Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman

by Anne Helen Petersen

“I think a man might have invented it. I don’t think girls would label themselves that way.”

When a man writes about family and feelings, it’s literature with a capital L, but when a woman considers the same subjects, it’s romance, or a beach book.”

large—one in which the thoughts of men, either in the books they write or in the articles they write about other ideas or books, take precedence over the ideas of women.

In his essay, Franzen advocates for the sort of solitary self-contemplation that has long been the provenance not just of the wealthy, but of men in particular. To retreat with your own thoughts and words is a privilege that few women, no matter their class, can afford—even if, like Weiner, they’re paid millions for their books.46

Franzen’s understanding of the ideal author is also rooted in the century-old model of authorship put forth by Kraus and his fellow European intellectuals: that the work was not for financial gain, but pure and exalted triumph of the mind, and thus should not be tainted by concerns of capital. To be worried about financial success, or readership numbers, is to declare yourself midcult, if not worse. But women’s relation to writing has long been shaped by different forces: for many, if not most, part of the joy of writing was how its profits enabled, and continue to enable, women to determine their own destiny—untethered to a man. Writing, in other words, as a form of metaphorical and financial independence.

Yes. This.

As Beth Driscoll points out, “For Franzen, mass media is a kind of noise that interferes with legitimate literary practices. It is also a mechanism for the dilution of literary quality.” He’s nostalgic for “the days when cultural gatekeeping occurred out of sight, away from the public forums of the internet and Twitter.”47 The hierarchy Franzen desires is maintained largely because of its exclusion of people like Weiner and her readers: of course he’d think Twitter, and the amplification of Weiner’s arguments about taste culture, was “intolerably shallow.”

It’s one thing to argue that you belong—it’s another thing to actually believe it.

As Weiner’s experience makes clear, part of the difficult, essential work of unruliness is shaking the status quo so thoroughly, so persistently, so loudly that everyone—even the very women behind that agitation, many of whom have internalized the understandings they fight so tirelessly against—can see their value within it.

I think I’ve highlighted half of this essay. So on point.

Dunham becomes “too naked,” then, when she refuses to turn herself into a nude, insisting on showcasing her body exactly as it appears.

asserting that women’s bodies are worthy even when they are not arranged, distorted, or otherwise represented through and for the gaze of men.

few things enrage, confuse, and repulse audiences more than the suggestion that the primary visual purpose of a woman’s body is not the pleasure of men.

Or, as art critic John Berger puts it, “To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen by

others and not recognized for oneself.”6

Both of these uses point to women’s primary value as objects, decorative or disposable.

“Social power had come to be less dependent on the sheer accumulation of material wealth,” Bordo writes, “and more connected to the ability to control and manage the labor and resources of others.”

Put differently, hunger has become the antithesis of “good” femininity: to eat, to desire, to be unsatisfied is to be a “bad woman.” The most vivid manifestation of that badness, that unruliness, is fat on one’s body, implying a lack of control, a lack of respect toward social mores.

A clear one: the disconnect between the way others view Hannah and the way Hannah views herself is, in many ways, the driving narrative of the show.

But the real reason for the pairing is far simpler: they each desired the other. And by preserving Dunham’s body in its naked form, Dunham uncouples the notion of desirability from its perfected nude representation.

Imagine the liberation: instead of spending time degrading ourselves for falling short of the very narrow understanding of what types of bodies are worthy of desire—and, by extension, value—we could be thinking about things that make us feel good, or anything at all, really, that isn’t rooted in shame at how our bodies don’t look like someone else’s.

Freeing

“My mother understood, implicitly, the power of it. See these hips, these teeth, these eyebrows, these stockings that bunch and sag at the ankles? They’re worth capturing, holding on to forever. I’ll never be this young again. Or this lonely. Or this hairy. Come one, come all, to my private show.”22

She doesn’t need your approval

Dunham’s nudity isn’t “brave,” because, as Dunham herself explains, for it to be brave she would have to be afraid. What she demands, instead, is bravery from others. To

Look inward, Dunham suggests—and realize there’s another way.

If spending this much time becoming deeply acquainted with these women’s work and reception has taught me one thing, it’s just how difficult and deeply disheartening it can be to be a woman in the public eye. All of these women are as imperfect as you or me, but when they say or do the wrong thing—or even say or do the right thing—the backlash can be swift, exacting, and cruel. To be an unruly woman in the public eye is to always be inviting criticism—and constantly fortifying yourself against it. Each woman in this book is a workaholic and a perfectionist, in part because anything less than that amount of labor and precise attention to detail could be her downfall. Unruliness can be liberating, but within our current cultural climate, it is also endlessly exhausting.

👏👏👏yes. This

A backlash, however, is coming.

It’s already here

hope that someday, the only rules a woman will have to abide by are those she sets for herself.