RECENT PRESS
The Ravenously-Engaged Nonfiction Of Wednesday Martin
Wednesday Martin, author of the peppy bestseller Primates of Park Avenue, returns with a similarly analytical but far more titillating book. Primates painstakingly chronicled Martin’s adventures among the Soul Cycle-d, Hermes-bedecked matrons of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, where the doctor of philosophy from Yale landed after marrying well. Untrue explores her life after she ditched the nabe for the slightly more outre Upper West Side and began to dream about sex outside of her marriage. “I had fantasies I did not want to share, daydreams that were more graphic than soft focus and romantic,” she writes. “And I entertained crushes on wholly inappropriate objects—men who were married, or too young for me, or too old for me. I had crushes on women too, even though I was pretty sure I wasn’t gay or bisexual.”
Women are more faithful than men, and other myths on female infidelity
Women are more faithful than men. Women cheat for love; men cheat for sex. Women are less sexually adventurous than men. It's a script that many of us -- whether clinicians or Hollywood -- follow when thinking about female sexuality. Yet it's a script based on unfounded assumptions about the way women view, pursue and engage in sex, writes Wednesday Martin, author of "Untrue," in which she mined the data and interviewed 30 experts and women from all walks of life to uncover the facts about female sexuality.
An Introduction to the World of "Tindersluts"
“We’re looking for someone to bring us snacks and really good dick.” For four women in Chicago, this request began with a hookup app and a dream: of men who would please them, tease them, and most importantly, deliver food every hour over the course of one day. The fantasy got a name—Tindersluts—and Gin Fizz set about making it a reality.
The Modern Monogamous Marriage is Built on Lies, Not Sex Research
With some exceptions, gender constructs have served men well in the modern world. It’s landed them in more high-powered positions. It’s gotten them higher wages. And, yeah, it’s given them license to pursue sex in ways that would lead women to be ostracized or shamed. In her new book Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women Lust and Adultery is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free, author Wednesday Martin digs into the damage incurred through this “boys will be boys” mentality. And she blows a whistle on the many biases that have boxed their female counterparts into such sexually constrained identities.
Everything You Thought You Knew About Women And Infidelity Is Wrong
According to truisms found in dusty tomes like the Old Testament and The Rules, women want stability, security, and emotional closeness with one special partner. Men, on the other hand, are hard-wired to spread their seed around. Of course, we all know gender differences are a bit more complicated. A new book by cultural critic Wednesday Martin, Ph.D., presents the science to back that up. Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity Is Wrong and How The New Science Can Set Us Freeis a wide-ranging look at everything from primatology to pop culture and how these factors shape what we think of as (predominantly hetero) female sexuality. In 2008, four-fifths of Americans in a nationwide social survey said infidelity is “always wrong.” But as Martin points out, that same data finds that as many as 37.5 percent of us cheat anyway—and that number is likely higher because we’re too embarrassed to own up to stepping out. “I’m trying to write a valentine,” Martin said to BUST, “to the work of women who dared to mess with our master narrative about who women really are and what women desire.” Here, she gets down to nitty gritty about how cultural expectations have had a stranglehold on female desire.
15 Books For People Questioning The Idea Of "Happily Ever After"
Untrue is a just-released investigation into the nature of female infidelity, ethical non-monogamy, and sexual psychology. Written in a conversational tone but packed with research, this is probably the best and most up-to-date overview of the latest research on female desire, cheating, and the question of whether women have an “innate” proclivity toward polyamory and/or sexual variety. My favorite moments are when Martin gets personal in her reporting, delving into her feelings when she attends a workshop on practicing ethical non-monogamy. (Her interview with Carrie Jenkins, author of the also-notable What Love Is: And What It Could Be, is also a highlight.) Untrue is a must-read if you want to understand why monogamy might not always feel “natural” — but don’t want to read something pushing any one particular relationship model’s agenda.
Why Married Couples Are Into Cuckolding
"You look like a classic hotwife," the direct message to my Instagram account read. Well, maybe, I thought, deleting it without giving it much thought. After all, who hasn’t received unwanted direct messages, sometimes with sexual content or innuendo? "Are you a hotwife?" another DM from yet another stranger asked later that week. Duh, I thought, deleting that one too. And then a third message: "Hi. Are you into the cuckold lifestyle?"This one gave me pause. The cuckold lifestyle? I looked at the profile of the guy who had DM’d me. Ex-military. Clean-cut. His feed was all about sports. He looked macho. But the term "cuckold lifestyle" conjured up the Chaucer I had read as a student — stories such as "The Miller’s Tale" and "The Merchant’s Tale," in which younger women have sex right under the noses of their unsuspecting older and ineffectual in every sense husbands. In both stories, the wife goes unpunished, and the joke is on her clueless spouse, for whom she, the reader, and the narrator alike have contempt.
