Last month, I took a trip to San Francisco to visit some college friends. I also lived there when I was 5 and again in 2004-5. On the way there, I read the book Citizen Girl (published in 2004) from start to finish. I had bought this book awhile ago and let it languish on my bookshelf while I read other books. Buying books and taking a few months or years to get to them is a bad habit of mine!

Anyway, Citizen Girl really frustrated me. I was excited to read about a young woman around my age who graduated from a liberal arts college try to make it in the big city. Instead of being centered around romance, it turned to the workplace and the quest to find a job that doesn’t make you feel like a puppet/monkey/prostitute/turd and get paid enough to pay rent and the cable bill.

The book opens with the main character, Girl, working in the non-profit sector for a women’s rights agency for a crazy boss. If the writers Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus were trying to debunk female stereotypes they did a horrible job, as Girl’s boss and coworkers come across as bra burning man-hating women. The men in the book fare no better; the reader meets pervy bosses, jocks, and other John Does. Girl’s love interest is a guy who’s always blowing her off for his friends or guilt tripping her for not taking up too much of his time. If I were an alien and only had this book to learn from, I would think New York City consisted of self-centered men and clueless women. The book goes downhill immediately. One of the lower points occurs when one of Girl’s nasty male bosses (she goes through a series of jobs) convinces her she has to get a bikini wax for work purposes. No she’s not a prostitute, model, or a porn star.

I read the Nanny Diaries and saw many of the plot points recycled. I so wanted to identify with “Girl” as there were many situations in the book that I or my friends have been through. Working at jobs that required tasks way below our intelligence levels. Trying to balance 9-5 work while pursuing are artistic interests at night. Choosing a career path than changing one’s mind moments later.

I’m one among many 20somethings who claim to be dealing with the quarter life crisis. I also know some 30somethings who are also facing an identity crisis in regards to what he or she is doing with his or her lives. I read another book in 2006 when I hit a slump in my professional life and decided to make some changes, mostly good. The book is QuarterLife Crisis. It didn’t really help me in anyway except repeat story after story that I’ve already heard in some form about women and men my age. The authors Alexandra Robbins and Abby Wilne did write a companion book that seems to offer some actual advice.

I would absolutely love to read something about someone struggling in the real world like so many of us are. But I keep asking myself, are we really struggling? That’s a large question to answer in another post. It is definitely a confusing time which is possibly why some of the literature I’ve read about this crisis is so muddled and confusing.

Anyone have any suggestions? Read anything good about this issue?

By the way here is a USA Today review from 2004 that tears about Citizen Girl.