For those who find comfort in "misery loves company," there are always twelve-step programs-guaranteed to introduce us to at least one family more insane that our own. And if we can swing therapy, hey, I was born in New York City, so of course I'm going to recommend it to every SmartMouth G.o.ddess. Unlike the rest of the nation, we white broads from New York think something's wrong with people if they don't have a shrink.

But what if we don't have the time, money, or inclination to spend years "working out our issues" so that we can "finally get to a secure place," so that we can eventually spend a holiday with our lover or eat a piece of cheesecake without hearing the Greek chorus of our relatives condemning our decisions?

Or what if we realize that making peace with our parents can take a lifetime, and since we have only one life to live, we'd rather spend it pursuing more realistic goals?

For those of us who'd like some nontraditional ways of dealing with traditional dilemmas, read on.

1. Be a smarta.s.s. At least once when we're little (which means, as far as our parents are concerned, anytime before we turn fifty), every single one of us hears the phrase, "Don't you open up a big fresh mouth to me, young lady." Variations of this include such cla.s.sics as, "Don't you be sa.s.sin' me," "Don't you talk to your mother like that," and "One more word like that and I'll wash your mouth out with Palmolive."

Being a SmartMouth is clearly kin to guerrilla warfare. Which is exactly why we might entertain it as an option. Desperate situations call for desperate measures.

Next time we're bombarded with s.e.xist, busybody, and unsolicited comments from our relatives, we should try opening up that big fresh mouth we've always been told to keep shut. If we're lucky, we may shock or enrage folks enough to make them stop talking to us. Make a habit out of such sarcasm and who knows? We might spend years of being ignored! Consider the following handy responses to frequent and annoying comments: Comment: So, when are you going to get a real job?

A. Hey, what's not "real" about lap dancing?

B. Well, my boss says that if I continue to be "nice" to him after hours, I'll never have to work again.

C. How about when Uncle Artie gets a real toupee?

Comment: Still not married, hmmm?

A. Nah, just sleeping around.

B. Well, my boyfreind is, so the way I see it, we're one-for-one.

C. No, but the baby's due in May Comment: You've put on weight.

A. Yeah, great s.e.x'll do that to you.

B. Good. I'll have more to throw around.

C. Let's hope so. Last time you saw me, I was six.

Comment: You're not getting any younger.

A. I know. That's why my lovers are!

B. True, but look at the bright side: At the rate you're aging, you could be back in diapers soon.

C. Gosh, you say that like it's a bad thing.

Comment: So, when are you planning on giving me grandchildren?

A. I don't know. When are you planning on breaking a hip?

B. How's about after you leave me a big inheritance?

C. Not until I get a cute girlfriend and a really good turkey baster.

2. Regard your family as a source of popular entertainment. There's a reason situation comedies are often built around families. What other human unit is such fertile ground for bad one-liners and theater of the absurd?

If it's hard to get any distance from your family's neuroses, try pretending they're on television. Write wacky character descriptions for them in your head, such as: Cousin Harriet, the Queen of Thorazine. Uncle Levar, the Man Who Insists He Could've Won the Lottery If It Wasn't for the G.o.dd.a.m.n Communists. Psycho Cousin Elwood, Who's Making a Suspension Bridge out of String in His Bedroom.

Nothing like reducing our loved ones to caricatures to make them bearable.

Or, alternately, you might try teaming up with a trusted sibling or cousin to hold a secret Family Olympics.

Decide in advance what the categories will be. My personal favorites are Compet.i.tive Nagging (it has to contain at least five minutes of unmitigated nudging); the Long-Distance Guilt Call ("Me? I'm not lonely. Not that you would know.");Track Discussion (when people belabor the same issue over and over): and Thin-Ice Skating (mentioning any touchy subject).

Take mental notes during the course of the visit. Then, whenever you and your cohorts can sneak away for a few moments, judge your relatives' performance in the various categories: "I give Uncle Tyron a 5.7 in the Track Discussion but only a 5.3 in the Thin-Ice Skating."

"What are you, kidding? Did you hear how he ducked out of that conversation about him running off with Celia in that Thunderbird! No, I gave him a 5.9, plus 5.6 for the Track. Mama, though, she gets a perfect 6.0 for the nagging."

