Big Books & The Body Image Babadook
2/14/20 - American Dirt. Plus, our 90s fashion trauma.
Transcript below.
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CREDITS
Producer: Gina Delvac
Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn
Composer: Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.
Associate Producer: Jordan Bailey
Visual Creative Director: Kenesha Sneed
Merch Director: Caroline Knowles
Editorial Assistant: Laura Bertocci
Design Assistant: Brijae Morris
Ad sales: Midroll
LINKS
American Dirt, explained
Brandon Taylor on writing about people who don't look like you
Against italicizing "foreign" words
Books we’re reading in lieu of American Dirt:
Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe
Mean by Myriam Gurba
Girl by Edna O’Brien
Real Life by Brandon Taylor
TRANSCRIPT: BIG BOOKS AND THE BODY IMAGE BABADOOK
[Ads]
(0:50)
Aminatou: Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend.
Ann: A podcast for long-distance besties everywhere.
Aminatou: She's Ann Friedman.
Ann: She is Aminatou Sow. On today's agenda we are talking about American dirt, who the big literary machine backs and who it doesn't back, and also our weird '90s fashion trauma.
[Theme Song]
(1:35)
Aminatou: Whew, look at that, what is it, week 17 of the year? Week 10? Week 5? We're still doing it.
Ann: Week 666.
Aminatou: I know, what week is it? Is it still February?
Ann: I am emotionally still in January. This whole year is January for me. [Laughs] I don't really know what is time.
Aminatou: You know, the problem is that January is 700 days and then the rest of the winter just kind of flies by.
Ann: Right. I mean technically we are like halfway through February, like high consumerist holiday Valentine's Day is upon us and that is the halfway point of this month. We are there.
Aminatou: [Laughs]
Ann: Definitively.
Aminatou: This is adult life, just counting down the calendar until you die. Okay, how are you doing over there?
Ann: You know, counting down the calendar until I die. I'm fine over here. [Laughter] Oh.
Aminatou: Are you reading any fun books lately?
Ann: Oh man. I mean I am reading the Patrick Radden Keefe Say Nothing book which is about -- it is sort of like a tick-tock reported historical account of the troubles in Northern Ireland. It is kind of intense. Interspersing.
Aminatou: Love the troubles. Love the troubles. It's a favorite historical period of mine, thank you.
Ann: I am interspersing it with a gift that a friend recently got me which is the Illustrated Greek Myths. So like a child after I read my stories of sectarian violence and intense cultural conflict I open up the Illustrated Greek Myths and I read one illustrated story and put myself to bed like a toddler.
Aminatou: Oh my gosh, I love this. I thought you were going to say your friend gave you the new novel American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins.
Ann: Oh my god, that was an artful, artful transition. I'm applauding you from over here.
Aminatou: Da-dun!
Ann: Are you reading -- are you reading seminal American novel American Dirt?
Aminatou: Ann you know that fiction is hard for me so I am likely not reading American Dirt. [Laughs] But I have to say I was in a bookstore recently, a bookstore that I really like and I go to, and all of the discarded promo materials for American Dirt were all in a pile in a corner somewhere and I was like wow, this is like when you thought you were going to have a party and the surprise got ruined, you know? So just to catch everyone up American Dirt is a novel by Jeanine Cummins that was a -- you know, I believe announced as an Oprah Book Club pick, like the latest Oprah Book Club pick.
(4:10)
Ann: Indeed. And also was a novel that was even I believe prior to Oprah choosing it it received a lot of attention because she received a rather large advance. The buzz machine, for lack of a better word, there was buzz even before there was Oprah.
Aminatou: Right. Man, this is actually a very good book industry scam to stay on because it's a scam in almost every industry right? If you invest a lot in something then you are invested in it being a thing. This is how the book sausage machine gets made. Like I wonder when the last time was that a book club picked a book that received a very small advance, you know? That no one knew and then they just kind of found it and I was like that probably has never happened.
Ann: Right. That a book published by a small independent publisher was a success that made the best-seller list and was picked by all these big booksellers. It's like no, no, the machine is alive and well and much like all the complaints that we have about political parties or movie-making where certain winners are kind of pre-ordained, the same thing applies to big publishing. Shocker, shocker, shocker.
