It was a sentence that rocked blogs, dominated newsfeeds and infuriated women by the millions: “To be truly feminine means being soft, receptive and — look out, here it comes — submissive.”
Eyes rolled, indignation reached epic proportions and nearly- unanimous cries of “No. She. DIDN’T!” swirled around water coolers and permeated the blogosphere.
To keep it real, the author of those words, former volleyball star and fitness expert Gabrielle Reece, is co-signing 100 percent.
“In hindsight, maybe ‘submissive’ wasn’t the best word, so I can see where people had some very definitive opinions about it,” said Reece, who spoke with me by phone to explain the purpose of those words within the context of her best-selling book, My Foot Is Too Big for the Glass Slipper: A Guide to the Less Than Perfect Life.
“The first couple of days, I was frustrated because I had been as forthcoming as possible, and suddenly I’m getting hammered for the wrong thing,” Reece continued. “I did call the producers who, I shouldn’t say started it, but who picked out that one passage, and said, ‘Hey you guys, you helped me to sell a lot of books, but you’ve now put me into a hole that I’ve had to dig my way out of.’”
Our connection happened after her team sent her a link to my April 26 Briefing column.
“I don’t go around sending books to just whoever and saying ‘Read the book and then we’ll talk,’ but occasionally there will be a situation, for whatever reason, that the message was taken out of context and the comments being said I actually agree with. You had a specific opinion about that line and I told my team, ‘Here’s someone who took a decent amount of time to write an expanded idea on the idea of the “submissive” context, and I’d like for her to have the whole thing.’ I’m not expecting people to agree with me about the whole book, but at least we’ll share the whole message.”
And after receiving the book, I can happily report that Glass Slipper is as far from being a “Team Doormat Man-Worshipping Manual” as one can get.
Yes, the ‘submissive’ passage is there (page 162), and she probably made more than a few jaws drop with her proclamation that, when it comes to men, “all they want is for you, their chick, to be naked and smiling” (page 152).
However, Reece’s memoir is a sassy, straightforward book about living the life you have as realistically as possible. She may be a world-famous, accomplished athlete and a blonde bombshell, but Reece shares her anxieties about:
Aging: “Youth is a currency … and if you can’t figure out a way to transcend that, it’s a slow, miserable death.”
Stepparenting: “I had to deal with the reality that I wasn’t [husband Laird Hamilton’s] first wife, and I wasn’t the first one to give him a child. It was hard to shake that feeling of being second class.”
Keeping their daughters grounded: “When I take my kid to those parties with different activity stations … I can’t help but think, ‘Are you [expletive] kidding me?’”
The watershed moment where she decided to reconcile with Hamilton: “I saw clearly … that he’s always been a loving, generous partner, and … I realized that he was a person with whom I had a good shot at happiness.”
So, instead of being the Suzy Stepford that the media gleefully portrayed her to be, Reece is much like the rest of us: grinding at her chosen profession, maintaining a relationship that’s still a work in progress and raising kids in the midst of it all. The purpose of writing Glass Slipper, she told me, is coming to terms with imperfection and supporting one another as we go on.
“I want to create an environment where we women can support each other,” Reece said. “It’s important because we do so much, and the book was about fostering that spirit.”
