Robyn Blumner
Tribune Media

In my issue-oriented column, I am always weighing how much of my personal life to offer up as fodder. The things I’ve shared, from my bout with breast cancer in 2011 to my travels in Russia, often connect to larger points -- for instance, my columns about breast cancer explored the U.S. medical and health insurance systems. I think the proper balance is to get personal if it’s relevant but not to let things get too “Rear Window.”

Penelope Trunk would disagree. The career advice entrepreneur, author and blogger has stomped her privacy into oblivion. Like a few years ago when Trunk, then-divorced and mother of two, tweeted, “I’m in a board meeting. Having a miscarriage. Thank goodness.”

Her popular blog about jobs, careers, marriage, parenting and just about anything that happens to her (see above) draws about half a million visitors a month. Trunk’s writing is a combination of a bare-all confessional and a preachy advice manual from an Asperger’s-afflicted know-it-all who reduces life to odds-making and to-do lists. She advises women in their 20s to “get married first, then focus on career,” because “career skills will outlast your ovaries.”

Gee, in what 1950s ladies magazine have I read that before? But Trunk, who lives on a farm in rural Wisconsin, is not some hayseed housewife. She’s on her third startup company. She’s lived in Los Angeles and New York City. And once you’ve read a couple of her diary-like posts, it’s hard not to read more.

Beyond her miscarriage tweet in 2009, which expressed relief because getting an abortion in Wisconsin is a “three-week hoop-jump,” Trunk’s most controversial posts have been about domestic violence. Based on her own experience.

I’ve never understood how any woman could stay for one second in an abusive relationship. Trunk let me in on what she’s thinking. In late December 2011, she wrote, “I am at a hotel. I think I’m dying. I have a bruise from where the Farmer slammed me into our bed post.” Trunk calls her current husband “the Farmer.” A picture of her angry wounds accompanied the post.

Then, on New Year’s Day, 2012, she offered an explanatory post that concluded, “And that’s why I’m staying with the Farmer.” In it, she partly blamed herself for provoking the violence. Trunk dismisses commentators who tell her ‘it’s not your fault” since that “completely limits a woman’s choices ... saying that she is powerless to control the situation.”

You are not powerless, Penelope, but your only real power is to leave. Why is it that a woman who makes a living doling out advice to others can’t see the obvious about herself?

Trunk came to my attention through The Browser, a website that helpfully offers daily links to 6-10 writings that the editors think are worth reading. Recently, they included Trunk’s latest prescription for women: “How To Pick A Husband If You Want To Have Kids.” It was predictable. Her advice amounted to little more than telling women to marry a major breadwinner (or someone with the potential to be one) if they don’t expect to have a big, lucrative job that they love; otherwise, they’ll feel badly about not being with the kids. She warns that true equality in a marriage is a myth and she claims a marriage is at high risk of failure if the wife earns more than the husband, “because surveys show that you will resent him.”

“It is primal,” she declares.

Trunk’s pop sociology turns men into walking wallets and women into calculating mooches. It’s the kind of thought process that might appear to be true on a spreadsheet at 10,000 feet, but it has nothing to do with the innumerable variables that impact the trajectory of people’s lives. Money is less important than character, and there is no substitute for having a good person standing with you throughout your life.

My advice to women is to look for someone trustworthy, good-hearted and intelligent -- in that order. And if he throws you against a bed post, leave.

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