by Lindy West
Praise for SHRILL by Lindy West
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
NPR • Esquire • Newsweek • Los Angeles Times
“Read West’s ferociously funny book and you’ll be shouting her praises.”
—People
“Stitch-inducing and searingly honest … West takes readers through her journey from a self-effacing child working to keep her body and voice small to an unapologetic, fat-positive feminist, skewering the status quo one keyboard stroke at a time.”
—USA Today
“Lindy West is the troll-fighting feminist warrior you’ve been waiting for … Shrill treats feminism, fatness, and social change with rigorous attention without losing any of West’s signature humor.”
—Los Angeles Times
“[West is] one of the most distinctive voices advancing feminist politics through humor … With patience, humor, and a wildly generous attitude toward her audience [West] meets readers at their point of prejudice so that she may, with little visible effort, shepherd them toward a more humane point of view.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“[B]eautiful, joyful writing … West defies clichés both by being persistently hilarious and deeply loving.”
—Washington Post
“Hilarious, biting, and wise.”
—Huffington Post
“Lindy West’s memoir is a witty and cathartic take on toxic misogyny and fat shaming. She comes to accept her body just as Internet trolls congregate en masse to try to rip this new confidence from her, but she’s rearing to fight back … In Shrill, West is our fat, ferocious, and funny avenging angel.”
—NPR, Best Books of 2016
“Reading West’s book is like taking a master class in inclusivity and cultural criticism, as taught by one of the funniest feminists alive today.”
—Refinery29
“An emotional roller coaster. One moment you’re snorting from laughter, trying to avoid all the weird looks you’re getting on the train. The next you’re silently absorbing a larger truth neatly packaged into the perfect sentence you didn’t expect to read.”
—Mother Jones
“With her clear-eyed insights into modern culture and her confidence in her own intelligence and personal worth, West appeals to the humanity of even the most parents’ basement-dwelling, misogynistic, and casually hateful of trolls.”
—Esquire, Best Books of 2016
“[West’s] writing is sharp, smart, hilarious, relatable, insightful, and memorable. She tackles serious and personal subjects—like being fat, getting an abortion, feeling lonely, or dealing with harassment online—and is just as capable of eliciting tears as laughter … I dare you to pick up a copy.”
—Newsweek, Best Books of 2016
“It’s hard to discuss SHRILL without being effusive. It’s hard to write about it without offering gratitude, and pullquotes such as ‘this is the best and most important book I’ve read all year.’ But it’s certainly no exaggeration to say we’re all very lucky to live in a world where Lindy West exists … When she writes ‘I hope I helped,’ you want to enthusiastically respond, ‘more than you can ever know.’”
—The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
“Poignant, hilarious, and contemplative.”
—Cosmopolitan
“One of the most impressive aspects of this book is the level of nuance, self-reflection, and humanity that West displays in her analysis of her own writing and her relationships with others … It’s the best kind of memoir, and it shows that Lindy West still has a lot more to say—and that we should all keep listening.”
—Bitch Media
“West is utterly candid and totally hilarious … as funny as she is incisive.”
—Vogue
“With Shrill, West cements her reputation as a woman unafraid to comfort (and confound) her critics … [Shrill] illustrates just how deeply sexism pervades our society while laughing at the absurdities that sexism somehow normalizes.”
—Elle
“Lindy West can take almost any topic and write about it in a way that is smart, funny, warm, and unique.”
—Bustle
“West is candid and funny, unafraid to criticize rape jokes or explain how airlines discriminate against fat people, and her fearlessness has made her one of the most notable voices on the Internet.”
—Flavorwire
“Both sharp-toothed and fluid … West is propulsively entertaining.”
—Slate
“Lindy West did not set out to be a feminist warrior against the forces that wish to silence and hurt women for doing things that men take for granted … Someone has to fight the misogynists, after all, and West is well-situated for the front lines, lacing her blunt sense of humor with a surprising amount of nuanced empathy, even for those out there who are the ugliest to women.”
—Salon
“Lindy West is one of the Great Ladies of the Feminist Internet … 250 pages of pure hilariousness.”
—Feministing
“Incredible and insightful … What West ultimately strives for is to incrementally make those small changes that can lead to something so much bigger and better for us all.”
—Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls
“[West is] warm and cutting, vulnerable and funny in equal measures; her sense of self makes you yourself feel seen.”
—BuzzFeed
“Hey reader! I thought I’d read enough in this lifetime about people’s childhoods and feelings and such and I’d never want to do it again. But Lindy West is such a totally entertaining and original writer she kind of blew that thought out of my head halfway into the first chapter. I dare you to feel differently.”
—Ira Glass, This American Life
“You have to be careful about what you read when you’re writing, or you can end up in total despair, thinking, ‘This is what I wanted to say, only she got there first and said it better.’”
