Required Reading: Shrill by Lindy West

I wish I had been able to read Lindy West’s Shrill years ago, when I was starting the uncomfortable journey of becoming myself.

West’s beautifully crafted and hard-working memoir proves equal parts feminist theory, cultural criticism and humor essay, but at its heart, is a story of self-acceptance and learning to love the parts of oneself one has been conditioned to fight and change.

Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman details West’s journey as a writer, feminist, and activist, contemplating the intersections at all of these paths and the questions that arise there — for instance, how does a woman come to accept her body and start to advocate for other fat people when the publication she writes for habitually criticizes and dehumanizes fat people? How does a feminist and humor writer fit into the comedy sphere when rape jokes and misogynist humor run rampant? How does a woman who dares to speak honestly and openly about sexism, inequality, and injustice hold to her beliefs and a sense of self-worth in an age of derisive comment sections and internet trolls?

Lindy West tackles these complex questions head-on, with sleeves rolled up, and we have the distinct pleasure of hearing her wax poetic and sardonic while she does it.

Shrill begins by pondering the question all children are asked by adults who don’t know how to talk to them: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

West leafs back through the slim selection of role models available to her as a young fat girl, noting that women in TV and movies who looked like her, and provided a glimpse of the kind of woman she might grow up to be, often alternated between fearsome and dejected (but always laughable due to their grotesque, “unfeminine” exteriors). She rattles off the few fat female characters she was exposed to from a young age — Miss Piggy, The Queen of Hearts, Ursula the Sea Witch, Miss Trunchbull. While the list of “role models” is dismal, West sharply culls out the humor in all of them. See below her take on Ursula the Sea Witch’s plight:

What Ursula really wants is to bring down the regime of King Triton so she and her eel bros don’t have to live in a dank hole tending their garden of misery slime for the rest of their lives… History is written by the victors, so forgive me if I don’t trust some P90X sea king’s smear campaign against the radical fatty in the next grotto.

This passage, only about 5 pages in, had me cackling on a park bench, concerning onlookers, while simultaneously feeling a familiar sadness for young fat girls whose view of themselves and vision for their future suffers from a lack of representation (I was one of those little girls). Before Shrill, I don’t think I’d ever read something that pinpointed and illustrated that unspoken sadness of realizing that you are not like other girls. Even though you want to believe with childlike wonder that you really could be a fairy princess or ballerina when you grow up, you’ve already gotten the message that that’s not you, and never will be. So what choices do you have? As the end of Shrill’s first chapter crushingly points out:

Mother or monster. Okay, little girl — choose.

This memoir is not only a story I strongly identified with, but a piece of writing that is lush, gorgeous, and evocative. West is a very funny writer. Like, I might have accidentally peed a little from laughing funny.

I had been erroneously led to believe that “veterinarian” was the grown-up term for “professional animal petter.” I would later learn, crestfallen and appalled, that it’s more a term for “touching poo all the time featuring intermittent cat murder,” so the plan was abandoned.

But she is also an extremely gifted writer in terms of prose and imagery. Take this heartbreaking passage from her chapter “Bones,” on growing up fat and learning how to hide your body:

So, what do you do when you’re too big, in a world where bigness is cast not only as aesthetically objectionable, but also as a moral failing? You fold yourself up like origami, you make yourself smaller in other ways, you take up less space with your personality, since you can’t with your body. You diet. You starve, you run till you taste blood in your throat, you count out your almonds, you try to buy back your humanity with pounds of flesh.

Her writing makes me want to try harder as a writer.

As much as West’s writing inspired me, her bravery and dedication to feminism and advocacy inspired me more.

West talks about serving as a film critic for Seattle newspaper The Stranger, during a time when America’s “war on obesity” was a hot news item. The Stranger consistently put out articles chiming in on the subject (with a side of fat shaming, of course), something not unusual for the paper’s “tell it like it is” style, but uncomfortable for West, who was beginning to accept her body. After asking her editor to show more sensitivity to no avail, West responded by writing her own piece for The Stranger, entitled “Hello, I Am Fat.” In West’s essay, she proudly proclaims herself as a fat woman, capable of a full range of emotions and worthy of respect, and proposes a call to action for people to simply mind their own business when it comes to other people’s bodies. She also brilliantly and succinctly wraps up why fat shaming is ineffective, redundant, and should never happen:

I get that you think you’re actually helping people and society by contributing to the fucking Alp of shame that crushes every fat person every day of their lives — the same shame that makes it a radical act for me to post a picture of my body and tell you how much it weighs. But you’re not helping. Shame doesn’t work. Diets don’t work. Shame is a tool of oppression, not change.

Fat people already are ashamed. It’s taken care of. No further manpower needed on the shame front, thx.

I think it was this passage that convinced me Shrill should be required reading for high school students. I can’t think of a more confusing, self-conscious, and frustrating time for people across the board, and I can only imagine how eye-opening, affirming, and comforting this book could be to younger readers who are developing their view of the world and a sense of empathy.

West also delves into her lifelong love of comedy, her experience debating rape jokes with comedian Jim Norton, and the resulting harassment she experienced from irate comedy fans and run-of-the-mill trolls who saw an opportunity to direct misogynistic and threatening comments towards West, which she continues to receive to this day. West’s choice to publicly speak out on an aspect of the comedy world she felt needed changing brought her into the public eye and earned her praise from feminist outlets, but ultimately alienated her from the comedy sphere she loved, and marked her as an “angry feminist” who can’t take a joke. West writes:

I sometimes envy (and, on my bad days, resent) the funny female writers of my generation who never get explicitly political in their work. They’re allowed to keep their funny cards; by engaging with comedy, by trying to make it better, I lost mine… Comedy, you broke my heart.

Knowing how absolutely hilarious West is, and how much potential she has to improve our cultural discourse and broaden our understanding of what comedy can be, this passage broke my heart.

West discusses other life experiences, such as her abortion. This is a part of many women’s lives, and one women often omit when telling their story due to the surrounding stigma. West talks about her abortion plainly and honestly, and her choice to share her story in this manner — as if it were just another chapter in her book — is so important. It reminds us that, yes, this happens and, yes, we’re allowed to talk about it.

To me, Shrill reads as a triumphant story, one of conquering — conquering fear and self-consciousness, conquering those who put you down, conquering life. Reading Shrill yields many rewards, as it offers laughter, rich and thoughtful cultural criticism, and writing you just want to devour. But the most rewarding aspect is seeing on the page how West has come into her own — how she began as someone who was always trying to hide herself, shrink her presence, and make her voice smaller, and how she became someone who embraces and celebrates who she is, shouts what she has to say, and stands up for those with smaller voices.

Shrill is full of so many hilarious, heartbreaking, and satisfying passages — such as West confronting one of her internet trolls in real life, being harassed, being emboldened, falling in love, grieving and healing — I can’t relay them all here. Suffice it to say, West’s memoir has a little something for everyone, but is likely to appeal to and be read by a largely feminist audience. While this book does so much work on feminist fronts, and is an important and rewarding read for feminists, I think it deserves to have a wider reach.

There are so many young people who hate their bodies and hold back what they really want to say who will never hear about this book. There are so many people who do not understand why changing the way we talk about issues like rape and abortion matters. And there are so many people who need a closer look at how our society treats marginalized groups. This book begs to be read by so many, and I hope I can encourage at least a few to pick it up.

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