What Bonobos Can Teach Us About Sexual Assault
If you’ve read National Geographic or seen a documentary about chimps, you’ve heard that we can learn a great deal about ourselves from our very close primate relatives Pan troglodytes. Observing a troop in Gombe, Tanzania, Jane Goodall discovered that chimps have personalities, intimate relationships, and agendas. Her work and that of scientists who followed in her footsteps also taught us that chimps are a male-dominant species, prone to not-infrequent violence, with males harassing and sexually coercing lower-ranking female troop members. Aggression, many primatologists, academics, and nonexperts extrapolate from our body of knowledge about chimps, is in our “nature,” as is the dynamic of males attempting to control and dominate females with physical attacks, forced copulation, and even infanticide. Harvard primatologist Richard Wrangham, a chimp guy, famously asserted in Demonic Males that we humans are living out “a continuous, five-million-year habit of lethal aggression,” driven by a male will to dominate strangers and females. We can expect male dominance and male sexual coercion of females, we’ve been taught, because we’re “wired” that way. But our wiring looks less nasty, brutish, and bro-y if we throw over chimps in favor of another close primate relative, the bonobo.
The ‘Untrue’ Woman
A week after devouring Untrue, Wednesday Martin’s eminently readable treatise on the lies society has been fed about female sexuality, agency, and infidelity, I saw an ad for Brooklinen sheets on the New York City subway. Three sets of socked feet were sticking out from beneath these sheets—two male, one female. “For throuples,” it began. I squealed. I was immediately reminded of the eighth chapter of Martin’s book, “Loving the Woman Who’s Untrue,” in which she interviews Carrie Jenkins, a professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and the author of a book on the empirical basis for arithmetical knowledge. Lately, as Martin explains, Jenkins “is as likely to be called a whore, a slut, ‘a walking sexually transmitted infection,’ ‘everything that is wrong with women,’ ‘a selfish cunt’ ... as she is to be addressed with the honorific ‘professor.’ ” Why? Because she dared to write—matter-of-factly, philosophically—about her own polyamorous living arrangement: a husband of six years and a boyfriend of five.
Everything You Know About Women and Sex Is Wrong
For centuries, men have asked themselves: What do women want? While you'd think we should have come up with an answer to this question by 2018, we clearly haven't, if the immense volume of Google searches for "how to give woman orgasm" or "where is the clitoris" is any indication. But author Wednesday Martin believes that this isn't men's fault. The problem is that everything guys have been taught about male and female sexuality has been wrong from the very beginning.
18 Brilliant Books for Fall
Combining Barbara Ehrenreich's immersive reporting style and Carrie Bradshaw's savoir faire, the Primates of Park Avenue author dispels many myths about female desire—for one, that women lust less intensely than men. "What if women are the decadent sex?" she asks.
Book Review: Untrue by Wednesday Martin
Wednesday Martin paints a grim picture in Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity Is Wrong, and How the New Science Can Set Us Free. She posits that in much of the world, female sexuality has been hemmed in, due to a seemingly innocent cause: agriculture. As early hunter-gatherers, women roamed freely and the practice of multiple sex partners was common. But with the advent of the plough came the myths about female sexuality and gender roles we are taught today: that women are naturally domestic, frail, and monogamous.
New Science Sets Women’s Sex Drives Free
If you’re female and fear you’re “oversexed,” well, ladies, you can finally relax and enjoy the ride. Because there’s no such thing, according to Wednesday Martin, PhD, feminist cultural critic, social researcher, and author whose work synthesizes psychology, primatology, anthropology, and sociology. She vivisected Upper East Side moms in her 2015 New York Times bestseller Primates of Park Avenue, and in her new book Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free, Martin’s on a bigger mission: to bust the long-held myth that women are endowed with weaker sex drives than men.
Who Exactly Was the Original Jezebel?