Relatives with the highest score could win a special prize-perhaps a gold, silver, or bronze albatross in honor of the one they've inevitably hung around your neck. Best yet, not only do these Olympics give new meaning to the phrase "family fun," but you don't have to sit through tear-jerky bios about the partic.i.p.ants because, hey, you've lived in them!

3. If you're single, grab a buddy. When I went to day camp as a little kid, we weren't allowed to go swimming unless we each had a buddy. The theory was that, even though the two of us could only doggie paddle, we'd somehow prevent each other from drowning by holding hands whenever the lifeguard blew his whistle.

The same theory might work with families. Make a pact with a friend to be each other's buddy. Go with your friend to her family's house for one holiday, then have her join you at yours the next.

Most families, no matter how pathological, try to behave themselves if they have "company." Going home with your friend for Thanksgiving will immediately force her relatives to be on their best behavior, while simultaneously absolving you of having to deal with yours. Then, when your buddy comes home with you for the winter holidays, her presence will force your family to be on their best behavior, while absolving her of having to deal with hers. Volley back and forth like this, and you could conceivably go for years without having to deal with your relatives in their pure, unadulterated state.

Of course, the minute your mother says to your buddy, "Oh, just call me Mom. You're practically family now," the gig is up. But until then, you're helping to keep each other afloat, even if all you know how to do is the doggie paddle.

4. Some people swap wives, so why not entire families?

Organize it like a Secret Santa. Get everybody who dreads going home to put their last name into a hat. Then, whichever family you draw, that's where you go for the holidays.

5. Let's take a page from the family-values fanatics. Every so often, when they're not busy terrorizing abortion clinics or parading in front of Planned Parenthood with giant plastic fetuses, the family-values fanatics lobby to pa.s.s "parental consent laws." These require teenage girls to get their parents' permission before obtaining an abortion. Funnily enough, backers of these laws rarely come out and say: "Hey, we're trying to pa.s.s these laws to curtail abortion." They don't even own up to the fact that maybe, just maybe, a few of them get a vengeful, puritanical thrill out of making life more difficult for s.e.xually active girls. Oh, no. These folks insist that pa.s.sing consent laws will make families closer by "compelling teenagers to talk to their parents."

Now, of course, anyone who thinks you can make a teenager talk to her parents by pa.s.sing legislation (a) has obviously never been a teenager, (b) has obviously never had a teenager, and (c) is a total f.u.c.king moron.

And yet, the far right continually insists on trying to change and shape fundamental human relationships through legislation and doctrine. There are the Baptists, deciding in prehistoric 1998 that all women should "submit" to their husbands as decreed in the Bible. There are some right-to-lifers who believe that women should not be able to get an abortion without the consent of their husbands. Conservatives are constantly talking about laws that will "reinstate morality," "strengthen the family," and "restore the family." (And they actually do this with a straight face. I mean, at least the British Members of Parliament who advocate family values often have the good taste to get caught attempting autoerotic asphyxiation with "young rent boys" in high heels and garters.) But recently I got to thinking: Maybe the Christian Coalition and their buddies have a point. Maybe the legal system really is the best way to try and change family dynamics. h.e.l.l, nothing else seems to work. Who's to say that using laws to govern intimacy is really that stupid after all?

The problem with the family-values zealots may not be that they're trying to legislate family values-it may be that they're simply trying to legislate the wrong ones.

I mean, if you really want women to be more devoted to their families, try pa.s.sing the following laws instead: a No phone calls from relatives asking if we've met "anybody nice" yet.

a Parents are prohibited from asking, "So when are you going to get a life already?" "Why don't you fix yourself up a little?" and "Are you sure you want to eat that?" Ditto for inquiring about our friends' marital status, mentioning our biological clock, or critiquing the way we raise our kids.

a If we're gay, family members cannot keep checking to see if we've "changed our mind" yet.

a The following discussions are permanently banned from all family reunions: Our weight.

Our love lives.

Comparisons of our salary, looks, and education with those of our siblings, step-siblings, and/or cousins.

Why we didn't go out on a second date with that lovely dental hygienist our cousin Alma set us up with.

a If uncles, brothers, fathers, nephews, and so forth, pinch us on the a.s.s, make a pa.s.s at us, or utter inappropriate s.e.xual comments, we have a legal right to clobber them.

a Parents and other relations must not play favorites.

a No karaoke machines.

And if they don't adhere to these laws?

I say: Sue.

Part III.

Ruling the World.

