by Karen Karbo
In the summer of 2007, in an academic journal called Democracy, Elizabeth published a think piece called “Unsafe at Any Rate.” It revealed the danger of subprime mortgages, the coming financial collapse, and the need for government oversight. (The subtitle was: “If it’s good enough for microwaves, it’s good enough for mortgages. Why we need a Financial Product Safety Commission.”) Remarkably, politicos read the piece and saw it as part of the solution to the problem of big banks gone wild. In 2011, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was signed into law. “Nobody’s responsible to the American consumer, no one’s looking out for American families; we started that,” Elizabeth told ABC News.
Let’s stop for a moment and appreciate how rarely this kind of thing actually happens. Scholars are always publishing think pieces and op-eds about solutions to the world’s thorny problems—but mostly they’re writing for each other, and 37 other nerds. The creation of the CFPB is the equivalent of sending an idea for a great feminist anthem to Beyoncé, and then having her record it and sing it at the Super Bowl. Still, the experience wasn’t all high fives and ticker tape parades; then President Obama refused to nominate Elizabeth for the position of director, worried that with her passion for equity and unwillingness to soft-pedal her opinions, she would never win the approval of Republicans.*3
Elizabeth Warren was crushed. She was down but not out. So in 2012, at the age of 63, she found another way to contribute: She ran for and was elected as the first female senator from Massachusetts, smoking the competition by eight points. Her campaign promise was that she did not intend to go to Washington to be polite and go along to get along.
Her second act is a wonder to behold. She’s got her public style down pat. Blond bob, frameless glasses, minimal makeup. For appearances she usually sports black pants and a bright, stylish jacket. Not quite a pantsuit. More frisky. Maybe because she didn’t intend to be a politician, or maybe once a star debater always a star debater: Either way, she doesn’t seem to see any point in measured speech.
Like Donald Trump, Elizabeth is an ace tweeter (though more articulate, with a larger vocabulary and an ability to spell). During the 2016 election the two went back and forth like a pair of high-profile table tennis champs. After Trump defended his middle-of-the-night rants, Elizabeth observed: “You never tweet at 3am with ways to help students getting crushed by debt or seniors struggling on Social Security.”
Of course, Elizabeth Warren has been called too angry—but my bet is that she doesn’t much care. She is angry. This is what makes a woman difficult: She not only refuses to change her behavior when she is called a name—but she keeps right on doing it, with verve and conviction. If that’s difficult, I’ll have what she’s having.
*1My own senator from the great state of Oregon, Jeff Merkley, also read a portion of Coretta Scott King’s letter, but no one said boo.
*2If your blood pressure can take it, check out Susan Chira’s piece in the New York Times, “The Universal Phenomenon of Men Interrupting Women.”
*3And right he probably was, given that Republicans love Elizabeth Warren only slightly more than they do Hillary Clinton (see Chapter 26).
CHAPTER 19
MARGARET CHO
Unrestrained
IN 1999, I WAS IN NEW YORK for one reason or another and a friend whose name I cannot recall—in those days she would have been called an acquaintance, but since the advent of Facebook, that term no longer exists—came down with something or other and gave me her ticket to an off-Broadway show to see a one-woman act by someone I’d never heard of. My memory is pretty good, but Margaret Cho blew my mind to such a degree that nothing associated with how I wound up in that theater seat exists. I laughed so hard my mascara tears left black stains on the front of my T-shirt. A bisexual Korean American—former phone sex operator, former sitcom star, daughter of a disapproving Asian mother whom she imitates brilliantly with equal parts scorn and love—Margaret Cho was a revelation. The show, I’m the One That I Want, went on to become a hot concert film and best-selling memoir. In 2002, her next show, Notorious C.H.O., would sell out Carnegie Hall.
Margaret was 31 years old in 1999, and “Hollywood obese” (that is, a normal-size female). She wore a pink skirt over pink pants, and very tall black platform shoes. Her set pieces included riffs on race, fag-haggery (her term), sexuality, eating disorders, and the reason men in straight porn are always so unattractive. She had just put herself back together after having barely survived the trauma of starring in her own sitcom, All-American Girl. The show came and went in 1994, leaving her devastated, suicidal, and with a shrink’s filing cabinet worth of material to be mined.
