Bossypants

Fey’s daughter brings home a book from the preschool library. The book, called My Working Mom, is written by two men and revolves around a working witch who frequently leaves home to attend meetings and nearly misses her child’s school play. Fey “didn’t love it” (232). To Fey, “the rudest question you can ask a woman” is: “How do you juggle it all?” (233).

Although she can argue with writers all day, Fey declines to confront the babysitter who cuts her daughter’s nails too short because she doesn’t want to spend her “PRECIOUS TIME AT HOME” (234) in confrontation. At one point she realizes that “[t]his ‘work’ thing was not going away” and that “[t]here was no prolonged stretch of time in sight when it would just be the baby and me” (235). The thought makes her spend “[t]he same ten minutes that magazines urge me to use for sit-ups and triceps dips” (235) sobbing in her office. She adds that this confession is “bad for the feminist cause” because it “makes it harder for other working moms to justify their choice” (235). Fey knows that stay-at-home mothers also spend time sobbing. She believes that “we should be kind to one another about it” and that “we should agree to blame the children” (235).