INTRODUCTION

THE BOOK YOU HOLD IN YOUR HANDS is about women who insisted on being difficult.

A difficult woman, as I define her, is a person who believes her needs, passions, and goals are at least as important as those of everyone around her. In many cases, she doesn’t even believe they’re more important—many women in this book were devoted, loving wives and mothers—but simply as important. A difficult woman is also a woman who doesn’t believe the expectations of the culture in which she lives are more important than what she knows to be true about herself. She is a woman who accepts that sometimes the cost of being fully human is upsetting people.

A difficult woman isn’t a bitch, although on occasion she might be. She isn’t cruel or selfish or mean—although, again, on occasion she might be. Just like anyone (by which I mean men), she has bad days, she makes mistakes, she loses her temper. A difficult woman is a woman who insists on inhabiting the full range of her humanity.

Difficult women tend not to be ladies-in-waiting. Waiting for love, waiting for someone to notice their excellent job performance, waiting for the kids to go to bed, or off to school, waiting until they lose weight and fit into their skinny jeans. Instead, they are driven by their internal engines. They make other people wait. It’s immaterial whether these others worry about her, grow impatient with her, find her frustrating, or call her names. Difficult women may not enjoy causing a stir (though most seem to), and sometimes their feelings get hurt, but the bumps along the way fail to deter them from their mission.

The 29 iconic women included in this book have inspired me over the years, and to this moment. Obviously, there are many more difficult women worthy of inclusion in these pages. But these were the ones who spoke to me.

My mother died when I was 17, my father quickly remarried, and I was more or less on my own. Throughout college, I ministered to my loneliness with biographies of great women. Into my life came Martha Gellhorn, Coco Chanel, Josephine Baker. They were women of a long-ago era, but they felt alive to me: singular, bold, different, difficult. Gloria Steinem, Jane Goodall, and Nora Ephron were in my personal pantheon of living legends I adored; now, I watch the uber-difficult Margaret Cho, Rachel Maddow, and Lena Dunham walking their talk, generating outrage (and tweets) all along the way.

As I read and wrote, I was a little delirious to discover the many ways in which women can be difficult.

We can be good-natured and competitive (Billie Jean King); sarcastic and vulnerable (Carrie Fisher); quiet, well behaved, and braver than most men (Amelia Earhart); completely unapologetic about taking everything that is our due (Shonda Rhimes); zany and so off-the-charts talented people don’t know what to make of us (Kay Thompson); ambitious beyond measure (Hillary Clinton).

They come from every background and upbringing, my difficult women. Wealthy, but neglected (Vita Sackville-West); of modest means, but rich in love and attachment (Elizabeth Warren); and straight-up middle-class (Janis Joplin). Many of these women had stable early childhoods, but if their fathers left or died, the family descended into poverty (Helen Gurley Brown, Eva Perón, Amelia Earhart). Some were conventionally pretty (Elizabeth Taylor, Gloria Steinem), some were what the French call jolie laide (Diana Vreeland, Frida Kahlo).

But all of them have embraced their messy, interesting lives. All serve as an inspiration for more accommodating women, who like me long to be braver, bolder, more courageous, more outspoken, more willing to upset the status quo.

I love these women because they encourage me to own my true nature. They teach me that it’s perfectly okay not to go along to get along. They show by example that we shouldn’t shy away from stating our opinions. Their lives were and are imperfect. They suffered. They made mistakes. But they rarely betrayed their essential natures to keep the peace. They saw (and see) no margin in making sure no one around them is inconvenienced.

These difficult women give us permission to occupy space in our worlds, to say what we think, and to stand our ground. They give us permission to be ambitious, passionate, curmudgeonly, outspoken, persistent, sassy, and angry. They tell us, by their words and deeds, that it’s all right to occupy our humanity.

I hope you will come to revere them—and be inspired by them—as I have.