I found this amazing drawing, uncredited, on Pinterest, but I recognized the style and knew it was by Summer Pierre (an amazing artist/writer who I love!):
If you’re a woman with an English degree (i.e., me), you probably love Sylvia Plath. I used to write long, overdramatic journal entries and quote her poems to describe relationships that ultimately meant nothing. Such is life! She’s great, I love her, and everything she wrote was golden. What I like best about Sylvia is that she’s very female. I’ve written before about a type of aggressive femininity that tends to appeal only to women, and that’s what Sylvia has. It’s something I also see in artists as disparate as Dolly Parton and Fiona Apple. These are women who make their femaleness the center of their work, but not necessarily in a way that appeals to the male gaze.
Here’s a quote from Sylvia herself that describes the writing process perfectly:
(If I knew where this came from, I’d tell you)
hey, i’m a lady with an english degree whose never read any sylvia plath, so the question is, who let me out of college???
ps
that quote explains why i don’t journal more. i never feel like i write well enough to capture anything accurately. it’s all ‘so this happened, and it was funny. haha.’ one more thing to practice i guess, right?
well, obviously you have to go back to college, jordan! sorry!
I feel about “The Bell Jar” the way you feel about “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.” That is the only way I can explain my love of Sylvia Plath.