The Bluestocking, vol 128: It's Like Rain, On Publication Day
Happy Friday!
No, wait... Happy Sunday night. I made a pact with myself that I would do as much promotion as I could for Difficult Women in the first month, to give it a flying start. Inevitably, I have caught a cold and fallen behind.
Anyway, all the hustling paid off because it's selling like loo roll. If you have mysteriously failed to buy a copy yet, they are available here. If you HAVE bought one, thank you - and would you please leave an Amazon review? And not one of those "this arrived late, one star" ones, either.
Helen
"I Brainwashed Myself With The Internet"
By February 2019, Judith had become unbearably anxious. The 28-year-old Pacific coast native’s due date had come and gone. Just two days shy of 45 weeks pregnant, her belly was stretched so far that it shined, her body was swollen, and nearly everything — from her toes to her hair — ached.
For women who haven’t gone into labor by 42 weeks, just about every medical and birth professional recommends induction — a jump-start to labor from medicines that ripen the cervix or contract the uterus. But Judith, an artist and freethinker who believes in “all that hippy jazz,” had a different kind of birth plan — one that dismissed medical recommendations and relied on nature and intuition, that rejected a sterile hospital for a warm pool in her own home and that avoided doctors and midwives. Instead, Judith wanted to be with only her husband and her closest friend, a plan known as freebirth, or unassisted birth, by the tiny subculture of women who practice it.
This story is unbearable. It also contains this astonishing statistic: "A woman in America today is 50 percent more likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth than her mother was."
What Happens After You're Cancelled
I was folding laundry with my partner one day when I looked up at him and said, “Do you think they’d be happy if I did kill myself?”
He looked at me, and took a long breath, and said, “No.”
“You’re right,” I said, “I know it. Nothing makes them happy.”
Taylor Lorenz, a staff writer at the New York Times told The Stranger: “In internet culture, being canceled is only good for your career. It usually results in going viral, which is default good in today’s broken world.”
I suppose it seems this way because you only see the people who survived it, who stayed in the public mind or their jobs. The rest of us, we cease, unpersoned and exiled. We are not in the observational data set, we are never spoken of when people talk about this mode of human life. To this day, as many articles as the New York Times has published about the phenomenon, never once has anyone mentioned my name.
One day I will tell the story of what it's like to tour a feminist book in 2020, but for now it's too stressful. This piece by Quinn Norton will serve as a placeholder.
My Grandmother's Sadness
Jacques, the brother I never met, was arrested in 1942 and sent to Pithiviers, a French concentration camp. He also posted my grandmother memorabilia to keep her updated, in this case, photos of himself and his fellow prisoners. Incredibly, he was allowed out for a day to visit his newborn daughter. Henri and Alex met him by his wife’s bed and begged him to go into hiding, saying they would help him. But Jacques refused, because he had given his word to the prison guards. So he went back and soon after was shipped out – on the same train as Irène Némirovsky, author of Suite Française – to Auschwitz, where he was killed.
Hadley Freeman's book is out, too! I loved House of Glass and this story, about her great-uncle Jacques, is just jaw-dropping.
Was The Oldest Person Who Ever Lived A Fraud?
People in France remember the summer of 1997 for the deaths of Princess Diana, Mother Teresa, and Jeanne Calment. The first became a household name by marrying into royalty; the second, by caring for the world’s sick and poor. Jeanne Calment, however, was an accidental icon, her celebrity the result of a form of passivity. For a hundred and twenty-two years, five months, and fourteen days, Calment managed not to die.
Wonderful writing from Lauren Collins.
Replaying My Shame
I am never allowed to forget that this moment existed for long. It seems that whenever I’m about to, it pops back up: A new acquaintance — a nurse about to draw blood, or a fellow parent at the playground — will narrate it to me from memory as they piece together why it is I look familiar. An interviewer will use it to introduce me to an audience as I sit there waiting for them to mention that I’ve written books. It’s hard to quantify how many people have watched the clip, pageviews being the fudgable metric they are, but one version on YouTube has 3 million views and counting. Just based on initial viewership of the live show, it’s the largest audience I have ever reached simultaneously in my entire career, and in all likelihood it will remain so.
Hard relate.
Quick Links
"The boy with the most beautiful name in Hollywood was once told by an agent to change it to Lenny Williams." Love this 1995 profile of Leonardo DiCaprio (NYT). Oh, the access!
"Recently I came to understand that my unmanageable inbox was a direct result of the way I composed my own messages. This realization changed my life: Bad email begets bad email. The only way to break the cycle is to send better emails in the first place." Preach.
All those studies on depression medication which use mice . . . ever wondered how you know a mouse is less depressed? Turns out neither do scientists. They've been using "how long will they swim to stop themselves drowning" as a proxy.
"The Hot Mess is more of a persona than a personality, less a projection of “flawed human being who tries her best and often succeeds” than the broadcasted shrug of “that 10th house in Capricorn was a lucky break, I guess.” Her achievements aren’t accidents, but she doesn’t want you to see how much she cares." This is SUCH a temptation for high-flying women. Don't dislike me! I'm actually a mess! Resisting Hot Mess Syndrome was one of the reasons I was enthusiastic about Elizabeth Warren, before her mysterious handbrake turn into dead-end identity politics.
See you next time! Seriously, buy my book.