The story of Jezebel epitomizes how preoccupations with progeniture, female ambition, and female sexual autonomy were gradually mapped together in the tradition of Western thought and religion. As Lesley Hazleton has suggested in her masterful biography, Jezebel is a tissue of representations over time as much as she is an historical personage. Old Testament “editors” revisited that text repeatedly over centuries, and part of what emerged was the larger story of female fates, in the form of the story of one queen, the wife of Ahab and mortal enemy of Elijah.
Sex guru explains why married women are having orgies
Wednesday Martin is immaculately dressed in a white skirt suit, heels — and a slim, metallic travel-vibrator necklace. It’s “just a bit of fun,” the 52-year-old author tells The Post. Less discreet is the clitoris-shaped chunk of neon-pink plastic she is handling with her manicured nails. It’s a gift she’s handed out to advance readers of her latest book: “Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust and Infidelity Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free” (Little, Brown Spark).
‘Untrue’ Challenges Dated Thinking on Female Sexuality
Among 18- to 29-year-olds, women commit infidelity more often than men do; several studies show no significant difference in male and female rates of fidelity into our forties. Many experts now believe that monogamy is a tighter fit for women, and that they actually require variety and novelty of sexual experience more than men do. Men’s rates of infidelity haven’t budged since 1990, while women’s have shot up 40 percent. Data suggest men and women alike have affairs even when there is no perception of dissatisfaction in their primary relationship.These eye-opening facts, which fly in the face of most conventional wisdom regarding who “cheats” and why, are just some of the norm-shattering ideas put forth in Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free (out this week from Little, Brown), in which cultural critic and social researcher Wednesday Martin delves into the increasingly female-dominated field of sex research, and comes up with some game-changing conclusions. Here’s a taste.
Monogamy May Be Even More Difficult For Women Than it Is For Men
It’s a widely held belief that monogamy comes more naturally to women than it does to men. A lot of people subscribe to a narrative that says the sexes are just “wired” differently, with women having evolved to be monogamous and men to be promiscuous. There’s just one problem with this line of thinking—it’s not true, according to author Wednesday Martin’s latest book. In UNTRUE: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free, Martin offers a provocative read based on the latest research studies and interviews with experts in human sexuality that challenges us to think differently about women and sex. She sets the record straight on a number of false beliefs about female sexuality in particular, including when and why women cheat.
What Polyamory Can Teach Us About Monogamy and Infidelity
“Working with Non-Monogamous Couples” was held at a nondescript family services center in a nowhere neighborhood in Manhattan. Having attended a talk in the same series (“Sex Therapy in the City”) in the same venue about a year before, I knew I would be surrounded by therapists who were there for certification credits and to learn from an expert in their field about the best approaches to issues that were likely to come up in their work. I also knew a little bit about consensual non-monogamy: I knew that it was for people who didn’t want to be monogamous, and who didn’t want to lie about it.
Wednesday Martin Dares to Call Her New Book 'Untrue'
Looking improbably dainty in a white summer frock, Wednesday Martin stepped to the front of a glass-enclosed room in Sag Harbor, N.Y., wielding a mandrake-like piece of pink plastic. “This is your clitoris,” she told her mostly female listeners.
5 Things You Didn't Know About Female Sexuality, from Wednesday Martin's ‘UNTRUE’
Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free (Little, Brown Spark, out September 18) digs into the latest research on female desire and includes interviews with experts on “consensual non-monogamy,” as well as women who cheat. “What we’ve been taught about female sexuality is untrue,” she says of the commonly held assumptions she hopes her book will disprove. “The female libido, when measured correctly, is every bit as strong as the male. Women are sexually weirder than we ever thought—and that’s normal!”
Here are five takeaways from Untrue.
Time's Up for the Great Sexual Awakening in Hollywood
There is something big happening right now, an earthquake of sorts, that will shake up our world and our beliefs about men, women and sex. I describe it in my new book, Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust and Infidelity Is Wrong …, and call it The Great Correction.
Ideas about female sexual autonomy, promiscuity and fidelity are being revisited, revised and overturned based on several decades' worth of studies gathered by mostly female primatologists, anthropologists and other social scientists. University of British Columbia clinical sex researcher Rosemary Basson and Queens University sexologist Meredith Chivers have toppled the long-standing myth that men's sex drives are stronger than women's by measuring triggered versus spontaneous desire.
