunned, lying in the snow, seriously injured,' the lawsuit said, describing the incident as a 'hit-and-run ski crash.'...  [According to the plaintiff, Terry Sanderson, there were] large signs as 'big as two refrigerators' that told skiers to slow down...  he decreased his speed appropriately and was 'just enjoying the day.' 'Then, I heard this hysterical scream like you never hear on a ski run,' he said. 'Never have I heard it in my life . . . like King Kong came out of the jungle or something.'"

Paltrow is white, so Sanderson can get away with saying "like King Kong came out of the jungle."

The story appears in WaPo, with the headline "'My brain felt like I’d been injected with novocaine’: Gwyneth Paltrow sued for alleged skiing 'hit-and-run.'"

The headline made me think the quote came from Paltrow. I thought that injected-with-novocaine feeling was Paltrow's reaction to getting accused of doing something wrong. But it's Sanderson: "My ribs were really sore, and my brain felt like I’d been injected with novocaine... It was just numb, nothing was making sense."

"The minute the phrase 'having it all' lost favor among women, wellness came in to pick up the pieces."

"It was a way to reorient ourselves — we were not in service to anyone else, and we were worthy subjects of our own care. It wasn’t about achieving; it was about putting ourselves at the top of a list that we hadn’t even previously been on. Wellness was maybe a result of too much having it all, too much pursuit, too many boxes that we’d seen our exhausted mothers fall into bed without checking off. Wellness arrived because it was gravely needed. Before we knew it, the wellness point of view had invaded everything in our lives: Summer-solstice sales are wellness. Yoga in the park is wellness. Yoga at work is wellness... The organic produce section of Whole Foods. Whole Foods. Hemp. Oprah. CBD. 'Body work.' Reiki. So is: SoulCycle, açaí, antioxidants, the phrase 'mind-body,' meditation, the mindfulness jar my son brought home from school, kombucha, chai, juice bars, oat milk, almond milk, all the milks from substances that can’t technically be milked, clean anything. 'Living your best life.' 'Living your truth.' Crystals...."

From "The Big Business of Being Gwyneth Paltrow/Inside the growth of Goop — the most controversial brand in the wellness industry" by Taffy Brodesser-Akner in the NYT Magazine.

From having it all... to having little symbols of nonexistent meaning... essentially having nothing... but nothing in a graspable, tangible form. And it even has a face. The face of Gwyneth Paltrow.

ADDED: The "mindfulness jar" really is a thing kids are making. I did a search to make this image. Click to enlarge and read:

Who are the women who accepted the deal as offered by Harvey Weinstein? Will their names be kept out of the press? Should they?

I'm listening to the NYT podcast, "The Daily," and today's subject is "Harvey Weinstein’s New Accusers."

The NYT reporter Jodi Kantor described listening to the stories told by Weinstein's accusers:

It's like watching the same movie again and again and again. It appears to have been a system. It was facilitated by so many people. Executives. Very low-level assistants who had to do some of the dirty work. There were a lot of logistics involved. In every case that we documented, according to the women, Weinstein asked to meet with them for a work reason. And in some of the stories we've heard, what the women describe is a very explicit work-for-sex quid pro quo. Other women say that just as Weinstein put the moves on, he essentially name-dropped. He said, Look at what I've done for this one. Or that one. He implied: If you want to succeed in this business, this is what you have to do. If you get intimate with me, I'll be able to make a big star like such-and-such.

Who is such-and-such? Will such-and-such's name be withheld? Obviously, Weinstein could have lied. He could have named the biggest star without it being true that the woman did what he said was a necessary step for a young, beautiful woman to get a role in one of his movies. Indeed, the intimacy test could have worked the other way: If you're pliable enough to give your beautiful body to a horrible man like me, you don't have what it takes.

The very next topic in the podcast is Gwyneth Paltrow, who was Weinstein's biggest female star at that time. We're told she rejected Weinstein's offer.

