Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Women's Studies
I read “Confessions of a Shopaholic” by Sophie Kinsella years ago when I was still living in Washington, D.C.. It was the recommendation of a coworker friend, a rich, well-schooled, family trips to Japan by way of Santa Barbara, young but telling me how amazing dermabrasion is, need i mention thin and on her way up up up with her big brain and bright smile, coworker friend. This girl fascinated me and I found her, in my study of the female of the species, to be a sort of cliff’s notes for things I could not learn easily on my own.
Sometimes, if I am holding something rather small, like just a wallet, or am at a dinner party where I want to hold a small plate and a beverage at the same time, I use postures and techniques this person taught me.
I can still hear her describing how she deals with ingrown hairs without sounding the slightest bit disgusting or uncomfortable. Her primping and brand obsession were simply part of her overall skill for organization. She had the ability to project an aura of being well balanced and in the process, to draw you in to her as she Showed The Way, outlining your positive qualities in a way that felt like she spent her afternoons daydreaming about your pretty smile or new pair of shoes. She made what you admired in her either obtainable, or totally superfluous to you personally in light of all your other qualities. Bless that girl.
Until the age of twenty-five my femininity had been highlighted only by the fact that I was always surrounded by males. Not courts of suitors, just men, guys, boys. I was a sort of meta-sex, starting campfires on rainy days by fluffing up an unused cotton tampon and telling them to fuck off about it, if they wanted cheeseburgers, and not to die.
When I was on my own again, after the adult initiation ceremony we have in our culture known as the the first marriage, I was figuring myself out. I almost typed “all over again” and realized that isn’t actually true. If I had figured myself out in the first place I wouldn’t have spent a year going insane with psychosomatic symptoms of unhelpful things I wouldn’t admit, such as, “this is not who i am.”
Anyhoo, one thing I did was join an all-female book club. I remember reading “Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister.” Officially, it was interesting because it flipped the point of view of a well known story, and because i have an academic’s fetish for the rich fodder of fairy tales, fables and children’s stories.very much because I hadn’t heard about Wicked, secretly because I had two beautiful stepsisters that everyone fussed over, who were pure evil when they actually came into my room, or spoke, or flipped their hair.
I was the only one in the book club who read the book. Story of my life.
I got over it and enjoyed the club for what it was: an excuse to have a nice happy hour, kinda dress up for each other, and talk. The one person I knew best was a friend from college, the others were through her or totally new. They all seemed like my “how to carry your purse” friend. World-experienced, stern, shallow, organized, untraumatized. It’s one of the few situations where my nervousness didn’t fuel me to talk. I felt like I had something to learn, even if it was about what I wasn’t, or what I had no hope of being. I needed to find the delineating lines that I felt had always been there.
These two books I just mentioned reflect my limited knowledge of what Chick Lit might be.
This comes to mind because all the summer reading lists are out and Salon is celebrating the book “Death by Chick Lit” by Lynn Harris, hitting shelves today. They point out that Pandagon gives it a good write up here.
I’m currently almost done reading Slow Motion by Dani Shapiro, and Zadie Smith On Beauty not that I have much time to read now that I’m not on the train all the time.
My bikini has a pony on the butt. I could write a story about that. Probably two. One story involves the story of how it was bought it for me, another would involve being in the un-fun part of Fire Island at the mercy of a girl who doesn’t want to say goodbye to a boy who’s moving away. I’m still looking at where the line is, for that line of delineation between writers of Chick Lit, and storytellers.
Page 1 of 1 pages