She was born in San Francisco in 1968, at hippie ground zero. Her father, a writer of joke books, also owned Paperback Traffic, a gay bookstore in the Castro. She went to elementary school on Haight Street, at home among the aging flower children, druggies, and drag queens. It may have been the peace and love 1960s, but the kids at school were as mean as snakes. Margaret was bullied mercilessly. She tells the story of a time she was ganged up on at summer camp. She was told she looked like shit, and then one night someone stuffed a handful of dog poop into her sleeping bag. “I had to empty it myself in the dark forest and still sleep in it, smelling that shit all that night and for weeks after, because my family was too poor to afford a new one.”
In 1984, at the age of 16, Margaret started doing stand-up at a club near her father’s bookstore. School was not really her thing. She skipped classes, got lousy grades, was expelled from one high school, and barely graduated from another. She lied about being in college when she entered a local college comedy contest. The winners were awarded the chance to open for Jerry Seinfeld. Margaret was one of them, and after her set, Seinfeld took her aside and told her she should just drop out of college and work on her stand-up full time. She was thrilled, since she’d already done just that.
Amy Schumer wasn’t even born when Margaret was landing sex-positive jokes about her lady bits.*1 In the early 1990s, she was the most popular act on the college circuit, booking upwards of 300 concerts a year. Roseanne Barr, another Edgy Female Stand-up, was starring in a smash sitcom based on her comedy. Hollywood rounded up all the successful Edgy Female Stand-ups like wild mustangs and, eager to duplicate Roseanne’s success, handed out production deals. That Korean-American Margaret Cho’s comedy was bawdy, groundbreaking, and difficult to categorize made no difference. She, too, was given her own show.
All-American Girl was the first sitcom centered around a Korean-American family. The network, in its wisdom, cast actors of Chinese and Japanese descent. Margaret was the only Korean American.*2 You can imagine how well this went over with Asian-American viewers. It also turned out that Margaret wasn’t supposed to be genuinely edgy, but fake TV edgy. Also, fake TV Asian American. It turns out girls born in San Francisco to immigrant parents can be pretty American. (Because they are.) ABC, having no clue how to “fix” her, hired an Asian consultant to offer instruction. “Use chopsticks, then put them in your hair,” was one piece of advice.
Margaret was also—wait for it—too fat. I’m sure you’re surprised. A dietitian and personal trainer were quickly dispatched to whip her into shape. She lost 30 pounds in less than a month. She had a bit in her stand-up routine during this time about how, when she first saw Jesus Christ Superstar, she could only focus on how many calories Jesus burned hauling that giant cross uphill. Eventually, she was hospitalized with kidney failure. She was also told there was an issue with “the fullness” of her face. Meaning, her Korean-American face.
The entire experience, from being discovered to cast aside, was due to all the ways in which Margaret wasn’t right. On YouTube, you can see her doing a short set at the Montreal comedy festival Just for Laughs, the same year she was trying so hard to be some studio executive’s idea of a perfect Asian-American sitcom star. Her voice is high and a little breathless. She’s very put together i
n all black, with a slash of red lipstick and styled hair. The real Margaret is still under wraps.
MARGARET CHO IS ONE IN A long line of boundary-busting female comedians—Phyllis Diller, Joan Rivers, and Wanda Sykes come to mind—who has figured out how to be her own woman, involving herself in pretty much everything that catches her creative eye. Her interests are far-ranging, and she explores them all. In addition to acting in a burlesque-style variety show, creating albums supported by music videos (some of which she’s directed), and starting a clothing company, she took up belly dancing, developed a line of belly dancing belts, and co-wrote and starred in a sitcom (it was not picked up). She got a hankering to do some funny animated rap videos, so that happened as well. In 2010, she was on Dancing with the Stars (this girl says yes to everything); she and her partner were voted off the third week. She’s cohosted a podcast, and also currently cohosts E!’s Fashion Police.
