I know this is the second day (or third or fourth, I lose track) in a row I’m going with something completely unrelated to personal finance, but I can’t help but post this very awkward seeming Q&A with Penelope Trunk.
If you don’t know about this whole miscarriage thing, here’s the scoop: Penelope recently realized she was pregnant and scheduled an abortion. She had a miscarriage during a board meeting with her startup and twittered about the experience:
“I’m in a board meeting. Having a miscarriage. Thank goodness, because there’s a fucked-up 3-week hoop-jump to have an abortion in Wisconsin.”
I’ve always been a Penelope Trunk apologist. I like her. I like her writing. Every once in awhile, she writes something that’s thoughtful and touching and sad and beautiful. I love that she’s honest and vulnerable (and indecisive) about things that I couldn’t wouldn’t be honest and vulnerable about.
My historic criticism is that Penelope Trunk writes about career development and how to get ahead in corporate America when she doesn’t necessarily know anything about succeeding in corporate America. She’s been fired from most of the jobs she’s ever had, and now she’s working in a small start-up environment, which so far has been more about raising money than making it. I think she would respond to this criticism by admitting that it’s correct, but that she makes up for this short coming by doing extensive research and talking to people who have expertise in areas that she doesn’t. I think that’s probably true.
My criticism, today, would be that lately I feel like she’s been intentionally writing things that she hopes will ignite controversy in order to draw attention to her startup and create a buzz. It’s like when celebrity sex tapes come out right before their new movie comes out. When her traffic goes down, she writes about how many abortions she’s had or how she thinks Christmas is stupid or whatever. It’s the Rush Limbaugh/Michael Moore extremism school of strategy for becoming extremely well known. That being said, I truly don’t think she expected there to be this much buzz about her board room miscarriage. I think she’s surprised. I don’t know. In any case, her blog is firmly planted in my RSS feed, and will remain there until she convinces me that she’s no longer capable of occasionally producing something really touching and beautiful. Thanks for reading.
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I’ve read her stuff. She is not right in the head. Anyone who wants to run their personal or work life properly should read her stuff and then do just the opposite. Hopefully she will never reproduce but it would be nice if she would get her tubes tied to make sure. I think that most people read her for the same reason that we slow down to look at accidents on the highway. So of course she is going to talk about abortions and miscarriages.
I couldn’t agree more with Mr. ToughMoneyLove. She may be able to string a few sentences together, but some of her “advice” is almost criminal.