The paperback edition of Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of Unruly Women came out on August 7th, and I had the opportunity to ask author Anne Helen Peterson about the book, and about her work on celebrity, the narrative of image, and how women are seizing control of their own stories. Her book is about unruly women who disrupt the world around them in unique and powerful ways, and our … Continue reading 312. Unruly Women, Camouflaging Misogyny, and Controlling Our Narratives: An Interview with Anne Helen Petersen →
Anne Helen Petersen’s byline on any collection of words means that I’m going to drop what I’m doing immediately to read it. I don’t read a lot of celebrity gossip and culture, but her analyses are fascinating on multiple levels. Not only are they thorough and drawn from a variety of sources, but they attempt to frame one or several layers of meaning around a celebrity’s brand or image, often locating that meaning in a … Continue reading Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman by Anne Helen Petersen →
Greetings, folks! This post is to test something on the back end of the site. That was delightfully meta. I’m using the spoiler tag to test the spoiler tag and to tell you what I’m doing. Which isn’t a spoiler, now that I think about it. I’m being pretty clear about what’s up. You may have noticed yesterday in the morning, eastern US time, that the site had, well, no content. Yeah, that was Not … Continue reading Another Technical Testing Post! →
I’ve recently added several paid subscription newsletters to my inbox – which is hilarious because if you told Past Sarah that Present Sarah was going to be paying for more email, she’d have erupted. My inbox used to give me a LOT of stress, but now that I’ve managed it more aggressively, I have time, space, and eagerness for deliberately and carefully reading newsletters from journalists and writers I respect and admire on topics I … Continue reading Newsletters We Love and Recommend →
I’ve read most of this series, and it’s among my favorite comfort reads. I’ve mentioned this before, but I started reading this series in Japan, when jet lag would gift me with a hard wake-up at 3am and I’d have no ability to get back to sleep. My memories of these characters are indelibly mixed with being wrapped in a duvet, hiding under the covers so the light from my e-reader wouldn’t wake everyone up. … Continue reading A Stroke of Malice by Anna Lee Huber →
Gossip meets history—a compulsively readable collection of Hollywood’s most notorious clashes and controversies in the spirit of Hollywood Babylon Believe it or not, America’s fascination with celebrity culture was thriving well before the days of TMZ, Perez Hilton, Charlie Sheen’s breakdown and allegations against Woody Allen. And the stars of yesteryear? They weren’t always the saints that we make them out to be. BuzzFeed columnist Anne Helen Petersen is here to set the record straight with Scandals of … Continue reading Scandals of Classic Hollywood →
I can hardly believe it’s time for Whatcha Reading already. It always sneaks up on me and I can hear my book budget weeping quietly in the background. If you’re new to the site, this is where we recap the books we’ve been reading and how we feel about them. Let us know in the comments how much or little you’ve whittled down your TBR pile! Sarah: One of the benefits to developing and then … Continue reading Whatcha Reading? August 2017 Edition →
From celebrity gossip expert and BuzzFeed culture writer Anne Helen Petersen comes an accessible, analytical look at how female celebrities are pushing boundaries of what it means to be an “acceptable” woman. You know the type: the woman who won’t shut up, who’s too brazen, too opinionated—too much. She’s the unruly woman, and she embodies one of the most provocative and powerful forms of womanhood today. In Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud, Anne Helen Petersen … Continue reading Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud →
Link time! It's like we're on the internet, this enormous trove of interconnected data and opinion searchable in myriad directions. Oh, internet, you're so awesome. First up: I'm over at Kirkus this week talking about Coming In from the Cold by Sarina Bowen, which I read last week on vacation and which helped break my reading slump: In my last column, I wrote about my reading slump, and how so few of the books I was … Continue reading Links! Lots of Things to Read and Look At This Week →
