Blueprint for Building Better Girls

The title Blueprints for Building Better Girls is from the title of a fictional etiquette book, something I have actually been gifted before.  Imagine what it means for women to constantly be told we need a book to become girls or ladies, never women.  Women have opinions and thoughts and desires, personal, professional, sexual.  A book that reminds you bra straps should never show, how to flirt properly if ever, the appropriate length of skirts.

But I digress.  Elissa Schappel's short story collection is a maze.  Quickly you realize all of the characters are interwoven and their lives have consequentially or inconsequentially crossed paths before.  Each story take a female archetype (slut, mother, college party girl, loving wife) and turns it on its heads.  These stories make you think.  Every woman fights with weight and body image and we all struggle to love ourselves.  That torn feeling of wanting more than your path but being a traitor for wanting it.  The idea that motherhood is hard and sometimes you cannot even stand your children and they can stand in the way of what you want most in the world.  The idea when your husband realizes you are having trouble conceiving it is YOUR fault and you cease to become sexual.  Or that maybe the "slut" just is a girl from a bad family who is seeking love in anyway she can find it and that having a free soul is also not the worst thing in the world.  Heather goes from a bad relationship to another but she grows up and becomes a human and becomes a mother.  Charlotte grew up rich but was raped in college and after affecting her the entire life it still has ramifications even as a grown up mother.  Emily is dependent and her mother encourages it.

But my real saviors is B, or Beth or Lizzie.  B who was dating an artist type but in typical fashion he envied her her success when as a playwright she became more successful than he did.  She found something that made her special and he resented that in her.  She missed him and missed his love but it did not stop her from flourishing.  She became successful.  She took this pain and his life issue and turned it into something special, her best work yet.

Why is this important? Why is this heartbreaking often depressing book sad? Because there are Lizzie's who take their pain and make it their gain, who overcome oppression and use it for a better cause. Because we all are in our ruts and our archetypes, we are.  But we can make it out and take our archetypes and smash them, or rewrite them, or at least acknowledge we are part of them.  At any moment we can escape whatever is holding us down and when we don't well, Schappel shows us what those consequences are too.  Heartache and stagnation and self-loathing.

Instead of following etiquette books, maybe we should be start making a fuss and being loud and as unladylike as humanly possible.  Maybe we should be nasty women even.

Cliche Confessions: Nostalgia is alive and well

My coworkers half complain half mock my nostalgia.  I am a child of the 90s and anything that reminds me of those simpler times of neon and muppets and legends of the hidden temple, nickelodeon, and some real unique literature options, has my eyes drifting to the distance to stare dreamily waiting for the world to do the hazy tv cinematic trick that signaled day dreams or back in time during said 90s tv shows.  I smile wistfully as I think of better times.  Kids now day don't remember the sweet dulcet tones (static pings) of AOL connecting.  They don't understand that if your mom picked up the phone you would instantly be kicked out of the chatroom you should not have been in because chances are you were talking a sexual predator.  They don't understand what an answering machine or the chicken pox.  These fools will never even have the chicken pox!  

But I digress.  I'm showing my age.  this is about a book.  Have I written this tangent to distract you from what I actually read because I'm so embarrassed? Unequivocally yes.  I read Sweet Valley Confidential.  Do you know what this book is or why I dared to read it?  Sweet Valley High was YA before YA was real. It followed twin sisters Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield through their adventures in Sweet Valley, California.  Elizabeth was the good and always conscientious sister. She was goody-goody.  Jessica was selfish and scheming and they would both literally die for each other.  And during the special mystery editions, they often almost did! They had romances.  There were friendships and breakups and make ups, and gossips (I'm looking at you Carolyn Pearce).  There was the kids version about the girls when they were 10 and there were the mystery editions and then Sweet Valley University.  It was intense and scandalous for its time.  

When I read about this book in Bad Feminist, I had to pick it up.  Despite the fax that Gay said it was pretty awful writing, I needed the calming feeling that flows through your body like the first drag on a cigarette.  I needed a fix.  Where was Jess and Lizzie and Bruce and that bitch Lila? Was Prince Albert the dog still alive? If they were almost killed every mystery special edition then these two were probably going to experience the biggest dramas ever.

I was not disappointed! Jessica had fallen in love with her sister's fiance, and it was... Todd Wilkins! And she was in love! omg! This is what nostalgia was made for.  Yes, the writing sucked but the drama. Oh the petty teenage drama. The memories hit me like a good game of knock-em-sock-em robots.  It was on.  And as I read this, I realized something I felt guilty about as a little girl but am totally ok with as an adult woman.  I don't like the good characters.  They're boring.  I like the complicated and messy. They're real, they're fun, they are experiencing life not mousily walking away.  

