Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl: A Memoir

by Carrie Brownstein

I banished my father and sister to the TV room. I pressed play on the mixtape I’d made containing the decade-appropriate music and dimmed the lights. The guests arrived and we mingled in character for a while. We gave toasts, ate sliced cheddar atop buttery crackers, and admired one another’s outfits and accoutrements. We slow-danced, girls with mustaches swaying back and forth with girls in dresses. Then we sat down on Ethan Allen upholstered chairs and solved a murder. I suppose I had reached my limits of mere participation and pretend. I wasn’t really creating anything; I was facilitating, implementing, setting up situations that could be both fantastical and fantasy. It was ultimately silly; it was a game. What I loved was the role-playing, the gender ambiguity, the hints of sexiness and bravado, the moments that deviated from the rules and structure.