The Graying of Professor Erma Bombeck

Abstract

female complaint serves in particular to mediate and manage the social contradictions that arise from women's... allegiance to a phallocentric ideology that has, in practice, denied women power, privilege, and presence in the public and private spheres. To the extent that women employ the complaint as a mode of self-expression, it is an admission and a recognition both of privilege and powerlessness. Lauren Berlant, The Female Complaint (243)