Of course Jessica is a schemer she admits this.  But she is also extremely vulnerable and uses her behaviors to hide that.  She clearly loves her sister but why deny herself the biggest happiness to keep her sister in a relationship with someone who clearly doesn't love her.  It was done in a shitty way, yes, but she still followed her heart.  She's intelligent and that is something no one acknowledges.  Elizabeth comes across as a passenger on the road of life, petty and set on revenge but not even good revenge!  Show some sasss!  I like the confused.  Also, the characters that we grew up loving because they were good (Enid and Winston) are jerks.  Enid became an obnoxious doctor and Winston got a lot of money, became an asshole and died.  Things are getting real at Sweet Valley.  So good guys become jerks and the seemingly jerks are actually the happiest.  See being the bad girl and a nasty woman do come in handy.  Being complicated can be more fun!

Nasty Women: Good Girls Gone Bad

Ahh! As I was writing this one I knew I was going to be excited to write this blog.  The idea of writing this one gave me such great joy.  I knew I was going to channel every bit of bad feminist in me, every iota of Nasty inside of me to write this one.

But, before I let loose, I should tell you what made me so excited to write, me someone who traditionally doesn't love writing.  Bad Feminist was a recommendation.  It was always on my to read list.  I was continuously told this book would be perfect for me. Then the Women's March, the walk to mecca, happened this weekend and my feminist heart was a flutter.  I knew this was something amazing and I wanted to keep the celebration going with reading. I knew this book was going to instantly increase my happiness.  Spoiler Alert: It did not disappoint.

Roxanne Gay first addresses the major elephant. A lot of women (and most men) are embarrassed about being labeled a feminist.  Hey, Pierce Morgan just used the term Feminazi.  I was actually called that same word in a facebook war.  Before reading this book I would have been embarrassed but now I am actually proud.  We're embarrassed about feminism but Roxanne Gay has reevaluate the word.  There's Feminism and there is Feminism.  Feminism is formal and academic and it's what most of us cringe at.  feminism is laid back, it's an ideal we know we won't live up to but we'll try our best.  Sometimes we'll do great and sometimes we'll fail and that's ok.  But we'll keep trying but we're all bad Feminists but maybe we can be pretty great feminists.

So start's Gay's collection of essays.  She infuses pop culture into her tales and I had to rethink my thoughts on the HBO series Girls and my views on Tyler Perry.  She also made me uncomfortable because, I am privileged but being privilege doesn't mean I'm not discriminated again or oppressed, if anything it positions me to better understand my oppression and discrimination.  She also wraps race into this.  As a white woman, it did make me question things and seeing how race and gender collide is important to.  I learned about rape culture, I learned about pop culture's ignorance about women and race and how they can help or they can perpetuate stereotypes.  But more important, I learned to speak up.

This political atmosphere, this Trump America, is awful for me as a female and as a lesbian.  Since that laughingstock got control of the world's biggest democracy I've faced some serious threats to my civil liberties.  I have been told my right to choose should be taken away, this from a man who wants to grab women by their pussies, you cannot tell me he never forced a woman to get an abortion.  That Planned Parenthood, an organization that offers healthcare to millions of women should be taken away. I was told that I should not have access to birth control if I so wanted it.  A bill is being brought to Congressional committee that says businesses should have the right to discriminate and oppress me as a lesbian and as a woman if they want to because to not do so is denying someone else their religious freedom.  Ok, well can I start discriminating people because they are conservative, or I think they're dumb, or they're Christian, or they have green eyes?

So no, I don't live in good times, but hey, I just read The Crucible, so I'm ready to fight.  I'm not going to chew my nails and worry.  I'm going to fight back.  I'm going to call my Senator and complain about education and this new wall (who is paying for this wall?), the repealing of Obamacare.  I'm not going to avoid posting articles or my opinions on Social Media because I'm nervous and worried about offending people or being too loud or too annoying (this is me being afraid of voicing my opinion because as a female why should I matter?).  I will fight back with those who are arrogant and mean and feel it ok to call me a sheep or a Feminazi or tell me I'm going to hell.  I'll post articles too, because I want us all to be educated.  I'm going to fight.  I'm going to have a voice.  I'm going to have conversations with my friends, my family, coworkers, total strangers! I'm going to get educated but I'm going to fight like a girl, because they're pretty damn good fighters.

Obra Personal: Leyendo Espanol

Hola! I did something kind of epic.  I read a book in Spanish.  From start to finish I read a book in another language.  I rarely had to consult a dictionary, though I did when necessary, I'm not too good for that, and I understood a lot of what I was reading.  I read a goddamn book in Spanish!  That's pretty amazing.

