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When I was working at NY magazine a thousand years ago, Tina Fey was honored at a luncheon the magazine was hosting. Fey went up to accept her award and said (at least this is how I remember it):

“A lot of young women come up to me and ask, ‘What advice do you have for me? How can I get where you are?’ And I tell each of those women the same thing… ‘Back off bitch, I’m working this corner.’”

That joke previewed a theme of her book: ”You’re not in competition with other women. You’re in competition with everyone.“

Tina Fey is so enchanting. She has ’90s credentials, but seemingly without the ’90s angst. She is just plowing ahead being brilliant and ambitious. She pays homage to the Second Wave (as in her praise of Jane Curtin). She addresses feminist in-fighting on her show. And now she has a memoir about her childhood, career and family.

I read it in one plane ride. I found it super enjoyable, and I loved what she said about how she hates being praised for her indie credibility, because really she was just trying to make a mega-hit like Cheers.

She’s so refreshingly even-handed and honest about issues like the supposed “war” between “mommies”:

So I’ve been surprised by the reviews complaining about her book being more David Sedaris than Proust, and wondering whence the backlash to what seems to me like an objectively friendly book from a genuinely charming person.

My guess: it’s the old ’90s theme: anything light or silly is suspect; seriousness confers importance. This bias parallels what Fey described on NPR as a suspiciousness of pretty ladies’ success. On the whole Olivia Munn-Daily Show to-do, she said:

I find it interesting that Olivia gets people who go after her sometimes on these sites — because she’s beautiful, I think is part of it. I think if she were kind of an aggressive, heavier girl with a Le Tigre mustache posing in her underpants, people would be like, “That’s amazing. Good for you.” But because she is very beautiful, people are like, “You’re using that.” It’s just a mess! We can’t figure it out.

Talking in her book and in interviews about crying at work, women with mustaches, and having major ambition so openly and in such good faith has to qualify her for some kind of feminist of the year honor. Quick, someone give her another award, just for the acceptance speech.

90sWoman.com

Posted in: Uncategorized by Admin / Tags: Backlash, Bossypants