| Amy Alkon | |
|---|---|
 Amy Alkon at DeepGlamour fashion celebration, 2009 | |
| Born | Amy Alkon (1964-03-08) March 8, 1964 (age 60) Farmington Hills, Michigan, United States |
| Pen name | The Advice Goddess |
| Occupation | Advice columnist |
| Notable works | I See Rude People Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck |
Amy Alkon (born March 8, 1964), also known as the Advice Goddess, is an American advice columnist. Alkon wrote a weekly advice column, Ask the Advice Goddess, which was published in over 100 newspapers within North America. While Alkon addressed a wide range of topics, she primarily focused on issues in intimate relationships. Her columns were based largely on evolutionary psychology. Her last column was published on March 31, 2022.
Life and career
Amy Alkon grew up in Farmington Hills, a suburb of Detroit, Michigan. She identifies as a weak atheist. Alkon credits her isolation as the catalyst that cultivated her early fondness for reading.
Alkon moved to New York City, where she dispensed advice on a street corner in SoHo as one of three women who called themselves "The Advice Ladies." This was not an occupation, merely a hobby, and their setup was minimal, using only folding chairs and a handmade sign advertising "Free Advice from a Panel of Experts". She co-authored a book, Free Advice - The Advice Ladies on Love, Dating, Sex, and Relationships with her fellow "Advice Ladies," Caroline Johnson and Marlowe Minnick. Her next book, a solo project entitled I See Rude People: One Woman’s Battle to Beat Some Manners Into Impolite Society, was published by McGraw Hill in November 2009.
Before billing herself as the "advice goddess," Alkon wrote Ask Amy Alkon, an advice column published solely in the New York Daily News.
In 2004, the Biography Channel featured Alkon in a series of one-minute shorts called "The Advice Minute With Amy Alkon." There were 11 in total and during these segments, which ran between the Biography Channel's regular programs, Alkon dispensed advice on the streets of New York, just as she had done with her cohorts years earlier.
In 2011, Alkon was threatened with a defamation suit with damages of half a million US dollars by a TSA agent who Alkon alleges forced the side of her gloved hand into Alkon's vagina four times through her underwear. The agent, Thedala Magee, claimed that describing such an act as 'rape' constituted defamation, and that Alkon had described her as a 'bad person' for behaving in such a manner. She was defended by First Amendment attorney Marc Randazza.
In a second incident, in November 2012, Alkon complained that a TSA agent "ran her hands, most disgustingly, all over my body, grazing my labia and touching my breasts and inside my turtleneck on my bare skin."
Campaigns
Issues she has written and spoken of are unruly children, the behavior of which she attributes to bad parenting, inconsiderate cellphone users, and copyright violators.
Further reading
- Alkon, Amy (2018). Unf*ckology. St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN 9781250080868.
- Alkon, Amy (2014). Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck. St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN 9781250030719.
- Alkon, Amy (2009). I See Rude People: One Woman's Battle to Beat Some Manners into Impolite Society. McGraw-Hill Professional. ISBN 978-0-07-160021-7.
- Alkon, Amy; Johnson, Caroline; Minnick, Marlowe (1996). Free Advice: The Advice Ladies on Love, Dating, Sex and Relationships. Dell Publishing
References
- Alkon, Amy (April 13, 2022). "RIP, Amy Alkon's science-based syndicated advice column: 1995 to March 31, 2022". The Source Weekly. Bend, Oregon. Retrieved March 24, 2023.
- "Advice Goddess Blog".
- "The Goddess speaks!".
- "Advice Goddess Blog".
- Hill, Kashmir (September 6, 2011). "Female Blogger Threatened With Defamation Suit For Writing About TSA 'Rape'". Forbes. Retrieved October 4, 2013.
- "TSA Agent Threatens Woman With Defamation, Demands $500k For Calling Intrusive Search 'Rape' - Techdirt". 6 September 2011.
- "Advice Goddess Blog".
- Amy Probst (December 15, 1999). "The Goddess speaks! - It had to happen: Here's Amy on Amy". Detroit Metro Times.
- Steve Steinberg (October 5, 2002). "Goddess shares her divine talent for giving advice". Dallas Morning News.
- 1964 births
- Living people
- 21st-century American Jews
- 21st-century American non-fiction writers
- 21st-century American women journalists
- 21st-century American journalists
- 21st-century American women writers
- 21st-century atheists
- American advice columnists
- American atheists
- American women columnists
- American women non-fiction writers
- Jewish American atheists
- Jewish American journalists
- Jewish American non-fiction writers
- Jewish advice columnists
- Jewish women writers
- Journalists from New York City
- People from Farmington Hills, Michigan
- University of Michigan alumni