i just finished mindy kaling’s new audiobook, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, and, while i have to say it’s pretty funny and such, it’s no Bossypants, that’s for damn sure. the best part about it, though, is that it’s read by mindy and that makes such a difference. tina fey’s book was great, but it was largely due to the fact that tina herself read the book, and she is just lovely and awesome. i want amy poehler to do the same, i wish simon pegg narrated his book.
anyway, mindy is charming and funny, and it was a good read (er, listen), but one of the most disappointing facts was something i found particularly disappointing during tina fey’s book. something that makes you (if you’re me, obviously) just feel like total crapfuck and want to just run headlong into oncoming traffic…
this is mindy kaling.
she’s pretty and petite. a good portion of the book refers to how chubby and fat she is, and how by hollywood standards (read: INSANITY) she is a gross, gross chubbster.
here’s an excerpt:
“Since I am not model-skinny, but also not super-fat and fabulously owning my hugeness, I fall into that nebulous, “Normal American Woman Size” that legions of fashion stylists detest. For the record, I’m a size 8 (this week, anyway). Many stylists hate that size because, I think, to them, I lack the self-discipline to be an aesthetic, or the sassy, confidence to be a total fatty hedonist. They’re like ‘Pick a lane.’”
she goes into detail about a 2011 photo shoot for people magazine where everything was awful and everyone there was like ‘you are too fat to fit in these dresses’ and made her feel like shit. and how she overcame. etc. etc. etc. which, ok, those feelings are super valid and such, but look at her. look!
this girl is fat? this girl has fat issues and feels awful about how she looks (which is fine).
there’s a similar ‘humiliatingly awful photo shoot’ story in Bossypants. and other issues with her weight, and how people would make her feel awful for being ‘too fat’. which…
this is tina fey.
tina fey is awesome. she’s smart, she’s hilarious, she’s personable and amazingly witty. tina fey is a million things and more, and it just so happens it all comes in one hell of a package. but the thing is, most women are are compartmentalized into only the most shallow of quantifiers: appearance. well, mainly famous women or women in the public eye, but it does trickle down into real life as well.
what was so disappointing about these books was the fact that you’re reading (listening) to these amazing women tell all these funny, charming, cringe-worthy stories about their lives and so much of it revolves around beauty and weight and self-image and they both do the common thing of self-depreciating.
which, if you’re like me, and you don’t look anything like either of these women (not even on your best day), is kind of …depressing?
these ladies are famous and funny and smart and still can’t escape the patriarchal bullshit of gender biased beauty standards. they’re still struggling with the suffocating self-image issues that makes every woman feel just so trapped in her own skin.
so it’s like, ok, these women are gorgeous and amazing and everything you may wish to be some day — and they seem so relatable because they’re not statuesque amazonian fashion models — but still are bogged down with the same crippling self doubt that everyone has. except, they’re small, they’re so small. and feel fat and unattractive (yet both describe how they came to be “OK” with their own appearances) at a size 8 or size 6 (or in fey’s case, the fattest size of 12). so what if you’re a ‘normal’ person, and you could probably crush both of these ladies into a fine, yet formerly hilarious paste?
ultimately you end up feeling like maybe you should just hang your massive, massive head and take a long walk off a short pier. or slipping on your ‘eatin’ dress‘ and just mow down everything in sight until you’re one of those freakish people who become fused to their furniture and have to be chainsawed/forklifted out of your houses.
or something.
and it’s further frustrating because you read all these books by dudes who, while some of the themes may be the same, don’t go into so much detail about their weight and their diets and how much this or that food does blah blah blah. maybe to illustrate a point of sloth or anti-social behavior (such as something david sedaris or augusten burroughs might write) but it’s not such a defining feature. and it’s sad that women are still falling within this same kind of glaring focus on the superficial.
and yeah, still makes you feel like crap because on you’re best day you’re still a million times grosser than the “fattest” tina fey or mindy kahling. and also, if you can be famous and successful and admired by so many, and look so pretty and still feel like crap and all of that…well, then what’s the point?
and what hope is there for the rest of us, ya know?
