Book-It 'o9! Book #2
Jan. 22nd, 2009 07:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alivemagdoleneMore of the Fifty Books Challenge! This one took forever since it seemed there were about five books I've already read this month that I couldn't stop reading, but here it is. This one was fifty cents at Goodwill.
Title: Wacky Chicks : Life Lessons from Fearlessly Inappropriate and Fabulously Eccentric Women by Simon Doonan
Details: Copyright 2003, Simon & Schuster
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "Most of us know a wacky chick. She's a true nonconformist, a woman who dares to be different. On any ordinary day she might be found performing a citizen's arrest, running a concession stand at a swingers' convention, or wearing a tiara on top of a cowboy hat. Even when conservatively dressed, wacky chicks give themselves away with their fire and exuberance: their outrageous personalities make them as easy to spot as a flamingo prancing among pigeons. Once considered a rarity, this wild and wonderful species seems to be increasing its numbers. In Wacky Chicks, irreverent social commentator and humor writer Simon Doonan celebrates this growing phenomenon by introducing readers to a bracing cross section of today's most provocative and unconventional women. He asks them to reveal what it takes to be a wacky chick and how wacky-chickery can help women everywhere find creative fulfillment. Readers will learn everything from wacky-chick spiritualism (woo-woo chicks) to wacky-chick business sense (chicks with shticks). We will witness their lives, habitats, mating rituals, careers, and childbearing practices. There's even priceless advice on fashion, beauty, interior decorating, finding the right partner, and unleashing your feminist wacky chick without losing your femininity. Some of Doonan's wacky chicks you may already know -- Amy Sedaris, cocktail waitress turned creator and star of Comedy Central's Strangers with Candy, and her alter ego Piglet; Warhol muse and Key lime pie aficionado Brigid Berlin; and Susanne Bartsch, the woman who showed Madonna how to vogue. But most are supervixens you've never met, because, naturally, a wacky chick does not aspire to traditional fame and fortune. Included here are the life lessons of fashion designer turned park ranger Spider Fawke, the proud mother of thirty-eight lizards and a four-inch tarantula; slashed-spandex-wearing Isabel Garrett; hip hypnotist Jessica Porter; and a new age pixie named Kazuko. They are about as diverse a flock as you can imagine, but they share a common theme: all of these women are Belligerent, Resilient, Uninhibited, Naughty, Creative, and Hilarious (B.R.U.N.C.H. for short). In a word, they are wacky. A book that pays tribute to the wild and unstoppable female in each of us, Wacky Chicks is the ultimate guide to embracing your inner rebel. Mixing intimate and outrageous interview material with philosophical interludes, Simon Doonan brings you on a soul-searching journey that may leave you creating hats out of tinfoil or opening your own hot dog stand, infinitely self-assured and infinitely wacky."
Why I Wanted to Read It: See title. Also, there was a mention of Amy Sedaris!
How I Liked It: I reaaaaalllly wanted to like this book. Seriously. A book about nonconformist women having fun on their own terms and it even mentions the epically fabulous Amy Sedaris?! Unfortunately, it was not to be. Doonan is one of those authors that does well in magazines, not so much in a 243 page book. Doonan is selling himself as well in the book; a flamboyant, fashion-conscious, French peppering ex Brit who lives in New York City and serves as creative director of Barney's. In the prose, he's not a human being, he's a stereotype. Doonan is the sort of gay John Waters says "Makes me homophobic!". His persona (who he injects the book strongly with) feels disingenuous, a caricature of a caricature. He spouts the word faggot nonstop and manages to do the text equivalent of falling all over you. It's annoying. The footnotes are pretentious and his declarations about women in general are far closer to the gay male stereotypical misogyny than to praising of "fearlessly inappropriate and fabulously eccentric women". And that, like the rest of the stereotype, is tiring. If one overlooks the offensiveness of the stereotype and remembers (with effort) that Doonan is a man, not a cartoon, it makes the book all the more tiring, as I said, since he obviously had to rely on a caricature rather than his own personality.
