e jean carroll’s 30 things every woman should do before she dies
1. RUN FOR OFFICE Throw your hat in the ring: local council, state or federal parliament… Or do you want to spend your one beautiful and prized life letting the male race go on deciding what’s good for us?
2. SPEND A WEEK IN THE WILD – ALONE Yes, the “outdoors”, that lovely spot you hike through in between exiting your car and entering Sephora. But if you venture deep, deep into the outdoors – where the trees are the celebrities and the birds run the Twitter accounts – it becomes the place where you strip away branding and status, where looks and money mean nothing. Go! Strap on the boots! Seventy bucks a night for a cabin on Airbnb! Anyway, when was the last time you were alone – without a smiler, liar, flatterer, chatterer, schemer or texter within miles? Go to the woods! You’ll live an adventure tale so gripping that you may discover where you really live and what you live for.
3. BE HEADSTRONG ABOUT SOMETHING – THEN NEVER GIVE UP Bubble with bonhomie as often as you choose, but when it comes to the goal you’re most passionate about – ending racism, saving the dolphins, getting your kids through high school – be a demon. Stubbornness and perseverance are what brought physicist Marie Curie two Nobel Prizes, not “liking” every goddamn thing about rocks.
4. JUMP OUT OF A PLANE Climbing on the scales and being publicly weighed – while wearing your shoes and a jumpsuit – is the terrifying part. Soaring four kilometres up in the air, jumping out the plane door and plunging at 200km/h towards your death – then salvation? That’s the fun part.
5. TELL FORTUNES LIKE MR ROCHESTER IN JANE EYRE You love turning the tables on fate, right? For number five, there’s no need to dress up. Weirdly, if you simply tell people you’re “good at telling fortunes”, 90 per cent will reply: “Oh? What’s mine?” When you say their future looks “spectacular”, it can actually have a greater effect on their prospects than 50 pep talks.
6. LEARN TO CODE Or I’m afraid your next job will go to someone who has.
7. SHOOT A QUIVER OF ARROWS AT YOUR ENEMY Yes, yes, we must not go around shooting at people. But to hell with being politically correct. Pin a photo to a tree and shoot the bugger.
8. DO NOTHING (IT’S AN ART! IT’S A SCIENCE!) Reading the massive research explaining why your most inventive ideas arise when you’re mucking around is a waste of your time. Doodling a tulip with your 40 gel pens is not. 9. SWIM NAKED (IF YOU CARE TO) IN THE WORLD’S FIVE GREAT OCEANS
And if you splash like a water nymph through the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Arctic and Southern Oceans and want extra
credit, gold stars will be awarded for skinny-dipping in the Amazon, the Nile, the Mississippi and fancy rooftop pools.
10. IF YOU’RE ONE OF THOSE CHARMING LUNATICS WHO INSISTS ON TIDYING UP, DO THIS: Clutter is your art, your history. Clutter is the museum of your soul. So, do what the Louvre does. At 6pm every Monday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday (9.45pm on Wednesdays and Fridays), go through your museum and throw out all the boring people.
11. EUTHANISE YOUR EGO There’ll come a time in its life when your ego will take such a thumping that you must drive it to the country, lay it on a blanket and let it look up at the Milky Way. This will help it put things into perspective. Then send it to the second star to the right, and straight on till morning.
12. TAKE A CELEBRITY TO BED Years of Ask E Jean letters tell us that almost every woman gets one or two chances to leap into the begonias with a famous person. Take yours! It’s delicious. (And even more delicious to be criticised for having done it! Ha!)
13. DANCE THE HABANERA IN HAVANA Cleopatra went to Rome. Julia Child went to Paris. You go to Cuba!
14. BECOME A MINISTER, WICCAN PRIESTESS, PROFESSIONAL CELEBRANT, ETC. Though the illustrious journalist Hunter S Thompson carried his ordination certificate ($5 at the time) from the Universal Life Church in his wallet, he was most fond of his minister’s parking permit [which allows holders to park in certain “no parking” zones in the US]. Yes, you can help people in jail, visit the sick in hospital and marry your friends (see #15), and you can also get a small tax break!
