Papergirl flow

I fold newspapers in the still dark morning. I fold them in three and snap a rubber band around the middle.

I am the first in our neighborhood to know that Mount St. Helens has erupted, that Ronald Reagan has won the presidency by a landslide, that John Lennon has been murdered.

My fingers black with ink, I pack the newspapers into the metal basket of my sparkly blue three-speed bicycle. I pedal fast. I spread the news...

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Think Feminism Made Women Unhappy? Try Television

"Commercialism is a vacuum," my mother warned me. "It will suck you in."

I was seven or eight years old and my mother was running a bath for me. I imagined being sucked down the drain into a wet underworld of nefarious Disney characters.

I was getting the lecture because I'd been caught watching television beyond my allotted hour and, even more horrifying to my mother, I'd been making my Christmas list during the commercials.

I figured I was multi-tasking.

My mother figured otherwise. "How do you think you can figure out what you want while the commercials are bombarding you with images of what they want you to want?" my mother asked me. To her eyes, I was a sitting duck.

Later that night, she picked up our television and lugged it out the garage, never to be seen again.

"Thanks a lot," my sister snarked...

Read more on my blog at Psychology Today