All the Sneaky Ones Part 3

Time for another female author! Today’s sneaky book review is Bossypants, by Tina Fey.

I have been wanting to read this book for a while, based on Sally’s review of it. When I visited the lovely Erin the other day, she was talking about it and ended up loaning it to me. “I told Caitlin she could borrow it, but you’re a quick reader, so you can have it,” Ez said. Challenge accepted! I thought. I finished it last night, a few days shy of two weeks after she gave it to me. Not too bad, considering it’s pretty long and I started uni this week.

I liked Bossypants. I don’t think everyone should read it, and I didn’t find it as funny as Sally said it was. Maybe it’s because she’s American and the humour is slightly different. It was funny, don’t get me wrong, but it just wasn’t side-splittingly funny.

Ez warned me the writing wasn’t that good, and I found her assessment to be true. It wasn’t up to the literary style I’m used to reading. I think it’s because she’s a script-writer, but it seemed more like a written-down speech rather than a piece of writing that embraced the book-form. I really can’t articulate it any better than that. I think I’m going to go away and think more about what I mean by this, because right now I have no idea.

Tina Fey identifies as a feminist, but I think she has the problem feminists of her class and race have been accused of since they started protesting back at the turn of the 18^th/19^th century: “women’s equality” for her means “women like me who struggle with the same issues as me”. I don’t know if I’m being unfair on Fey, or hypocritical because my feminism probably has the same fault, but it’s just the impression that I get. She is also deeply entrenched in the American capitalist cultural model. And her references to feminism weren’t really supported by any kind of theoretical background.

Let me backtrack a bit. Tina Fey does make reference to some intersectional class and race issues, briefly. And also, Bossypants is not a feminist text; it’s the memoir of a woman, who counts feminism as a part of her identity.

If I met Tina Fey, would I like her (based on her book)? I don’t know. I think I would enjoy talking to her. She’s ambitious and awkward and a feminist, all traits that I share. But there were certain parts of the book that I felt uncomfortable with. Like when she kind of screwed over a co-worker. There are other examples but I can’t remember them.

I’ve just figured out what it is that makes me uncomfortable. Fey just seemed to not want to fight for institutional change. Instead of protesting at sexist attitudes in the entertainment industry, she recommends that women get jobs in the area and hire diverse women. When bemoaning that because she works long hours she can’t see her daughter as much as she wants, she doesn’t suggest a change to workplace structure, but rather says she just has to suck it up because people rely on her for their jobs, and there are positives and negatives to both being a working mother and being a stay-at-home ‘Mom’.

I enjoyed Bossypants. It was light and entertaining reading. But I don’t think everyone should read it.