Last night I slurped down the last drop of Candy Girl that I left for myself. I wanted to gulp the entire thing over the weekend, but I knew that I had a little more food to munch on, so I left a small but satisfactory 1 inch pool at the bottom of my cup.
Quick overview of book: Diablo Cody (screenwriter of THE ART OF 2007, colloquially called Juno) wrote this little "memoir" pre-her in-demand Hollywood days. I use the word memoir lightly. While this is how the book is marketed, I tend to think of a memoir as a recounting of an experience after all of the meaning has sunk in. Diablo's experience to be logged was very much sought out for the purpose of written reporting. I'll call it a pseudo memoir. And I don't mean that in a demeaning way.
OK, so our heroine has this typical corporate "girl" job of monotony, and she decides to sign up for a stripper amature night for some kicks. Along the way she develops something of an addiction to the high she acquires from the experience of using nothing but her raw person to earn the dough. She jumps around the sex industry from strip club to strip club to strip club to sex store peep box to strip club to phone sex operation, etc etc.
Why is this good? I originally went into this book thinking it would be drenched in anthropological analysis. She had a suprisingly meager amount of analysis. While she commented excessively on every bizarre socially relevent observation, she didn't break it down into tiny molecules. What gave the book the worthwhile stamp is Diablo Cody's (now very) clear signature language. In the same vein as Juno, every observation is loaded with pop culture and high culture references. The kind that make you feel like you're nodding directly at the writer. You get it. You're in the club.
I wouldn't call it one big empty calorie. I learned a crapload about the sex industry. This knowledge will undoubtedly come in handy for obvious conversational reasons.
What else did I learn? A new angle on feminism. As someone that has fallen into the Women's studies, liberal frame of mind, when you hear about any livelihood that involves voluntarily objectifying oneself, you think: AWFUL. Sacrificing what we've earned to fall into what men have dictated. Except then you go back to the voluntary part. To strip is a choice. To choose to exploit the power that society has assigned to breasts, artificial tans, and applied friction is to take advantage of the system, and it makes logical sense. To do this without losing one's own sense of self is a different issue.
This is a pro-choice book.
Choose to dance naked and hump money out of horny men?
Choose to not get an abortion?*
Choose to not vote for Hillary because you don't like her leadership style?
Choose to not let the hammered-in rules of fundamental feminism dictate your decisions despite identifying oneself as a feminist?
Holla.
*Juno has been called anti-feminist and anti-abortion. I believe it to be pro-choice.