Aminatou: Wow. So you mean organic success does not exist? Okay. Got it.
Ann: Right. So the story is a lot of people were invested in American Dirt. The machine was very much behind it. I think that's an important thing to note. Should we talk about the content of this novel?
Aminatou: Well, okay. So the book is -- it's the fictional story of a Mexican mother and her son and their journey to the border after a cartel murders the rest of their family.
Ann: Right, they're living in Mexico when the book opens correct?
Aminatou: Right. I believe that's the headline of this book. And I -- man, sorry, I'm still stuck at the machine working because I'm like yeah, now we're going to tell you everywhere that you can be a little pebble of sand that grinds the machine down to a halt.
Ann: [Laughs]
(6:15)
Aminatou: And so I find that I'm always on the outside of this conversation because big book Twitter is not a Twitter I engage in. Fiction is not a Twitter I engage in either. But this, you know, this reached me on my various channels so I feel like a lot of feelings were had. So the book has obviously been the subject of a lot of controversy and criticism now after those early readers started reading about it. So people have called it a stereotype. People have said that it was appropriated. The New York Times book review for it is iconic, not because it actually engages with whether the book is cultural appropriation or whether it's a stereotype but because it actually engages with whether the book is good or not. It's like the reviewer found that the writing was bad. There are indictments on many levels to be had here.
Ann: Right. If this book has made it onto your radar it's probably been accompanied by a word like controversy or like dust-up or something like that right? About if you are not deep in literary Twitter which I am not either like someone . . . I definitely heard about this from a friend. As it was becoming more of a conversation, I believe the day that the New York Times review came out and the day that the writer Myriam Gurba published her review of it as well.
And so anyway this book, what the -- I'm air quoting here -- "controversy" is about is the fact that the woman who wrote this book, who writes in the introductory or the end materials, I forget which, about how many years she researched this book and about how she identifies as white and I believe she has a Latina grandparent.
Aminatou: Well let's get into that.
Ann: Right.
(7:55)
Aminatou: Because that's an interesting kind of thing right?
Ann: Which is mentioned often in descriptions of her race.
Aminatou: Right. So the accusation is the book is doing brown face, LOL, if that's a thing you can be accused of I guess.
Ann: Or and also I wouldn't say necessarily just brown face but perpetuating some harmful stereotypes about Mexico, about people who choose to immigrate, about places that are not the United States of America that are on this continent too. I think brown face is definitely a part of it but then there is also this kind of larger issue of representation and how this author is representing a pretty broad and diverse set of people and places.
Aminatou: Right. And the thing about this, the first thing people argue about with things like this or how this conversation always reaches me, is people will say like "Well can white people never write about blah, blah, blah? Can straight people never write about gay people?" You know, there's always like a thing. It turns out that if you're someone with privilege you feel very aggrieved about what stories you can or cannot tell. And I find usually that that line of questioning is very disingenuous because it's not about what you technically as a person of privilege can do. It really is the reality of who has the privilege to stand in your shoes, right? And do this. It's interesting because the conversation about this book for me happened after I read Edna O'Brien's book Girl. Edna O'Brien I believe is Irish. She's . . .
Ann: She is. Irish, yeah. [Laughs]
Aminatou: So I read this book written by an Irish woman where the narrator is a girl that lives in Central Northern Nigeria and the story is around Boko Haram like terrorism. And it was so well-done. It's one of the best fictions I've ever read. A friend gave it to me to read and it really -- it was so the thing that I needed to read. Then I was like oh, the writer is like none of these things. And look at that, the story did not feel exploitative. It didn't feel bad. There was no controversy around does she get to tell the story or not? And I was like well maybe the first bar of entry into this like can you do this thing, like tell a story that's not your story, is maybe it should just be good.
(10:05)
Ann: Right. And I think often when people criticize a work by a white-identifying writer about someone who is not white or a work by a writer with more social privilege about anyone who does not share that privilege the critique is often what, no one white can write from another perspective? And I think actually anyone can write whatever the hell they want. It's just that everyone else is allowed to evaluate whether it's compelling and successful and actually a good piece of writing. And so your point about the first metric being "Is this good?" is yeah, no one is saying this shouldn't have been published or read at all. The question is is it working? That is a reviewer's job and a critic and a reader.
