The XX Factor: What women really think.

Thoroughly Modern Martha

"[George Washington] was clearly sexually excited by her," said Patricia Brady, a historian who wrote the first revisionist biography of Martha a few years ago. "When Martha decided to marry George, she didn't marry him just to be a kind stepfather to her two children. He was a hunk, and I think she decided to make herself happy. ..."

are seeking to revamp the former first lady's fusty image, using the few surviving records of things she wrote, asking forensic anthropologists to do a computerized age-regression portrait of her in her mid-20s and, perhaps most importantly, displaying for the first time in decades the avant-garde deep purple silk high heels studded with silver sequins that she wore on her wedding day.

It’s cool to know more about Martha. And I get that first lady fashion is back like black—the Smithsonian is displaying a beautiful onyx pocket watch worn by Mary Todd Lincoln after her husband’s assassination/ (I have it on good authority that DVF is an admirer.) But must we describe Martha’s shoes as “the Manolo Blahniks of her time”? I’m more interested in the mention of her late 18th-century management of five tobacco farms. What was that like? Ironically, this extreme makeover ends up bounding its subject within a rather retrograde portfolio, comprising what she wore and how she related to men and who wanted to diddle her. Exchanging the trope of the schoolmarm for that of the proto-Bovarian fashionplate isn’t really progress, is it?

... Except That Princess Dreams Eat Away Your Self-Respect

Jessica, Samantha: I recognize this impulse, the vague belief of some middle-class or upper-middle-class girls and young women (primarily white, I think; don't know if brown and black women have this too) that the world owes them a living so that their creative, artistic, interesting inner selves can be supported and thrive. I certainly had this in my 20s, when I graduated from college with my brilliance in English literature and writing poetry. I was shocked by the cold, brutal world of the itty-bitty paycheck and the boring filing jobs. I think this vague sense that we will be rescued—whether by NEA grants, as I imagined, or by a sugar daddy—is a serious problem in girls' upbringings and inner lives. It's what worries me about the cult of the princess toys for girls.

Here's what I've come to feel, in the decades since: I was insanely lucky to be a lesbian. Not just because girls are so much cuter than boys (ahem!!), but because it's forced me to test myself in the harsh world of the market ... and to grow up. No more protecting my precious creativity! I've had to market it. It's terrifying at first, but a gas, really, to get good at negotiating and at making demands in charming ways, to stop being afraid of being smart in public, and all the other challenges that grow from knowing that no one is ever gonna support you—so you have to figure out how to support yourself (and potentially a family). Honestly, I feel my life is much bigger, more rewarding, and richer precisely because I never had the sugar-daddy option.

So Samantha—don't do it. Don't retreat. Figure out how to dive in and turn your education and talents into your own income. Not only will you be safer from the post-divorce poverty that struck my mother waaaaay back in the late 1970s, which still strikes too many women who rely on their husbands' incomes, and of course, from the widow's poverty that strikes when the husband's pension and Social Security dies with him—but you'll respect yourself more in the morning.

Toward that end, some interesting reading: Linda Hirshman's Get To Work struck me as harsh, but I know a lot of young women who have found her message to be bracing and helpful. Anna Fels' Necessary Dreams takes a good look at the female retreat from work as well. And Hannah Seligson's New Girl on the Job has some good practical suggestions about how to cope with the scary, nasty office.