Feminist Girl in Spain
“There is nothing gutsier to me than a person announcing that their story is one that deserves to be told, especially if that person is a woman.” –Lena Dunham, Not That Kind of Girl
Today my story looks like this: I heard “Going Down For Real” by Flo Rida in my favorite café over breakfast and danced a little in my chair as I ate my toasted bread with olive oil. (That song will never not be awesome, especially in Spanish cafes.) I got caught in a rainstorm on my way to class and my little black umbrella almost turned inside out. When I got home with wet shoes and tried to plug in my computer, my charger died. I tracked down an Apple store nearby and almost cried at how much my new cargador cost. I got home and Skyped my mom, Skyped Julie. Actually cried. Laughed a lot more and then ate some chocolate. And now I’m here.
Lena Dunham has been in my head a lot lately. I’ve been ripping through her new memoir even faster than I ripped through Season 3 of House of Cards. (Only 13 episodes? What the fuck, Netflix?) If you don’t know who Lena Dunham is and you’re into genius character development/graphic nudity, you should check out her HBO show Girls. Her writing is honest, irreverent, witty, and graphically sexual. Lots of what she has to say makes me uncomfortable. Lots of what she has to say makes me think.
Take the term “girl crush,” for example. I’ve used those words in casual conversation too many times to count, mostly in association with Emma Watson/Emma Stone/Jennifer Lawrence, aka the holy trifecta. I’ve watched that Jenna Marbles video a lot of times. (“I don’t know if I want to be you or be on you!”) Here’s what Lena has to say on the topic:
“I find the term ‘girl crush’ slightly homophobic, as if I need to make it clear that my crush on another woman is not at all sexual, but rather, mild and adorable, much like…a girl.”
Whoa. The nod to homophobia felt accurate, but it was the bigger context of Lena’s observation that struck me most. Mild and adorable. So much was wrapped up in those two words. I had to put the book down for a second.
Girls are expected to be mild and adorable. If we’re not, we get called names. Bossy. Bitch. Slut. How much of my life has been shaped by the expectation of me to be inoffensive, like a girl? How many times have I apologized for asking a question in class? How many times have I swallowed my anger instead of lashing out for fear of looking “crazy”? (If you’re looking for a quick and easy way to discount a girl’s rationale and intellect, just call her crazy the next time she angry-cries.)
Here, I’d like to include a note from Julie (via Microsoft Word bubble comment on an early draft of this post): “It’d be totally cool if you could add another sentence here about how dumb it is that when we’re talking about something and we’re impassioned or upset and someone calls us crazy, we feel crazy. Like crawl-under-a-rock-never-speak-in-public-again-stupid. And all you have to do is tell us to calm down and whatever it was we were saying, no matter how cool or important or right or wrong, it vanishes. It doesn’t matter anymore because we were just being crazy.” She put it way better than I could.
Just now I noticed my voice go up an octave as I thanked my host mom for dinner. Mild and adorable. Do my guy friends have a “thank you” voice? Do they hide their feelings so people don’t accuse them of being crazy? I’m honestly not sure.
The depth of the things I’ve never noticed is hard to wrap my head around. I still don’t always know what to believe or think, but when I find a writer that makes my world feel like it’s expanding and shrinking at the same time and forces me to question my place in it, I feel the need to write about her on the Internet.
So Lena Dunham has been in my head, and she has me thinking about my own story, which might just be the most powerful thing an author can do. I’ve always felt like I have a critically-acclaimed memoir living in me somewhere. (I have this little daydream where Julie and I write a witty nonfiction book together and build a Hannah & Julie empire, complete with fancy pens, signature scents, and a movie deal featuring all three members of the holy trifecta.) But there are a few things about memoir-writing that make me a little nervous.
Names. In nonfiction, changing a character’s name and certain physical characteristics is usually enough to avoid accusations of being a slanderer or a total asshole. It’s not that I have bad stuff to say about a lot of people, but I do have a lot of stuff to say about a lot of people. If I give my friend Pete a mustache and name him Jack, everyone I know is still going to know that it’s fucking Pete. Not sure I’m ready for that kind of transparency.
Interesting-ness. Of course by the time I get around to writing my memoir I’ll have published a few (beloved, imaginative, wildly successful) novels and maybe pushed out a kid or two, but I’m really not sure if I’ll ever do anything memoir-worthy. I don’t plan on hiking the Appalachian Trail by myself or getting pinned by a rock and having to cut off my own arm to survive. I’m way too anxious to try any hard drugs, so the Strung Out Druggie Turned Successful Lawyer/Author/Surgeon story isn’t too likely. I’m not saying I need a gimmick, but I’m probably going to have to be pretty witty to compete with all those other ones.
Boys. Taking the fear of transparency a bit further, I sometimes wonder what would happen when it came time to write the chapters about boys. I’ve only officially dated one—we were fourteen, we made pizza together once—but I have some great ass stories to tell. From a storytelling perspective, the only thing more interesting than dating someone is not actually dating someone. More confusion, more suspense, more hang-outs that you think might be dates but really turn out to be platonic viewings of Dutch movies about trolls. The idea of one of my ex-flings picking up my future memoir and finding himself in some chapter—with a fake mustache, probably—makes me just a little bit nauseous.
Maybe I’ll get my memoir book-deal one day, maybe I won’t. But I think it’s important to know that I have a story to tell, even if it’s just to myself.
I know I wandered a bit from the #hannahandjulieabroad theme this week, but don’t worry, there’s plenty more to come. In the meantime, feel free to enjoy this historical re-enactment of bulls and matadors fighting in La Plaza de Toros in Ronda, Spain.
No bulls were harmed in the making of this montage.
