“For heaven’s sake, what kind of question is that? Would you want to be friends with Humbert Humbert? Would you want to be friends with Mickey Sabbath? Saleem Sinai? Hamlet? Krapp? Oedipus? Oscar Wao? Antigone? Raskolnikov? Any of the characters in The Corrections? Any of the characters in Infinite Jest? Any of the characters in anything Pynchon has ever written? Or Martin Amis? Or Orhan Pamuk? Or Alice Munro, for that matter? If you’re reading to find friends, you’re in deep trouble.”
-Claire Messud, when asked if she would want to be friends with her character. Agreed 1000%. Weird, unlikable characters forever!
Posts Tagged: lady inspiration
Lady Inspiration: Joan Didion
“It all comes back. Perhaps it is difficult to see the value in having one’s self back in that kind of mood, but I do see it; I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.” – Joan Didion, On Keeping A Notebook (Go ahead! Read it online if you haven’t yet!)
Photograph by Nancy Ellison
Lady Inspiration: Linda Belcher from Bob’s Burgers
“Linda Belcher? But isn’t she a fictional character?” you might be asking me right now. Well, yes, she is, but open your mind! Fictional characters can be lady inspirations, too!
I recently discovered that I want to be Linda Belcher when I get older. You know what, why wait until I’m older? I want to be Linda Belcher right now. She is the coolest lady on TV because she’s a sassy mom, something I truly hope I can say about myself someday. I really do feel like I was meant to be the sassy mom of teenagers. Like, that’s when I’m going to hit my stride, you know?
She’s involved in her kids’ lives, but she’s not too involved. She still has her own interests (wine, dancing, competing with other moms in spaghetti fund raisers).
She also understands the importance of food, be it soft serve ice cream or a piece of cake. I like any woman who can really go to town on a dessert.
And she’s not afraid to let people know when she isn’t happy. Like when there’s a cow in the living room.
And, of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Linda’s voiced by the wonderful, hilarious, genius John Roberts, who brought us one of my favorite characters ever.
Bob’s Burgers is probably my favorite current TV show (even though I’m woefully behind). If you’re not watching it, you can watch a few episodes on Hulu (more if you have Hulu plus!) or catch up on the first season on Netflix.
I Just Want to Thank Lena Dunham for Being an Inspiration to Pear-Shaped Women Everywhere.
Lena Dunham’s acceptance of her body and her constant display of it makes me feel better about myself. And I don’t mean that in a vague or flip way. I mean that when I look at her, my brain literally thinks, “Oh, a person like me!” and I feel relieved. Lena Dunham has the body of a human being, not the body of someone who starves herself. Sometimes, I think we don’t even realize how thin the women are that we’re used to seeing. Lena’s said that she’s a size 8, which is not very big. That’s a completely average size. You can buy size 8 clothes in any store. And yet we’re being told by newspapers and magazines that she’s fat. There’s something really, deeply wrong with that.
A few weeks ago, people complained that Lena Dunham was showing off her lower body again. Lena Dunham, badass that she is, said:
“If Olivia Wilde had gone to a party in . . . little shorts, she might have been on a ‘weird dressed list’ or been told her outfit was cute. I don’t think a girl with tiny thighs would have received such no-pants attention. I think what it really was . . . ‘Why did you all make us look at your thighs?’ My response is, get used to it because I am going to live to be 100, and I am going to show my thighs every day till I die.”
She’s a spokesperson for us all, ladies, and I appreciate it. As body parts go, large thighs aren’t celebrated much. You know who likes women with huge boobs? Everyone. You know who likes women with large lower bodies? Robert Crumb. Thank you, Lena Dunham, for normalizing thighs. You keep doing you. I know that once I complained about how you never wear pants, but that wasn’t because I thought you should wear pants for modesty. I just didn’t understand why you weren’t worried someone would unexpectedly show up at the door (I still wonder that! I still wonder, Lena!).
I love Lena Dunham for repeatedly showing off her body, and for never accepting it when other people tell her she should be invisible. The whole idea that she should cover herself up because she has big thighs is bogus and offensive. We all deserve to be seen and to dress how we want, even if our thighs have “dimples” on them, as one article stated.
Lena Dunham: she speaks for those who have no voice. I’m talking about our legs, here. They can’t talk because they don’t have mouths, and…you know what, forget it.
Lady Inspiration: Maria Bamford (Again!)
The best cure for creative self-consciousness, creative jealousy, etc. from what I’ve read or what’s helped me — is creativity. So, I write 3 pages of nonsense a day, I’ll commit to a pal that I’m going to write 10 premises and then call them back, I’ll PAY somebody to just watch me practice … just so I can go through a whole bunch of stuff. Just do whatever it is and that seems to shut everything up. But I have a hard time too sometimes — I think everybody does.-Maria Bamford