Five books ... hot new reads that upend traditional views about women
Wednesday Martin comes to her meditation on female unfaithfulness with a point of view: adulteresses are brave and their experiences instructive. In the great relationship pool that is Manhattan, she expected to date, meet her perfect man and settle into monogamy (a word she quips sounds like something comfy to sit on). Instead, she dated prolifically, had lots of sex, got serious, got bored, then found herself interested in a new guy. If that sounds familiar, this book may be for you. Martin is a lively stylist (her controversial memoir, Primates of Park Avenue, was a bestseller), and her research into female philandering draws on many disciplines — science, history, literature, philosophy, popular culture, and more.
'Whiskey In A Teacup' By Reese Witherspoon & 13 Other New Books Out This Week
In this thought-provoking exploration of female infidelity, Primates of Park Avenueauthor Wednesday Martin blends social science, interviews with sex researchers and anthropologists, and chats with real women to examine faithlessness, monogamy, and female sexual autonomy.
BookExpo 2018: Julia Sommerfeld on the Launch of Amazon Original Stories’ First Collection
Amazon Original Stories, a new imprint dedicated to short digital fiction and nonfiction, released its first collection, The Real Thing, yesterday. It brings together six love stories, by Eddie Huang, Wednesday Martin, W. Kamau Bell, Jade Chang, Melissa DePino and Elizabeth LaBan, and Samantha Allen, with new art and animations by Geoff McFetridge. Julia Sommerfeld, editorial director of Amazon Original Stories, talks about this new venture.
'Untrue' By Wednesday Martin Will Challenge What You Think About Women & Sex — And The Cover Is Just As Revealing As The Book
When it comes to women and sexuality, stereotypes are presented as truth more often than the actual truth. Women are confronted with a combination of poor sex education and the societal effects of slut shaming, and all of that has a real impact on the way individual women experience sex and lust and love. But in her new book,Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free, social researcher and author Wednesday Martin deconstructs many of the false beliefs that have negatively affected the way women's sexuality is viewed — including the deeply entrenched notions that women are the more naturally monogamous sex or that women's sex drives are shrinking violets compared to men's. In a cheeky homage to the contents of the book, Untrue has two covers — one on the outside, that tells some of the truth, and one on the inside that tells all of the truth. Bustle has an exclusive first look at the "inside" cover below.
'Primates of Park Avenue' TV Series in the Works (Exclusive)
Lionsgate TV is looking to turn Wednesday Martin's memoir Primates of Park Avenue into a scripted comedy.
The studio is teaming with the author to develop a half-hour comedy based on her 2016 New York Times best-seller from Simon & Schuster. A network is not yet attached.
Martin will co-write the pilot and executive produce the project alongside Anonymous Content's Nicole Clemens, Stacy Cramer (Burlesque) and Heather Lieberman (Cruel Intentions).
Skirt Club Gets Some More Press
Wednesday Martin, author of the 2016 memoir Primates of Park Avenue, is working on a new book about female sexuality. As part of her immersive research for that project, she recently checked out several events put on by Skirt Club, the women-only sex-parties organization...
Whether or Not the Trumps Keep Them, Separate Bedrooms Are the Ultimate Status Symbol
While the first couple vehemently denied reports that they sleep apart from one another, in their social set, separate bedrooms are just another way to prove you’ve got money and square footage to burn...
Exclusive: Anxiety is Boiling Over at a New York Private School Now That The Trumps are Staying in Town
I’m worried about some type of Mexican multi-car street abduction,” one concerned private school mother confessed to another this week. She was fretful, of course, regarding her child’s safety...
The Roving Sex Party Coming to the Hamptons This Summer
With the weather warming up, one might wonder: What does Wednesday Martin (the author who caused a publishing-industry stir last year with a book that, among other things, introduced the concept of the Upper East Side “wife bonus”)...
Rich, married women love their Hamptons ‘p—y whisperers’
New York socialites are putting a whole new spin on being bi-curious.
As “Primates of Park Avenue” author Wednesday Martin recounted to the Observer...
‘Primates of Park Avenue’ author pens another bombshell
Author Wednesday Martin, who dissected the lives of the rich Upper East Side ladies who lunch in her controversial memoir “Primates of Park Avenue,” will set tongues wagging and blood boiling again with her next book...
Melania Trump and “Nagging” as a Class Issue
The aspiring first lady Melania Trump has said startlingly little during this interminable campaign season, and when she does speak, she has defined herself time and again as someone who does not criticize, find fault, annoy, or irritate her husband...
