Salon.com > Julie Klausner

The comic geniuses of “Real Housewives”

Mon, 04 Oct 2010 11:01:00 +0000

To say I am a fan of Bravo's "Real Housewives" franchise is a massive understatement. I watch every iteration, from the original "Real Housewives of the O.C.," featuring gold-digger-cum-boyfriend-recycler Gretchen Rossi, to my favorite, "Real Housewives of New York City," starring the bipolar antics of the wide-eyed fawn Ramona Singer, whose drunken declaration that it was "Turtle Time" on a pier in St. John's last season made it into the Emmy reel commemorating the "Reality" category. The reunion shows are like crack to me; the cast members of each series like trading cards.

I'm not much of a reality show fan. Besides the occasional TLC show about cake or polygamy, my DVR is otherwise packed with critically approved scripted television, like "Modern Family" and "Boardwalk Empire." But despite the bottomless spate of new "Housewives" series that Bravo keeps trotting out, the "Real Housewives" franchise still fascinates and enthralls me.

Lady Business: Baby on my mind

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 13:01:00 +0000

I get to work, I stare at my computer screen, and I think about my baby. I can't bring myself to care about my projects at work. I do the bare minimum to get by. I exhausted my maternity leave months ago and my husband is taking care of our daughter, because I'm the breadwinner. This is all good and great -- I support non-traditional gender roles, really! But I just don't care about work anymore. I want to be with my baby, but I can't afford to not work. What do I do? How do I get back into work -- or, alternatively, get out of work?

Babies, babies, babies! They're everywhere, aren't they? In our eyes, in our thoughts, in our arms, in our dreams. Sometimes, in our dreams, they are riding alpacas or juggling tacos -- but that doesn't mean those dreams are necessarily about babies. Look, I'm not Freud.

Here's the thing: if you want to be at home with your baby, and you feel like your kiddo is all you can think about, you don't have to hear it from me that a career transition is probably on deck, at least for the time being. If your current gig is a full-time one, and your schedule is preventing you from doing what you need in order to feel like you have a life, and not just a job, it sounds like you need a more flexible gig, or to work toward taking a break until your partner finds work.

Lady Business: The inappropriate boss

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 13:01:00 +0000

I have a problem with my boss. Whenever I go into his office, he's scratching his crotch. I can't tell if it's a health thing, or a boner thing, or just a bad manners thing. It makes me really uncomfortable. Should I say something?

He's what-ing his what? Are you KIDDING ME? And to think that it was only recently when women weren't allowed into the workplace. Not that our crotches are any less scratchable (especially four days out of a bikini shave), but at least we are discreet enough to do the majority of our privates-clawing during our after-work hours.

And as for your extremely generous multiple choice attempt at understanding why your boss would ever, EVER, think it would be OK to rummage around his business in a place of business, that's just a case of inappropriate empathy. There are worse diagnoses! But of the choices you've laid out, I'd give a resounding yes to your hunch that his public pubis-tousling is most definitely a "Bad Manners" thing, and whether he's in need of a dermatologist or he's just "hard at work," so to speak, his reasons for relieving himself in front of you are so irrelevant, I actually just got angry typing that right now.

Lady Business: I want to be a writer

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:30:00 +0000

I'm moving to New York to get my MFA in nonfiction -- I hope to be a writer. How do I stay sane in a competitive field where success is basically "be famous"? What is the balance among work to be proud of, self-promotion, the numbers game (Twitter followers, Facebook friends, website stats, book sales, pounds gained from emotional eating), and other people always being better? How do I move to New York without the word baggage of "jealous," "inadequate" and "afraid"?

Greetings, Future Would-Be Competitor!

Advance congrats on making the big schlep to New York, where professional writers suffer and strive in unparalleled numbers! You're doing the right thing by coming here, though I can't necessarily condone your decision to go the grad school route with the same amount of conditionless confidence (though I'm certainly aware that you didn't, ahem, ask). From my experience, I think that when it comes to writing things that aren't novels, the best way to learn how to do it is to farm yourself out for freelance gigs like a meth addict juggling plates. Do it a lot is what I mean. Take non-paying assignments for the experience, meet people in the process, and use those relationships to get yourself more work, becoming better and better at writing while you do.

Lady Business: Drinks with the boss

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 13:30:00 +0000

I'm an unpaid intern at a local newspaper. Sometimes after work a bunch of people, including my editor, will go out to a bar for drinks. The other interns in the office are all guys, and they seem perfectly comfortable getting sloppy with the bigwigs (also all guys) — but I'm not. I feel like I have to be on guard and keep myself together, lest I appear like some air-headed floozy bent on sleeping her way into a paying job. (I also get the distinct impression that my supervisor would be happy to give me the chance to do so.) Do I forgo these after-work drinks and miss out on the networking opportunity? Do I try to just act like one of the guys? Do I just woman up and try to get over my sense of being an outsider?

My Dear Intern,

In the parlance of the newspaper world, it looks from your question that you have a veritable backlog of issues that need addressing; I'll do the best I can to answer the ones you've left on my stoop.

Lady Business: My career has stalled

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 13:01:00 +0000

Dear Julie,

I am an accomplished editorial professional. I've had a very successful career, but feel that I've reached a point where I can't break through from a senior editor position to the editorial director level. For the last several years, I've made lateral moves, always making a bit more money, but never that vertical move upward in responsibility. I've handled budgets, personnel and strategy -- all of the things that add up to the experience necessary for such a move.

