It's not easy being difficult

A friend gave me Elizabeth Wurtzel's new book, Bitch, commentingcasually, "This seems to be up your alley."

Subtitled In Praise of Difficult Women, the book celebrates - orat least sympathizes with - women from Delilah to Zelda Fitzgerald toLiz Phair.

There's also a lot of Wurtzel involved; in the first chapter,she manages to mention the time she had sex on her desk at the NewYorker. Wurtzel, the author of the timely and self-indulgent ProzacNation, is her own best advertisement. She posed for the coverwearing nothing but a chair, her middle finger extended to serve asthe "I" in Bitch.I'm finding the book slow going, first of all because it's kindof hard, and second of all because she defends Amy Fisher. Wurtzelis the kind of person you'd excuse yourself from at a galleryopening. She rants in a scholarly way: "All my life, one person oranother has been telling me to behave, saying don't let a guy knowyou're a depressed maniac on the first date, don't just be yourself,don't show your feelings. . . . It seems like, all this, all theseyears of feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft, Charlotte Perkins Gilman,Simone de Beauvoir, Virginia Woolf, Gloria Steinem, Susan Faludi -all that smart writing so we could all learn to behave?"Good girls go to heaven, Wurtzel writes, but bad girls goeverywhere. In high heels. It's provocative writing, and it'saffected me, not just in my renewed devotion to Vamp lipstick. "I'ma depressed maniac!" I confess to random passersby.These women are a long way, baby, from my first role models.But she's got a point. Why do I have more biographies on mybookshelves of, say, Diana Ross than, say, Jane Addams?I blame St. Therese of Lisieux. In grade school we learnedabout the Little Flower of Jesus, a girl determined to be a saint,only there was no one around to persecute her. So instead sheinvented the Little Way. She'd offer up everyday difficulties toGod.Intrigued by the notion of becoming a saint without having toactually endure torture, I tried the Little Way. I offered up theindignity of wearing a shapeless brown plaid jumper and a yellowblouse with a Peter Pan collar. I was kind to the classmate whonever cleaned his ears. I saved up pennies in a little cardboardcontraption for poor children.For about a week. When no visions of the infant Jesus wereforthcoming, I went back to my Barbies. Therese was too much to liveup to; how could I hope to measure up to the patroness of flowervendors?So I rebelled. I switched allegiances to Trixie Belden, girlsleuth, for a while. Then came flings with Miss Piggy, Jane Austen,the GoGos.None of whom is mentioned in Wurtzel's book.Wurtzel celebrates women who are strong, independent andfrequently loud. They are infrequently candidates for sainthood.But isn't there a happy medium?The closest I've been able to come is in my worship of AudreyHepburn. Nobody ever had anything bad to say about her. (Except fora crabby Humphrey Bogart, who groused on the set of "Sabrina," "She'sOK, if you like to do 36 takes.")The elegant actress played nuns in two movies and was an angelin another. She was a good mother, and toured famine-wracked Sudanas an ambassador for UNICEF.Of course, she kept the Givenchy wardrobe.