Man, Caitlin Flanagan can just be so annoying

Okay, I’m back. K is safely ensconced at college and I’m home and ready to jump back into editing.

So I took the most recent Atlantic on the flight, and man, what is up with Caitlin Flanagan? I know, probably I should just skip her articles because she irks me so much, but the problem is, I don’t look at bylines. I read and I read and then I start getting pissed off, and then I go, wait a second…and I flip back to the first page and there she is.

So this time it was an article spawned by a book about Patty Hearst and CF does her thing about how the mothers in the 60s and 70s all had daughters missing, daughters who wore dresses and headbands and heels and pearls to school one year and the next year they wore blue jeans and tie-dye and their boyfriends had long hair and they wanted to go to Woodstock. I mean, we saw this — wasn’t this that television show?

And basically, what this is all about is CF’s own issues with women being independent and free thinkers. Remember, this is Caitlin Flanagan who:

castigates women for working outside the home (in a vicious, ugly and demeaning article that you should go read just for the righteous indignation factor — it’s probably on the Atlantic website)

doesn’t work outside the home but has a nanny to raise her twin sons (I don’t even know what the fu — what that’s about, but she wants mothers to raise their children but doesn’t raise her own children?)

stalked a teenage girl on MySpace to make a point about stalkers of teen girls on MySpace (and may I just say, creeeeepy)

wrote an article about how girls are stressed out when they go away from home and to college (what the fu — sorry, what is it about this woman that she thinks girls are such delicate fragile creatures that they must be protected and kept from insulated from the rest of the world)

So anyway, here’s the deal: women should work. Daughters should separate from their mothers (and yes, you don’t have to point out to me that this may have struck home at this particular point in my life and my daughter’s life — I see it). Girls aren’t fragile, and if they are, maybe a little toughening up is good for them. See, we can say. You are strong, you can cope, you can excel.  Maybe, if Caitlin Flanagan weren’t being such an immature girl for whom excellence is neither expected nor warranted, she would take more pride in her work and her byline.