Wednesday Martin: Unlocking the Privileged Code
The wealthiest 1% has been attacked in American mass culture multiple times, starting from a cult TV series about preppy kids, “Gossip Girl” and ending up with massive Occupy Wall Street protests. This summer a Michigan born and New York based...
With The Birkin Bag, Hermes Plays Hard to Get
A Birkin costs between $10,000 and $200,000. It's a bag - a purse made by the French luxury brand Hermes. And here's the weird part. Birkins are almost always mysteriously out of stock. Stacey Vanek Smith from our Planet Money podcast explains...
The Misery Sessions
Our daughter had just turned 3 when we applied for admission to the nursery school of the Lycee Francais de New York. At the time, the Lycee occupied one of the Upper East Side’s most impressive buildings, a Beaux Arts mansion on East 72nd Street just off Fifth...
Primates of Pacific Heights
Summer reads should be engrossing, entertaining, escapist fun. But occasionally, one comes along that also makes you think.
For me this year, it’s “Primates of Park Avenue,” (Simon & Schuster) by Wednesday Martin...
The harried tale of ‘Primates of Park Avenue’
The social researcher, at work in her natural habitat, dwells in a lovely co-op decorated in mid-century modern furniture and painted in flattering tones of blush and platinum. After a photo shoot in a red dress, she changes into more casual clothing...
Primates of Park Avenue: 8 quotes that will make you LOL at the UES
The Upper East Side can be a jungle.
Wednesday Martin's tell-all memoir 'Primates of Park Avenue' has been under scrutiny since it came out last month, but not without appropriate levels of Gossip Girl intrigue
‘Primates Of Park Avenue’ Author Wednesday Martin: ‘Wife Bonus’ Controversy Is Rooted In Sexism
For many Upper East Side housewives, participating in the requisite charity, shopping and grooming rituals is afforded through a “wife bonus,” a yearly allowance awarded to them...
The Tribal Rites of Motherhood on Manhattan's Upper East Side
When the parenting memoir Primates of Park Avenueopens, its author, Wednesday Martin, and her husband are facing a common new-parent problem: Their living situation no longer feels right...
Debra Messing Attends CMEE's Author's Night For Dr. Wednesday Martin's "Primates Of Park Avenue"
On Saturday, June 20th, the Children's Museum of the East End (CMEE) hosted CMEE Author's Night to celebrate the launch of Dr. Wednesday Martin's new memoir, "Primates of Park Avenue." ...
'Primates of Park Avenue' author leads the pack east
On a rainy Saturday afternoon, Wednesday Martin, the author of the phenomenally popular and occasionally polarizing "The Primates of Park Avenue," was in a small children's museum in Bridgehampton, on the eastern end of Long Island...
Women explain the quest for the ultra-expensive Birkin
One of the most-talked-about details in Wednesday Martin's book, Primates of Park Avenue, is the author's all-consuming quest for a Hermès Birkin handbag. It is, she said, to be her "sword and shield" as she navigates Manhattan's most elite...
Amy Zerner’s Fashion Sense: Primates of Park Avenue
My husband Monte Farber and I attended a book-signing party for Primates of Park Avenue: A Memoir by Wednesday Martin at the Children’s Museum of the East End. It is a new book, published June 2, 2015, that looks into a secret, elite world...
Wednesday Martin’s ‘Primates of Park Avenue’ Celebrated in the Hamptons
The release of Dr. Wednesday Martin’s new book, Primates of Park Avenue, was celebrated at the Children’s Museum of the East End in Bridgehampton on Saturday at the inaugural CMEE Author’s Night. Martin, the #1 New York Times bestseller...
Get Ready for a ‘Wife Bonus’ Movie
The Upper East Side will soon be getting even more screen time: MGM has bought the movie rights to Primates of Park Avenue, Wednesday Martin's account of life among the Birkin-wielding moms of the Upper East Side. And this weekend, at a party in the Hamptons to celebrate the book...
Primates Party at The Children's Museum of the East End
Last night, The Children's Museum of the East End celebrated the release of Primates of Park Avenue, the recent New York Times best seller penned by Wednesday Martin. We discovered that the author has a lot to celebrate- MGM bought the rights to...
Hobbies of the Summer Hamptons Crowd
One of the most favorite pastimes of spending time in the Hamptons is coveting other people’s money.
Who among us, using “us” as a relative term, doesn’t wish there were an extra $12 million lying around to buy that two-bedroom shack on the beach...
