Why are women so hard on one another?

June 2, 2018

In my guise as editor in chief of WAG magazine, I had a pleasure of sharing a moment with Ashley Judd on the red carpet of the Greenwich International Film Festival (GIFF) in Connecticut Friday night. She is an exquisite-looking woman who is, more important, exquisite in her manners and manner. I began by thanking her for her work as one of the leaders of #MeToo and asked her if she thought that this time, the response to the sexual harassment women have suffered would really be different.

It already is, she said, and the result will be an improvement not only in the lives of women but of men as well. …

A world lit by fire in a reverse fairy tale

May 19, 2018

In the end – after all the melodrama about in-laws and outlaws, race and clashing cultures – it was both a deeply personal moment and a global event brimming with cultural meaning.

A justifiably proud, almost wistful mother seeing her daughter off into a new life; a father-in-law stepping in to escort a bride who might’ve represented the daughter he never had; a self-possessed scion supporting his adored, rougher-around-the-edges kid brother on his big day; and oh, that kid brother – like a hero out of Jane Austen – waiting, craning his neck, hoping almost against hope, as it were, for “her” to appear. Then, finally, yes, it was she, of course, poised at the entrance of the church, but then, who else would it, could it, be? Looking like a goddess …

‘Giselle’ in the #MeToo age

April 9, 2018

The ballet “Giselle” – the quintessence of 19th century Romanticism – tells the story of a simple, open-hearted peasant girl driven mad for love of Albrecht, a man who’s hidden his aristocratic identity and engagement to another. Dying, Giselle becomes a Wili, one of the female spirits compelled to avenge themselves on the men who wronged them in life by dancing them to death.

In the excellent, though far from perfect, Bolshoi Ballet production given an encore simulcast last Sunday in theaters around the world, there was a great moment in Act 2 when the Wilis dispensed with Hans, Giselle’s unrequited suitor, whose jealousy of the beloved Albrecht sets the tragedy in motion. Under Yuri Grigorovich’s choreography, two of the lead Wilis basically tossed Hans away. They were like elegant bouncers. The ladies sitting behind us ...

Kudos... to me

April 6, 2018

I’m pleased to announce that I have been selected for a 2018 Folio: Top Women in Media award in the Motivators category. . (Folio is an online magazine about, well, online and print magazines.)

I’ll be at the June 7 awards luncheon at the Edison Ballroom in Manhattan, representing WAG magazine as editor in chief, and joining in a toast to 2018 Lifetime Empowerment & Achievement Award recipient Martha Stewart, WAG’s July 2014 cover subject. ...

Nominated for a Lambda Literary Award!

March 13, 2018

It is with delight and gratitude that I announce that I’ve been nominated for a Lambda Literary Award for my novel “The Penalty for Holding,” the second in my series of books dealing with power and rivalries, “The Games Men Play.”

The Lammys, as they’re called, are a group of awards in various fiction and nonfiction categories celebrating works with LGBT themes. This year’s winners will be announced June 4 at New York University’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts. ...

Farewell (for now) to PyeongChang

February 26, 2018

Experts will tell you that the high-pressured setting of the Olympics’ global stage is like no other. It can make the favorites fall and rise again and the dark horses surge to the front of the finish line.

That was certainly the case of the magical two weeks in PyeongChang, whose motto might’ve been “Expect the unexpected.”

It was a time when America lost its record for most medals in the Winter Games (37, Vancouver) to Norway (brilliant with 39) while setting a new record for medaling in the greatest number of different events (11). So what Team USA sometimes lacked in depth, particularly in the glamour sports of alpine skiing and figure skating, it made up for in breadth ...

The gun control movement’s #MeToo moment

February 24, 2018

Just as The New York Times’ Harvey Weinstein series ignited #MeToo, so the shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, has galvanized a movement – and a generation – against gun violence in a way that we thought the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting would but never did.

I know: We’ve been here before – too, too many times. But this time feels different as high school students have taken to the streets and to buses – latter-day Freedom Riders, Oprah Winfrey called them – to protest the absolute lunacy of children, and the rest of us, being held hostage by people who think their Second Amendment rights entitle them to assault weapons.

Why does their right to own guns that should only be in the hands of the professionals trump our peace of mind? ...