Everything about Margaret Cho’s persona is difficult. She’s sweary. She’s not afraid to talk about or imitate oral sex, gay sex, threesomes (insofar as one person can imitate a threesome). In recent years she’s amassed dozens of tattoos: beautiful peonies and, weirdly, portraits of Presidents Washington and Lincoln, one on each knee. “I wanted to be in a one-man band, that’s my idea,” she told the Today show by way of explanation. “So I was going to put knee cymbals so I could bang their heads together. I just thought that it would be good to keep the beat and stay patriotic.”
DIFFICULT WOMEN WHO HAVE this much access to their rage tend to put people off. The world doesn’t seem to know what to do with women who insist not only on talking about their sexual abuse and anger but then converting it into comedy. Margaret was Jerry Seinfeld’s guest on his web series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, and cracked him up with a display of her mother’s feeling about her molestation. “I know he’s a rapist because he’s already raped your aunt. You’re not special. Also, he very old. He gonna die soon. So why don’t we do this? We can cremate him and I let you flip the switch.”
What Margaret does best and most consistently is give us a glimpse at what it’s like to walk in her Korean-American shoes. Once, when she was out promoting All-American Girl, she was a guest on a local talk show, and the host wanted her to say something in her native tongue. She looked into the camera and spoke in clear, West Coast–accented English. Her hilarious impression of the obsequious, bowing, tiny step–taking, Asian flower girl sends up our expectation that she or anyone like her would ever behave that way. In 2015, she made a cameo at the Golden Globes as a Korean army general and expert on pop culture. She stood between Tina Fey and Amy Poehler in their sexy gowns opining about Orange Is the New Black. Was it just hilarious, hilarious and offensive, or hilarious and racist? A million think pieces bloomed in the coming days; she was lambasted as engaging in “minstrelsy” by journalist Kai Ma in Time. But this is all part of the Margaret Cho terrain. “I take issue when PC culture works against me,” she says. “When it works to silence me, then it’s racist.”
She’s certainly had her flops. She’s always playing on the edge, and sometimes she falls off. In her most recent show, Margaret Cho: PsyCHO (2015), political rants take center stage. And you know, I can do that for myself.
But I’m still with her. She set the bar high all those years ago—and if I’m not weeping with laughter, that doesn’t mean I love her any less. It’s instructional that when Margaret was trying to contort herself into Hollywood’s vision of herself, people turned away. Now she’s freely mouthy, angry, and unrestrained. And as a difficult woman extraordinaire, she’s earned our respect.
*1Kidding, actually she was in high school.
*2None of the producers, directors, or writers were Korean American.
CHAPTER 20
AMELIA EARHART
Adventurous
ON JUNE 17, 1928, WHEN FAMED aviatrix Amelia Earhart made her first transatlantic flight, she was a passenger, not a pilot. Amelia already knew how to fly. She’d had her pilot’s license for five years, but her expertise mattered not; a transatlantic flight was presumed to be too stressful and terrifying for a member of the fairer sex. She went along with it, because she was passionate about flying—and being the first woman, even if she wasn’t in control, was nevertheless awesome. She was stowed in the back of the Friendship, which wasn’t much larger than a Chevy Suburban, behind pilot Wilmer “Bill” Stultz and co-pilot Louis “Slim” Gordon. Amelia, who did nothing but endure the discomfort of the 20-hour, 40-minute flight from Trepassey Harbour, Newfoundland, to Burry Port, Wales, nevertheless became an instant celebrity: the serious, pretty, female face of this newfangled thing called air travel.*1
When she returned to New York, Amelia was thrown a ticker tape parade. Afterward, a limo had been hired to take her to another appearance. It was a scorching day, the traffic thick. Automotive air-conditioning had yet to be invented. Amelia took one look at the car and imagined being stuck in the backseat in a pool of her own sweat. But then she spied an empty sidecar attached to the motorcycle ridden by one of her police escorts. Without a thought, and without asking any of her minders’ or managers’ permission, she hopped in. The cop flipped on his lights and siren, and away they roared.
This is classic Amelia: She went along with the program, allowing herself to be celebrated for something she didn’t believe she deserved—I should have been flying the Friendship, not sitting in it like a sack of potatoes! But when the moment arose to escape, she took it without looking back.