A field guide to Park Avenue: Unnatural selection
NORTH of New York’s 59th Street and just east of Central Park is the natural habitat of a peculiar breed of higher-order primates. Among the females, a fiercely competitive tribal culture and a dramatic imbalance in sex ratios...
Here's our dream cast for Primates of Park Avenue
When news broke Monday that MGM had snapped up the movie rights to Wednesday Martin’s just-released memoir, Primates of Park Avenue, we immediately started shuffling through our mental IMDb pages for actresses to play the wealthy Manhattan mothers...
Controversial 'Primates of Park Avenue' Book Acquired by MGM (Exclusive)
The film rights to Primates of Park Avenue, Wednesday Martin's controversial book about wealthy Upper East Side women, have been acquired by MGM. The book sparked a bidding war with multiple bidders in the mix to pick up...
Primates of Times Square: A Case Study
When did The Times’s coverage of Wednesday Martin’s book, “Primates of Park Avenue,” reach critical mass? Or perhaps the question should be: When did it catapult into excess?
It all began, reasonably enough, with...
Who’s who in scandalous Upper East Side tell-all
Plenty of Birkin bag-carrying blondes on the Upper East Side hate the new book “Primates of Park Avenue,” Wednesday Martin’s “anthropological” study of their hierarchical behavior. But some might hate it even more because they are alluded to...
The memoir irritating Manhattan's uber-rich
It's a mommy memoir causing a rumpus in New York: how pill-popping, wine-quaffing, uber-rich mothers on Manhattan's Upper East Side get year-end bonuses from their husbands and hire tutors for toddlers...
Author of Park Avenue Exposé Stands by 'Wife Bonuses' Claim as Book Comes Under Fire
New York City author Wednesday Martin is standing by the controversial claim in her memoir, Primates of Park Avenue that some ultra-wealthy stay-at-home-moms get “wife bonuses.”
Gone native: how Manhattan’s richest women follow the laws of the jungle
From Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities to Candace Bushnell’s Sex and the City, New York’s Upper East Side has long offered novelists and satirists a rich seam to mine. But until Wednesday Martin came along, no one had thought to use primatology...
Why the Wealthy Women of New York's Upper East Side Are So Completely Fascinating
Are there any creatures on the planet more fascinating than the impeccably groomed, spectacularly attired, strikingly thin, exquisitely (and expensively) blonde women of America's...
In Defense of Wednesday
Wednesday on Wednesday. It was Wednesday. Where else? Michael’s. My lunch guest was Wednesday Martin, author of the new book “Park Avenue Primates,” which I read and wrote about here this past Monday. Yesterday was the first time we’ve ever had a conversation. I wasn’t surprised...
Wealthy Women on Display
One day, shortly after moving to Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Wednesday Martin was walking home with a carton of milk when an elegantly dressed older woman came barreling toward her on the empty sidewalk. Martin inched closer to the curb to get out of her way, but the woman kept bearing down until...
Love Spectacle? In ‘Primates of Park Avenue,’ Wife Bonuses Are the Least of It
Are you thinking about adding “Primates of Park Avenue” to your reading list?
Hidden in the debates sparked by Wednesday Martin’s book, a mock-anthropological study about...
Author Wednesday Martin Dishes on the Over-the-Top Parenting of N.Y.C.'s Uber-Rich
Ever wonder what it's like to be an uber-rich Upper East Sider?
Now you can learn all about it from author and...
7 things we learned about NYC real estate from “Primates of Park Avenue
It seems all the world — and by world, we mean New York City — is abuzz about Wednesday Martin’s new book, Real Housewives of the Upper East Side “Primates of Park Avenue.” When Martin, a writer and social researcher...
A Conversation With Wednesday Martin, Author of Primates of Park Avenue
On the surface, Primates of Park Avenue is an examination of a lived stereotype: an anthropology-inflected, lightly analytical memoir of coming to belong within an Upper East Side community where blonde, thin, status-obsessed moms hip-check...
Birkins and Wife Bonuses: An Anthropologist's Take On Upper East Side Mom Style
Last month, anthropologist Wednesday Martin introduced the world to the concept of a “wife bonus”—an annual shopping budget based on a husband’s earnings and his stay-at-home spouse’s...
The Primates of Park Avenue Are Going Ape-Sh*t: A Conversation with Wednesday Martin
Wednesday Martin’s book, Primates of Park Avenue: A Memoir, has gotten all of New York talking. And it only hits the shelves today. Martin, who holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Yale University...
