Book Review: Leg the Spread

Leg The Spread opens with a recounting of the tragic tale of Anne McKenzie, a former commodities trader. The story was offered to author Cari Lynn as a subtle warning that the trading environment she was entering was hostile and unforgiving, that fortunes were made and lost in split seconds regardless of who you are. Lynn sets this story as a warning to the reader as well to never forget that there are real people and real lives impacted by those decisive split seconds. This message hits hard and is difficult to forget when navigating through Lynn’s own first-hand trading experiences that ground her insightful debut effort.

Lynn’s experiences come from working in the big, volatile world of finance as a clerk for The Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The Merc, as it is known, is a rough and tumble place where women are (for the most part) outsiders. This ‘old Boys Club’ however as been slowly transforming thanks to the efforts of dedicated women like Lynn who mercilessly strive daily to blow through the sexism and hammer out their rightful place in this greedy ‘take no prisoners’ society.

Lynn introduces the reader to a few women like Alice, Alexis, and Bev who have made the Merc their territory in order to put a human face on the one-dimensional activities that take place there. Numerous themes emerge from their stories, the most resonant being that a woman’s success as a trader is rarely measured simply in terms of how much money they make or the deals they broker (even though most of the women are indeed in it for the money, just like men). There are the double standards and harassment resulting from the pressure to be a ‘woman’ and yet be a ‘man’ at the same time that always taints a female trader’s successes and failures.

Leg The Spread (a term that refers to safeguarding your market position) is an engaging and involving book mainly because of the women Lynn brings forward. Their stories are inspiring and provide the reader with solid examples of how to stand up for yourself and not be intimidated by those who only want to see you fail. Although there are no warm and fuzzy happy endings here, the reader is still left with a wealth of knowledge about how the Merc works and a very strong understanding that for as far as we women have come, there is still much distance to go.

Book Review: Teresa Riordan, Inventing Beauty

Publisher/Year: Broadway Books, 2004

Who has not heard the story of one Mr. Titslinger, the inventor immortalized in the glitzy stage show in the film Beaches? New York Times writer Teresa Riordan is counting on everyone knowing the popular story of how he invented the bra. Or did he? This is just one historical point that Riordan focuses her attention on in her captivatingly educational book Inventing Beauty. The book takes us on a journey from head to toe to tail, bringing forth beauty myths and truths for all the women who have ever, as another reviewer stated, “pushed, pulled, tweezed, squeezed, and spackled themselves into synthetic loveliness.”

Did you know that women’s right to use cosmetics was actually argued on the political stage in the United States? Charlotte Smith, editor of the The Woman Inventory and Madame M. Yale, a cosmetics entrepeneur, went before the House of Representatives Agricultural Committee in 1892 to debate whether women could use cosmetics to improve their appearance. The outcome of the debate is obvious as the cosmetic industry generates billions of dollars annually on women’s desire to look beautiful and put together. But the fact that this topic was posed on such a stage is yet another example of how a woman’s body has never really been her own.

Did you also know that “because of consumer demand, the vibrator (at this stage meant to be externally rather than internally applied) was only the fifth electrical device introduced into the household, arriving just after the electric sewing machine, fan, teakettle, and toaster”? It was devised to assist physicians in the treatment of hysteria (so they would no longer have to manually stimulate their female patients), and was thought to be beneficial for the treatment of wrinkles. This information certainly makes you look at the vibrator in a new way.

Riordan looks at how the bustle started as a modest means for enhancing a woman’s derriere. It turned into a fashion fright though as women soon had to endure contraptions that could hold a whole tea serving set! She also examines the evolution of our fascination with lips--why the first lipsticks were orange to devices that aided women in drawing the perfect cupid lips to the development of the containers we are all familiar with today.

Riordan completed some meticulous research on the beauty industry for this book, all of which is carefully documented in the Notes and Bibliography sections. To support this research, Riordan has also littered advertisments, photographs and sketches throughout the pages to provide an extra layer of value to her prose. You can check out the stars and models who helped sell these products and ideals to the public, and then compare them to the pictures of the poor women who had to endure the neverending cycle of product reinvention in order to attain the current beauty ideal.

Historians will be amazed at the facts and information Riordan was able to unearth, but all readers will be dazzled by the clarity and enthusiasm with which Riordan tackles this touchy topic of female beauty. Roirdan has managed construct a book that neither rails against the beauty industry for promoting unrealistic beauty standards for women nor enthusiastically celebrates its achievements for women. She perfectly captures the comedy and drama of the situation, by combining the horror stories of women enduring carbolic acid peels with the often amusing tales of the inventors and entrepeneurs who (disastrously) came up with these ideas. And Riordan’s wonderfully inviting writing style makes Inventing Beauty an irresistible read for anyone interested in learning a little more about the everyday life of women.