In quid pro quo, you get what you bargained for, but what if you give and don't get? You can't sue to force Harvey Weinstein to make you a star. Some women who've made accusations got monetary settlements, but these women had to give even more (in the form of nondisclosure agreements). And they seem to have rejected the sex or had it forced on them.

Did anyone accept the arrangement, give the sex willingly, and expect Weinstein to fulfill his end of the bargain? We haven't heard the name of anyone in that position. I assume there are lots of names in this category. Notice that we don't know what they got. Did anyone enter the bargain with eyes-open, deciding it's worth it, and get what she was led to expect?

Weinstein's modus operandi wouldn't work if the open secret included the knowledge that the women who said yes got little or nothing. If Weinstein were lying, using names of women who didn't in fact take the offer, then he was slandering the women he named. Those stars — such as, perhaps, Paltrow — could have brought lawsuits, but there's little reason to believe that the potential for a defamation lawsuit would have stopped a man who was committing so many legal wrongs and getting away with it for 20+ years.

So much silence facilitating so much harm! Should the women who took the bargain and got what they wanted out of it be regarded as victims and entitled to keep their names secret, or are they part of a system that hurt many others, and subject to outing?

Interest in sexual harassment was suppressed to protect Bill Clinton: Is that part of why Harvey Weinstein got away with his abuses?

The 1990s began with a heightening of interest in sexual harassment as liberals tried to defeat the confirmation of Clarence Thomas. The refrain in the fall of 1991 was "You just don't get it," as Democrats lambasted anyone who resisted taking sexual harassment in the workplace seriously. But in 1998, when the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, Democrats reversed the message. In the biggest sellout of feminism I've seen in my lifetime, sexual harassment turned into just sex, and those who wanted to take it seriously were derided as prigs.

Now, I'm reading the NYT article "Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie and Others Say Weinstein Harassed Them/'This way of treating women ends now,' Ms. Paltrow said as she and other actresses accused the producer of casting-couch abuses," and I'm wondering why only now? Why not earlier? What stood in your way?

My hypothesis is that liberals — including nearly everyone in the entertainment business — suppressed concern about sexual harassment to help Bill Clinton. Giving him cover gave cover to other powerful men, and the cause of women's equality in the workplace was set back 20 years.

So I'm looking at the new NYT article and trying to see what the dates are. They're kind of obscure! I'm seeing vague phrases like "in the late 1990s" and "accounts of sexual harassment going back to the 1990s." I am seeing a couple clear dates. First, 1999...

Even as Ms. Paltrow became known as the “first lady of Miramax” and won an Oscar for “Shakespeare in Love” in 1999, very few people knew about Mr. Weinstein’s advances. “I was expected to keep the secret,” she said.

... and 1996:

In 1996, the French actress Judith Godrèche said she was invited up to Mr. Weinstein’s suite, where he asked to give her a massage. After she said no, she recalled, he argued that casual massages were an American custom.

I just want to put this hypothesis out there and encourage people to correlate allegations about Weinstein with the great knowing-and-forgetting process that happened in the 1990s — 1991 and 1998 were the key dates — as the issue of sexual harassment was crushed into whatever shape worked in the interest of Democratic Party power.

Are these allegations coming out now because Hillary Clinton lost the election and the time for covering for Bill Clinton is over at long last?

***

"I just want you to know how much Bill and I appreciate the things you do for him. Do you understand? Everything you do."/"What really went through my mind at that time is 'She knows. She knew. She's covering it up and she expects me to do the very same thing.'"

"Have you ever seen the movie 'Sliding Doors' with Gwyneth Paltrow? It's a pretty good movie that shows how one small decision can change your life."

"In the movie, we see what happens when Gwyneth Paltrow's character comes home early from work one day to find her boyfriend cheating on her. We also see the alternative, where she is delayed on her way home and doesn't catch him. The most exciting part of the movie? In the timeline where she catches her cheating boyfriend, she ends up with the world's most awesome haircut...."

From a blog post titled "The 'Sliding Doors' Haircut," which I found after reading something over at Tom & Lorenzo's about Gwyneth Paltrow:

GIRL. FIX YOUR HAIR. The Marcia Brady look is tired and you’ve been sporting it for close to two decades now. GOD.