The Price of Being a Power Mom on Park Avenue
In an excerpt from her buzzy new memoir, Primates of Park Avenue, Wednesday Martin calculates all of the personal-training sessions, Botox, and spa treatments required to survive and thrive as a wife and mother on the Upper East Side. It ain’t cheap.
Can a Birkin Steal Your Soul? Wednesday Martin Reveals the Secrets of Park Avenue Moms
"There is a fair amount of dish, but it's dish with a doctorate," says Wednesday Martin as we sit down at a cafe on Manhattan's Upper West Side. She's talking about her new memoir, Primates of Park Avenue...
What We Can Learn From Insanely Rich Parents
Motherhood, like yoga or eating, is not supposed to be a competitive sport. But some people can’t help themselves, and just as with yoga or eating, among certain types of humans, it can become quite a contest...
At Lunch With the Author Who Introduced the Upper East Side ‘Wife Bonus’
Consider the prototypical Upper East Side mommy: bleach blonde, whippet thin, perfectly manicured, stay-at-home, chemically preserved. Polite but not warm. Type A. Beautiful, sexless. Multiple houses...
Secrets of Manhattan's Upper East Side Housewives Revealed in New Book
A new book, "Primates of Park Avenue," reveals one woman's encounter with multiple Upper East Side families.
Manhattan's Social Elite Is Going Ape Over "Primates of Park Avenue." Is Wednesday Martin The Margaret Mead Of The .1?
If you don't live in Manhattan, it may seem slightly insane that two words could hijack the conversation in Upper East Side zip codes for several weeks...
Social Diary: Primates of Park Avenue
The talk, if you want to call it that, was about a book. “Primates of Park Avenue; a memoir” (Simon & Schuster) by Wednesday Martin. The talk I was hearing was because of all the publicity Martin is getting for this new book. And who’s her publicist? Sandi Mendelson of Hilsinger Mendelson...
Vanessa Grigoriadis discusses Wednesday Martin’s memoir, “Primates of Park Avenue”
This week, Judy Blume talks about her new novel; Liesl Schillinger rounds up new travel books; Alexandra Alter has news from the publishing world; Vanessa Grigoriadis discusses Wednesday Martin’s...
Rich Housewives Go Under The Microscope In 'Primates Of Park Avenue'
On the hunt from a good public school for her son, Wednesday Martin moved from her old home in downtown Manhattan to a new one just a few miles north. The spots were no more than a short cab ride away from one another, yet she soon found...
‘Primates of Park Avenue: A Memoir,’ by Wednesday Martin
A few pages into “Primates of Park Avenue,” I raised an eyebrow as high as a McDonald’s arch. Was Wednesday Martin, a Midwestern-born Ph.D., trying to explain the rites of the Upper East Side to me, an autochthonous Manhattanite schooled at...
A Cultural Study of the Ladies who Lunch
Wednesday Martin explores the inner-workings of the Upper East Side in Primates of Park Avenue.
Sex segregated dinners are the norm, charitable success calls for a “wife bonus” and former Disney guides have become the new nannies...
Beach Body Type: Cool new books and hot beachwear for a smart summer
Upper East Side women are like baboons who display power by threatening to ram younger rivals on the sidewalk, conspicuously bidding $20,000 at school auctions for finger paintings and jealously treating nursery school admissions like...
Inside the bizarre life of an Upper East Side housewife
In her 26 years in New York, Wednesday Martin has lived in nearly every neighborhood, from Long Island City to Soho to the West Village. Nothing, she says, prepared her for the Upper East Side. “It’s the most fascinating and alienating and...
Wednesday Martin Is the Margaret Mead of the .1%
The author and coiner of the "wife bonus" trains an anthropologist's eye on the wealthy denizens of the Upper East Side.
The name of her book is memorable. Her own name...
INTERNATIONAL PRESS
A strong libido and bored by monogamy: the truth about women and sex
What do you know about female sexuality? Whatever it is, chances are, says Wednesday Martin, it’s all wrong. “Most of what we’ve been taught by science about female sexuality is untrue,” she says. “Starting with two basic assertions: that men have a stronger libido than women, and that men struggle with monogamy more than women do.” Martin pulls no punches. Her bestselling memoir Primates of Park Avenuecast her as an anthropologist observing the habits of her Upper East Side neighbours. She claimed among other shockers that privileged stay-at-home mothers were sometimes given a financial “wife bonus” based on their domestic and social performance. The book caused a furore, and is currently being developed as a TV series, with Martin as exec producer. Her new book, out this week, should be equally provocative. Entitled Untrue, it questions much that we thought we knew about women’s sexuality.
