Stories I Tell Myself
Linda Brody Bakst on Brooklyn, growing up, identity and more
Category: gender roles
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“Are you doing your eyebrows again?” Sue asked. My college roommate opened the door to find me sitting at my desk, a magnifying mirror propped in front of me, the lamp on, poised to pluck another hair. “Yes.” “Do you do that every day?” she asked incredulously. “Not EVERY day, no, but if I don’t…
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I am not a conventionally attractive woman. I don’t write that to fish for compliments or to elicit sympathy. It is a fact, and it has complicated implications. I am reading a memoir, Crying in the Bathroom by Erika Sanchez and in the course of telling her story as a Mexican-American woman who has defied…
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Recently I watched a four-episode series on Netflix called Unorthodox. It told the story of a young woman who left (escaped might be a better word) her Hasidic family in Williamsburg, Brooklyn to start a new life in Berlin. Aside from being a compelling story, I found one scene particularly poignant and it resonated with…
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Note: Some of the material in this blog appeared in a previous post, but I have added content, edited it and, hopefully those who have been reading all along will find it compelling. For newer readers, I hope you enjoy. This is part of a series of pieces I have written about searching for my…
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Mom felt woefully unprepared for her own puberty. When she found blood in her underwear, she thought she was dying. Her mother, my Nana, had said nothing to her about the changes she could expect as she matured into womanhood. Determined not to make the same mistake, Mom was on a mission to provide me…
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I just finished reading She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb, for the second time. Since I don’t remember much about books I read, it may as well have been for the first time. Anyway, it is a coming-of-age story of a girl, Dolores, which begins when she is about 4 years old. Her first vivid memory…
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Are you afraid I’m going to steal your lunch?” he asked. I was hunched over the table in the cafeteria of my junior high school when some guy, who I didn’t know, asked me that question. My left arm encircled a Tupperware containing a small chef’s salad, while I shoveled a forkful of lettuce in…
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It was 1990. We had just celebrated Daniel’s first birthday, and Leah was fast approaching three years old. I was working full time for the Legislative Commission on Expenditure Review (LCER). Gary was finishing the first year of his Endocrine Fellowship. The kids were in daycare at Kidskeller. Those are the facts. Gary and I…
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Class ended. Mercifully, after two and a half hours of policy analysis and evaluation, it was time for lunch. A group of six of us, all full time graduate students at Columbia, had a habit of going to the diner a couple of blocks down Amsterdam Avenue after class. I gathered up my stuff and…
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Click on this link to hear the theme song and opening sequence: That Girl I loved “That Girl.” I wanted to be Ann Marie, the lead character. She had great hair (I’ve written about my struggles with my hair before in Hair: Not Long, Not Beautiful). Hers was shiny and straight with a stylish flip at…
