The catharsis of watching Cate Blanchett star in the movie version of the best-selling book When I first met Bernadette Fox, I wasn?t sure what to think. Fox, the protagonist of Maria Semple?s epistolary novel Where?d You Go, Bernadette, is a middle-aged female architect who no longer practices, the mother of an eighth grader, an unwilling resident of Seattle, and a MacArthur ?genius? award winner married to a TED-talking AI specialist. Two days before Christmas, she disappears on a cruise to Antarctica.
The book was hilarious and felt so real?except for the disappearing part. I started to pick at the details. How long has knitting been a subversive craft" When was the color pink co-opted by feminists" Was Bernadette an avatar of thwarted female creativity for her time or for ours" My real question, embedded in a blog post I wrote for Design Observer at the time, was whether Bernadette Fox was a good role model. Creating a role model wasn?t Semple?s intention, but as a woman in architecture who, when I read the book in 2013, had a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old, the book?s entwined storylines of motherhood and genius and how women find the space to make something great? well, I found it hard not to identify. I rooted for Bernadette against the ?Galer Street gnats,? the private school moms who didn?t understand her disinterest in participating in school activities or taking care of her yard. I rooted for Bernadette to seem like a gift and not a problem fo...