Sisters are doing it for themselves.

I'm one of those people who is smug and self-righteous about not owning a TV, but I still get starved for pop culture from time to time. So in the last couple of days I read two books written by women who got their start on the talking picture box so many people are chatting about. I actually ordered Suck It, Wonder Woman by Olivia Munn for my library, partly because there was some internet drama about her awhile ago, and apparently I go in for that sort of thing. Also, she's on the Daily Show, which I haven't actually watched in a few years, but if my favourite silver fox Jon Stewart is going to give his stamp of approval, I'm down. I am sad to say this book kind of blows, but I'm also sad to admit I probably should have known. Olivia Munn became famous doing stuff like this:



I know it's "in context" (on a show about videogames watched mostly by pimply boys--and yes, since you've asked, making sweeping generalizations IS part of my yoga practice), and I know she's made a name for herself being the hot nerdy girl, and I know that I am by no means her target demographic, but even in a vacuum her writing just feels so false and trite. She's a bit of a name dropper and tells unfunny anecdotes about taking muscle relaxers and making out with a woman by accident and zzzzzzzz ohhh sorry, I fell asleep just thinking about it. It's not that I don't support the right of a supposedly geeky hot chick to write her book, or her right to include ten pages of fan-produced portraits and ten pages of her dressed up as great women in history, pinup-style, including Sexy Eleanor Roosevelt and Sailor Moon (yes, really). I just don't need to watch or read it. And I don't think the rest of the Sisterhood does either. She's said some pretty wretched shit about women who criticize her, and I can't stand behind the Mean Girl. Especially when in addition to the hate, you also have to read about her boring childhood.

On the other hand, you know whose formative years I'd read about forever and ever? Chelsea Handler's. I'm about halfway through Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang and it is amazing. She chronicles her obsessive childhood masturbation habit, her long hard fight for a Cabbage Patch Kid and her dubious sexual encounters and I just can't stop spitting up on myself from laughing so hard. Chelsea Handler is inappropriate as hell, and also incredibly self-aware, and I think I want to go camp out on her lawn till she agrees to hang with me. Granted, I don't think she's as funny on TV, but whatevs.



It's interesting--I always feel like her books are marketed wrong. I know they're about sex and drinking and other supposedly racy stuff, but she also writes about her family and her relationships in this very real way that just rings really true for anyone with a complicatedly endearing past. I hope the scantily-clad lady on the cover won't keep people from reading.