matochak's Full Review: Natalie Angier - Woman: An Intimate Geography
Natalie Angier -- the acclaimed author, wife, mother, Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist, weight-lifter and Maryland resident -- has provided perspective beyond the mere, but interesting proper pluralization of clitoris, and has taken on providing a medical, scientific, political, ethical, cultural, historical, anecdotal and empirical look at women from the inside out in her 1999 book Woman: An Intimate Geography.
This 384 page opus -- that simultaneously seems too short and too long -- begins with a look at the miraculous egg and continues to delve into the chromosomes, image of femininity, everything you ever wanted to know about the clitoris (yours, hers and that of a variety of primates), the uterus, the breast, breast milk, the ovary, hormones, estrogen in particular, mothers and grandmothers, and testosterone.
It was a subtle difference, but starting with Chapter 15 “Spiking the Punch: In Defense of Female Aggression,” the book starts to change. The remaining chapters on the importance of muscle, the bondage of love and what’s wrong with evolutionary psychology (the latter being admirably judgmental, in my humble opinion, but judgmental nonetheless) seemed more binary, more black and white, more right and wrong, after this point of demarcation, which was in stark contrast to her more spectral and accepting views on such topics as breastfeeding, which was very well-balanced and essentially encouraged mothers to do what is right for them and not give into peer (or leer!) pressure.
In Chapter 15, this particular dividing line of a chapter, Angier lapses from her valiant and convincing efforts to deconstruct outdated models and stereotypes, and asserts her own questionable beliefs about the nature of women. For example, she discusses the conventional wisdom that “boys are more aggressive than girls” (emphasis hers), “for they shout with their mouths and on occasion with their bodies, while the girls keep their fists to themselves.” Well, that wasn’t my personal experience at all growing up, but I’m willing to suspend my disbelief until statements like the following annoyingly ask me to face up to my own purported catty passive-agressiveness and that of my bitches ‘n hos.
I’ll admit up front that I dislike this form of aggression, and that to mention it is to reinforce clichés about female treachery and female conniving. Yet it is an aggression that we gals know, because we grew up as girls and we saw it and struggled against it and hated it and did it ourselves. Indirect aggression is anonymous aggression. It is backbiting, gossiping, spreading vicious rumors. It is seeking to rally others against the despised but then denying the plot when confronted. The use of indirect aggression increases over time, not just because girls don’t generally use their fists to make their point, but because the effectiveness of indirect aggression is tied to the fluency of a person’s social intelligence; the more sophisticated the person, the cleverer her use of the dorsal blade. (p. 267)
The intensities of childhood friendships, dyads, coalitions, and jihads subside with age, but sometimes just barely. Women remain, through much of their lives, unsettled about other women. We feel drawn and repelled, desirous of a connection and at the same time aggressive toward those who register on our radar screen. (p. 269)
I don’t find passive-aggressiveness and backstabbing a distinctly feminine trait and I never will. Here, there is certainly equality of the sexes. Angier does defer to this equality in such statements as “Despite rumors to the contrary, systematic eavesdroppings have revealed that men and women gossip and equal amount about their friends, families, colleagues, and celebrities.” However, more ink in is spilled in attempting to attract women to the bitchtastic side of her argument than in trying to expose this particular stereotype for what it is -- a culturally accepted stigma.
There are other distractions in the book, such as her strong endorsement of certain drugs, particularly marijuana, as “orgasmic lubricants” and nothing short of thaumaturgical for the woman who has trouble achieving orgasm. Even more bizarre is Angier’s mysterious and intense loathing of luggage with wheels (“odious, inexplicably popular wheeled suitcases with retractable handles”). Does she take issue with business travelers, or is she just trying to tell us (for the hundredth time) that she is stong and fit and assertively demonstrates it on a daily basis?