Chapter 16.

Everything We Need to Know.

We Learn from Shopping.

Nothing cheers a girl up like shopping.

-MADONNA.

When I worked at Glamour magazine one summer during college, it fell to me to do the incredibly glamourous job of opening the mail.

Earlier that year, in one of its reader questionnaires, Glamour had asked women if they were "shop-a-holics." As I began sorting through the responses, it became clear to me that I'd stumbled upon a twelve-step program that was so anonymous, its own members didn't even know they were in it.

Hundreds upon hundreds of women, of all ages and backgrounds, confessed to being compulsive shoppers. They wrote in great, lurid detail about the extreme pleasure they got from shopping. For some, it was a matter of "just looking"; others had developed a dangerous habit of grandiose "impulse" buying. But whatever their version of the vice, these gals wrote with fervency and pa.s.sion, with lots of exclamation points and triple-underlined words, describing how they literally got high at the mall: "After I make a purchase, I feel exhilarated," one woman wrote. "I can't wait to get home and look at it. I have a buzz for the rest of the day."

"Every night, on my way home from work, I just have to swing by the stores for one quick fix," wrote another.

Mind you, these were not rich girls. Some were living so far beyond their means, they'd had to file for bankruptcy or landed in Debtors Anonymous. And yet they continued to, ahem, charge ahead.

Why?

Woman after woman said that shopping gave her a sense of "power" and "control." In fact, power and control appeared so frequently in the letters, they started to sound like a theme song or a mantra. "People wait on me," one woman wrote proudly. "I feel such power."

"When I'm shopping, I'm able to get exactly what I want," explained another. "I'm totally in control."

For many of us, sadly, a store is the only female-centered domain where we feel we have total veto power and the ability to pick and choose as we like. Jobs, families, and relationships, of course, require constant and often unequal compromises. Even Temples of Girliness, like salons, have a degree of surrender involved: Once we're in the swivel chair and the bib, hey, we're at the mercy of the stylist. In a spa, we're wrapped in a towel and led around like a baby, vulnerable and naked, hoping the ma.s.seuse isn't a s.a.d.i.s.t. And the gynecologist? Don't get us started.

But in a store: Hel-lo! We are suddenly d.u.c.h.esses with dollars, queens with cash, prima donnas with plastic. Provided a boutique isn't too snooty or racist, we are utterly transformed beneath those fabulous fluorescent lights. We preside over endless possibilities, over aisles full of new delicious goodies to admire and possess. Even if we're flat broke, we can indulge our fantasies, imagining ourselves remade, our homes redecorated, our wardrobes revamped.

And so, at a time when women are overwhelmed with choices and conflicting desires, why not approach our entire lives like Kmart or Nordstrom?

Okay, I admit it sounds fatuous. But think about it. Even if we hate buying clothes-even if we get a mall headache just looking at a catalog-even if we think capitalism is the root of all evil-we girls know how to shop. As soon as we're old enough to point and say, "I want," our culture grooms us for shopping, breeds us for shopping, coaches us in shopping: Every magazine, TV show, movie, and advertis.e.m.e.nt is dedicated to cultivating us as conspicuous consumers, to getting us salivating over stuff and spending our shekels. In America, Gettin' the Goods has been elevated to a sport-not to mention a religion, an art form, and a talent. It's a wonder stores don't hold a Shopping Olympics-with compet.i.tions in, say, Bargain Hunting and the Fifty-Yard Dash to the Cash Register.

Yet, at the same time, so many of us gals are besieged with life decisions: We don't know whether to downsize or supersize our careers, whom to commit to romantically, where to live, how to live, if and when to have kids. It's like we're faced with a buffet table of opportunities but can only go through the serving line once. Many of us don't know where the h.e.l.l to start. Or what to choose. Or how to balance the main course with everything else we want on our plates. We've seen the Baby Boomers ahead of us at the table, piling everything on at once. And we've seen them get sick and exhausted and lose their appet.i.tes in the process.

We ask ourselves: Can we, in fact, have it all? How do we make smart choices? What do we even want? We're constantly second-guessing our priorities.

But give us two hours at Macy's, and hel-lo.

Suddenly, we're Madonna.

Set us loose in a storewide sale, and we're instantly transformed into ambitious material girls who know exactly what we want and how to get it. Whether our fetish is shoes, books, or power tools, we're unabashed in our desires. Out of our way, please. Those black-velvet dress pants have our name on them. Could we see the silver bracelets instead of the gold? And make that a double skim latte, no whip.

