Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear . . . and Why

by Sady Doyle

Hardcover, 2016

Status

Available

Publication

Melville House (2016), 320 pages

Description

Sociology. Women's Studies. Nonfiction. HTML:â??Smart ... compelling ... persuasive .â?ť â??New York Times Book Review Sheâ??s everywhere once you start looking: the trainwreck.   Sheâ??s Britney Spears shaving her head, Whitney Houston saying â??crack is whack,â?ť and Amy Winehouse, dying in front of millions. But the trainwreck is also as old (and as meaningful) as feminism itself. From Mary Wollstonecraftâ??who, for decades after her death, was more famous for her illegitimate child and suicide attempts than for A Vindication of the Rights of Womanâ??to Charlotte BrontĂ«, Billie Holiday, Sylvia Plath, and even Hillary Clinton, Sady Doyleâ??s Trainwreck dissects a centuries-old phenomenon and asks what it means now, in a time when we have unprecedented access to celebrities and civilians alike, and when women are pushing harder than ever against the boundaries of what it means to â??behave.â?ť Where did these women come from? What are their crimes? And what does it mean for the rest of us? For an age when any form of self-expression can be the one that ends you, Doyleâ??s book is as fierce and intelligent as it is funny and compassionateâ??an essential, timely… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member rivkat
Doyle has rewritten the Joanna Russ classic How To Suppress Women’s Writing for an age of celebrity. Though she covers Mary Wollstonecraft, Harriet Jacobs, Sylvia Plath, and a few others before recent decades, she’s really writing about how celebrity female trainwrecks are used by the people
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who comment on them to define the appropriate boundaries of womanhood. It was both enraging and invigorating to read during this election season, where the desire for Hillary Clinton to be a trainwreck, and her refusal, has been such an important theme.
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LibraryThing member schatzi
I will admit that I don't stay informed when it comes to celebrity culture; I don't really know who is considered a popular actress or actor nowadays. But the themes talked about in this book are recurring; they play out in every generation, it seems, even if they evolve a bit to keep up with the
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times. The author is around my age (mid-30s), so she discusses a lot of examples from the early 2000s, of which I am more aware (Britney Spears, Tara Reid, etc).

We all know the "trainwreck" - the actress who can't keep her shit together, who has sex when she wants to (the horror!!!), who delves into alcohol or drugs or some combination of both, whose life falls apart as the paparazzi circle her head like so many vultures waiting on their next meal. But WHY are these "trainwrecks" almost exclusively female?

Because even as a teenager, I realized that male and female celebrities were treated differently by the media. Britney Spears admits to having lost her virginity to her long-term boyfriend? What a slut and hypocrite! Meanwhile, an actor can be sleeping his way through half of Hollywood and it's all "oh, what a rake and a charmer! ;)" Paparazzi wait, crouched down to waist level, in the hopes of snapping an "up-skirt" picture for a rising teenaged starlet, and once that picture is splashed everywhere, it is somehow the actress who comes across as "bad" - not the photographers who are trying, literally, to look up a teenager's skirt. (And if she had been wearing underwear, I am sure someone would have blogged about her panty lines.)

Doyle tries to explain why this happens so routinely, and she does a pretty damned good job, too. She traces it all back to feminism - trying to keep the "errant" females quiet, the shaming that is so often involved to keep women "in line," often performed by women as a group - and links modern cases to historical "trainwrecks," such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Charlotte Bronte, and even Monica Lewinsky.

I found this book to be fascinating, and I had a hard time putting it down. I'd definitely recommend it.
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LibraryThing member CasualFriday
I follow Sady Doyle on Twitter. She is a reliable advocate for feminism and was a powerful voice for Hillary Clinton when the Bros of the left were trying to destroy her. So I was excited to read her first book about the Women We Love to Hate. It’s an examination of prominent women, historical
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and contemporary, who have been excoriated by the public for “bad” behavior: Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan, Hillary Clinton, Monica Lewinsky, and bad women of another era like Charlotte Bronte and Mary Wollstonecraft.

The book held my interest while I read it, but I confess it’s already fading. I think it would be a great choice for young women who are just discovering feminism, but perhaps less vital for crones like me who feel like we’ve lived this book. Part of my problem was that I am so removed from contemporary pop culture that I literally could not pick Lindsay Lohan out of a lineup, so the pop culture stuff did not grab me. I would have enjoyed a whole book about Nasty Charlotte Bronte.
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LibraryThing member ASKelmore
Best for: People who maybe enjoy the schadenfreud of the seeming downfall of famous women but who are also interested in maybe stopping that.

In a nutshell: Author Sady Doyle examines all the ways we push women and judge them for their imperfections.

Line that sticks with me: “We spend so much time
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pathologizing “overemotional” women that we scarcely ever ask what those women are emotional about.”

Why I chose it: I’m on a bit of a roll, reading about women who fight the system, who get taken down and fight back. This seemed to fit in nicely.

Review: I’ve laughed at Lindsay Lohan (and not just when she’s being weirdly supportive of Harvey Weinstein - when she’s getting pulled over and drugs are found on her). I’ve scoffed at Britney Spears before her very public meltdown, then did a 180 and for some reason only really saw her humanity when she was being put into conservatorship. I’ve prefaced statements of support for Hillary Clinton with “I know she isn’t perfect, but,” as though there is some politician who is.

I’m also a feminist, and I get real angry when women are dismissed as overly emotional, or irrational, or crazy. And while I sort of know how these two seemingly diametrically opposed philosophies can coexist in my mind, this book brought it to light.

Ms. Doyle provides a look not just at how we seemingly root for women to fail (but then laud them after they’ve died), but the history of how this has been going on for literally centuries. This isn’t an examination of Britney Spears (although her story features prominently in some chapters); it’s an examination of western society and how we treat women. Mostly, how we treat famous women, but Ms. Doyle uses that to point out that this translates to how we treat women in general. How we silence them, how we judge them, how we don’t allow them to be whole, complex people.

Parts are rough to read (although the writing itself is great), but nothing made me madder than the afterward that Ms. Doyle chose to include, discussing in about 20 pages the 2016 election outcome. She has a chapter where she discusses both Hillary Clinton and Monica Lewinski, but this afterward looks specifically at Secretary Clinton in light of what we gave up, how we as a country decided we’d rather have an admitted sexual assaulting liar with no government experience than an extraordinarily qualified person who also is a woman. It hurts (and it’s why “What Happened” has been on my nightstand since it was released but I haven’t been able to open it), and it’s hard to find a lot of hope in it. But we’ll see, right?
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LibraryThing member greeniezona
I loved this book just as much as I expected to. Doyle collects fascinating anecdotes from as far back as Mary Wollstonecraft of celebrity culture and the pillorying of women in the spotlight as a means to keep all women "in line."

Many of the stories here were unfamiliar, nearly all will make you
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want to read them aloud or repeat to a friend the next day. Even the cases most of us would think of as familiar, like Britney Spears -- Doyle brings new context and compassion to.

Not a new idea, but an important reminder.
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LibraryThing member elenaj
The 'uplifting' conclusion falls flat, but otherwise this is an engaging and thoughtful (if also profane and breezy) takedown of western culture's penchant for broken/breaking women.

Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

2016

Physical description

288 p.; 5.7 inches

ISBN

1612195636 / 9781612195636

Local notes

feminisms

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