Let's get this out of the way, once and for all: Who is Tina Fey?
Saturday Night Live's first ever female head writer. Sarah Palin impersonator. Producer, actor and head writer of 30 Rock. Improv machine. Comic genius. Coined the words "blorft" and "bossypants". This last, along with her perpetually hunched shoulders, are the reasons she has been hailed the 'sex symbol for the intellectual man'. She is also the woman to be held guilty for every time a guy finds out that his straight girlfriend unashamedly has a crush on her.
Also, just for the record, she signed a $5 million contract to write this book, while winning Emmy's, cutting her daughter's fingernails and spoofing Palin.
If you judge a book by how fast you finish it and its 'unputdownability' (how appropriately Fey-ish of me), this is scream-off-your-rooftops-i-wish-this-book-wasn't-just-275-pages good. It's hugely funny, before you even open the book. The spoofy cover is bound to have your simple father innocently inquiring if it's a book about a lady going through a gender change operation. My dad did, anyway. Advance praise for the book on the back cover includes one by a guy who eats books saying, 'Totally delicious'. :D
Structured like a memoir but more like a collection of funny life experiences, Fey talks about everything from bewilderment with her first period (it wasn't blue fluid like they showed in advertisements), to her journey towards becoming the most influential funny woman alive. It's characteristically peppered with punchlines such as...
- On being asked by a photographer what kind of music to play at the shoot- Just murmur "Hip Hop" or make up the name of a hipster sounding band and then act superior when they've never heard of it. "Do you guys have any Asphalt of Pinking? [disappointed] Really? [shrug] Whatever you want, then."
Basically she makes people who think that women aren't funny (read: Christopher Hitchens) feel stupid. Her kick-ass attitude and feminist zeal light up the book even in parts that seem slightly oddly-placed and irrelevant. She takes a stab at misogyny and clears the air about gender politics with equal elan.
But the stories conceal more than they reveal. She brings up her scar "but I only bring it up to explain why I'm not going to talk about it." It's a system of deflection and self-defense, that allows her to have the last laugh, and lets us join in as well.
She is completely transparent and extraordinarily funny on the subjects of body image and motherhood.
The beauty and ugliness of Photoshop, and the grudging acceptance reality that it's here to stay.
The pain of breastfeeding, and realising the inappropriateness of watching the sexy men of Entourage talking about sex while she's at it.
The impossible standards of beauty women are expected to conform to, and that Kim Kardashian has been 'made by Russian scientists to sabotage our athletes.'
The thing that I loved most about the book aren't so much the crazy punchlines. It is that she did not attempt to deconstruct her own success and style of humor, like many expected from this book. Rather, her wit and comic timing is on full display in the pages of this book. Cute anecdotes prove she is hard-working and overworked. Even Oprah thinks so. A chapter that is a tribute to her father Don Fey displays her love for family and knowledge of all things important. Talking about her mentor and boss Lorne Michaels, it is clear that she bossypants her way around by example.
Read it. :)
