Women and War and Freedom of the Press

Caryl remembers Marie Colvin and the fallen journalists who died reporting the news

Marie Colvin 1956--2012

She liked parties and pearls, sailing the open seas and drinking to dawn. She loved her friends--and she loved her work. It was said she wore a La Perla bra under her flak jacket. She was a complicated woman for complicated times. And, she was a rare breed: a war correspondent, rarer still because she was a woman. This week, 88 journalists from 25 countries who died last year while covering the news were honored at the Newsmuseum in Washington, D.C. Among them was Marie Colvin, who died at 56, in Syria in 2012. Over her 30-year-long career, she had covered conflicts in several countries, losing her eye in Sri Lanka’s civil war. Accepting the Courage in Journalism Award from the Internal Women’s Media Foundation in 2000, Colvin said: “What’s important is trying to bear witness. The pain of war is beyond telling.”

Caryl relives: Crazy Salad, Scribble, Scribble and Nora Ephron

The Nora Ephron I loved to read didn't hate her neck. It was her breasts that bothered her: Their non-existence.In one of the first essays she wrote for Esquire in 1972, she wrote more than "A Few Words About Breasts":

My first brassiere came from Robinson's Department Store in Beverly Hills. I went there alone, shaking, positive they would look me over and smile and tell me to come back next year. An actual fitter took me into the dressing room and stood over me while I took off my blouse and tried the first one on. The little puffs stood out on my chest. "Lean over," said the fitter. (To this day, I am not sure what fitters in bra departments do except to tell you to lean over.)

Nora Ephron died last June, and there was a flurry of tributes  ranging from Tom Hanks in Time Magazine--(who can forget his performance in 'You've Got Mail" which Ephron wrote and directed)---to Lena Durham who memorably memorialized her in the New Yorker. (Some say Durham, who is the creator and star of HBO's Girls is the heir-apparent to Ephron. The 26-year-old Durham just received a $3. 6 million advance for a book of humorous essays.)

Ephron not only captured the essence of a generation of women (mine and, I suspect, yours) but she also nailed the state of the media at the time. She wrote about the former subject in Crazy Salad, which was published originally in 1975. And, she made notes on the latter in the next book, Scribble Scribble, which came out three years later. Those two books were fixtures on my book shelf during my twenty-something years, read and reread, marked up and down, a repository for my deepest desire, my unrealizable dream:  If only I could write like that . . . .

A Life Well-Lived: Bonnie Prudden

Bonnie Prudden, fitness guru
1914-2011

An early champion of physical fitness, Prudden was an author, instructor and entrepreneur who followed her own advice and exercised regularly until her death at 97 on Dec. 11.

Long before Michele Obama adopted her campaign against childhood obesity, Prudden had been part of a study team that documented America’s out-of-shape youth in 1955 for another president—Dwight Eisenhower. As a result of the report, Eisenhower called for the creation of “The President’s Council on
Youth Fitness.”

The woman who, with her husband, climbed the Matterhorn on her honeymoon was one of the first fitness instructors with a national presence on TV. An author of 15 books, Prudden developed exercise classes for babies, the blind , those who wanted to improve their sex lives or prevent incontinence. She invented exercise equipment, rock walls and a line of fitness apparel. That’s a full-body leotard of her design that Prudden is wearing on the cover of Sports Illustration.

Despite a broken pelvis in her 20s and a triple bypass in her 90s, she never stopped working out. “ You can’t run back the clock,” Prudden said, “But you can rewind it.