David Sedaris (whom Doonan refers to in the book as "the famous faggot writer") spawned a genre in the '90s merely by telling stories from his life in his own amusing voice. Hacks across the world (gay, straight, what have you) suddenly decided to try the same formula for themselves. The problem being they aren't as witty as Sedaris and in books such as this one their "ME" overtones overpower the subjects of the book (whereas Sedaris is telling stories from his life, these writers are expected to provide information and insight into topics such as, say, "Wacky Chicks"). Doonan is another writer who's fallen victim to that syndrome.
This book in another, more deft hand could've been a classic and that's the shame of it.
Notable: From pages XXII to XXIII:
"By the time I hit my teens, I decided I wanted to be a woman. Not like my mum--- that would be too Norman Batesish and creepy. No, I wanted to be a dolly bird. It was during the 1960s. How totally fab it would be-- or so thought my cheery, wholesome teenage brain-- to iron my hair and wear top 'n' bottom lashes ala Twiggy, and to buy all my clothes at Mary Quant and Biba, and to subjugate myself to a member of the Rolling Stones. How pacey and mod! A gorgeous and stupid knock-kneed fashion model, that's me! Just like Pattie Boyd or Chrissie Shrimpton. I wouldn't eat much. I'd drink Pimms, giggle a lot and get shagged by Brian Jones. Pas mal.
I lost those inclinations when, in the late sixties, the dingbat dolly birds turned into earth-mother hippies. One look at those caftan-wearing, joint-rolling, tofu-stoganoff-baking Mama Cass lookalikes-- the female hippies did all the schelpping and housework-- and my transgenderish yearnings soured like the bong water. Trina and the other Ladies of the Canyon would have to stave off their munchies and thread their wampum beads without my complicity.
In the 1970s I finally became a woman, sort of. And so did every bloke. Glam rock arrived and turned us chaps, both gay and straight, into feather-boa-totin' poseurs. We upstaged any adjacent chicks: remember Angie Bowie? No? I'm not surprised. Nobody was looking at her while Ziggy Stardust was mincing about. Quel draggy era for women!"
Title: Wacky Chicks : Life Lessons from Fearlessly Inappropriate and Fabulously Eccentric Women by Simon Doonan
Details: Copyright 2003, Simon & Schuster
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "Most of us know a wacky chick. She's a true nonconformist, a woman who dares to be different. On any ordinary day she might be found performing a citizen's arrest, running a concession stand at a swingers' convention, or wearing a tiara on top of a cowboy hat. Even when conservatively dressed, wacky chicks give themselves away with their fire and exuberance: their outrageous personalities make them as easy to spot as a flamingo prancing among pigeons. Once considered a rarity, this wild and wonderful species seems to be increasing its numbers. In Wacky Chicks, irreverent social commentator and humor writer Simon Doonan celebrates this growing phenomenon by introducing readers to a bracing cross section of today's most provocative and unconventional women. He asks them to reveal what it takes to be a wacky chick and how wacky-chickery can help women everywhere find creative fulfillment. Readers will learn everything from wacky-chick spiritualism (woo-woo chicks) to wacky-chick business sense (chicks with shticks). We will witness their lives, habitats, mating rituals, careers, and childbearing practices. There's even priceless advice on fashion, beauty, interior decorating, finding the right partner, and unleashing your feminist wacky chick without losing your femininity. Some of Doonan's wacky chicks you may already know -- Amy Sedaris, cocktail waitress turned creator and star of Comedy Central's Strangers with Candy, and her alter ego Piglet; Warhol muse and Key lime pie aficionado Brigid Berlin; and Susanne Bartsch, the woman who showed Madonna how to vogue. But most are supervixens you've never met, because, naturally, a wacky chick does not aspire to traditional fame and fortune. Included here are the life lessons of fashion designer turned park ranger Spider Fawke, the proud mother of thirty-eight lizards and a four-inch tarantula; slashed-spandex-wearing Isabel Garrett; hip hypnotist Jessica Porter; and a new age pixie named Kazuko. They are about as diverse a flock as you can imagine, but they share a common theme: all of these women are Belligerent, Resilient, Uninhibited, Naughty, Creative, and Hilarious (B.R.U.N.C.H. for short). In a word, they are wacky. A book that pays tribute to the wild and unstoppable female in each of us, Wacky Chicks is the ultimate guide to embracing your inner rebel. Mixing intimate and outrageous interview material with philosophical interludes, Simon Doonan brings you on a soul-searching journey that may leave you creating hats out of tinfoil or opening your own hot dog stand, infinitely self-assured and infinitely wacky."