‘Women are closing the infidelity gap:’ New book explores why wives cheat
One husband came upon his wife’s infidelity after hacking into her inbox and poring over reams of e-mails she’d exchanged with the other man. Another woman’s affair was discovered when she didn’t show up to her own surprise birthday party: she was in a hotel room, nowhere to be found. Another recalled the jolt she felt when her phone buzzed and her husband was standing nearby, never learning her secret. Female infidelity remains both widely condemned and highly misunderstood. Three recent books challenge the cultural myth that women are inherently monogamous and shine a light on the motivations wives have when they step out of their marriages.
Women and sex: It’s not what they say … but deep down, girls, you knew that already
Everything you think you know about female sexuality and monogamy is a lie.
That’s the stunning premise behind New York Times best-selling author Wednesday Martin’s incendiary new non-fiction book, Untrue.
“We used to think that men were naturally more sexual than women, that they were wired to cheat, if you will, and women were wired for monogamy,” she says. “It’s time to revisit that narrative … The lies cannot hold.”
Les Primates de Park Avenue
Le 5 avril, Wednesday Martin nous livre ses observations sur les Primates de Park Avenue aux Éditions Globe.
L’anthropologue met ses connaissances au service de l’étude des femmes au foyer de l’Upper East Side dans un livre incisif...
The Primates of Park Avenue
Imagine a world where competitive parenting is ramped up to the level of an Olympic sport, where there's no sneaking the kids to school in a pair of battered leggings that you haven't changed since your early morning yoga class.. we're talking about a world where a full hair salon appointment...
La femme au foyer, ménagère triomphante
Taillant quelques croupières aux combats féminins pour l’égalité des salaires et les opportunités de carrière, certaines femmes se mettent à revendiquer fièrement leur choix de vie. Une communauté qui se développe dans les classes aisées…
Lectures estivales
Je traîne toujours un peu les pieds pour écrire ce post, pourtant devenu un rituel au fil des ans. Il faut vraiment que plusieurs d’entre vous me prient avec insistance de faire ma liste pour que je m’y mette. C’est que, en dehors de la période estivale...
Mujeres de Manhattan, una tribu aparte
Viven en la orilla Este de Central Park, suelen ser rubias, se lanzan besitos al aire y llevan a su perro al terapeuta. Al hilo del best seller Primates of Park Avenue, el periodista Guillermo Fesser nos cuenta su fascinación por esta "tribu aparte"...
Une New-Yorkaise au pilori pour « Les primates de Park Avenue »
Le livre de Wednesday Martin, qui rencontre depuis le 2 juin un succès en librairie et sur internet, veut montrer l’ombre du tableau idyllique dans lequel vivent ces femmes au foyer richissimes du quartier de l’Upper East Side...
Wednesday Martin investigates the uber-rich moms of Park Avenue
The metaphor of city as jungle is a familiar one, but Wednesday Martin's new book Primates of Park Avenue zooms in closely on one particular patch of tropical concrete. In the Upper East Side of Manhattan...
Inside the life of an Upper East Side housewife: Moms serve wine at 11am playdates, hire food trainers for fussy children and make sure they will all be pregnant at the same time
From the secret handshakes of fraternity kids, to the underground music playlists of the hipsters...
Rich mum, poor mum
Anthropologists living among alien tribes will probably all have had their Heart of Darkness moments, when they wonder, appalled, if they can continue with their experiment. For some it will be witnessing female circumcision; for others, cannibalism.
Rich, thin and anxious in the New York and London manicured Mummy tribe
Many anthropologists living among alien tribes will have their Heart of Darkness moment, where they wonder, appalled, if the experiment can continue. For some it will be witnessing female circumcision, for others, cannibalism.
Manhattan rich take mickey out of Disney by buying disabled access
The secret came out in a conversation between two mothers in Manhattan. “Oh, so you are going to Disney World?” said one. “You will want to get one of those black market handicapped guides.” By hiring a disabled guide, discerning families were apparently...
The Wicked Stepmother Bites Vack
Who is this character in the pantomime cast list?
She is the downtrodden family outsider, unrewarded when she makes an effort and unfairly maligned when she tries to keep out of the way. She must take endless punishment, and be the target of jealous...