Such novelties prompted Angie Schmidt to start an online “breakup boutique.” Called Smashing Katie (smashingkatie.com), it is named after the woman who Schmidt says stole her ex. Top sellers include a wedding ring coffin, used to perform symbolic burials of the past; voodoo dolls; coffee mugs that say Boo Frickin’ Hoo; and an After the Breakup Wheel O’ Wisdom, which the site describes this way: “Where most self-help tools optimistically focus on healing—the end of the process—[this product] also acknowledges the human need to wallow in pain and/or seek revenge.”
At the same time, there has been a sharp increase in Internet sites about divorce. For a while, one even bore Betty’s name. In April 2006, Bettybroderick.com appeared out of the blue. Clearly homemade (but not by Betty—she has no computer access), the site featured a photo of her and asked, “Do you think Betty was sentenced fairly?” In a chat room, opinion was divided. Before the site shut down earlier this year, 40,000 people had visited. Other sites focus more generally. Darndivorce.com is a blog on “the dreaded D-word.” A recent post: “How to Handle Post-Divorce Tweeting: Beware of the Bitter Twitters.” Then there’s the social networking site FirstWivesWorld.com, which hit the jackpot last year when it was written up in the Sunday Styles section (aka the women’s sports pages) of The New York Times. The site, created by producers of this summer’s First Wives Club: The Musical and widely covered on daytime talk shows, declares on its home page, “FirstWivesWorld is a community for, and by, divorced women.” Common topics: Haggling over custody. Learning how to date again. Forging a relationship with your ex’s new spouse. Attempting, as a woman alone, to give your kids both discipline and love.
Betty is by no means responsible for all of this, but her fame helped fuel it. So did a movement that Betty seemed to ignore completely: feminism. Betty embraced a ’50s ideal of marriage at a moment—the mid-’60s—when many other women were questioning it. Then in the ’80s, when her marriage failed, she spouted some of feminism’s don’t-tread-on-me messages but didn’t have a full grasp of the tenets on which they were based. Feminism, after all, is not about blaming men. It is about celebrating women and treating them with equal respect. Killing your ex-husband isn’t a route to empowerment. Standing strong on your own is.
Much has been written about the confusion that gender equality has brought to romantic relationships. But if you ask me, I’d rather be confused than stuck, like Betty, in a disappointing, outdated fantasy of a June-and-Ward-Cleaver marriage. Both Betty and feminism, this odd couple, have raised the public consciousness. The result: Many women—yes, even divorced women—have moved beyond Betty.
Wondering whether the years had made her reflective, perhaps remorseful, not long ago I wrote to her again. I told her how my life had echoed hers but said that I still didn’t understand how she’d behaved. She wrote right back.
The California Institution for Women in Corona was originally called Frontera, a feminine derivative of the wordfrontier—or new beginning. Built in the 1950s, when rehabilitation was in vogue, it has a campuslike design, spreads over 120 acres, and houses 2,600 inmates. For most of the last 18 years, it has been Betty Broderick’s home.
Betty is 62 and will have her first parole hearing in January. She is passing the time writing another book. It’s called “Telling On Myself,” she said in her letter. “The book explains who I am as a person, how I was raised, and the values I hold and how/why you get pulled in and trapped in abusive relationships that you can’t get out of. The book will be damn good if I can just finish it…. Longhand is like a chisel/stone process. Very tedious & slow.“
Women do get abused by men. About that, Betty is correct. In recent years California has taken steps to better address this reality. Since 2002, a state law has allowed domestic violence survivors convicted of murdering their partners to petition for new trials if they did not have expert testimony about their battery. The new law—the only one of its kind in the nation—has freed ten women from prison. One of them is Hudie Joyce Walker.
Sounds like a Mad Men marriage…