Shrill
By Lindy West
Coming of age in a culture that demands women be as small, quiet, and compliant as possible -- like a porcelain dove that will also have sex with you -- writer and humoristLindy West quickly discovered that she was anything but.
From a painfully shy childhood in which she tried, unsuccessfully, to hide her big body and even bigger opinions; to her public war with stand-up comedians over rape jokes; to her struggle to convince herself, and then the world, that fat people have value; to her accidental activism and never-ending battle royale with Internet trolls, Lindy narrates her life with a blend of humor and pathos that manages to make a trip to the abortion clinic funny and wring tears out of a story about diarrhea.
With inimitable good humor, vulnerability, and boundless charm, Lindy boldly shares how to survive in a world where not all stories are created equal and not all bodies are treated with equal respect, and how to weather hatred, loneliness, harassment, and loss, and walk away laughing. Shrill provocatively dissects what it means to become self-aware the hard way, to go from wanting to be silent and invisible to earning a living defending the silenced in all caps.
Hand to god, I read The Witches are Coming last year (or the year before??) and had no idea that this was written by the same person. I have no idea where my mind is. Now, admittedly that is because after reading The Witches are Coming I was not interested in reading more from West, but that's not because it wasn't good. It was good. It just made me really depressed. In fact, I typed that last sentence just now before re-reading my review, and had completely forgotten about the "GODDAMN DEPRESSING" exclamation. At least I'm consistent!
But this was different in a couple of important ways:
(1) It wasn't as funny.
This felt more like memoir than TWAC, which makes sense, because it kind of is. It tracks West's "up-and-coming" years, when she got famous and got slammed and made her mark. Shrill is the book which got developed into the TV show. TWAC is the book that was written after she went so mainstream even I had heard of her. Not that I'm living under a rock. I just don't follow the comedy scene (for reasons very clearly laid out in Shrill) and I noped myself off of Jezebel when they changed their commenting rules, although now, in the distant fog of time, I can't remember what it was that I didn't like, since I never commented anyway. I was definitely part of the Great Exodus though, which took me to Hairpin, which took me to Billfold, which took me to Ask a Manager, only dipping my toes into the Toast occasionally but not becoming a fanatic, and now that I've dredged up all that, some internet archaeologist can probably tell you my exact age and identifying details.* Anyway, all of that is to say, I'm definitely in West's demographic but hadn't really known much of her biography until reading Shrill. So I was a bit surprised that it was more biography than comedy, since "comedian" was my only frame of reference for her.
TWAC reads more like a series of riffs on various topics. I mentioned the Adam Sandler one in my previous review, but her page-long screed about her husband's trumpet playing is also pretty amazing. Shrill is more raw, more personal (and therefore not necessarily amusing) and although it is funny, feels more like the goal was to explain, than entertain.
(2) It wasn't as depressing.
This helped a lot. Honestly, although I found parts of TWAC to be hilarious, Shrill felt more cathartic. It started sort of slowly for me, but once the chapters start becoming closer, chronologically, it felt like it really picked up steam. The last quarter or so of the book, with the sections on the trolls and the break up and her dad's death, and the remorseful troll, felt more hopeful to me than anything in TWAC. Maybe it was good I read this one second, because it made me optimistic. Reading TWAC now I feel like I would just get bombarded with everything that hasn't changed since Shrill. In writing this, I went down a few rabbit holes of feminist websites and writers from the early-mid two thousands, and I really miss those kinds of sites - I can't really think of any that have adequately replaced what is now defunct. They were a haven, in many ways, from the misogyny and dick-swinging that categorized most of the rest of the internet. I hope that there will be something to replace it for our younger generations.
*I totally high-fived myself for remembering all that without looking it up, but turns out I have just as terrible a memory as I claim to: I think The Awl was somewhere in there too, and who knows what detritus of other short-lived but beloved sites. The whole thing has come full circle though, since both founding members of The Hairpin now write advice columns for Slate, which I started reading long before they joined (although why I was reading it I have no idea. That one must have been a random recommendation).
