Disgruntled Housewife

Gayle O'Brien — Sun, 01 Jun 2003 08:01:01 +0000

I know Pif honoured Disgruntled Housewife many moons ago, but seriously, this site is so incredibly fab that it merits an updated, more in-depth review.

Disgruntled Housewife is the pet project of Nikol Lohr, and has been going since 1996. A site as diverse, entertaining and random as Disgruntled Housewife is hard to describe in a single sentence, so it merely skims the surface to describe it as a set of witty, somewhat trivial musings that would verge on the absolute inane if it wasn’t done with so much style and substance.

The ironically kitschy icons, design and section links are fantastic – from the titles of section such as ‘Stupid Crap I Bought Last Week’ and ‘Meals Men Like’ to the rollover icons that each link to a section of a site (for example, the ‘Work’ section is represented by a peanut; rollover and you get a drawing of two hands tied together). Dig deeper, beyond the superficials, and you’ll find hours of fun, due mostly to Lohr’s sarcastic, entertaining writing style.

DH’s infamous Dick List is still wildly popular, and the fact that Lohr has recently put in a search function while adding ‘50 new dicks a week’ speaks to its popularity. The Dick List, as the name suggests, is a forum for jilted women to post the dickish behavior of the men in their lives. One woman writes from Corpus Christi, “My husband of 7 years, and father of my three beautiful children fucked his assistant bitch, whore, cunt, cow, sleavebag, doucheface, stinking, used up slut at work nearly every other day for more than FOUR years….And he has the LITTLEST dick in the free world.” It’s hard to call the Dick List funny (it tends to make you cringe), although some of it is freakin’ hilarious. It’s the best exercise in e-catharsis and e-empathy I’ve ever seen.

Along with the Dick List, other sections filled with reader contributions include ‘Secret Confessions’ (‘I am an adult man and I have three different Xena dolls’) and the ‘Working for the Man’ section, containing a series of tips for ’surviving that soul-crushing job of yours’ (‘Work a little overtime and sneak into cubicles, steal something from one person, and hide it in the desk of someone else you hate’).

But it’s Lohr’s content that remains the site’s main attraction. Her sporadically updated diary provides an unabashed presentation of her many neuroses. What she does, perhaps unwittingly, is give voice to both the mundane and larger concerns of her demographic – I too marvel and aspire to my friends ‘who can fit into their corporate slots (not just fit into them, but actually totally exploit & enjoy them) by day and still be likable by night.’

The Dick List, along with other more contentious sections of DH (see her scathing review of the pregnant women in her workplace in ‘Pregnancy’) generate enough hate mail that Lohr has added a Hate Mail Generator, showcasing the often poorly argued, grammatically incorrect feedback of a number of dim web surfers for whom the ironic, trivial joys of DH simply go right over their heads (a woman named Diane M. Andersen wrote in to offer this useful snippet: ‘EITHER YOUVE NEVER BEEN FUCKED RIGHT, OR YOU CANT GET OFF IF YOU HAVE BEEN FUCKED RIGHT!.’ Fortunately, Lohr has much more class than some of the people that write in with feedback.

Even better, you don’t have to be online to surround yourself with its irony. Lohr’s ‘Merch’ section is more fun than that candy store in ‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.’ The kitschy design of cocktail glasses, shopping bags (I love bringing my Disgruntled Housewife to my local supermarket – so many of the Stepford Wives look so shocked), ‘This Isn’t A Date’ underwear, and the best set of coffee mugs in the whole darn world (my favorite says ‘I love my job’ in large letters on one side, and ‘Kill me’ in smaller letters on the other).

In short, Disgruntled Housewife is one of the many reasons why I love the Web. You couldn’t buy this kind of fun in any other medium; only the Web provides both the space for someone like Lohr to be so creative and the chance for the rest of us to access it with little effort. I’m continuously impressed with how full and frequent DH is – I don’t know how Lohr manages to find the time, but I sure am glad she does.

Review of Hissyfit

Gayle O'Brien — Sun, 01 Dec 2002 08:01:01 +0000

Oh, I remember it like it was yesterday. In 1997 I had a Chickclick sticker on the side of my harddrive, fresh and tasty made me feel like I was part of a new brand of girl power by owning a snowboard and I wore by Bust t-shirt with pride. In the Web’s hey day, I also got into the whole girl zine scene, back when it actually felt like a scene. There were dozens of fresh, fun and informative zines for women, most of which, thankfully, had nothing to do with horoscopes, make-up or dieting. These zines did what print mags didn’t have the balls to do – challenge to status quo, talk about real, often unpleasant issues, and not underestimate the power of a good old rant. And most girl zines did it with intelligence and class. They all formed part of an inspiring and vibrant community that inspired us all to kick ass and take names in the name of e-liberation.

But those days are (mostly) long gone. Chickclick has long shut down, abandoned by its frustrated and tired founders, fresh and tasty is now a site for baked goods, and many of those that have kept their domains haven’t updated since 1999.

With so many sites having gone by the way side, what’s left? In the short, but none-the-less impressive list of survivors, Hissyfit (www.hissyfit.com) is at the top.

Hissyfit’s motto – `you are entitled to our opinion’ – hasn’t changed since Wing Chun, its creator and main contributor, launched the site in 1997. Chun started the zine to help her `maintain some grasp on her self-respect’ while working for an interactive agency that dealt mostly with big name corporates. And even though Wing Chun left the corporate nest, she has lost none of her fervor and hilarity, combining her excellent writing skills with healthy doses of humor and sarcasm, targeting everything from the French to FOX programming.

Hissyfit is still the same breath of fresh air it was back in 1997. The Internet economy has come and gone, but Chun and her list of contributors still use the site as a platform for hissyfits. Regular columns like `112 Reasons to Live a Barren, Childless Existence That Ends in Your Death’ and the serial Bad Teen Novel are particular highlights, and my personal favorite is the long-running `A Review of a Movie We Haven’t Seen’

As Chun writes in `Bubble Girl’, her rant about having to actually deal with her fellow humans, `the whole point of this site is pretty much to complain, generally about people.’ But `complaining’ doesn’t quite do Hissyfit justice. It’s kvetching with style. It’s bitter with an intellectual bite. It’s sassy, it’s smart and it’s a darn good read.

This month’s main article, `Slap Them: They’re French’, is a case in point. A variation on `What have the Roman’s ever done for us?’, Chun writes:

“Have you ever noticed that most of the French words and phrases that have entered the English lexicon happen to represent concepts that pretentious people like to talk about? Like “oeuvre and “genre” and “mise en scène” and “Favre” and “ménage à trois” and “au contraire“? Language of love, my ass.”

Hissyfit is good, solid writing by smart, interesting people who aren’t afraid to take the piss out of what other people just accept, like Bruce Willis’ hairpiece in The Story of Us and the lack of pre-screening counselors at tattoo parlors.

Hissyfit rocked in 1997 and it still rocks today.

Pif Magazine » Gayle O’Brien

Disgruntled Housewife

Review of Hissyfit