I'm in my mid-40s and am not ready to throw in the towel, quietly riding out my career at this level. I still have things to learn and a great deal to impart. Is it me? Is it the economy? Is it the sheer dearth of such opportunities because I'm in a niche market (healthcare editorial)?

Sincerely,

Maria

Lady Business: Where’s my fair shake?

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 13:01:00 +0000

I work for a large corporation. Three days ago, I was at a meeting at which the CEO was in attendance. After the meeting concluded, my boss introduced me and four others to the CEO. The others were all men. The CEO shook all their hands but when my boss introduced me, he just said "Hi!" and didn't extend his hand. I extended mine and then he shuffled around, said, "Oh yeah," and shook my hand.

Was it rude of me to stick my hand out there, asking for a handshake? Should I have been more assertive?

Best regards,
Not Shaken

Dear Not Shaken,

I don't blame you for being "stirred"! How a-BOND-inable of that guy to give you the COLD-finger and say "Dr. No" to your offer to shake ... um ... hands.

Look, the good news is that I'm out of James Bond puns, but the bad news -- for your boss's boss -- is that he seems like the CEO of being an awkward jackass, by letting his transparent discomfort around a girl in the workplace show like an unzipped fly on a podium-less speaker.

Lady Business: Cleavage in the workplace

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 13:01:00 +0000

One of my younger female co-workers wears really low-cut, cleavage-revealing tops. I don't mean to be a douche bag and stare, but, as a hot-blooded straight young-ish dude, how can I not? It's really distracting and makes it hard to focus on the task at hand. What do I do?

It sounds like you're nostalgic for the "good old days," when a slice of pie cost a dime and college tuition was a nickel and ladies were kept away from desks and chairs and other things that weren't ovens, because of the hips that babies crown out of when they are birthed near there, and other such tempting fruit on our body-trees. Who can blame you!

Oh, that's right, everybody in the world can blame you, because you are awful. Look, is it cool that the woman you work with wears tight things that may or may not be appropriate for work, depending on what kind of office you work in, how the clothes fit her and other things that have to do with the context of her culture, general style and, frankly, body type (thank you, Lane Bryant for making an issue out of that banned ad and its reflective bias)? Maybe, I don't know.

Introducing: Lady Business

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 13:01:00 +0000

I always hear that women are far less likely to ask for a raise than men are. I'm a highly competent employee who's been at my job for six years, and nope, I've never asked for a raise. But my question is this: How do you actually ask for a raise? I mean, seriously, do people really do this? It seems unfathomable to me. Am I just another female pushover? Or am I right to think that it's insane to ask for a raise when there's a recession going on?

Your question starts out with a disconcerting hat tip to perceived normality ("I heard that most women don't have orgasms, right?") and ends up a forlorn monologue from a low-status cartoon character who walks around sulking with his enormous bald head down like Charlie Brown around Christmas, or Ziggy any time of year.

Buck up, Uncle Buck! You've been somewhere for six years? Even college is only four years, and most of that time is spent figuring out whether you really do like the Cure, or if that's just something that made sense to you in high school, when you wore pajama bottoms and green nail polish out in public.

“Fame”: It’s not gonna live forever

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 07:09:00 +0000

In a scene from the new "Fame," opening Friday, an acting teacher addresses a crop of aspiring adolescents trying out for a coveted slot at the LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and the Performing Arts.

"You wanna be famous?" he asks from the seats of the theater. "Then you gotta earn it."

That may be an acting teacher's party line. But that advice blaringly ignores the reality of today's instant celebrity, when YouTube stars like Chris "Leave Britney Alone!" Crocker and the sixth runner-up on "American Idol" are more likely to enjoy name recognition than a kid who learned how to play the oboe at a performing arts school. "Fame" (which was not screened prior to its release) tips its hat to the way things are, to an extent. In the best line from the trailer, an excessively jazzed student exclaims, "The casting director found me on YouTube!" Not, "The casting director liked the monologue I spent ages rehearsing!" Being good at what you do has never been a lock for any actor hoping to land roles in the laughably competitive world of entertainment. But as Tila Tequila can tell you, being famous in 2009 has precious little to do with talent or hard work.

Hey, skinny bitch!

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 12:07:00 +0000

The bestselling diet book provocatively titled "Skinny Bitch" features on its cover a line drawing of a lithe fashionista in a little black dress. Also on its cover is a pitch to "savvy girls" to "stop eating crap and start looking fabulous!" Nowhere on the outside of the book, however, does the copy suggest its agenda to make vegans of women seeking tiny butts; that's just a sneaky surprise. Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin, the authors of "Skinny Bitch" and its recently released follow-up cookbook, "Skinny Bitch in the Kitch," have surpassed Jessica Seinfeld's broccoli-spiked brownies to create the bait-and-switch diet book of the year. This book is a PETA pamphlet in chick-lit clothing and an innovative fusion of animal rights activism with punitive dieting tactics that prey on women's insecurities about their bodies.

The "Skinny Bitch" empire has proven so popular, in fact, that soon men will be part of the franchise, with Freedman and Barnouin's guy-targeted sequel, "Skinny Bastard," slated for release in 2009 (no word on whether Vincent Gallo will be the cover model).