The traditional difficult woman is generally outspoken, opinionated, and headstrong. She likes to shoot her mouth off, and has little interest in avoiding conflict; indeed, she finds it stimulating. Apple carts? She lives to upset them. For those of us who wish to be difficult but are introverted and see no reason we shouldn’t keep our opinions to ourselves, Amelia Earhart is our girl. Gracious and somewhat shy on the outside, she was willful and independent on the inside: polite, yet freewheeling, a person who answered to no one. She took the position that adventure is a worthwhile pursuit in and of itself—a radical stance for a woman.
Born on July 24, 1897, in Atchison, Kansas, Amelia was always an adventuresome girl, bombing down hills on her sled in the winter and hunting rats with a rifle she’d pilfered from some male relative in the summer. She maintained a scrapbook of magazine stories and newspaper clippings about women with exciting (male-dominated) careers: film directors, engineers, attorneys. In 1920, at an airshow in Southern California, pilot Frank Hawks was offering 10-minute flights for 10 bucks. Amelia, always restless, always eager to go, took him up on it and was hooked. In the summer of 1921, she bought a used Kinner Airster biplane. In 1923, she became the 16th woman in the world to receive her pilot’s license.
After her celebrated transatlantic flight aboard the Friendship in 1928, Amelia vowed to use the money she made with celebrity appearances, lectures, and best-selling memoirs to finance her own solo trip across the pond. On May 22, 1932, she took off from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, landing 15 hours later in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. More records followed. She was the first woman to fly solo across the United States, east to west, and the first woman to fly solo from California to Hawaii. In the early 1930s, Amelia set seven solo women’s records, for both time and distance, before setting off, in 1937, to become the first person, male or female, to circumnavigate the globe at the Equator. (Others before her had completed a northern route.)
PART OF AMELIA’S INDEPENDENT nature was inborn. When she was a toddler, she once told her mother, “If you are not here to talk to, I just whisper into my own ears.” When she was seven, the family visited the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Amelia asked if she could ride the roller coaster, and her mother declined. So the child went home and built her own: a death trap made of a pair of two-by-fours, nailed to the edge of the toolshed roof with a wooden crate and roller skate wheels attached. She was the first to test it, and the wipeout at the bottom�
��busted lip, torn dress—deterred her not at all. “Oh, Pidge,” she said to her sister, “it was just like flying.”
Amelia’s home life was complicated. Her father, Edwin, was an alcoholic. An attorney of some promise, he had no trouble landing jobs but could never seem to keep them. Her mother, Amy (also an Amelia), came from a prominent Atchison family; Amy’s father was a former federal judge and a bank president. She lived in a constant state of disappointment and low-grade fury that married life had left her struggling for money and prestige. The family moved around as their fortunes rose and fell and fell: Des Moines, St. Paul, Chicago. Amelia and her sister were parked at the home of their grandparents for long stretches of time while her parents tried to work things out.
From her very proper grandmother—yet another Amelia, who disapproved of her granddaughter’s tomboy high jinks—Amelia learned a very valuable skill (and one my own mother subscribed to): Tell people what they want to hear, then do whatever the hell you want. From her frustrated mother, Amelia learned the price a wife pays for relying on her husband for her happiness and financial well-being.*2 From her charming father, Edwin, she learned to do whatever made her happy. (Yes, he was that parent.)
In 1920, when Amelia was 23, she and her father took in an air show in Long Beach, California. At that time, aviation was all the rage. Fighter pilots who’d perfected their skills and daring during the First World War barnstormed around the country, showing off their barrel rolls and loop-de-loops. Air shows garnered as much buzz then as the Super Bowl does now. Still, the whole business was insanely dangerous. Engines dropped out of planes at a moment’s notice, propellers ceased turning for reasons no one could explain. Because formal runways were things of the future, landing in a field that looked flat from the air but was in fact studded with gopher holes could spell death. In 1920, 40 pilots had been hired by the government to deliver “aerial” mail, and by 1921 all but nine of them had died. Amelia was undeterred; the risk inherent in flying was part of the magic. Her father paid for her 10-minute introductory flight, and five minutes into the spin around the Southern Californian sky, she knew she had found her passion.