Two women drive across the country looking for stories. It’s a pretty typical road trip—except these women have a mission. Nona Willis-Aronowitz and Emma Bernstein are criss-crossing the United States in order to interview people about feminism, what it means to them and how it fits into their lives. And they’re blogging about it with the hopes of turning the whole enterprise into a book upon their return.

Some of the people they’ve already interviewed or hope to talk to are names you might recognize, like Andi Zeisler of Bitch Magazine. But most of the people Emma and Nona interview aren’t celebrities or magazine editors. They’re college students, performance artists, working mothers, aspiring actresses, professors and even porn producers.

One of the issues that keeps coming up in the vignettes is calling yourself a “feminist” in the first place. A lot of the women interviewed shy away from the term, and their reasons are intriguing.

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While television news broadcasts and pundit shows have been asking for months now if the United States is ready for President Hillary Clinton, another province of Televisionland has been busy conjuring up fictional visions of what a female leader of the free world would look like.

Or perhaps “busy” isn’t quite the right word; even in the fictional universes of the small screen, female presidents seem to be few and far between. Even so, the past several years have brought television viewers several prominent Madam Presidents, and is set to do so again in January. Will life imitate art in 2008, and if so, what should we expect? A quick review of television leaders may give us some clues.

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Penelope Trunk is a Boston Globe and Yahoo! Finance columnist who’s been giving out tips and advice as the Brazen Careerist. The basic idea is she tells you what it’s really like in today’s workplace, and that you can hack the system by following her tips—which no longer involve such old-fashioned concepts as “climbing the ladder” and “paying your dues.” Which is fine—even hearing those phrases puts me in a bit of a 1950s American Dream mindset anyways.

Some of her recent columns have put people in a tizzy. A couple of weeks ago she doled out her tips on office etiquette, which included adding your CEO to Facebook, keeping your headphones on all the time, and always always be available on the weekends for work calls. Whether adding your boss to your Facebook is really a way to get ahead careerwise, I couldn’t say, but I’m skeptical.

And speaking of the 1950s: the next week, she came out with another doozy: The New Girl’s Guide to Workplace Success. The whole column is good for some laughs, but I’ll leave you with this one tidbit:

3. Expect harassment, and stay cool.

A recent segment on New England Cable News reported that 46 percent of summer interns will be harassed. And most professional women will experience some form of sexual harassment in their career — some studies even say as many as 80 percent of them.

It’s clear, then, that most women don’t report harassment. But it isn’t because they’re scared — it’s because they’re smart. The laws are very clear on what companies should do to respond to harassment claims, but they aren’t very clear on how to define when a woman has been illegally fired for reporting harassment.

The careers of most women who report harassment suffer, even if the company works hard to do the right thing. The law is too far behind the times, so don’t report harassment.

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Let’s ask these anti-abortion protesters in Libertyville, IL:

( The video above’s been removed, probably because it wasn’t posted by the filmmakers; they’ve posted it here.)