Susan Jane Gilman once despised wedding dresses. She saw them as a product of the narrow-minded society, worn only by "future homemakers and Cinderella wannabes." That was, until she tried on a gown of her own and felt, for the first time, able to appreciate her own unique beauty. Gilman had become a hypocrite in a pouffy white dress.

The author of the best-selling Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress read excerpts from her memoir and spoke about the changing approach of feminism March 22 in the Shea room at Conte Forum. Her lecture, filled with humorous anecdotes, focused on how her upbringing in the New York City culture shaped her as an independent woman, unsatisfied with the current state of the feminist movement.

"I found that feminism, as I grew up with it, was necessary and achieved a lot of good things," she said. "But it has become dreary and angry; it doesn't offer the sort of practical solutions and it has sort of missed the mainstream.

"Feminism has not done a good job of raising up young women who are funny and articulate and can talk in the vox populai," Gilman said.

Gilman began by sharing stories of her youth, which were marked by an early path toward writing. At the age of 8, she wrote her first book called Bunny House.

"From that day on, that was sort of what I wanted to do," she said. "The plan was that I would go to college and I would graduate and write the great American novel by the time I was 22 and then I would be world famous."

Things didn't quite work out as the aspiring author planned, and after four years at Brown University she wrote for various New York City newspapers, including the New York Observer.

"I slaved away working as a cover reporter for a series of newspapers and struggling at what I realized is not just a matter of a bolt of lightning coming down and hitting you but what is an arduous and lonely craft," she said.

Her early struggles did not derail her dreams, however, and she eventually published Kiss My Tiara: How to Rule the World as a SmartMouth Goddess in 2001. The book came about after writing a humor column for a feminist magazine where she and other writers agreed that they liked feminism in theory, "but the practice annoyed us."

Her second book came four years later when she published Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress, which enjoyed a spot on The New York Times, LA Times, and other regional bestseller lists. Where Kiss My Tiara was more of a modern woman's self-help guide, Hypocrite chronicled Gilman's life with social commentary to which she feels all can relate.

She shared experiences of first grade occupation ambitions -- ballerina, princess, actress, artist -- her hormonal adolescent crush on Mick Jagger, and falling in love with her once despised wedding gown.

"It's about more than being single or going shopping; it shows one woman's story, which everyone can relate to," she said. "It's not just a girl's book or a boy's book, it shows the things that we struggle with are human issues and I think that's really important for feminism to keep in mind."