Morning everyone,

Today’s Fem Friday is a celebration of the women of New York, and I’d like to start with a MEDIA ALERT for a book that I think you are going to love. Do you remember the toast dot net’s HEY LADIES series? If you do, perhaps you also knew that its creators were writing a book, this is the book I recommend to you today:

https://www.amazon.com/Hey-Ladies-Story-Friends-Emails/dp/1419729136

Oh and look, the authors – who live in New York – that is the connection to today’s theme – have done a March Madness bracket on the terrible #content people make about/around their weddings:

It’s just disappointing that these are the options we’re faced with. Hey Ladies! and this bracket are both so much about the inescapable basic bitch that lives inside of all of us, like it or not. So when you’re forced to caption a really nice picture of you and your significant other, try coming up with literally anything clever. “Me and Dan on the mountain” kind of sounds like your mom labeling the back of a CVS-printed photo with a Bic pen. But then the other side of the spectrum becomes, “Lookin out into forever with this guy!” :(

https://www.racked.com/2018/3/28/17174314/hey-ladies-bracket-instagram-engagement-captions

Here’s another great New York writer who avoided writing about weddings in the most heartbreaking ways; it’s Edith Wharton! According to this obituary, it was her family – the Joneses – who gave rise to the phrase “keeping up with the Joneses”:

Edith, in accordance with the customs of her class, was forbidden to read any novels, until 'the day of my marriage'. Yet, as a child, she was a natural, even compulsive writer, 'making up' incessantly – a solitary, ritualistic, obsessive activity. Her first literary efforts were quelled. Aged 11, she showed her mother a story which began, ' "Oh, how do you, Mrs Brown?" said Mrs Tompkins. "If only I had known you were going to call I should have tidied up the drawing room".' 'Never shall I forget', Edith wrote bitterly, 'the sudden drop of my creative frenzy when she returned it with the icy comment: "Drawing rooms are always tidy." '

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/edith-wharton-a-magnificent-and-subtle-writer/

If you want to read one of her books, which will certainly make you laugh less than HEY LADIES will, here’s The House Of Mirth:

https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/wharton/edith/house_of_mirth/

Finally, this is not a literary lady of New York, but it is an amazing one. Sylvia Bloom worked in a law firm as a secretary for 67 years and, when she died, donated $8.2M to charity. I love this:

“She was a secretary in an era when they ran their boss’s lives, including their personal investments […] So when the boss would buy a stock, she would make the purchase for him, and then buy the same stock for herself, but in a smaller amount because she was on a secretary’s salary.” Since Ms. Bloom never talked about this, even to those closest to her, the fact that she had carefully cultivated more than $9 million among three brokerage houses and 11 banks, emerged only at the end of her life.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/05/06/nyregion/secretary-fortune-donates.html

Happy happy Friday,

A xx.