E. Jean Carroll

E. Jean Carroll (b. December 12 1943, Detroit, Michigan) is an American journalist and advice columnist. Her “Ask E. Jean” column has appeared in "Elle" magazine since 1993, and was ranked one of the five best magazine columns (along with Anthony Lane of "The New Yorker" and Lewis Lapham of "Harper's Magazine" ) by the "Chicago Tribune" in 2003. [Chicago Tribune, June 12, 2003 “The 50 Best Magazines” http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/chicagotribune/results.html?st=advanced&QryTxt=%22e.+jean+carroll%22&type=current&sortby=REVERSE_CHRON&datetype=0&frommonth=01&fromday=01&fromyear=1985&tomonth=04&today=26&toyear=2007&By=&Title=&Sect=ALL]

Born as Elizabeth Jean Carroll and nicknamed "Betty Jean" from an early age, Carroll's opinions on sex, her impatient, boisterous counsel that women should “never never” wrap their lives around men, and her compassion for letter-writers experiencing life’s hard knocks, make it unique in women’s magazines. [Joan Kelly Bernard, Newsday, March 1994, pg B.13 “Get a Grip and Take Some Sassy but Sane Advice from Elle’s E. Jean”] [The New York Times, Sunday March 30, 1997, front page of the Styles section]

Amy Gross, former editor-in-chief of "Elle" and currently the editor-in-chief "O, The Oprah Magazine", recalls the “Ask E. Jean” debut. “It was as though we had put her on a bucking bronco and her answers were the cheers and whoops and hollers of a fearless woman having a good ol time.” [Katherine Rosman, “Method to Her Madness,” page 99, Brill’s Content, November 1999.]

NBC’s cable channel, "America's Talking", produced the "Ask E. Jean" television show based on the column from 1994-1996 (when the channel became MSNBC). [USA Today, Friday, December 15, 1995, front page ] "Entertainment Weekly" called Carroll “ [T] he most entertaining cable talk show host you will never see.” [Entertainment Weekly, December 30, 1994/Jan 6, 1995/September 30, 1994] Jeff Jarvis in his review in TV Guide said watching E. Jean and her “robotic hyperactivity drove [him] batty.” He went on: “However then I listened to her⎯⎯and couldn’t help liking her. E. Jean gives good advice.” [TV Guide, March, 1995] Carroll was nominated for an Emmy for her writing for "Saturday Night Live", (1985) and a Cable Ace Award for the "Ask E. Jean" show (1995).

The AskEJean.com website, based on the "Elle" column, is an on-going experiment in the gripping ways people give and get advice. Users can type in questions and receive instant video answers on topics such as career, beauty, sex, men, diet,"sticky situations," and friends. Or, users can join the Advice Vixens (a section where “YOU become the advice columnist”). "Top Campus Sex Columnists" features the best college advice columnists from across America. [ [http://www.askejean.com Tormented? Driven Witless? Whipsawed by Confusion? - Ask E. Jean ] ]

Journalism and Books

In 2002 Carroll's “The Cheerleaders” which appeared in "Spin", was selected as one of the year's “Best True Crime Reporting” pieces. It appeared in "Best American Crime Writing" edited by Otto Penzler, Thomas H. Cook, Nicholas Pileggi (Pantheon Books, 2002). [http://www.avclub.com/content/node/20721

“…The book’s first and finest piece, “E. Jean Carroll’s “The Cheerleaders” (which surveys an upstate New York community cursed by murder and suicide on their high school football team) would be exploitative if its dismembered, half-naked cheerleaders were on a movie screen; conceived as reportage, the details of the case retain their mystery.”

Noel Murray, Book Review on A.V. Club.]

Carroll has been a contributing editor to "Esquire","Outside" and "Playboy" magazines. Her beat is “the heart of the heart of the country”. For an April 1992 issue of "Esquire", she chronicled the lives of basketball groupies in a story called “Love in the Time of Magic." In June, 1994, she went to Indiana and investigated why four white farm kids were thrown out of school for dressing like black artists in “The Return of the White Negro”.

