A Note, Dear Readers

Elle’S Beloved Advice Columnist Opens Up About Her Very Private Battles, Only Recently Made Public.

Women! You Are Fabulous!

But it’s weird. I’ve been writing the Ask E. Jean column for 26 years, and for 26 years I’ve been noticing that many of the problems coming into the column have been caused by one thing. And that cause is men.

Now, about 90 percent of the letters I receive don’t run in the magazine, you understand. But according to a lot of my Ask E. Jean mail, when the chaps are not lying, cheating, and passing women over for promotions, they are being inconsiderate to letter writers like Miss Tinsel (see right), or pestering, groping, pawing, pinching, and vastly underpaying the Ask E. Jean correspondents.

So I came up with a scheme to do away with the lads entirely. But first, I had to find out if we needed chaps for anything, right? In 2017, I loaded up Miss Bingley (my old Prius) with Lewis Carroll (my poodle), and we set out together on a 4,099-mile road trip. We only went to towns named after women—Angelica, New York; Tallulah, Louisiana; Marysville, Ohio; etc.—and when we arrived in each city, Lewis and I jumped out of Miss Bingley and asked people, “What do we need men for?”