Heralded on the cover of Time magazine as 'The Most Important Person in America,' Fontaine initially finds being the much-photographed founder of 'the fastest growing movement in American history' quite a kick. 'Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful' is suddenly the hottest feminist leader since Gloria Steinem, the spokeswoman for a burgeoning boudoir boycott that will end, she declares, only when Underwood is im peached and 'punished for the torture of his wife.' Half- joking, she suggests they call for the same sort of tactical sex strike described in Aristophanes' classic play 'Lysistrata.' And voila - Ms. Congress refuses to impeach Justice Underwood, and 2 million women converge in Washington for a protest rally.įontaine is there, too, and inadvertently winds up in a strategy pow- wow with the heads of every major women's group in the country.

Like an astonishing number of latent activists, however, Fontaine suddenly 'gets' sisterhood when Lynn Underwood, the wife of the chief justice of the Supreme Court, commits suicide after years of spousal abuse (so investigators con clude). 'It just means that I like to do it from a safe distance.'

'This doesn't mean that I don't feel strongly about women's rights,' she explains. And in her not-so-humble opinion, her supermodel looks don't exactly endear her to other women. Apparently she never quite got over being the butt of a cruel girls' school joke in her teens (although she evened the score by seducing the instigator's fiance). Over the years, her gutsy, wildly successful trades have earned her the coveted Wall Street sobriquet of 'big swinging d-.'Īt first, Fontaine's female bonding skills are nil. In the privacy of her own mind, this smart-alecky Atlanta sexpot is just about the fiercest (not to mention funniest) feminist 'ever to walk in high heels.' The sole, glass ceiling-shattering female partner of the prestigious Sterling White brokerage firm, Fontaine won her first stock trader job in a high-stakes pok er game with the big boys. But no one's quite as big a babe as her larger-than-life heroine, Lauren Fontaine, a 'drop dead gorgeous' divorcee of 36 with 'magnolia-petal skin,' a closet full of Chanel, a Pulitzer Prize-winning beau and a legendary Wall Street career. Faulk (a former account executive) portrays the deepening feminist sensibility of a Southern belle turned women's rights champion.īabes who are both cosmetically and politically correct abound in 'Holding Out.' Their presence, we gather, is Faulk's way of putting an attractive face on feminism. Part romance and part feminist tract, this imaginative, often humorous hybrid of a first novel by Anne O.

If Danielle Steel and Marilyn French sat down at the word processor with Aristophanes standing by, they might come up with something like 'Holding Out.'

Holding Out by Anne O. Faulk