And from the comments:

PLEASE...go back to the short hairstyle in Sliding Doors...this center part HAS TO GO !

IS ALL CAPS to begin and end a statement some kind of THING?

I don't know, but it seems to me — and I read this in a magazine a long time ago — that the women with the very best hair arrive at one hairstyle and keep it permanently. Anna Wintour is said to have worn the same hairstyle since she was 14.

Saks Fifth Avenue — once a purveyor of sophisticated clothing for women — shows faux-schoolgirl clothes on a model who's much too small for the clothes, so that she looks even tinier than a schoolgirl.

Seen in the sidebar to my blog just now:



Look how oversized everything is, including the very long belt that hangs down to her knees. The girl is sad and stumbling. She looks as though she can barely walk and hardly knows what to think about anything. Her lack of any capacity is symbolized by the absence of visible hands. They're somewhere inside those overlong sleeves.

How can this be how women are now invited to see ourselves? Feeble, vulnerable children.

This makes me want to show you a photo I snapped the other day at the hair salon:



I didn't go out of my way to put those 3 magazines together. That was what was arrayed in front of me: Jennifer Lawrence, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Emma Stone, all posing in thin lingerie. Stone, in particular, looks naked. These are the same movie stars who lecture us about feminism.

If you had to design an outfit that made a person look extremely covered up and simultaneously disturbingly sort of really naked...

... it would be this very strange thing worn by Gwyneth Paltrow the other day.

And there is something a little ’70s sci-fi about the look that endears it to us a little. Very “Space 1999” or “Logan’s Run.” She needs feathered hair and a big plastic raygun that looks like a hair dryer to complete the picture.

But no, really. It’s awful. We kind of love her for wearing it, but it’s truly, truly awful.

"Lenny is your over sharing Internet friend who will yell at you about your finances, help you choose a bathing suit, lamp, president ... AND tell you what to do if you need an abortion."

From the mission statement of the new Lena-Dunham-related newsletter experience.

The word "experience" there is an artifact of cutting-and-pasting from a New York Magazine article, "Lena Dunham Tries to Cement Her Guru Status," that begins "The Lena Dunham experience is getting another brand extension...."

The Lena Dunham Experience... is it like the Jimi Hendrix Experience?

I know, I know, you'll probably scream n' cry
That your little world won't let you go
But who in your measly little world are trying to prove that
You're made out of gold and can't be sold
So, are you experienced? Have you ever been experienced? Well, I have...

I doubt if the subscribers to Lena Dunham's newsletter are being invited out of their "measly little world." The mission statement is an offer to be your friend and to fit right into your little world, where you're doing your usual things, buying clothes and decorating your apartment, figuring out how to vote, and keeping your finances and your body from acquiring the power to drag you — perhaps screaming and crying — out of that nice little world of yours that it would be mean to call "measly" and "little." Come on, let's buy a bathing suit!

And so, another female entertainment celebrity branches into the women's magazine business. It's like Oprah's magazine and Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop, right? Or does Dunham not want that spin, not want to be thought of as Gwyneth-y?

“We don't see Lenny as the anti-Goop, even though we realize that our readers may not have the same income in their lives,” Dunham said. 

And Dunham's partner in the Lenny project, Jenni Konner, said: “We worship Gwyneth. She has literally been the most supportive person of this project of anyone we've spoken to.”

We worship Gwyneth. 

How exactly does one do that? Is it anything like watching the sun rise from the bottom of the sea?

"By glamorizing a limited budget in a piously frugal 'look what you can do with it' sort of way, it suggests that people who aren’t eating as beautifully are doing it wrong and deserving of additional scorn."

"This isn’t an exercise in actually eating what SNAP recipients can eat, and it creates false impressions of what this lived reality actually is, making it easier for people to make false comparisons to their own situation."

A former nutritionist named Stephanie Jolly told Darlena Cunha, a home-based parent and former television producer. Cunha has an article in WaPo titled "How Gwyneth Paltrow hurt America’s poor and hungry/Her uber-privileged food stamp challenge obscures the many obstacles low income people face."

