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.