We're actually emboldened by the possibilities before us. We take delight in picking and choosing, in sorting through the racks and bins. Sometimes, in fact, going into a store without a clue is the most fun of all. Project! Challenge! Treasure hunt!

In a store, we know how to study our options, a.s.sess our budget, and make authoritative decisions.

In a store, we can discern what's of lasting quality and what's not, what's worth our money and what's not, and what's worth waiting in line for-and what's not.

In a store, we don't hesitate to ask for help to get what we want.

We know a good deal when we see one.

And we know how to drive a hard bargain, need be.

So why not apply these skills to our lives beyond the cash register? I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, but wouldn't it benefit us occasionally if we could treat our bosses and lovers like sales-clerks? After all, we never have trouble telling some guy at Valu Village exactly what we need.

Or consider this: One of my friends plans when she's going to shop based on the big annual sales. She waits to get a raincoat during President's Day, hits the factory outlets on vacation, and goes to the mall the day after Christmas to stock up on wrapping paper for the next December. She even follows a formula called CPW (cost per wear) that she read about in Self magazine, so she can make sure that each time she's going to sh.e.l.l out big Bennies for a major clothing purchase, she'll really be getting her money's worth. Three hundred dollars for a skirt, she reasons, comes down to less than a dollar a day.

But ask her where she sees herself professionally in a year, and she says, "Oh, gosh, I don't know. How can you plan a career?"

Or there's my friend Andrea, who's an expert at shopping for cars. She knows how to do her homework, walk into a dealership, shmooze the salesguy, and stand her ground until she gets the model she wants for the price she wants. But she's loath to ask for a raise at her job. "I have more trouble a.s.sessing and asking for my own financial worth than for that of a Honda," she admits.

And as for all those shop-a-holics and credit-card junkies out there: Studies have shown that women are better than men at picking stocks and managing mutual funds precisely because we've been raised to be savvy shoppers. So why not harness these skills to work in reverse for us financially?

"Wall Street is the ultimate shopping mall," said a binge shopper I know. "Whenever I get the urge to splurge, I invest the money instead. I get the same thrill buying a couple of shares of stock as I do buying nail polish." In both instances, she says, she gets to shop around and find out what's hot: "But when I purchase a couple of shares of stock, there's an added kick to it because I actually stand to make money on what I've just bought."

(Funny, but we gals know that you don't have to be rich to enjoy yourself at the mall but, like most Americans, we tend to believe that you either have to be rich or a slightly psychotic e-trader to own stocks. Not so. It is possible to make something out of nearly nothing. National Public Radio reported that if you take the price of a pair of new shoes-say, seventy-five dollars-and sock it away at eight-percent interest in a no-load mutual fund, it'll be worth four thousand dollars in fifty years. Not bad when you consider that the shoes themselves probably won't make it past next season.) And since most of us would like to shop till we drop with someone special in tow, why not give our prospective lovers as much consideration as we give, say, a dress?

After all, if we have to buy a pricey outfit for a wedding, it's usually a major undertaking. We'll even "prep" for it: scouring the stores, maybe checking out newspaper ads and magazines. And we know the rules: Rarely will we buy the first dress we try on, even if it looks stunning on us. Oh, no. We'll have to try on at least two dozen others to make sure the first really is the best. Then we'll drag our girls in to look at it. We'll mentally go through our closets to make sure it works with the other things in our wardrobe. We'll ask ourselves: Does this really suit me? Is it flattering? Can I move and breathe in it? Does it have to be dry-cleaned? Will it break my bank? Will I wear it only once-or will I use it again? The purchase becomes an item of existential import and consideration.

But let some hottie at the cash register ask us out, and we'll write our phone number on the back of a gum wrapper without a second thought. Our clothes we treat like investments, but our dates? Impulse purchases.

If we gals want some high-quality, durable goods in the romance department, I say we've got to remember that nothing we pick up on a whim on the check-out line is usually anything we want hanging around our house two years later. And we shouldn't grab the first person who seems halfway decent, either. We've got to do a little comparison shopping-and ask ourselves: Does this person really suit me? Do they give me room to move and breathe? Are they easy to care for? Will they break my bank? And really: Are they good for more than one night?