We were just talking about Paltrow's food-stamp challenge here. There are lots of good comments in there. And Dan from Madison has his own blog post, here:

I decided to go to my local grocery store to see if I could get enough food to live on for one week for $29.... Vegetables, frozen, are a great deal.... The chicken thighs were an easy choice for protein.... The mayo cost us $1.59 - but that will help stretch all of that tuna that only cost us .625 per can (there was a deal at 4 for $2.50).  I would plan on tuna fish sandwiches or that PB and J for lunches at my job, and would bring an apple or banana along.  The bread was only .89 for the loaf.  For breakfast I could imagine a fried egg atop toast with a little yogurt and/or fruit on the side.  The cans of chicken noodle soup were an astounding .49 each.  For dinners, I imagined rice (.99 for the bag - and that is a lot of rice), and chicken with vegetables.... So the total for all of this food above was $23.99...

To that, Dan added a "flask of Shellback Spiced rum... $4.19." He declares: "I think I pretty conclusively proved that one person could easily eat for $29 for a week and still have money left over for bad habits like drinking."

Does that count as the "scorn" Stephanie Jolly was talking about? And, more importantly, will Dan be "eating beautifully"?

Gwyneth Paltrow does the food stamp challenge... too well.

I think the challenge is supposed to demonstrate how hard it is to eat for a week on $29:

This is what $29 gets you at the grocery store—what families on SNAP (i.e. food stamps) have to live on for a week. pic.twitter.com/OZMPA3nxij
— Gwyneth Paltrow (@GwynethPaltrow) April 9, 2015

But this array clearly demonstrates how to do it right: Rice and beans are the core staples that combine calories with some decent protein. Eggs are great protein and are completely delicious and versatile. There are additional starches for variety: a yam, corn, and tortillas. And there's plenty of fresh greenery, including the splurgy avocado and limes. The main thing missing is oil.

The Washington Post doubts that this is enough food: "It just might leave her consuming fewer than 1,000 calories a day for a week...."

Why do they write crap like that? Everything is in the picture. It would be easy to count the total calories and divide by 7. What's with the "just might" business?

"You sit on what is essentially a mini-throne... and a combination of infrared and mugwort steam cleanses your uterus, et al."

"It is an energetic release—not just a steam douche—that balances female hormone levels. If you’re in LA, you have to do it."

How many posts on this blog have the "Obama the Boyfriend" tag? 54!

We were just talking about yesterday's "'Obama Courts Women in Campaign Swing' — courts women?! Not men?'" I was saying it's normal to say that a candidate "courts votes" — because he really wants to win the one-and-only vote the person has to give in a particular election — and that easily slips into the sloppier usage "courts voters," but when you slot in a single sex and say "courts women" — as the NYT did yesterday — the original connotation of wooing a lover becomes apparent. You can tell it's there because you know they wouldn't say "courts men."

I said to Meade: "You know, there's a reason I created the 'Obama the Boyfriend' tag. How many times do you think I've used it?" He answered "5." I knew it was a lot more than that, but even I was surprised to see that the answer was: 54. Obama has been sold to us on this theme for a long, long time. The most recent post with the tag before yesterday's was "'You're so handsome that I can't speak properly.' Said to Barack Obama by Gwyneth Paltrow...."

But when did it start? Whose gush first pushed me to create the tag?

Maureen Dowd has boyfriend trouble.

"He was going to be the kind of guy who whipped you up and then, when you were all excited, left you flat, and then, when you were deflated and exasperated and time was running out, ensorcelled you again with some sparkly fairy dust."

Absurd. And so mystifyingly anti-feminist. How did Barack Obama pull voters away from Hillary Clinton in 2008? You'd think that women would have felt a special attachment to the the woman on the verge of being the first woman President. There's a special attachment that is more special than the attachment of woman to woman: the boyfriend. What a deft political move for Obama! It was a fairytale romance.

As our old boyfriend declared — and it takes one to know one — it was "the biggest fairytale" he'd ever seen.