Aminatou: Is it working? Did you succeed in doing the thing that you're doing? And also how is it making people feel? I think I obviously do not plan on reading American Dirt so that's someone else's job. But I think in this era where everyone is challenging whatever they think political correctness is or talking about cancel culture or not and things that I don't believe exist I find it really dismaying that when someone tells you that you have hurt them or that you are harming them your response can be "But I did a lot of research" or "I wrote a really good book about it." You know what I mean? I'm just like what are you talking about? People are actively describing how they are hurt from something that you have done and how you are not representing them and how you're actually probably perpetrating a lot of stereotypes and harm in something that you thought you did really well. And your immediate response is to defend yourself. Like that's kind of an eye-popping, eye-opening moment for me. I truly do not understand that impulse.
(11:50)
Ann: Yeah. There's a great essay written by Brandon Taylor who also has a novel that's out right now that is definitely where you're not -- the money you're not spending on American Dirt should go to his novel Real Life.
Aminatou: Yes, Real Life. Whew.
Ann: But he wrote something about this that as with all things related to discussion of privilege so often it defaults to "Hey, why can't the person with more privilege write this? Isn't it sad that they are hamstrung?" And in fact I want to read this little excerpt of his essay about writing across identity lines. So he writes "I think that the trauma that marginalized people feel when they read problematic stories about themselves is real. I think watching an author strip away your humanity or flatten the complexities of your life or your experience into a couple of sentences meant to prop a secondary character is an awful thing, but I do not think the author sets out to do that. I think that we must be able to hold two things in our mind at the same time: we must be able to honor the trauma that marginalized people feel when a story does violence to them and we must also be able to discern the cause of the story's failure." And I'm just like that really summarizes for me the fact that it kind of doesn't matter that Jeanine Cummins didn't set out to write a book that made people who are of Mexican descent or who have a history of immigration or who have any Latinx identity or anyone who read this book and felt bad, she did not set out to make them feel bad and yet still a really big problem.
Aminatou: Right. It's also been interesting to see how all of this, you know, how the machine also is reacting to this right? The book is an Oprah Book Club pick. The book is in the New York Times' book review section. Another author, Lauren Groff, gave the book I would say an ambivalent but leaning towards positive review and that person was white, the person who gave this review. And so just seeing how everyone is reacting also informs how the people on the sidelines react.
And so the publisher comes out and is very, you know, puts their foot down and it's like we stand by our author, blah, blah, blah, we're doing this whole thing, because obviously they have a huge financial interest to protect. And as someone who used to work in PR I love to read crisis PR statements because every time I see them I just shake my head and I'm like you are not paying enough money for this bad advice that you're receiving. This is all bad. But anyway again because for me it's all about people telling you that you have done harm and violence to them and how do you respond to it? And every response that I saw from this was very inadequate. And then we move into the phase of the thing where the publisher decides that are pulling the author off of book tour because of violent threats that they have received. And this is where I -- like the rage started burning in me because the threats are unidentified and the way that they are really phrasing it is like oh, people were mean to our author on Twitter and critique is the same as violence. Not like someone has actually threatened to come blow up a building she was in.
(14:45)
And to be clear I'm not condoning any kind of -- I don't think any kind of violent response is appropriate. What I'm questioning is whether the violence that they said was there was in fact there and there's no evidence to that.
Ann: Right. I mean we don't know. Frankly I don't know what's in Jeanine Cummins' inbox or whatever. What I do know is that it seems pretty obvious that with everything we know about the, as you say, the machine getting behind this book, that they sort of made a calculation that it is better to not have people show up and ask these really difficult questions to her place or potentially even protest her book events.
Aminatou: Mm-hmm.