On the positive side, Angier is a brilliant writer. In fact, this book is somewhat overwritten, in that she uses an unnecessarily Umberto Ecoesque vocabulary and maniacally “metaphorizes” nearly every item of interest in the book. Such rhapsodizing, often sartorially manifested [in the introduction, she talks about women and our desires “flapping out like the tongue of an untucked blouse” and closely follows it on page three with a discussion of the cellular membranes during apoptosis that “ruffle up like petticoats”], is thankfully, more poetic than it is impedient. She engages the reader in technical and medical details that would be dry and sterile without the stylings of her feathered pen. Her passion for science, debate and women’s issues is evident and helps the reader forgive her many (sometimes gratuitous) dalliances into forays into opinion versus information.
The information, while plump with editorial, is fascinating. Woman is a “buddy book” in that the reader will feel obligated, as one would be while reading Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain for example, to nudge a proximal pal and implore him or her to read one of perhaps thousands of fascinating factoids.
* Bonobo (repeatedly referred to primate) females stick up for each other to “such a degree that they are rarely violated or even pestered by males, despite the males’ being larger and stronger.”
* "The male chromosome is a depauperated little stump, home to perhaps two dozen, three dozen genes, and that’s the range scientists come up with when they’re feeling generous. On the X, we will find thousands of genes, anywhere from 3,500 to 6,000.”
* "The Bonobo is a sexual Olympian. males, females, old, callow, no matter -- it’s sex, grope, hump, genitor-genital rub-a-dub-dubbing, all the day long. Most of this sex has nothing to do with reproduction. It serves as the code of ethics by which bonobos survive group living. It is their therapy, their social lubricant and their post quarrel salve, a way of expressing feelings, and it is often quick to the point of perfunctory. In a species in which sexuality is so important, and in which females engage in frequent homosexual as well as heterosexual and pangenerational trysts, it is no surprise that the clitoris assumes considerable stature. As a young adolescent, a female bonobo is maybe half the weight of a human teenager, but her clitoris is three times bigger than the human equivalent, and visible enough to waggle unmistakably as she walks. Only later, when the bonobo matures and her entire labial area swells, does it become difficult to descry the organ. But the clitoris is still there, and is drafted into service by its owner several times an hour.”
* ”Marilyn Monroe, the most elaborated sexual icon of the twentieth century and surely the source of autoeruptive glee for thousands of fans, confessed to a friend that despite her three husbands and a parade of lovers, she had never had an orgasm.”
* “Because the display of the beckoning breast is aggressive and ubiquitous in the United States, we are said to be unusually, even pathologically, breast-obsessed. In other cultures, including parts of Africa and Asia, breasts are pedestrian. ‘From my research in China, it’s very clear that the breast is much less sexualized there than it is in American culture,’ Emily Martin, the cultural historian and author of Flexible Bodies, said to me. ‘it’s neither hidden nor revealed in any particular way in women’s dress or undergarments. In many villages, women sit in the sun with their breasts exposed, and older women will be out washing clothes with their breasts exposed, and it’s all completely irrelevant to erotic arousal.’”
* Baby girls have all the eggs they’re ever going to have -- six to seven million -- by the halfway point of gestation. In the next twenty weeks or so, four million of those eggs die, and by puberty, only 400,000 are left. Mostly, the body reclaims them through apoptosis (according to my friend and book club colleague, Julia, this word is said in an eerily breathy and disturbing way on the audio version of this book), and only a few hundred are used in ovulation.
Woman: An Intimate Geography is an impressive book, in spite of some distractions. I would not recommend it to an impatient reader, or those who are prone to fits of fury when the battle of the sexes (regardless of the side they are on) rages on. This book is probably best read by the relentless seekers of knowledge and self-awareness, and will forgive overly enthusiastic prose and opinions disguised as pronouncements of fact in order to get there.
Other books by Natalie Angier:
* Natural Obsessions: Striving to Unlock the Deepest Secrets of the Cancer Cell
* The Beauty of the Beastly: New Views on the Nature of Life
* Scientific Conversations: Interviews on Science from the New York Times
* Natural Obsessions: The Search for the Oncogene
* (as editor)The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2002 (The Best American ™)
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