Cheap Thrills

From The Atlantic Monthly:

Money Money, a Memoir: Women, Emotions, and Cash by Liz Perle. Reviewed by: Sandra Tsing Loh.
Apparently it’s the last post-feminist taboo. So let’s violate it. Just for you, my friend, today I’m going to open it wide … My pocketbook, my purselet, my hidden portmonee … Yeah, I’m going to push aside all the secret velvety folds and show you that most intimate of female parts: my money.

Because oddly, in this age of the blinding white Oprah pantsuit, when everything is illuminated, it seems a Victorian lace curtain still hangs over the delicate womanly matter of our personal expenditures. But unlike most urban professional females, I’m going to rip back that curtain, I’m going to bare all, I’m going to feed you raw numbers like oysters — My husband? Him? Oh, he won’t mind. As usual on weekends, he’s with his favorite dominatrix, PBS’s own Hell’s Angel, Suze Orman. There he stands in the kitchen, obediently chopping vegetables, as from the small TV the saber-toothed blond androgyne berates him in her jacket of leather: “So you’ve been ‘too busy’ to figure out how a Roth IRA works, or what a FICO score is? Buddy, wake up and smell the 401(k)!”

More here.