What I believe is irrelevant. Facts are relevant.

You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say that hey, it’s biology’s fault women have to take breaks to have kids and then argue that it’s women’s fault they make less money. If it’s biology, why are women personally penalized through lower pay? Just ‘cause? We could just stop punishing women for being the people who…

That’s part of the wage gap. Women bear a much larger burden of unpaid work than men do in our society (including bearing and raising children and tending the home), which forces them into situations where they must take lower paying and lower prestige jobs in order to accommodate the larger share of unpaid work they…

Sorry, I had not seen your comment downthread. Your original comment made it seem like you had not read the book.

You are not alone. There was a lot about the show and book that I found triggering, including Jane’s storyline. One of the reasons I’m a much bigger fan of the book than the movie is that all of these issues are addressed in a more thoughtful, unfolding manner than in the show, which heightened the drama and played to…

Read the book instead. They made almost everyone super rich for the show (I guess because they wanted to shoot all the scenes in ridiculous ocean-front houses and splurge on wardrobe?), but it’s different in the book and therefore more layered and interesting.

Read the book. It will give you all these layers and more. The show was much better than I expected by the source material is really extraordinary. There is a lot more to all of these characters than the show could get to in one short season.

Agreed. I think this was partly due to the decision to move the setting from Australia to California. Madeline and Ed and Nathan and Bonnie are all still pretty priveleged in the book, but the do have actual money pressures and concerns (i.e. when Abigail goes to live with Nathan and he asks Madeline for child support…

That, plus the fact that Perry uses his financial access to trap Celeste. He essentially forced her to stop working and uses jewelry and expensive vacations to keep her dependent on him. Yes, few women would have the resources to rent and furnish an apartment in an effort to escape an abuser. But Celeste doesn’t…

Do it. We let the information out slowly over time, telling only a handful of close friends early and then others as we saw them and it felt right. I know some of my friends are weirded out by the fact that we still haven’t done a Facebook announcement even though I’m due in August, but I’m just not ready for that…

Oh, and congratulations! I hate being pregnant too. :)

Sing it, sister. It’s not like I expect anyone to sugarcoat shit for me, but I’m a grown ass woman. I’m pretty aware that my entire life is going to change after this baby is born and that there’s going to be a lot of really big challenges, especially in the first few years before s/he’s in school. I waited until I…

Thank you! And that friend sucks. I mean, what if the pressures of parenting had pushed your marriage to the edge? Would her comment have made you feel better or helped in any way? This is what I don’t understand about this attitude — it is so counter-productive. It’s possible to commiserate without competing or…

Ugh, I hear you. I feel like so many of my adult “friendships” aren’t even really friendships — they are just social obligations so that people aren’t alone all the time. But I don’t feel like there’s the mutual support and love there that I associate with friendship.

I mean, from a character perspective, it’s very clear why they would feel connected. Madeline connects with Jane’s experience as a young single mom, and Celeste connects to Jane’s secrecy about a potentially violent or upsetting past. But I agree that the casting of Woodley doesn’t help that along. When I read the…

We should stop giving wedding gifts and start giving divorce gifts. People going through divorce are often in much more need of both financial and emotional support — they are dividing a household, instead of combining one. Other registries that should exist:

I kept voting Getting a Raise too! But when I line it up against vacations, I realize the error of my ways. TBH, my years as a contractor/freelancer are a big reason I’ve gotten cynical about privileging money over time when it comes to my compensation. There is nothing like setting your own rates and having to bill…

Yesssssss. Was just talking about this elsewhere — WW was really elevated by the performances of the women cast on the show, all of whom made those characters smarter, more nuanced, and more independent than written. But that’s one of the things that make it harder upon rewatching. The choices these characters make is…

Reading his scripts make it even more obvious. He has benefited from some really amazing actresses in his female roles over the years (Annette Bening and Allison Janney, among others) who often create more nuance in the characters than first appears on the page. To be fair, the frequency with which his projects employ…

Friends. Countrymen. Lend me your ears.