E. Jean Carroll

Carroll's "Ask E. Jean" column has appeared in Elle magazine since 1993. It 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.[1]

Carroll's column became known due to her opinions on sex, her insistence that women should "never never" structure their lives around men, and her compassion for letter-writers experiencing difficult life situations.[10][11] Amy Gross, former editor-in-chief of Elle and currently the editor-in-chief of O, The Oprah Magazine, describes the "Ask E. Jean" debut 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."[12]

NBC's cable channel, America's Talking, produced the Ask E. Jean television show based on the column from 1994 to 1996 (at which time the channel became MSNBC).[13] Entertainment Weekly called Carroll "the most entertaining cable talk show host you will never see."[14] 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".[15] 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).

Carroll also runs the AskEJean.com website, based on the Elle column, where users can type in questions and receive instant video answers on topics such as careers, beauty, sex, men, diet, "sticky situations", and friends. Users can also join the Advice Vixens, where advice is provided by other users. "Top Campus Sex Columnists" features college advice columnists from across America.[16]

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, and Nicholas Pileggi (Pantheon Books, 2002).[17] Carroll was "Miss Cheerleader USA" in 1964.[18]

Carroll has been a contributing editor to Esquire, Outside, and Playboy magazines. Her focus 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 them and their wives.[19] Bill Tonelli, her Esquire and Rolling Stone editor, has commented: "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."[20]

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."[21] Carroll hiked into the Star Mountains with an Atbalmin tracker and a Telefomin warrior. She became the first white woman to walk from Telefomin to Munbil in the former West Irian Jaya, and nearly died.[21]

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 as 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).

In 2002, Carroll co-founded Greatboyfriends.com with her sister, Cande Carroll. On the site, women recommended their ex-boyfriends to each other.[22] The Oprah Winfrey Show profiled the website 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."[23] AskEJean.com was launched in 2007. Carroll is pictured and listed on the Tawkify website as co-founder, and an adviser to Tawkify's matchmaking team.[24]