A friend of mine has been recommending the podcast 2 Dope Queens for forEVER and now I really wish I had taken her up on it sooner, because this book made me happy to read. It also makes me really want to read her first book, You Can’t Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have To Explain and it honestly makes me want to start writing my own life/world essays. Because that’s what this book is, life as Phoebe Robinson sees and experiences it. Just funnier, because she’s a comedian.
Everything’s Trash, But It’s Okay is about embracing the guilty pleasure trash (watching all reality TV and no Schindler’s List) while tossing out the TRASH trash (racism, excessive student debt and associated money problems). The book covers dating, feminism, white feminism, body images, society’s trash beauty standards, money and the lack thereof, it’s quite a wide swatch of topics, but all topics that really make sense when you’re a woman our age (plus the race issues that I can’t speak to because, as I’ve said before, I’m hella white).
On the one hand, I really appreciate that she so clearly writes like she talks like she thinks. In that, she and I are alike. My speech patterns and verbal idiosyncrasies are pretty clear in the way that I type and even as I read this aloud, I hear my voice speaking it and yeah, checks out. On the other hand, there are a lot of directly codified verbal ticks and abbreviations that make the reader do a double take to fully understand, and ho boy are there #hashtagproblems. Eeeeeverything becomes like a five word hashtag. It’s a lot. I get it, but it’s a lot.
Anyway, I 100% follow her on Instagram now and yes, it makes my life better.