Ann: It is better to avoid that altogether than it is to go out on tour. That's what I feel like we really know about this. And it's also worth noting that Myriam Gurba who I mentioned wrote one of the initial, very full-throated critiques of this book, and you should also read Myriam Gurba's book Mean, it's excellent. Anyway, Myriam Gurba has also been on the receiving end of a lot of very violent threats. And I think that it's not to say that I -- like I say I don't know what is actually happening in the lived reality of Jeanine Cummins' life but I do know that Myriam has been very open about what she has received for speaking out about how this book is hurtful and does not align with her own lived experience. So yeah.
(16:10)
Aminatou: Right. But the reason I bring it up is for exactly this point, right? Of who has the privilege of being protected by institutions? And so when the institution is who was telling you oh, our author is threatened and blah, blah, blah, and there is no transparency around it, all we are seeing is what we are seeing with our own eyes and it just seems very disingenuous then to leave people with less power kind of hanging in the wind. There are so many other writers who are subject to threats and to violence just for speaking out their opinions every day and I don't see publishers rallying around them to protect them.
Ann: Right. Well I don't see them rallying around those writers to give them very lucrative book deals in the first place. Like, you know . . .
Aminatou: Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
Ann: Yeah. I mean it's not even about supporting them on the back end; it's about really what's going on here? Do I care? Like Jeanine Cummins can write whatever novel she wants. Fine. Where I start to get upset is what is the system backing? Whose story about what is being deemed worthy of being consumed or being promoted on a widespread level? And I think that this is one of those stories where the audience for this book or the perceived audience seems to be to be pretty centered in like a white, North American, upper middle class sort of oh, this is far from my personal and familial lived experience. The audience -- it's less about does the author have the write to write about this topic. For me it's more about where is the lens and who is really the implied reader of this?
(17:50)
Because one of the things that Myriam Gurba had to say in her critique is the main character in this book seems continually shocked by like how awful her own country is day-to-day and that is much more of an impression that someone who is not familiar with the dynamics written about in this book might feel. It's more of a . . . you know, I think Myriam uses the phrase "Through the eyes of a pearl-clutching American tourist." Like not through the eyes of someone who is actually close to and invested, you know, beyond stereotype.
Aminatou: Wow. So maybe the question is not do you have the right, it's do you have the range?
Ann: Do you have the range and the resources? Yeah.
Aminatou: She doesn't have the range. She doesn't have the range.
Ann: She doesn't have the range but she does have the resources which is dangerous.
Aminatou: I know, just enough that you can be dangerous. Okay. Case closed. Next case on the docket.
Ann: Oh my god, can I have an addendum to this story though that I want to just -- I'm going to put a plug for this in the show notes, is I read a really interesting essay this week about the practice of italicizing words and which -- air quote -- "foreign language" words get italicized in English language text and how that is also political. Because one thing I did notice in a lot of the critiques of this book were people saying oh man, every word that appears in Spanish is italicized. And if you are actually, you know, your day-to-day reality includes speaking Spanish or a mix of Spanish and English, offsetting it with italics is a very weird choice to make.
Aminatou: Right.
Ann: Anyway, so I'm going to link to this essay for our fellow word nerds who want to think about this on a level of even like punctuation and formatting because that is even a part of this story too.
Aminatou: And like one more addendum because I do feel we are -- you know, there is . . . the thing with stuff like this also is the minute you start digging you find more, right? It's not that this author is just maybe a white lady with maybe a Puerto Rican grandma who is writing about this; it's that there are so many missteps here. One of the conversation points for why she was a racially-sensitive person is like, you know, people kept saying she had a husband who was undocumented and then you do two Googles and the undocumented husband is Irish. Or looking at other mistakes that she had made, like these barbed wire centerpieces that a bookseller was using. All things that are very offensive when you're trying to tell stories about what is going on at the border. Again, so it's just use your whole -- you know, use all of your resources but also be someone who is I would not say above reproach because no one is above reproach but be really honest about the kind of life that you're living and take responsibility also for the ways that you are actively offending people. Offending people is not a fireable offense. What is a fireable offense is gas-lighting them and making them believe you weren't doing that in the first place.
