It's Not That I'm Bitter...: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Visible Panty Lines and Conquered the World

Gina Barreca is not bitter about the way Sarah Palin played the 'Cute Hockey Mom' card, but she wonders why a woman like Hillary Clinton still has to worry about her highlights while deciding whether or not to bail out Wall Street. She's still confused, years later, about why Anne Bancroft, thirty-six when "The Graduate" was filmed, was cast as 'the older woman'. In "It's not that I'm Bitter...", Barreca ponders these questions and many others by giving women a hilarious antidote for the toxic 'musts' they've been fed over the centuries. In essays that mull everything from the horror of chin hairs to why the 'glass ceiling' is better described as a thick layer of men, Barreca tells women to stop believing the lies and conquer the world - and she does it with a sharp wit, good shoes and remarkably little eye cream.

About the Author :
GINA BARRECA, Ph.D. is a professor of English and Feminist Theory at the University of Connecticut and author of "Babes in Boyland, They Used to Call Me Snow White, but I Drifted" and "I'm With Stupid: One Man, One Woman, and 10,000 Years of Misunderstandings Between The Sexes Cleared Right Up ("coauthored with Pulitzer Prize-winner Gene Weingarten of "The Washington Post)." She grew up in Brooklyn and now lives in Storrs, CT. Go figure.

Review :
"Fans of Nora Ephron's "I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman" will find humor along with serious insights about women and aging in Barreca's latest challenge to women to "stop obsessing over hymens, husbands, and hangnails and once again direct our attention outward to the larger issues of... the creation of genuinely significant opportunities for women in all workplaces." But Barreca ("Perfect Husbands & Other Fairy Tales") is more about laughs than lecturing, as she addresses the mysteries of finding the perfect bra, the indignities of bathing suit shopping at TJ Maxx, her relationship with her hair and the "Fifty-two Things I Learned by Fifty-one." Along the way, she points out what she considers to be the insipid concerns of holiday preparations or what exactly women may consider to be a waste of time ("Why, oh why, didn't I organize my closet according to color and texture of garment?"). Between the snappy observations, Barreca takes an opportunity to liken the progression of contemporary feminist thought to a car accident--"it's not so much that we're in a backlash as we're in a whiplash."--Booklist "Gina Barreca is very, very funny. For a woman." - Dave Barry "Some people are funny in an acid-edged cocktail lounge, like Dorothy Parker, in a smoky French cafe, like David Sedaris, or in a crazy English country house, like P.G. Wodehouse. Gina is funny in your kitchen, in the ladies' room of your favorite restaurant, in the awful dressing room with forty-seven ugly bathing suits around you. Gina Barreca is funny, for real." - Amy Bloom "Regina Barreca's prose, in equal measures, is hilarious and humane. Her no-holds-barred observations make me laugh, tear up a little, and nod my head in recognition. A witty "paisana," Barreca packs a punch and lays bare our foibles." - Wally Lamb