Gabrielle Reece – My Foot Is Too Big for the Glass Slipper (Scribner)

Full disclosure upfront: First- after 25+ years working in and around the media I have developed a healthy distrust of the media. I have witnessed firsthand the lazy media types take the easy way out to try to make the biggest splash and get noticed, never bothering to do any heavy lifting like research or preparation. It’s one of the reasons why a skilled public relations person can easily manipulate the media by spoon feeding them the storyline they want out there. Second- I normally avoid self-help or relationship books like the black plague!

But when the storm of “controversy” erupted around the new book from former volleyball champion and model Gabrielle Reece’s new book My Foot Is Too Big for the Glass Slipper: A Guide to the Less Than Perfect Life because she allegedly proclaimed that she saved her marriage by being…submissive to her husband! And the lazy media was off and running! I was surprised that some self righteous anchor-ette didn’t rush out and dust off the crusty old feminist Gloria Steinem to proclaim Reece apostate  to all things equally rights for not bowing down at the altar of you can have it all baby!

With that as the setup, I didn’t know quite what to expect when a cracked open the cover, which features Reece not in full model war paint, but with a couple of her kids and what is clearly spelled out in the book, her husband’s dog, hanging out by the water. If you believed the media, you’d expect her to be decked out, Mrs. Clever-style in a dress, heels, string of pearls and vacuum close by.  The book turns out to be anything but a guide to how to please your chest-thumping cave man!

Reece talks about her life; her career, her husband’s career, their family and the pretty much mundane day to day things that most couples go through. She doesn’t attempt to sugar coat the ordinary or detail some fairytale life; she pretty much tells it like it is! In the pursuit of “having it all” we have created this unattainable myth of what life should really be like. She clears the air early, often and with plenty of humor that it’s okay to not have it all; it’s okay to age and not be model perfect and not worry if “this make my ass look big.”

While she does talk about wanting to please her husband, she gets it right; most guys aren’t looking anything too complex or cryptic, in the end we are pretty simple and easy to keep happy. But that doesn’t mean that this isn’t a two way street and that women shouldn’t have expectations too; or as Reece puts it “Be the Queen.”

In a day and age when bullshit “reality” shows are passed off as “real life” Reece offers up a refreshing reality check for folks who actually live out here in the real world.