Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

Women matter. Women are half of us. When you raise every woman to believe that we are insignificant, that we are broken, that we are sick, that the only cure is starvation and restraint and smallness; when you pit women against one another, keep us shackled by shame and hunger, obsessing over our flaws rather than our power and potential; when you leverage all of that to sap our money and our time – that moves the rudder of the world. It steers humanity toward conservatism and walls and the narrow interests of men, and it keeps us adrift in waters where women’s safety and humanity are secondary to men’s pleasure and convenience.

Shrill is basically a political book – progressive and feminist – so to understand how I reacted to it, I suppose it's appropriate to make my own politics clear: despite Lindy West's frequent disparagement of conservatives, I identify as one (albeit, of the Canadian small-c type; I also identify as a feminist) and what that means to me is that I believe in the inherent dignity of all people. I've never been into fat shaming, I don't laugh at rape jokes (or sexist jokes, or gay jokes, or racist jokes...), and I would never anonymously (or openly) troll anyone online: basically, I am already in agreement with the majority of what West lays out here. Yet, when the overleaf says, “Lindy narrates her life with a blend of humor and pathos that manages to make a trip to the abortion clinic funny”, I suppose I should have known that I wouldn't identify with everything: I have zero interest in limiting any woman's access to abortion (which in Canada is pretty much universal and 100% covered by provincial health plans), I have zero interest in judging any woman for the decisions that she makes (yet am uncomfortable about free access to gender-selection terminations; isn't that a feminist issue too?), but I can't buy into the idea that there's anything funny about the procedure; that it's equivalent to “the time I had oral surgery because my wisdom tooth went evil-dead and murdered the tooth next to it”. I share all this because no one reads or reviews a book in a vacuum: if you are a progressive-type who is already rolling your eyes at what I've written, West probably confirms and celebrates everything you already believe in this book and you'll like it very much; if your politics align more with mine, you might find some of West's material provoking (and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with reading viewpoints that might challenge your thinking); if you're way out to the right of me, you might find no common ground here at all (but, again, that's no reason not to read it). 

Part of writing is choosing which details to include and which to discard. Part of reading is deciding whether or not you can trust your narrator.

I've never read Lindy West before, but am unsurprised to learn that she whet her chops on the alt newspaper The Stranger and the Jezebel blog: her whole tone is that millennial-focused, frequent cursing, this-is-what-I-think-and-if-you-don't-agree-the-problem-is-yours style of writing that can wear on me (which is why I can't spend much time on Jezebel or anything else Gawker-related). On the other hand, West is a thoughtful writer who makes solid arguments; when a person has this much to say, it's less important to me how that message is shaped. The first half of Shrill outlines West's childhood and how she made the transformation from “a terror-stricken mouse-person to an unflappable human vuvuzela”, and that was all interesting and cleverly-written and builds a good foundation for the second half, which is more about her professional career and adult relationships. Along the way, we read how West became a body-size advocate (and refused to back down in an online argument with her then boss, Dan Savage), she dug her heels in on the notion that rape jokes contribute to rape culture and are therefore never funny (and it's pretty much perfect to watch the video of West debating the issue with comedian Jim Norton, followed by the video of West reading a selection of the rape threats she got after that appearance; “rape culture” isn't a thing, eh?), and I was most touched by West's compassion for one internet troll who decided to set up a Twitter account in West's recently deceased father's name just to insult her with: she's a better woman than I. So, I enjoyed most of her stories, and for the most part, they felt important. And very often, she made me laugh:

Like most fat people who’ve been lectured about diet and exercise since childhood, I actually know an inordinate amount about nutrition and fitness. The number of nutrition classes and hospital- sponsored weight-loss programmes and individual dietician consultations and tear-filled therapy sessions I’ve poured money into over the years makes me grind my teeth. (Do you know how many Jet Skis I could have bought with that money? One Jet Skis!!!)

In the end, this wasn't a perfect read, I didn't love it, I'm not compelled to read more of Lindy West than I've already dug up from the Internet, but it's obviously more than a boring old three star book. Perhaps you'll like it even better than I did.