Big Girls Don't Cry

An at-times muddled, at-times searing take on the 2008 US election, and what it meant for the ladies.

I picked this up on a party acquaintance's (?) recommendation, since I was seeking books through which I could dispense some of my #ImWithHer energy/zeal. Basically, I wanted a Hillary bio. This isn't a Hillary bio, so much as a broad overview of what the 2008 political stage looked like: Hillary, Michelle Obama, Sarah Palin, Gloria Steinem, Katie Couric, Rachel Maddow.

In a way, this book is effective at positioning that moment in history - both my personal history (and why I thought the things I thought), and American history. It had never occurred to me how things like the rise of feminist blogs (Jezebel, Feministing, and shout out to the late, great Tiger Beatdown) with their snark and pithiness and angry, hilarious eviscerations were part of big cultural movements. I just thought... I had somehow stumbled upon them organically, as in a jungle? But, no, as with my crafting craze of 2005, my LiveJournal fanfic days of the early 00s, and my interest in data science, it's all just vogue stuff.

Suffice to say: this book gives a macro clarity to all the feminist stuff that came up in the late 2000s. It's relevant now because, of course, Hillary is running again (and oh God do I need to stop checking the polls), and we also have big powerhouse political women like Elizabeth Warren thundering down from the Senate. The book's good at framing things, but it meanders a bit - and it's written, basically, like a book-length Salon/Slate/Atlantic article: so, snarky and pithy and not terribly concerned with structuring a cohesive narrative over multiple chapters. But - meh, I learned a bunch of things, it clarified some stuff, I give it a B.