15. SAVE THE FUTURE OF THE HUMAN RACE You may think you’re just setting up two friends on a blind date. But what if they fall in love? What if they go forth? What if they multiply? It means you’ll have had a hand in the creation of the next generation. So with the future of mankind at stake, be a matchmaker. Fix up your friends.
16. GO WITH YOUR LOVE UP A SCENIC LONG-DISTANCE HIKING TRAIL It’s less dangerous than sitting at home every weekend.
17. DON’T BE SO SURE ABOUT THAT “I want to beg you as much as I can, dear sir,” says Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke in his Letters To A Young Poet, “to try to love the questions themselves.” Quantum physics has proved that nothing on this earth is certain. Your success may turn into failure, your failure may turn into success; everything you see, including this beautiful ELLE, changes. So, in the end, it’s your courage to carry on, dear lady, that counts.
18. MAKE A SECRET CHILDHOOD DREAM COME TRUE Your Auntie E was raised in a country schoolhouse, across from a graveyard, high in the hills of Indiana, US. Since the age of four, I’ve yearned for playmates. So one summer (one of the best of my life!), I built a mobile game called Damn Love – it’s posh, evil and hi-larious. You try to beat your friends at breaking up a (fictional) couple in love. After all these years, I’ve realised my dream, have playmates galore and can type four words I never thought I’d write in my life: I made an app.
19. TAKE A PRIVATE CABIN ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS There are great trains, but this is the most shimmering fantasy train on earth – the thing seems almost more cinematic than real. If you’re a non-magical woman and still want to get high, ride the Peruvian Central Railway – the highest (4,000 metres!) in the world. A doctor is on board to administer oxygen. 20. BUY NO MORE JUNK FOREVER The cheap bullshit you possess,
kumquats, possesses you.
21. STOP TRAFFIC WITH A TWO-FINGER WHISTLE Let lesser mortals drunk with self-importance call Uber. We’ll hail taxis by blowing high notes like Louis Armstrong.
22. MAKE OUT AT THE MOVIES The greatest invention of woman is kissing. The stupidest invention of man is virginity.
23. CLIMB MOUNT KILIMANJARO “Change Your Hair Colour”, “Achieve Your Ideal Weight” and “Get in Shape” will not appear on “The 30 Things Every Woman Should Do” list, because when you summit Kilimanjaro, you’ll return a completely different woman.
24. RELIVE YOUR FAVOURITE SUMMER For a weekend, you won’t think, sleep or eat 2016. Instead, you’ll wear the same clothing you wore during your favourite summer, eat the same food, watch the same movies, listen to the same music, go to the same places, talk on the same phones, date the same boys or girls, post selfies on the same platform (interoffice mail?) and, to utterly regain your youth, follow Oscar Wilde’s advice and repeat your follies.
25. TAKE A CPR COURSE And then please move next door to Auntie E.
26. STOP APOLOGISING FOR NOT HAVING KIDS (Or for having kids, right?) To the concerned halfwits who ask, say: “I’m ecstatic just the way things are.” Why should your happiness be subject to the opinions of others? In a moment, the halfwits will be gone from the earth. And in another moment, the earth will be gone, too.
27. FOR 24 HOURS, BE A JAIN NUN Follow the vows, the five “mahavratas”: no hurting living creatures; no lying; no boffing; no stealing; no attaching. It’s like falling into a vat of honey in another universe.
28. RESCUE A DOG There are plenty of sweet dogs that are currently up for adoption, awaiting a new home. And by the way, when you visit your local shelter, give the cats a kiss. They’re the ones running the Genius Bar.
29. KEEP A WABI-SABI STATE OF MIND Once you’re steeped up to the eyelids in wabi-sabi – the philosophy that celebrates beauty in things imperfect and impermanent – you’ll find an old woman more beautiful than a young one, and an unconventional woman the most interesting of all. 30. TAKE THE UTTERLY FABULOUS “30 THINGS EVERY WOMAN SHOULD
DO” ROAD TRIP On this trek, we’ll pack up and only go to places named after women. Hello, Greta, NSW! Yo, Sarina, Queensland! ’Sup, Alice (Springs)? Here we come! See you on the road, darlings.