(20:45)
Ann: Oof, yes. And also, you know, this is not a defense of the author but when I saw for example the photos of those barbed wire centerpieces I was immediately like oh yeah, because this is a machine-backed book, this is a book that people really, really had a lot invested in it succeeding. It's like when you see brands tweet about, you know, MLK's birthday to call back to a recent episode, you know, where it's like this really wrongheaded you think you are engaging in some kind of deep way with something that you are really in fact like perverting.
Aminatou: Right, you know? You know, and also it's the publishing industry we're talking about here. You and I went through several rounds of meetings with publishers when we were selling our book and I don't think it is fair to say that we met even a handful of people of color. Like I don't think that's even a fair -- that is overrepresenting what happened.
Ann: I think the numbers are 17 meetings and I think we saw like maybe two or three people of color. Not saw them around the table all day long.
Aminatou: Right. And by 17 meetings we mean like 17 teams, you know what I mean? Of multiple people. And it's just like I . . . reading about how this book snafu is made, you know, look at who we're talking about here. It's so convenient to put the author out to dry and it's like oh, it's her fault and she shouldn't have written this book and she shouldn't have whatever. And it's like yes, all of that is true. But also there's literally no one to protect you. Maybe if there were not white people at your publisher someone would've said a barbed wire fence for a book that says that it's about bringing humanity to what migrants are going through is not an idea that someone would've had. So it is really tiring and tiresome and just very gaslighty to keep having these conversations.
Ann: Right. This is why the focus has to continually be on the bigger systems right? The bigger systems about who isn't selling books for a lot of money, the bigger systems about how this kind of winner-take-all notion and all the winners happen to be white people picked by a white publisher it's like, you know, the way that the blurbs for this book are these really over-the-top praise-heavy big names. All of that stuff doesn't just happen. And so part of this is we talk about being a critical consumer of news all the time but I think, you know, this is about being a critical consumer of culture. And I think sometimes when it comes to things like art or books if you are not immediately in that industry it can be hard to know the way the machine works, right? You and I didn't know any of this stuff in the kind of way we do now. I find myself thinking about how would I react to this story if it had come out three years ago before you and I had had direct experience in publishing.
Aminatou: Yeah.
(23:55)
Ann: And I don't know the answer but I do know this stuff is very opaque and not apparent to the people who might be just inclined to pick this book up because it's Oprah's Book Club, you know?
Aminatou: Right, it's not. And it's also just realizing how -- and we talked about this when we talked in the bad bosses episode. We talk about this any time we talk about these power structures. It's really realizing that once you get into bed with these people no one is looking out for you and no one is protecting you. It's either you adopt the party line and you are still a low-level enough player that no one gives a shit about what happens to you and all you have is your own compromised values, but I think that you're right to keep shining the lens on the system. And this is why we say it's not personal, it's systematic, because the system is what is really deeply messed up.
Ann: It's structural, sorry. [Laughter]
Aminatou: Wow, does somebody sell merch about this?
Ann: Oh my gosh.
Aminatou: The scam is structural? Uh, shopcyg.com. Let's take a break. [Laughter]
Ann: Oh my god. [Laughter]
Aminatou: Wow, someone is getting mad that I'm getting good at radio. You won't let me shine anymore.
Ann: You know what? I am not mad. You cannot see my face. I am delighted over here. I am so happy. I could not be happier.
Aminatou: Okay, we're going to take a small stretch break.
Ann: Okay.
[Ads]
(27:15)
Ann: We were just trying to figure out something that is lighthearted to talk about and well, here's what I came out with which is I am processing a lot of feelings about chunky-soled shoes being in style right now.
Aminatou: Well okay, tell me your feelings because I have a lot of damage of being someone who always had the biggest feet of everyone they knew. And now the marketplace caters a little bit more to me but shoe trends are things I don't even let myself think about them because there's only two pairs of shoes I can ever own.
Ann: I have never felt this close to you I don't think. I feel very . . . [Laughter] Like I honestly feel a lot of anxiety about shoe trends as well for a different reason which is that every inch I add to the soles of my feet actually has an impact on how I live out in the world. Two inches or less doesn't really impact it but say I am taking public transportation and wearing a two-inch heel it's like now I'm in the range where I'm ducking to get on the bus or on the subway.
