Author Interview: Lindy West
The author of Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman on holding steadfastly to truths, what feminism and humor can do, and the momentous work we have before us.
I run the feminist book club here at Literati, and am constantly on high alert for the next big book, one that leaps and, without hesitation, demands my attention. I first learned West’s name when my boss handed me an advanced copy of her book, thinking that it might be a good pick for the next meeting.
I took it home, flipped to the first page, and was forever a little bit different.
On a personal note (because what is writing if not personal?), I’ve always felt that my body was a kind of large blip on the world, one that I chose, quite frequently, to let slip from the reflections of mirrors, from the lenses of friends’ cameras, from the appreciation of others. But recently, post-election and post-this book, I’ve found that my body is a thing with which to empathize and a tool with which I can use to connect. Without laying bare the many parts of my body that have enlarged, that have weakened, that have become the subject of well-meaning comments about body positivity, I’ll just say that I’ve been coming to terms with this fleshy thing I’ve been given and with the feminist company it keeps. I found a confidant in Lindy West and Shrill, a book that is all at once touching, gut-bustingly funny, and entirely honest.
Lindy West — feminist icon, unapologetic activist, comic genius — has a biting, uproarious voice that demands appreciation and connection. I am forever grateful for this book, and for the women writers who inspire me and demand my activism.
I was lucky enough to speak with Lindy over email about bodies, empathy & activism, and the straightforwardness of feminism.
Lindy West reads at Literati Bookstore on March 23rd at 7pm.
The term feminism is weighed down with a lot of baggage, especially in these dark, post-inauguration days. What does feminism mean to you? To your writing?
Any baggage attached to feminism is externally imposed, either by our culture’s dogged determination to stigmatize female independence and ambition, or by racist and transphobic women perpetuating oppression in feminism’s name. And there’s a third group, I suppose — the types who want to declare anything any woman does a “feminist” act, including Kellyanne Conway abetting a confessed sexual abuser in stripping abortion rights, tearing immigrant mothers from their children, and rolling back every single gain made by the feminist movement.
But feminism isn’t inherently fraught; it’s actually pretty straightforward. If you believe that women deserve the same rights and opportunities as men, but that the world is not currently a safe, equal, and just place for women, then you are a feminist. And I’d also argue that you have to live those values. Believing in equality while refusing to challenge inequality is functionally the same as complicity. Feminism isn’t a badge you earn. It’s something you do. Feminism fought for Kellyanne Conway and will continue to fight for her, regardless of how doggedly she abuses it. Because feminism isn’t a team — it’s an idea.
In my writing, I just try to hold the line as visibly, steadfastly, and compassionately as possible. So much of anti-feminism is propaganda, disinformation, gaslighting — trying to convince us (and, perhaps more significantly, bystanders) that what we perceive isn’t real, that we’re overreacting or somehow profiting from a victimhood of our own manufacturing. I think that’s a seductive idea for a lot of men, because the alternative is coming to terms with the fact that your gender has been complicit in some truly awful atrocities, and that the women you love are almost certainly harboring secrets that would break you. It’s easier to dismiss us, and go on with your life assuming that we feel what you feel and we experience what you experience. So I think it’s vital, in my work, to not bend. I will hold to the truth forever, and I will repeat myself as many times as it takes.
Here we are, two white women of privilege. 53 percent of us voted for Trump. You and I did not. But we have a crucial obligation here: to engage the world around us in conversation, in protest, in action. To put it broadly, and to face you with some impossible questions, how do we do that and how do we start?
1. Talk to other white people, especially other white women. Have difficult conversations. Do not leave that labor to people of color. That is our burden — or, more accurately, that is our opportunity to build a safer and more just world for our neighbors and our children. 2. Remember that you cannot and will not reinvent activism. There are many, many people who have already been fighting these battles for generations. They are the experts. The organizations are in place — they don’t need your big ideas, they need your money, time, and sweat. 3. Remember that a feminist movement that does not serve the most marginalized is not a feminist movement at all. Listen to women of color, trans women, disabled women, and sex workers. Better yet, follow them.
I was especially touched by this sentiment:
“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.”
I’m particularly interested, as a reader and as a woman looking to improve, in the ways in which we are learning to forward interpersonal connections between women, especially concerning intersectionality. How do you think books by women — of different races, sexual and gender identities, mental and physical abilities, and socioeconomic statuses — help to inspire empathy in the minds of others? How does idea-sharing change or enhance the ways in which we engage with one another?
I think personal narrative is an incredibly power empathy generator, which means it’s more important now than ever that we fight for diverse representation in our news and entertainment. Huge swaths of this country are deeply segregated, even in big cities. A lot of white people live in all-white towns. I remember when I went to college I met kids who had never met a Jewish person before. It’s easy to dehumanize groups of people if you never actually interact with them — all you have to fill that vacuum is the propaganda of opportunists, which is especially effective if you’re suffering and looking for a scapegoat you can step on. Instead, we must fill that vacuum with more and more truth, an unassailable citadel of truth, by publishing (and paying!) writers from diverse, marginalized, underrepresented backgrounds. Not everyone has the financial flexibility to get out of their town and physically leave their bubble, but literature has been a surrogate for travel for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
I laughed out loud — snorted embarrassingly, actually — at so many moments in this book. What kind of role does humor play in the conversations we have about feminism and fat-positivity?
I think if you can make a piece of writing funny you can get away with almost anything — you can get very dark, you can mock the very powerful, and you can trick people into eagerly consuming ideas that are normally very threatening. I always think of it as hiding an aspirin in your kid’s pudding cup: making challenging topics palatable by disguising them as entertainment. A lot of people became fans of mine when I was a film critic and mostly wrote fart jokes and love letters to John Goodman. Those people stuck with me when I moved into more overtly political, feminist writing because I’d already seduced them. They couldn’t just dismiss me as a humorless feminist, because they’d been laughing at my jokes for years. It was actually a really powerful switcheroo.
I at once both loved and was angered by this line: “So the subtext, when a thin person asks a fat person, ‘Where do you get your confidence?’ is, ‘You must be some sort of alien because if I looked like you, I would definitely throw myself into the sea.” I’ve been here before. It is a boring question. What part of us suffers when we question the confidences of other women? When we question the space that women take up?
We have to stop validating the hierarchy of bodies. We all lose.
One last question: which women writers inspire you?
Samantha Irby, Alexandra Petri, and Tamora Pierce.
