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2000 THE NEW YORK OBSERVER

THE FEMININE FORCE:  RELEASE THE POWER WITHIN TO CREATE THE LIFE YOU DESERVE

by Georgette Mosbacher  (1993)

by Peter Kurth

I've got to admit I'm of two minds (if "mind" is the word I'm looking for) about Feminine Force:  Release the Power Within to Create the Life You Deserve, Georgette Mosbacher's bubbly foray into the world of self-improvement.  On the one hand, I can't believe I actually finished reading a book as gushy, imperturbable, hastily written and retro-bimbo as this.  On the other hand, it's a relief to spend some time with an author who isn't complaining, hasn't got an ax to grind, doesn't hate anyone, wasn't molested as a child, and never went to a treatment center for co-dependency, drug addiction, or low self-esteem.  I feel she ought to be rewarded for her courage.  I feel, indeed, that Georgette Mosbacher deserves the life she has.  She's earned every one of those power lunches, every one of those houses and gowns, those cars, those jewels, those shiny incisors and that big red hair. 

"I wasn't born a redhead," Ms. Mosbacher explains, in what is by no means the funniest sentence in her book, "but I was born to be a redhead."  Her frankly incredible guide to a happy, healthy, slimmed-down, tidied-up, turned-out, made-over life at the Top of the Heap is good old American uplift with a nipped-and-tucked face.  It's Couéism re-imagined for the Home Shopping Network:  "Every day in every way, I am getting" -- well, let's just leave it there.  Georgette Mosbacher has been getting and getting and getting for the last 20 years.  "As my friend Marietta Tree, a former United Nations Commissioner, says, `What do I have to do not to be called a socialite?'" Ms. Mosbacher asks.

Poor Ms. Tree, of course, has been dead since 1991, but I suspect Ms. Mosbacher has been too busy to notice.  At the moment she's anticipating $20 million in first-year sales for her thriving cosmetics company, Exclusives by Georgette Mosbacher.  Her husband, Robert, the Houston honcho and former Secretary of Commerce in the Bush Administration, is worth a little money himself. 

"He hasn't come to the point where he'll clean the house or worry about his socks," Ms. Mosbacher complains, but she says that she can "live with that."  She is a "self-made woman" with "guts of steel."  She sees no reason why she shouldn't "be a CEO, a warm and nurturing wife, and iron perfect shirts."  Her book is filled with steps and suggestions, zingers and tips -- first this, then that, and "thirdly" something else.  "Fourthly," she writes, "make a commitment to steps one, two, and three."  She regards her "inner voice" as the key to her success, and she recommends that you do the same if you want to "achieve your goals."  "Goals," in fact, is Ms. Mosbacher's favorite word, after "Georgette."

"`Georgette,' my inner voice piped up,'" she says.  "`Things being what they are, what are you going to do to achieve your goals in this town?'"  Or:  "`Georgette,' I finally said.  `You are not going to play into their hands by wearing black."  She suggests that you talk to yourself in the mirror once or twice a day and that you "identify at least one thing you did that you feel good about.  At least one thing," she repeats, "and hopefully more." 

Now, I wouldn't want to take a guess at the number of people in America who, at this very minute, on the advice of some money-grubbing guru, are talking to themselves in the mirror and feeling good about their goals.  Whenever I try it, I think about Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver ("You talkin' to me?") and a glance out the window, if you're really in doubt, will convince you that the method doesn't work.  The planet isn't teeming with well-adjusted persons of either sex, just as the boardrooms of corporate America aren't filled with Ms. Mosbachers, wafted along to a radiant destiny by means of the Feminine Force.  Ms. Mosbacher never does get around to defining what the "FF" is -- or rather, she defines it only in vague and sloganized terms, which puts the blame on you if your "goals" don't pan out. 

"The Feminine Force is my way of describing the intangible but indelible powers or energies that all women are born with but that many of us lose somewhere along life's way," Ms. Mosbacher writes.  "The Feminine Force operates according to its own principles and moves uniquely through each of us."  It's something you can "practice," I gather, in your copious spare time.  You can use it to "discover your talents" and "get a foot in the door."  You can "visualize" it, pamper it, and cuddle it along.  (What you can't do is expect it to repel a jewel thief, as it apparently did for Ms. Mosbacher one day at the Barbizon Hotel.  "God willing," she writes -- this is the funniest sentence in her book -- "you'll never find yourself at the wrong end of a gun.")

I haven't got room here to list "Georgette Mosbacher's 72 Feminine Force Principles," or her advice on "Getting From Point A to Point B,"  "Basic Responsibilities 1 through 4," or "Ten Proven Techniques for Turning a Moment Into a Lifetime."  Four or five of the sharper affirmations will give you a clear idea:

            "I am totally responsible for myself."

            "I pack my own parachute."

            "Any goal is a worthy goal."

            "My appearance is talking and I like what it is saying."

            "Network.  Network.  Network."

 

Or, as Ms. Mosbacher might have said more honestly, "Marry up.  Marry up.  Marry up."  She met her first husband, "an incredibly caring, generous and wealthy man," at a movie auction in Los Angeles, and tricked him into dating her by posing as a reporter for TIME. 

 

"When he was through laughing," Ms. Mosbacher recounts, "he told me he thought I was very gutsy" (instead of having her arrested, which would surely have happened to you if your Feminine Force had been out of the house that day).  Her second marriage was to George Barrie, the CEO of Fabergé, who popped her one in a drunken moment and brought her as close as she's come to "abuse" (guts of steel, remember?)  Now she's got Mosbacher, who, at the time that she was dating him in Texas, was described by one of her friends as "the second most eligible bachelor in the world" after Prince Rainier of Monaco.  This will tell you all you need to know, really, about the Feminine Force and the females behind it.

 

"Watch out for the theoreticians of anger," Ms. Mosbacher warns, giving us also this priceless bit of wisdom, worth the cost of a thousand self-help books:  "Here's my beef with Susan Faludi:  never once does she even consider the possibility that a lot of women who have had plastic surgery don't mind the process and actually like the results."  Want to meet an eligible man?  Walk your dog on the Upper East Side.  Phone a few insurance agents and see whose wife has died.  Hang around F. A. O. Schwartz on a Saturday afternoon "when it's loaded with divorced men and their children."  Whether she's giving advice on evening dress or market strategy, growth potentials, make-up styles, "humor" in the boardroom or sexual harassment, Ms. Mosbacher's message is always the same.  It's Get That Guy and Rule the World.  It's Lift Your Face and Dye Your Hair.  Compromise.  Minimize.  Talk About Him. 

 

"It's true," she finally says in a moment of clarity, "that the sheer ability to endure has been a trait attributed to strong women since the beginning of history."  But, like I said at the start:  how can you mind when she's still got her smile?

Peter Kurth is the author of Isadora: A Sensational Life (Little Brown & Co.).

 

 

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This column ran on page 21 in the 8/12/02 edition of The New York Observer.

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