Aminatou: Mm-hmm.
Ann: You know, it's affecting how . . . I mean more tree branches are smacking me in the face. It is a real issue.
Aminatou: Wow. So you can't live your Sporty Spice dream life? Like that could've never been your Spice.
Ann: Well interesting you reference '90s icon The Spice Girls because the chunky-soled shoe trend first was a part of my life in the '90s when I was way less comfortable in this body that I have which was the same size back then and it was a really difficult thing. Listen, the Rocket Dog platform flip flop era where every girl in my junior high was wearing an extra four inches of just foam underneath.
Aminatou: I'm literally going to have to Google that because I don't even know what you're talking about.
Ann: It's a nightmare. If you Google . . .
Aminatou: Rocket Dog. Rocket Dog.
Ann: Platform flip flop.
Aminatou: I'm like screaming already. This country is disgusting.
Ann: Or like the super thick-soled Sketcher I think was also very big.
Aminatou: Google Image Search won't even -- no, this shoe?
Ann: Yes. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Oh no. Okay.
Ann: So it is not a million miles away from the kinds of shoes that are very high-fashion right now, you know? They are all extremely chunky. The thing is I appreciate aesthetically what's going on. I understand trends come and go. We are in a moment of collectively looking back at '90s fashion. Whatever. Fine. Cool. But for me it is bringing out this stuff where I'm like oh, I thought I was totally fine being a foot taller than every other woman and now I'm like oh, now all the cool shoes I want to wear have a minimum of three inches of platform sole happening and now I'm forced to choose. Like am I really comfortable in my body? Or am I going to continue buying a shoe that I feel like is not really having its moment? It's making me feel very junior high. This is why I love your comment about it bringing out your feelings about your own body and feet.
(30:25)
Aminatou: Well, so here's the thing: are we talking about chunky sneakers physically or all the shoes being chunky right now?
Ann: Well we're talking about chunky sneakers but I also think what's happening in boots is a pretty heavy sole is going on as a general trend.
Aminatou: I mean the reason this doesn't stress me out is if I'm ever prone to a trend I always want the most expensive version of the trend which I can't afford which means that I don't participate. So it's just inoculating yourself via not being wealthy.
Ann: Don't worry, there are giant Gucci sneakers that you could covet and then inoculate yourself from.
Aminatou: I know, remember? Trust me, I've tried them on at the Gucci store.
Ann: [Laughs]
Aminatou: But here's the problem. It's this thing that we're talking about right? I am a size 12 shoe -- foot -- and I can't add . . . the bulkier a shoe is the more cloppity-clop I look. And so I recently, Ann, ordered Doc Martins because I thought that was going to be my winter shoe and I think something is weird with the Doc Martin sizing. Unclear. But anyway I got the size the website said I should get then when the shoe came I thought I was like Hagrid. It was wild.
Ann: It was like a clown shoe? [Laughs]
Aminatou: It was wild. Not only was it a clown shoe, my foot was too big in the shoe. Sorry, the shoe was bigger than my foot. It was like I just couldn't understand it. Then I tried those other ones, the Australian ones that everybody loves, the boots. Long story short people with big feet have a lot of problems but I have made so much peace with the fact that I'm okay with trends because whenever I see the chunky sole trend I'm like you know what? The smaller girls, this is their moment to shine right now and that's fine. Then the trend will pass and then it'll be back to me again and it's fine. I was like everyone gets their sun under the bad trends situation that we have.
(32:15)
Ann: I hear that and I also -- but I think what I'm reacting to more is about how it is bringing up feelings about my body that I thought I had resolved, do you know what I mean?
Aminatou: Fair. Fair.
Ann: That is really -- I'm like I agree. I'm like yes. Yes to people who want to be wearing a lot of sole even in a comfort shoe. Love this moment for them. Love it. But it's interesting, so I was like a teen in the late '90s which is an era that is oft referenced right now in kind of popular fashion and there's all these other trends like chokers or like multiple kinds of plaids or just like the -- everything else that's happening that's kind of '90s throwback I take great pleasure in. I don't feel any kind of way. Either I wore it or I didn't as a teenager but it's not bringing anything up for me. And for some reason when I get to shoes, I always thought Doc Martins were very cool when I was a teen, but not only could I not afford them -- I was in the Converse price range if you know what I mean . . .