What did I learn? That I can do it! That I can be a part of a better global community.  That I am cultured.  That I am capable of culture.  This book was not easy by the way.  The Alchemist is itself a transcendental arty book.  There is no clear structure. Everything means something deeper.  But I made it through!

I think maybe next time I should find something easier to read, maybe a teen novel in Spanish? But I think I want to read a Spanish book in Spanish.  I have Ficciones but I don't think that will be much easier but maybe I can try it and see what that gets me.

If we are calling this my own version of The Happiness Project, my own Eat Pray Love (although way less exciting and global so far) then I am going to challenge myself to read another book and finally settle down and learn French.  I really want the pleasure of saying I'm trilingual.  Watch out world, I wouldn't want to mess with this chick.

The Trump Trials

This one honestly took me a hot second to figure out.  Making a play about the Salem Witch Trials, something I already knew about, applicable to my life and to gleam a lesson took some time.  But isn't that the fun of this project? You do this and learn something about your life in ways you didn't expect?

Arthur Miller's The Crucible is a classic, but if you didn't know what it's about, I'll catch you up quickly.  Arthur Miller took the story of the Salem Witch Trials and turned it into a drama where it started because Abigail Williams was bored of her life and had an affair with John Proctor who rejected her for his wife.  It was a classic revenge scheme and the book, funny enough, came out during the McCarthy Trials, another form of witch hunt.  Disturbing much? A bored teenager can be responsible for so many deaths and the destruction of an entire town.

Then I thought about it and I realized this is applicable to my life, in a very unfunny and uncomfortable way.  We have a pretty awful political environment right now.  A schlump became president and thinks presidency actually is synonymous with dictatorship.  That president does seem awfully like a whiny teenager who did not get what they wanted and is now looking to get attention by throwing a massive tantrum and making everyone else's lives miserable.  Essentially Trump is 19 year-old Abigail Adams in this drama.

But how does that tie into using literature to find happiness? It doesn't but I just had to get my political dig into this and the analogy holds up pretty well.  But this book did show me something about courage.  And that also relate to our current political clime.  Rebecca, Elizabeth, etc. All they had to do way confess and they would have been let off the hook and allowed to return their lives.  It would not have even been a real confession, blaming something on the devil does absolve you of guilt.  The alternative was death by hanging or placing stones on your body until you were crushed.  Some chose confession but others chose to stand their moral ground.  These few would rather die than give up their morals.

That's big.  There was something bigger than their lives.  If you think about it, it is a sad story but we still know their names.  We still talk about them in reverence and we still talk about the Salem Witch Trials and Puritanism and how it caused teenage girls to crave attention and a break from work.  Their names mean something in present day and that's kind of epic.  In this world would any of us die for a cause? If it comes down to it and my civil liberties and my fellow humans are at stake, will I stick up.  I hope that answer is yet but this serious book does have me questioning how far I will go.  I do find myself trying to give myself a talk on how there are things we need stand up for no matter the cost.

Fat Girl's Guide to Reading

My life's work, my heartsblood if you will, requires me to be fairly knowledgeable about kid and teen books so of course I have to read them.  I'm nothing of not dedicated.  This is nothing if not bullshitting you.  I love YA.  I wish it had been more of a thing when I was a teen.  I had the Wakefield twins thanks to Sweet Valley High and Fear Street but there wasn't the quality angsty goodness that channels an the inner teen psyche that there is now.  No one would even know what dystopia would mean way back in 2000.  We were too busy with witches, wizards and vampires who glittered.

I would love to tell you my YA love is making up for lost time but I think it's my quick no thinking read.  I'm also currently doing The Brother Karamozov and The Alchemist they require a lot of brain power and so much attention,  This probably sounds pretentious but I simply mean, I'm not 15 anymore, I can read from a distance.  Reading these books at 31, I'm not thinking this book sums up exactly how I feel, I'm reading with distance and what I hope is wisdom but probably isn't. It's probably gratitude that I was never a teenager in 2015 going up against Facebook (remember when you had to go to college to get it and it was called The Facebook) let alone Snapchat, Twitter or Insta.

It is with that in mind that I read Jennifer Niven's Holding Up the Universe.  It's an interesting book to read as overweight adult. Why you may ask? Because it is about an overweight 16 year old who falls in love and goes back to high school for the first time in years after she had to be cut out of her home.  Reading the story I cringed because in my head I knew how this book was going to go.  She would be bullied.  She'd fall for the cute boy.  He would like her but could never get over the social construction of teen mob mentality and betray her.  They would share a brief moment and then she'd die because someone always dies (I really think that characters dying in YA novels is more like a killing off of your childhood self and stepping into an adult self but that's a former psychology major for you).  I was pleasantly wrong.

