These lines were written by the author within the last few years and it immediately brought to mind what D.H Lawrence had to say about being a women a long time ago
..cool chicks are still women. And there’s no easy way to be a woman, because there’s no acceptable way to be a woman. And if there’s no acceptable way to be the thing you are, then maybe you drink a little. Or a lot.
Lawrence in his essay Give Her a Pattern says:
..the real tragedy is not that women ask and must ask for a pattern of womanhood. The tragedy is not, even, that men give them such abominable patterns, child-wives, little-boy-baby-face-girls, perfect secretaries, noble spouses, self-sacrificing mothers, pure women who bring forth children in virgin coldness, prostitutes who just make themselves low, to please the men; all the atrocious patterns of womanhood that men have supplied to woman; patterns all perverted from any real natural fulness of a human being.
The problem identified by D.H Lawrence about women requiring to ask for and follow a pattern is still true. But no matter what pattern she is given to follow, it will never be good enough. The cool chick that Coulter mentions is driven to drink because she can't find the pattern which makes being cool feel cool. The more things change the more they remain the same.
I have have read some D.H Lawrence growing up but his book of essays was quite a tedious read for me though there are interesting tidbits in most of them including Give Her a Pattern. I read Exit Interview by Kristi Coulter and found it very entertaining but this one about return to sobriety was not worth reading for me - I was mostly done after the first twenty pages. She had one good story (like just about everyone does) and she told it well. Maybe there is nothing else there judging by this book - which is not so uncommon for most people. There is no second or third story in the content of their lives. This is a fact even a person with the right mechanical skills to "write" needs to make peace with.
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