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Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman
“In other words, only a man’s voice sounds like it tells important truths.”
Anne Helen Petersen • Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman
It’s one thing to argue that you belong—it’s another thing to actually believe it.
Anne Helen Petersen • Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman
But I was always cripplingly terrified of what people thought of me: my classmates, the boys I liked and even the ones I didn’t, random people on the street, the teachers whose approval I craved. That fear was so overwhelming that I allowed it to temper and otherwise silence the parts of myself that gave me joy.
Anne Helen Petersen • Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman
“Is anyone shocked?” Picoult tweeted. “Would love to see the NYT rave about authors who aren’t male literary darlings.” Weiner’s addition was a variation on the idea she’d been articulating for years—“When a man writes about family and feelings, it’s literature with a capital L, but when a woman considers the same subjects, it’s romance, or a beach
... See moreAnne Helen Petersen • Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman
As with trans people, the most socially acceptable way to be gay is for nothing, save the existence of your same-sex spouse, to betray your queerness.
Anne Helen Petersen • Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman
Clinton’s treatment suggested a much larger cultural ill, one that had less to do with the specifics of her personality and more to do with the enduring structures of patriarchy—structures that had bearing on more than just the woman standing on the stage asking you to vote for her. It was one thing to dislike Clinton. It was quite another to
... See moreAnne Helen Petersen • Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman
Each woman in this book is a workaholic and a perfectionist, in part because anything less than that amount of labor and precise attention to detail could be her downfall. Unruliness can be liberating, but within our current cultural climate, it is also endlessly exhausting.
Anne Helen Petersen • Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman
But after attending the reunion, and feeling none of the elitism or snobbery she’d expected, Weiner admitted that she might be mapping her own insecurity onto others: “The overall pleasant evening has led me to the painful realization that I’ve spent 15 years insisting that books like mine deserve a place on the shelf, and maybe I don’t entirely
... See moreAnne Helen Petersen • Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman
But so much of that amenability—that need to please, that lack of acting out—stemmed from a posture of fear.