In “The Loves of My Life", (June 1995), she tracked down her old boyfriends and moved in with the fellows and their wives. [Esquire April, 1992, June, 1994, June, 1995.] Bill Tonelli, her "Esquire" and "Rolling Stone" editor has said: “All of E. Jean’s stories are pretty much the same thing. Which is: ‘What is this person like when he or she is in a room with E. Jean?’ She’s institutionally incapable of being uninteresting.” [Katherine Rosman, “Method to Her Madness,” page 98, Brill’s Content, November 1999.]

For "Playboy" (February 1988) at the height of the “Sensitive Man” era, E. Jean told her editors that "modern women run around complaining that they want a primitive man, so I thought it would be fun to come to New Guinea and find a real one.” [Playboy, Page 88, February, 1988] Carroll hiked into the Star Mountains, with an Atbalmin tracker who stood 4’2” and a Telefomin warrior. She became the first white woman to walk from Telefomin to Munbil in the former West Irian Jaya, and came close to perishing. [Playboy, Page 88, February, 1988]

For "Outside", Carroll wrote about (among other things) taking Fran Lebowitz camping and going down the Colorado with a group of “Women Who Run With No Clothes On.” Several of E. Jean’s pieces for "Outside" have been included in various Non-Fiction collections such "The Best of Outside: The First 20 Years" (Vintage Books, 1998), "Out of the Noosphere: Adventure, Sports, Travel, and the Environment" (Fireside, 1998) and "Sand in My Bra: Funny Women Write from the Road" (Traveler’s Tales, 2003).

E. Jean Carroll authored four books:
*"Female Difficulties: Sorority Sisters, Rodeo Queens, Frigid Women, Smut Stars, and Other Modern Girls" (Bantam Books, 1985)
*"A Dog in Heat Is a Hot Dog and Other Rules to Live By" (a collection of her Ask E. Jean columns, Pocket Books, 1996)
*"Hunter: The Strange and Savage Life of Hunter S. Thompson" (Dutton, 1993)
*"Mr. Right, Right Now" (HarperCollins, 2004)

The Thompson book received massive critical praise. [Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times, January 25, 1993.]

Websites

In 2002, Carroll got “sick sick sick of women writing to me asking how to find a man,” and co-founded (with her sister, Cande Carroll) Greatboyfriends.com. On the site, women recommend their ex-boyfriends to each other. [Ginia Bellafante, The New York Times, November 24, 2002. “Take My Ex, Please: Preowned, Preapproved.”] ("The Oprah Winfrey Show" did a show about it in 2003). The Knot, Inc. bought GreatBoyfriends in 2005. In 2004 she launched Catch27.com as a spoof of Facebook. On the site, people put their profiles on trading cards and buy, sell, and trade each other. The "Boston Globe" headline was “You Can’t Buy Friends Like These⎯ Well, Actually You Can.” [ Matthew Shaer, The Boston Globe, February 21, 2006] AskEJean.com was launched in 2007. The Top Campus Sex Columnists (a section of the AskEJean site) is the only select gathering of college columnists in the world.

Biography

Her father, Tom Carroll, is an inventor, and her mother, Betty Carroll, is a retired Allen County Indiana politician. Betty Jean Carroll was raised in Fort Wayne, Indiana. She attended Indiana University (on probation, her SAT scores were horrendously low) where she was a Pi Beta Phi and was crowned Miss Indiana University. She received an F in the only journalism course she took. She was also a cheerleader.

In 1964, representing Indiana University, she won the Miss Cheerleader USA title. [Holly Miller, Indianapolis Monthly (October 1996) “Zings and Arrows”]

She currently resides in upstate New York. [ Bio appearing on AskEJean.com 2007]

Footnotes

External links

*imdb name|0140800
* [http://www.AskEJean.com/ Ask E. Jean]
* [http://www.AskEJean.com/advicevixens/index.php/ Ask E. Jean's AdviceVixens]
* [http://www.Elle.com/ Elle Magazine]