About book Hypocrite In A Pouffy White Dress: Tales Of Growing Up Groovy And Clueless (2005)
Susan Jane Gilman grew up with hippy parents in New York in the 1970s, and fully embraced Madonna's style in the 1980's - only missing the opportunity to call her chapter about her teenage years "Desperately Seeking Susan". The stories she tells about her childhood and young adulthood reveal her as stubborn, funny, melodramatic, naive, vulnerable and feisty. The contradictions in her character are what give her anecdotes their punch. Self-confidant enough as a starstruck teenager to hang around at a studio door waiting to meet members of the Rolling Stones, her feelings are a rollercoaster when she meets Mick Jagger at a party and he actually talks to her, complimenting her in a sexist way. Again, the contradictions in her theoretical opinions and what she actually does are highlighted in the story about choosing her wedding dress. Far from making her a traitor to the cause, or the hypocrite of the title, her ability to confess her weaknesses and laugh at them are what makes her human. It's all very well being a feminist, but if that means nobody can compliment you on your appearance or you don't allow yourself the joy of wearing something beautiful, what have women gained? When trying on her wedding dress, she wonders:"Why did it take so long to have this experience? Every woman should have this experience - and not only if or when she gets married. Every woman should see herself looking uniquely breathtaking, in something tailored to celebrate her body, so that she is better able to appreciate her own beauty and better equipped to withstand the ideals of narrow-waisted, narrow-minded culture."There were so many touching moments in this book. As a child, her moment of glory when she sang her solo. As a non-practising Jew, the impact that a visit to Auschwitz had on her:"Until that very moment, I realized, I'd stupidly believed, "I would've gotten out of this somehow." Until that moment, staring directly into the genocidal maw of a body-sized pizza oven, I'd somehow assumed that the Holocaust had been meant for other people - for real Jews, Jews who actually card abut their religion, Jews who hadn't been nearly as savvy, charming, or modern as my family was. Surely we would have been spared. Surely, we would have figured out some way to wriggle out of it, to avoid the debasement of it all, to be granted an exemption from a fate reserved for six million others. Surely, in trying to kill us, the Nazis would at some point have realized that they were making a terrible mistake. Look: We had a Christmas tree. I'd sung in a choir. The last time I'd checked, my mother was a Buddhist. Yet as if it could speak, as if a demonic voice had been summoned from the inferno of its past, the oven gaped before me and its message was only too obvious: Oh, Sister. Don't kid yourself. This one's for you.I loved the way Gilman balanced her serious insights into life with the lighter side. This poignant story of the trip to Germany is offset her tale of an interview ... And this is where my computer crashed and I never managed to finish the review. I may find the rest of my notes and continue, but I want to take the book to a BookCrossing meeting, so that might not happen.
This was kind of a roller coaster read for me. Some sections, I found myself nodding and saying "YES!" and other sections I really couldn't relate to. Even the parts I couldn't relate to were pretty fun to read as I like learning about how other people live.Like the author, I was not popular at all in school and there was that group of girls whose lives seemed to be devoted to making mine miserable. Her experience with the solo in the Christmas program particularly resonated with me, having had a similar one myself. I had gotten the solo in our Christmas program, and probably out of jealousy, these girls ran all over the playground badmouthing me to everyone and telling everyone is was unfair that I got the solo when I wasn't even in the swing choir. And I did the same thing the author did....went all over the house for weeks practicing the solo and hoping I didn't mess up. I could picture her so easily in her situation, because I had been there.I also really nodded through her "Speak at the Tuna" chapter. I've made several similar blunders living abroad. I think my most famous one was probably asking where the broom and lightning were, instead of the broom and dustpan. Nothing as embarrassing as my French friend who accidentally told her colleagues that she had eaten a delicious dick for lunch, instead of schnitzel. But it happens to all of us ex-pats at some point and it's a good thing we can laugh about them. It's fun to read or hear about others' mistakes because at least I know I'm not the only one whose made them. I really enjoyed that chapter, as well as the part where she described how Europeans view Americans. It's so spot on! My mother-in-law was horrified to be seen with me when I was wearing my Christmas sweater, which in her words "no self-respecting Dutch person would ever be seen in." and she spent the morning announcing to everyone that I had just moved from America, lest anyone should think she was just casual friends with such an embarrassing specimen of humanity. It still makes me laugh.Overall, a fun read, though I would not recommend it to my conservative friends. I'm a liberal myself and I kept thinking of all my reader friends who I could definitely not recommend it to because there were certain aspects that they would probably not appreciate. If, on the other hand, you like memoirs and your politics fall left of center, and you find sex incredibly funny, this might be a great choice!
