Oh, Grow Up Petra Pan!

A former editor of Ms. magazine, Suzanne Braun Levine, has a new book out, Inventing the Rest of Our Lives: Women in Second Adulthood. Sorry, but these women can’t seem to make it into a first adulthood, let alone navigate a second one.

Writing in the winter issue of Ms., Levine encourages women to embrace the “F**k-You ’50’s.” Charming, just charming. She argues that women need to work on “mapping our second adulthood,” in order to make needed changes in society. (That list is too predictable to bear repeating.)

Here’s a key sentence: “our influence is compounded by our attitude.” Actually I’d have to agree with her. But the attitude she’s encouraging women to adopt is breathtaking in its stupidity. Adopting a posture that is vulgar, base and hostile? She thinks that’s the path to changing the world? To inspiring young women?

We’ve long had a Peter Pan syndrome for men who refused to grow up. We need one for women. Call it Petra Pan . . . adulthood is the issue for Ms. magazine and the feminists who use it as their lodestar. But they just can’t seem to grow up.