Betty Dodson with Carlin Ross

Better Orgasms. Better World.

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While it seems that Hollywood is becoming more female-friendly with films based on the lives of Julia Child, Amelia Earhart, Virginia Wolfe, and Co Co Chanel, it took the NY Times and Manohla Dargis to slap me across the face and hit the point home: all these women were dead (for decades).  Not only were they accomplished, beautiful, and famous but they were "legitemized by history".  They're not just interesting stories they're f*cking icons.

Put simply the standard for what makes a person noteworthy is different for women then it is for men.  Interview Richard Nixon and we get "Frost/Nixon" while Frost is still making deals.  Chum up with Bill Clinton and we get "The Special Relationship" (all about the bromance between Bill and Tony Blair) while Tony Blair is still globetrotting around the world.  I should note that Hillary is portrayed in the film in a scene or two.  Interesting that the story of the first women to make a real run at the White House gets 0 play.

Last year, only one movie about a woman - "Twilight," the vampire romance about a living teenager and her undead but supercute boyfriend - squeezed into the ranks of the Top 10 grossing titles, a chart dominated by superheroes and male cartoon characters. Another two female-centric stories climbed into the Top 20. That sounds shocking except that only three such stories made it to the Top 20 in each of the previous two years *sigh*

I've been working to get Betty's memoir published and it looks like we're going to have to ebook it.  A story about a woman who lived life on her own terms and changed the way we have sex - AND IS STILL LIVING - isn't that marketable.  It doesn't matter that she introduced the electic vibrator into the marketplace or that she reestablished the clitoris as women's primary sex organ or that her book sold a million copies. 

If only she'd interviewed Nixon, ran a porn mag, or had a penis.