Book Review/Heather Seggel

Too Much, Never Enough

I’ve definitely done it, and there’s a chance you have, too—someone’s talking about a woman they admire, and you counter with, “Yeah, but she’s just too [fill in the blank] for me.” I found Hillary too hawkish, though I still voted for her. Anne Helen Petersen wrote a pointed examination of women we view as “too”...something back in 2017, when we heard plenty about all the things Hillary Clinton was too much of: Too masculine, too phony, too pants-suity. In “Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman” (Plume/Penguin), Petersen talks about Clinton in terms of being too “shrill,” an insult that’s damning in part for having very little clear meaning beyond, “I can hear her and I don’t like it.” The book’s introduction describes shock at the election results, presumed to be a slam dunk, immediately followed by an editor apologetically demanding she write about it; she dove in with a piece exploring why America hates women.

Petersen, who has a Ph.D. in media studies, layers that question over several women who most of us will recognize, each accused in popular culture of being too much in some way or other. Kim Kardashian, famous worldwide for reasons that still escape my comprehension, saw the dark side of fame when she was open about her pregnancy and its complications. She was not just dewy photo shoots and accolades, but swollen feet and morning sickness; authentically pregnant, but Too Pregnant for many. (Kardashian was recently eclipsed in this regard by comedian Amy Schumer, who made her complicated pregnancy the stuff of a Netflix special.) Rapper Nicki Minaj may run her career like a top-line business, but she can’t escape accusations of being “too slutty” for using her body in her work; male rappers who exploit their dancers and tout their conquests are not subjected to the same judgement or scrutiny.

Love her or not, Madonna has had a long career and made an indelible impression on pop music. Her fatal mistake? Continuing to exist. Despite doing workouts that could hospitalize a Navy SEAL and eating thimble-sized meals, tabloid scrutiny of any sign of aging and fans going in for the kill by mocking her hands, her arms, her desire to be seen as sexual despite not being 24, have in some ways censored her self-expression. She started wearing gloves in public, and stunts like kissing Drake onstage are seen more as a vampire’s bid for relevance than sincere performance. Too old! Nevertheless, she persists.

While this is a deeply frustrating look at double standards, there’s a lot of fun to be had while reading. “Broad City”’s Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer are tagged as “too gross”; the case against them includes a lot of explicit talk about sex toys and an episode of the show dedicated to carrying weed in a particularly intimate bodily nook. If you’ve seen the show, though, you know it’s all in service to a particular vision of life in New York City and to female friendship, with its secret languages and shared victories. The criticism seems at least in part to be fueled by resentment at not getting the joke, or feeling left out.

In each case, whether it’s Serena Williams being “too strong,” Melissa McCarthy “too fat,” or Lena Dunham “too naked,” Petersen looks at the ways the accused fight back against these stereotypes, and also the ways they acquiesce to them; Madge did put on those gloves to hide her liver spots, after all. McCarthy is a comic genius whose best work is often vulgar and crude, but she attributes those bits to a kind of fugue state where she’s barely aware of it happening. She has tried to choose roles where her weight is not a central issue, but starred in the sitcom “Mike and Molly,” where fat jokes were abundant.

So, why do we care? Especially about rich and famous people? In this case because they’re a template for the ways all women can be silenced or discounted. “Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud” narrowly predated the #MeToo movement, and the backlash that followed in its wake. We continue to see women discredited and doubted, often on no more pretext than “her voice is weird.” Witness the attempts by the political establishment to take down some of the newly elected members of the House of Representatives; they’re landing some blows but ultimately failing because, as comic and actor Rhea Butcher recently explained on an episode of the Fake the Nation podcast, they can’t go all in and “Hillary” half a dozen different women at once. And that’s the key: If women uphold one another, no matter how fat or slutty or strong or loud we are, we are a true force to be reckoned with. It’s when we turn on our own that we lose vital ground.

Heather Seggel is a writer living in Northern California. Email heatherlseggel@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, June 1, 2019

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