I first heard of Lindy West on Jezebel where I was a regular reader and infrequent commenter. She was always brassy and direct and had a very clear and distinct writing voice. She wrote about difficult and controversial subjects with a deft hand that said f*ck the trolls. Since Lindy left Jezebel I’d occasionally hear about her–an article about her wedding with a picture of her amazing dress, or an episode of This American Life where she confronted one of her worst trolls. I love reading […]
Rest Well, And Dream of Large Women
In case you haven’t encountered her on the internet, Lindy West is a writer and comedian who battles trolls–the kind that dwell on Twitter instead of beneath bridges. She’s also an audaciously loud, unapologetically fat woman in a world that prefers its women to be quiet and thin. I identified with a lot of what West wrote about in Shrill. Her lifelong struggle with body image issues, her journey to find her voice as a writer, and–most recently–her incredible screw-up of a freelance project. Today, […]
This one made me think
Shrill is a series of essays/memoir about being a big, bold woman in a world that demands that we be small, quiet and perfect. Some chapters cover cultural issues from a personal perspective – the disrespect for and devaluing of non-skinny people, the repulsive comedy of rape culture, and the horror of abuse from internet trolls. And some chapters are straight-up memoir, sharing the stories of the author’s life. One of the more fascinating stories she shares is how she took on a public war […]
More Like Notes from an Opinionated Woman…
Maisie Williams got some press at the beginning of the year for the following quote”I also feel like we should stop calling feminists ‘feminists’ and just start calling people who aren’t feminist ‘sexist’ — and then everyone else is just a human. You are either a normal person or a sexist. People get a label when they’re bad.” I feel like I fall into Maisie’s definition of a feminist rather than Lindy West’s more outspoken advocating for the female cause. I didn’t know who West was prior to Shrill (although […]
We’re all building our world, right now, in real time. Let’s build it better.
I first heard of Lindy West when she did a segment for This American Life where she confronted a troll who had been so hateful as to create a fake account with her recently deceased father’s information just to hurl abuse at her. She wrote about how much it hurt and the troll actually apologized and took down the site. Later he was willing to be interviewed by her and talk about his motivations. It’s an extraordinary moment in journalism. I follow her on twitter […]
I came for discussions of Lady Kluck. I stayed for discussions of internet bullying.
I’ve long been a fan of Lindy West’s irreverent and sharply funny style. I loved reading her film reviews when she was still with The Stranger (my favorite review is of Sex and the City 2, which I absolutely refused to go see) and Jezebel (hello, scathing indictment of Love, Actually, which is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad movie). I was excited to see her book released this year, and her passage on Lady Kluck in the first chapter made me cackle as […]