—Jennifer Weiner, number one New York Times bestselling author of Good in Bed and The Littlest Bigfoot
“The surge of love and joy I felt while crylaughing through this book almost made my cold dead heart explode. Lindy is so smart and so funny that it almost hurts my little jealous-ass feelings. She is my most favorite writer ever.”
—Samantha Irby, author of Meaty: Essays
“It made me hurt, both from laughing and crying. Required reading if you are a feminist. Recommended reading if you aren’t.”
—Jenny Lawson, number one bestselling author of Let’s Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir) and Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things
“It’s literally the new Bible.”
—Caitlin Moran, best-selling author of How to Be a Woman
“There’s a reason Lindy West is such a beloved writer: she gets to the heart of impossible issues with humor and grace. West will have you cringing, laughing, and crying, all within one page. Shrill is a must-read for all women.”
—Jessica Valenti, author of Why Have Kids?: A New Mom Explores the Truth About Parenting and Happiness and Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism Matters
Also by LINDY WEST
Shrill: Notes from A Loud Woman
First published in Australia and New Zealand by Allen & Unwin in 2019
First published in the United States in 2019 by Hachette Books, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Copyright © Lindy West 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in w
riting from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.allenandunwin.com
ISBN 978 1 76087 537 4
eISBN 978 1 76087 223 6
Internal design by Timothy Shaner
Cover design by Amanda Kain
To the kids.
Trust your instincts. Believe your eyes.
CONTENTS
Introduction: They Let You Do It
Choosing the Lie
Is Adam Sandler Funny?
Ted Bundy Was Not Charming—Are You High?
How to Be a Girl
Always Meet Your Heroes
Do, Make, Be, Barf
A Giant Douche Is a Good Thing if You’re a Giant
Gear Swap
Joan
Obsolescence Is a Preventable Disease
What Is an Abortion, Anyway?
Leave Hell to the Devils
Anger Is a Weapon
Magic Isn’t Magic
The World Is Good and Worth Fighting For
Long Live the Port Chester Whooping Cranes
Tomorrow Is the First Day
Acknowledgments
Introduction: They Let You Do It
Not long ago, my husband was at a bar in Chicago. A friend had told him to check out this particular bar because it’s a cool dive run by queer people of color, with dancing and cheap drinks and a good vibe. So he was sitting there, having a beer, and after a while a guy came in and sat down next to him. White guy, late forties. Polo shirt. Mustache probably. Khaki shorts. Standard random white guy.
The guy—his name was Larry or Barry or something, so for the purposes of this story let’s call him LarryBarry—struck up a conversation with my husband, asked him if he was having fun. My husband said, “Yeah, this is a fun bar! People are dancing. It’s cool.” And the guy got a real sad look on his face and said, “Yeah, this is one of my favorite songs. I wish I was dancing right now.” So naturally my husband asked, “Well, why don’t you go dance?”
And LarryBarry said, “I’M NOT ALLOWED TO DANCE.”
My husband was confused. There did not seem to be any posted restrictions on who was or was not allowed to dance. Other people were dancing. So he inquired, “LarryBarry, why are you not allowed to dance?”
And then LarryBarry told his tale:
“Well, two nights ago, I came to this bar, because it’s the closest bar to my house, and I come here all the time. And they were having a dance night, and I love to dance. So I went out on the dance floor, and there were some people out there dancing, so I just started dancing with this girl, and she said, ‘I don’t really want to dance with you,’ and then her friend got all weird about it. So now I guess I’m not allowed to dance.”
Can you believe that? He’s not allowed to dance!
This is what it’s come to, ladies and gentlemen. This is what the PC police have done to us. It’s as though the PC police don’t even care how much LarryBarry likes that song! Or how important it is that he continue his ongoing research into the worst ways to move the human body!
Well, sorry if I don’t want to live in a world where straight white men in their forties with mustaches can’t go to the queer POC dance night and nonconsensually grind on lesbians they don’t know without people getting weird about it! Last time I checked, this was America!
My husband said kindly, “LarryBarry, I’m pretty sure if you just go out there and dance and don’t touch anyone, you’ll be fine.”
And LarryBarry thought, “Hmm, don’t touch anyone? What’s that?” But he decided to go for it, and as he got up from the bar he looked my husband in the eyes and said, man to man, “If something goes wrong out there, will you back me up?”
And my husband said, “If something goes wrong, you will look over here, and you will find that this chair is empty, and you will never see me again, because I don’t know you.”
This modern fable—the Ballad of LarryBarry—tells us quite a bit about our current moment in history.
It seems that a lot of men are confusing being asked not to violate other people’s sexual boundaries with being forbidden to participate in basic human activities such as dancing, dating, chatting, walking around, going to work, and telling jokes.
One thing we’ve been hearing a lot recently when a man—particularly a man a lot of people really like—is accused of something awful is that the accusations aren’t real but in fact are part of a baseless, bloodthirsty, politically motivated mass hysteria known as a “witch hunt.”