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Her parents were hippies but all she wanted to do was wear a tutu- and she did- to school!! See? It's funny because she is so QUIRKY! So many zany things happen to her, so she has to write about each terribly hilarious embarrassing episode of her white, overprotected, privileged life! But never fear, there is heart and love in the gooey middle! She realizes this when she tests her meddle in a foreign country (Switzerland! oh the culture shock!! The sockets look WEIRD!)that allows her to continue her lily white, privileged, overprotected life EVEN THO SOME PEOPLE DO NOT SPEAK ENGLISH THERE! Gag me.
—Amyss
For those who've yet to read it, the book can be divided into roughly three [unequal] parts: childhood, high school/college and Susan-as-an-adult. The first part was the best for me - perfect mix of funny and sad, just like a good sweet-and-sour sauce should be. The second section is shorter than the others, which is a good thing. High school pretty much consists of a looooooooong riff on virginity, with a drawn-out celebrity stalking adventure thrown in. Her college years are covered by one anecdote; all I'll say about that is that Henry seemed like a "metrosexual before his time" and the more he went on about needing to screw his girlfriend the less convincing he sounded. This section was the low point for me. Stick with it though as the later stuff gets better. Ms. Gilman's conclusions on the concentration camp tour of Poland were the high point of the book for me; her subsequent Congressional job and wedding plans are well-written, interesting stories that coast the book nicely to a smooth end. I did have a major problem with her presentation: how could she possibly have gotten into Stuyvesant (one of the most prestigious high schools in the nation) and Brown, and have been that clueless? Her rant on having all those deductions from her first actual paycheck (as a high school student) struck me as preposterous. I don't see how she could possibly have not known about deductions (nor have missed the student withholding exemption status when she filled out her tax forms)? Her ignorance about Judaism (she is a native New Yorker raised in an ethnically Jewish, though non-practicing, household!) was so very far-fetched that I had to consciously disregard it as a failed fictional device. I deducted a star for this, and the uneven middle section. That having been said, I enjoyed the book a lot, and would consider it as gift material for friends and family.
—John
"Somehow, my five-year-old brain had grasped the ideas the '-ess' was the culmination of all things feminine and highly desirable. It was a suffix that separated the girls from the boys in the best of all possible ways. Princess, goddess, actress, countess. What was there not to love?... '-Ess' made any profession sound glamorous. A laundress, a sorceress, an adulteress. To this day, I'm convinced that, if someone had only been enterprising enough to call female MDs 'doctoresses' and female scientists 'nuclear biologesses,' I would have been equally enthusiastic about becoming those, too." pg 27"God doesn't really care if you decorate a pine tree in your living room or if you light candles. God cares how you treat other people, and how you treat yourself, and how you treat the world." pg 77"Making out, I'd quickly discovered, was the greatest activity ever invented in the history of the planet. As soon as I started making out with boys on a regular basis, I couldn't believe that vast segments of the human population ever did anything else. How, I wondered could people possibly pick up their dry cleaning, perform open-heart surgery, or teach high school mathematics when they could be making out instead? What was wrong with this world? Where were people's priorities?" pg 124Susie lost her virginity to Jake."...we lost our virginity more for each other and ourselves than for any of the boys we were actually with. We lost our virginity for the glamorous creatures we hoped to become, for the privileges we imagined we'd enjoy, for the experiences we longed to understand and master."Are you all right?" Jake whispered when it was over."Yeah. Absolutely. Great," I said, smiling at him in the candlelight. Though what I really wanted to say to him, of course, was, "Hey, now that it's over, mind if I borrow your phone?" pg 154
—Kristin