Why I Wanted to Read It: See title. Also, there was a mention of Amy Sedaris!
How I Liked It: I reaaaaalllly wanted to like this book. Seriously. A book about nonconformist women having fun on their own terms and it even mentions the epically fabulous Amy Sedaris?! Unfortunately, it was not to be. Doonan is one of those authors that does well in magazines, not so much in a 243 page book. Doonan is selling himself as well in the book; a flamboyant, fashion-conscious, French peppering ex Brit who lives in New York City and serves as creative director of Barney's. In the prose, he's not a human being, he's a stereotype. Doonan is the sort of gay John Waters says "Makes me homophobic!". His persona (who he injects the book strongly with) feels disingenuous, a caricature of a caricature. He spouts the word faggot nonstop and manages to do the text equivalent of falling all over you. It's annoying. The footnotes are pretentious and his declarations about women in general are far closer to the gay male stereotypical misogyny than to praising of "fearlessly inappropriate and fabulously eccentric women". And that, like the rest of the stereotype, is tiring. If one overlooks the offensiveness of the stereotype and remembers (with effort) that Doonan is a man, not a cartoon, it makes the book all the more tiring, as I said, since he obviously had to rely on a caricature rather than his own personality.
David Sedaris (whom Doonan refers to in the book as "the famous faggot writer") spawned a genre in the '90s merely by telling stories from his life in his own amusing voice. Hacks across the world (gay, straight, what have you) suddenly decided to try the same formula for themselves. The problem being they aren't as witty as Sedaris and in books such as this one their "ME" overtones overpower the subjects of the book (whereas Sedaris is telling stories from his life, these writers are expected to provide information and insight into topics such as, say, "Wacky Chicks"). Doonan is another writer who's fallen victim to that syndrome.
This book in another, more deft hand could've been a classic and that's the shame of it.
Notable: From pages XXII to XXIII:
"By the time I hit my teens, I decided I wanted to be a woman. Not like my mum--- that would be too Norman Batesish and creepy. No, I wanted to be a dolly bird. It was during the 1960s. How totally fab it would be-- or so thought my cheery, wholesome teenage brain-- to iron my hair and wear top 'n' bottom lashes ala Twiggy, and to buy all my clothes at Mary Quant and Biba, and to subjugate myself to a member of the Rolling Stones. How pacey and mod! A gorgeous and stupid knock-kneed fashion model, that's me! Just like Pattie Boyd or Chrissie Shrimpton. I wouldn't eat much. I'd drink Pimms, giggle a lot and get shagged by Brian Jones. Pas mal.
I lost those inclinations when, in the late sixties, the dingbat dolly birds turned into earth-mother hippies. One look at those caftan-wearing, joint-rolling, tofu-stoganoff-baking Mama Cass lookalikes-- the female hippies did all the schelpping and housework-- and my transgenderish yearnings soured like the bong water. Trina and the other Ladies of the Canyon would have to stave off their munchies and thread their wampum beads without my complicity.
In the 1970s I finally became a woman, sort of. And so did every bloke. Glam rock arrived and turned us chaps, both gay and straight, into feather-boa-totin' poseurs. We upstaged any adjacent chicks: remember Angie Bowie? No? I'm not surprised. Nobody was looking at her while Ziggy Stardust was mincing about. Quel draggy era for women!"