This is a relatively new usage of the term. Traditionally, “witch hunt” has been used in reference to the witch trials of early modern Europe and colonial America, during which an estimated 40,000 to 60,000 people were brutally tortured by being briefly ostracized at work and having a lot of people yell at them.
Wait. That’s wrong. They were actually hanged, beheaded, or burned at the stake. Still, though. Very, very similar to the modern-day witch hunts against rapists!
Imagine, if you will, a fine woodcut print of a colonial witch burning. A town square, a black sky, perhaps a fat bristly pig. A massive bonfire crackles hungrily, and at its heart, three screaming women are bound to a post, burning to death in agony. Nearby, a group of angry men in pantaloons and buckled hats stoke the flames with long poles. A bat-winged demon harries the dying women from above, while all around the townspeople froth at the mouth and howl in a frenzy of bloodlust. Here and there, corpses litter the ground, but the townspeople seem not to notice or care. Some fricking knave beheads the pig with a sword.
Now, in case you’re not familiar with classic seventeenth-century iconography, I, an art historian,1 have compiled a handy reference guide to what each of these elements represents:
Women burning to death = Men who did nothing wrong
Men stoking the fire = Feminists (third-wave, booooooooo!)
Demon = How Sharon’s butt looked in those pants
The fire = Call-out culture
Townspeople = The court of public opinion
The pig = Due process
The knave = Salma Hayek
Corpses = Free speech, comedy, human reproduction, the legacy of Matt Lauer
I think we can all agree that this fully checks out and that, indeed, it is men who are the true victims of witch hunts. Which they invented. To kill women.
But the “witch hunt” deflection isn’t only for rapes! It has the power to transform pretty much any credible accusation against a man into an unfair—nay, unconstitutional—and unfounded smear campaign. Accused of racism? Witch hunt! Accused of undermining the integrety of democracy itself? Witch hunt! Accused of willfully letting children die in concentration camps on the southern border of the United States? A pure, unadulterated, hysterical, bitchy witch hunt!!!
Perhaps no one is as fond of this rhetorical maneuver as the United States’ forty-fifth president, Donald J. Trump. Based on a simple Twitter search, he has tweeted the phrase at least two hundred times since taking office, betraying a ceaseless, all-consuming paranoid panic that is definitely safe and good to have in a world leader. A minuscule sampling of the fucking hundreds of them I found:
May 15, 2016: “The media is really on a witch-hunt against me. False reporting, and plenty of it - but we will prevail!”
January 10, 2017: “FAKE NEWS - A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!”
February 27, 2018: “WITCH HUNT!”
March 19, 2018: “A total WITCH HUNT with massive conflicts of interest!”
April 1
0, 2018: “A TOTAL WITCH HUNT!!!”
April 22, 2018: “A complete Witch Hunt!”
May 23, 2018: “WITCH HUNT!”
June 5, 2018: “ … The greatest Witch Hunt in political history!”
August 22, 2018: “NO COLLUSION - RIGGED WITCH HUNT!”
December 13, 2018: “WITCH HUNT!”
January 26, 2019: “WITCH HUNT!”
Very normal, very cool!
So, just to clarify, you guys get to be the witch-hunters and the witches and the witch-hunter-hunters who hunt down any witches who are witch-hunting too hard. And the rest of us get burned.
To be fair, Donald Trump framing himself as a witch actually makes a bit more sense than it does for most of the guilty little wormies who try to do it. Every iota of Trump’s success is a con, a dark magic trick, built on illusion and hypnosis and the impenetrable magical thinking of his followers. Even the repetition in those tweets—WITCH HUNT, WITCH HUNT, WITCH HUNT—is a kind of incantation, calling itself into being. Of course a man whose only skill is putting his name on shit understands the power of branding.
Trump is not a witch, but he is adept at one spell. He knows that, at least in this country at the moment, all you have to do is say something is true. If you say you’re a self-made billionaire, you’re a billionaire. If you say you’ll make something great, sure, it will be. It’s a witch hunt? If you say so.
Let’s go back to before the fullest expression of the power of that brand. It was October 2016, and we were doing so well. It felt like we were doing so well, anyway. Thanks to decades of bloody, incremental, hard-won victories by generations of activists and organizers, the traditional presumption of white male authority had grown translucent, vulnerable. The term feminist was no longer so stigmatized that teenage girls were afraid to assert their innate equality and celebrities were afraid to utter it in interviews. Marriage equality passed, and the pits of Hell did not open beneath us. Black Lives Matter forced the facts of racialized police violence through the generally impenetrable psyches of Middle Americans, whether they liked it or not. Sure, the environment was fucked and we’d been at war for nearly twenty years (since I was a teenager and since my teenagers were babies), but there was a palpable momentum, an undeniable feeling that progress had the upper hand. We were just a hairsbreadth from electing the United States’ first female president to succeed the United States’ first black president. Justice Antonin Scalia passed away unexpectedly and, despite Mitch McConnell’s best efforts at subverting democracy, she was going to choose his replacement. We weren’t done, but we were doing it.