Some of it was right.  Of course kids were mean, they always are.  Although, they seem to get worse in these teen years. But Libby, "The Fattest Teen in America," is actually pretty self confident.  She kind of loves herself and she knows she is awesome.  How great to finally read a book where the female is the confident one and she loves herself no matter what.  It's refreshing.  The male character, the handsome well-adjust male is not so well-adjusted and he actually has propasgnosia, face blindness.  He can't tell people's faces, something Brad Pitt actually has and in a character in a novel, he actually is quite lonely.  To never know who you are looking at is quite sad.

But that's regardless.  This blog is supposed to be about extrapolating meaning from books.  Using them to elongate happiness. This one seems pretty easy.  I could choose happiness as the theme but I think where you can learn something is in confidence.  It's hard being overweight but really the hardest thing I honestly face is being a woman.  Seems silly but it is sadly true.  There is an assumption of weakness, people assume a lack of intelligence and forget trying to be a badass in business.  People don't respond well and they doubt you as a human.  But my girl Libby, she doesn't care.  She's going to kick life's ass and just love herself even if it means being obese and standing in the middle of high school in a purple bikini to get a message across. She's confident in her loveability and her awesomeness.  It doesn't matter what you look or who you are but we could all use some of Libby's confidence and I hope I can try to channel that for the next week.  Let's see if I can get the confidence this week.  It would be perfectly timed I will say that...

The Happy Book Blog

Reading is probably the number 1 sign of my mood and something no one in my life has ever noticed.  It's not the reading makes me happy necessarily (sometimes books can be difficult or sad) but I can only read when happy.  When melancholy sets into my bones and stress resides in a large knot on my left shoulder blade, words turn to mush.  No concentration or attention will work for me.

So, as always happens in a New Year, you stop and think about the best possible life you could live.  For me that goes hand in hand with reading.  So rather than decide to go on a diet or learn a language or travel places (all things I actually do want) I thought I would try and find a way to hold onto happiness for a whole year.  In no way do I expect or even want to be happy every single day, but I do want to find a way to hold onto it a little longer. Savor it. Mull it over and hence this blog came to fruition on one of my most favorite dates, Friday the 13th.

The hope is that in each book I can take away something with me to help this happiness project.  Whether novel or nonfiction or self-help, I want to walk away with an idea, a thought or to make my life better.  Maybe it is something as simple as how to not live my life or avoid men who talk obsessively about business cards and font (Patrick Bateman reference right there).  Without further adieu, here I go.

I just read and mostly devoured Nina George's The Little Paris Bookshop.  Anything billed as a book about books gets my attention.  It is a bizarre genre, but one I am obsessed with and always fall in love with (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, The Book of Speculation, Shadow of the Wind).  So I took on Jean Perdu a book pharmacist.  What is a book pharmacist you may ask yourself? It is someone who prescribes books to people to cure ailments or help them achieve something.  Need meaning in your life take on Brothers Karamazov, need a piece of happiness something cozy and cuddly to sidle up against you like a kitten, then read The Little Parish Bookshop.

Perdu means lost.  This 50 year old man is dealing with a love lost 21 years ago and takes some very interesting characters with him.  A 20 year old famous author and an Italian also looking for a love lost.  But it's not the love story I find appealing, it's this Jean Perdu.  He is transitioning from a life not lived and after a 21 year hiatus you have to learn to live again.  At one point he realizes there is a a thing called the Time of Hurt when you end one journey and start another one.  This book made me realize maybe I'm going through my Time of Hurt and getting ready to start a new one.  Maybe I'm letting go of 7 years in a relationship where I lost a lot of who I was and I'm ready to be ME again.  It's scary because it involves finding out who I am and who I want to be.  But it is also interesting and exciting and terrifying.  Like the things nightmares are made of terrifying, but we all need a kick in the ass and a change in our lives.

When I met my now ex-wife I would never have seen myself as a sales person.  I want an academic and pretentious job.  I found something I love.  I love corporate life, I thrive it in. I want to find someone who loves a lot of the same things I do, I want someone ambitious who lives life not allows herself to be a victim of circumstance.

If this book were a cuisine it would be something rustic.  Simple and elegant and it makes me crave the same.  I want to visit the South of France and sit on the beach, wake in a B&B and have baguettes and croissants for breakfast.  I want simple chickens and potatoes and veggies for dinner on a wood table watching a quieter life.  I also want Paris with its glitz.  I want to learn to love wine.  I want to see this beautiful.

With that I bid you adieu...