Aminatou: [Laughs]
Ann: Also the heel was like . . . the heel, I was like oh my god, it's like a full inch. I couldn't wear it. I had a lot of body insecurity.
Aminatou: You know what it is Ann?
Ann: Yeah, tell me?
Aminatou: You know what it is, Ann? I think some body things we truly get over in that you forget about them and other body things, you just sublimate them. And unless you actively actually release the thing there's always a chance it'll just come back up. And so it's one of these -- sorry if I sound like a therapist.
Ann: No, I love it.
Aminatou: It's just one of these things that I was like you know, I think sometimes we . . . I don't know, when you're an evolved person and you're like okay, I used to have these feelings about XYZ. We don't always appreciate that some feelings that we have let go of we actually had to do work for. You know, it's like okay, you processed them out loud then you kind of released them. Then other things, it was never that you were okay with them; it's kind of that you've forgotten. And now that you're being reminded you have to find a way to deal with that.
(34:15)
Ann: Right. Or counterpoint in my case which is I thought I had dealt with it and I was just like oh, it's you again.
Aminatou: Right.
Ann: The Babadook. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Yeah, the Babadook. The Babadook body feelings. But this is what I'm saying is I think that sometimes we just -- you know, the things that you tell yourself versus the things that are actually true. And so I'm sorry that it's bringing out these Tall Girl (TM) feelings for you but I am here for you to process this and your therapist is also here for you to process this so let's fix it.
Ann: Oh my god. Can I tell you though like that -- by and large the fact that fashion trends that were very popular when I was a teen are now popular mostly brings me pleasure. Like I love seeing a woman wearing multiple things that would've never been worn by the same girl in the '90s right? It makes me feel like god where I'm like oh, I know the context for those three items separately but you weren't alive then.
Aminatou: Aww.
Ann: I'm also having a pleasures of aging moment at the same time I've got to say.
Aminatou: It's beautiful. Let me tell you what brought that all up for me.
Ann: Please.
Aminatou: When that cold shoulder trend was happening two years ago.
Ann: Oh my god.
Aminatou: I didn't even know I had feelings about my shoulders. I didn't even know, then it all came out. And thank god no one is doing that anymore so it's fine.
Ann: Wow. This too shall pass.
Aminatou: Yeah. This too shall pass. We'll deal with it as a family. It's fine.
Ann: Wow. Shoulders, feet, we are really finding all of the ways. [Laughs]
Aminatou: But also next time I see you in person can we just go try on chunky sneakers to LOL? We're obviously not going to buy them, I just want to LOL with you.
(35:50)
Ann: This reminds me of the time, I don't know if you remember this, a million years ago when we first became friends you somehow came into possession of a very high, spiky pair of fancy heals. Do you remember this? And I tried them on. They were my size, not yours for some reason. I tried them on in the carpeted living room of my old house and I couldn't even stand on them.
Aminatou: Oh my gosh, Ann, I remember this moment but I don't remember where the shoes were from but they were very fancy.
Ann: I know. I was like how did you come into possession of fancy stilettos in my size? Anyway, I feel like us going to try on chunky shoes together is going to be the equivalent of me baby giraffing it in those stilettos, like gripping the wall for support many years ago.
Aminatou: Oh my gosh. We've got this. I will see you at the Balenciaga store to try the chunky sneakers.
Ann: Oh my god, see you at Gucci.
Aminatou: [Laughs] Bye boo-boo. You can find us many places on the Internet: callyourgirlfriend.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, we're on all your favorite platforms. Subscribe, rate, review, you know the drill. You can call us back. You can leave a voicemail at 714-681-2943. That's 714-681-CYGF. You can email us at callyrgf@gmail.com. Our theme song is by Robyn, original music composed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. Our logos are by Kenesha Sneed. We're on Instagram and Twitter at @callyrgf. Our associate producer is Jordan Baley and this podcast is produced by Gina Delvac.