All Adventurous Women Do (Too Much)
An ode to Jenny Slate, Eve Babitz, Greta Gerwig, and some other big-feelinged heroines of mine
I think sometimes you’re too much for some people, is an actual sentence an actual real-life man I once knew said to me one time.
I know because I wrote it down. The second he said it, actually. Instead of reacting and responding as I usually would, by widening my already very wide eyes, I captured the words that he said because I knew that when he said it, it did probably the opposite of what he wanted those words to do.
He meant it as a note, I think. A cute little adjustment. Kind of like, hey, quick tip for future reference: you are a whole bunch and actually probably a lot too much of a bunch so if you want to be able to have an easier time with people like me (i.e. men), maybe you should tone all of your… stuff… wayyyy down.
I think, in his mind, I was going to thank him. And take the note. But instead, I wrote it down because it unlocked a thing that I think I had previously spent my whole life trying (unsuccessfully) to keep a tight lid on. And then he said those words and Pandora’s box was opened and he was right: sometimes I am absolutely too much for people. But the people I am too much for are not the people I want to walk amongst.
I look up to giants. Women who create words and worlds that are bursting at the seams with muchness, with big, enthusiastic hand gestures and the ability to project their voices so that it reaches the back of even the largest of venues. Every woman whose soul has touched a part of my own is one I am certain has also been told is too much for people sometimes.
Jenny Slate recently released a new comedy special called Seasoned Professional. To know me is to know I love Jenny Slate. To be loved by me is to tolerate me reading passages of her book, Little Weirds, to you on the phone because her words feel like answer keys to parts of myself I know people don’t always understand.
When I share her words, what I am saying is, “See this? Hear the sounds that these feelings make? That’s me right there in that noise. That noise is where my voice is from and I am taking you to my hometown because I want you to learn my language. I want you to understand the things about me that you don’t.”
Her latest special was, as usual, another glimpse into a lot of different sections of my psyche. It made me laugh loud enough to wake the dog beside me in bed and left me with a number of quotes and morsels that I transcribed; they now live in a document on my computer titled BATTLE CRIES full of other quotes that translate my too much-ness said by other women who were absolutely called ‘too much’ at least a handful of times in their lives.
Some of these quotes will find their way in this piece. Too many, maybe. But I don’t think so. I am sharing the things that I want to share even if they are too much, because I think sometimes the things we feel are in fact too much are actually things that feel bigger than ourselves or too hard to understand, and so I am here to show you how to understand them.
Rax King’s book, Tacky: Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have to Offer, explores this very thing. In the introduction, she writes about her relationship with the word ‘tacky;’ what it means to her and what it looks like to embody the descriptor we so judge:
“As far as I’m concerned, tackiness is joyfulness. To be proudly tacky, your aperture for all the too-much feelings—angsty, desire, joy—must be all the way open. You’ve got to be so much more ready to feel everything than anyone probably wants to be. It’s a brutal way to live…. Tackiness is about becoming: it’s hard to access all those too-much-feelings if you believe you’re already done growing, but it’s the easiest thing in the world when you’re constantly poking your head around corners looking for what’s next.”
In Seasoned Professional, Jenny Slate, the too-much maven, explores, for a second, the idea of ‘chillness,’ which, in my opinion, is the exact opposite of too-much-ness.
“…I wanted to be chill. Which, by the way, is a fool’s errand. And I’ll just add that ‘chillness’ is not real. I don’t believe chill people exist. I think it is a concept that misogynists invented so that we could act like we don’t have needs.”
I agree with this. I agree with her. We’ve all, I’m sure, seen the “cool girl monologue” in Gone Girl, the one where Amy Dunne picks apart the details and minutiae of chill girls with surgeon-like precision:
“Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.
Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men – friends, coworkers, strangers – giddy over these awful pretender women, and I’d want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who’d like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them. I’d want to grab the poor guy by his lapels or messenger bag and say: The bitch doesn’t really love chili dogs that much – no one loves chili dogs that much! And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: They’re not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be. Oh, and if you’re not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesn’t want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version – maybe he’s a vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe he’s a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics. There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn’t ever complain. (How do you know you’re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: ‘I like strong women.’ If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because ‘I like strong women’ is code for ‘I hate strong women.’)”
This monologue has made itself into a movement. A viral TikTok sound, a reference thrown around with a level of frequency and familiarity that astonishes me but, in thinking about it, in looking at the text again, I understand.
Cool girls, chill girls, don’t exist. They are in fact, absolutely too much, they just channel their too-much-ness into hiding their muchness altogether. The layers of casual they apply like armor are testaments to just how much they really are.
I have watched my roommate try seven variations of the same outfit, spend an hour on her hair and another hour on her makeup, and say that she’s going for the “chill, whatever girl look.”
Chill isn’t real. And, even more so, it’s not appealing. At least not to me, not anymore.
In Betty Gilpin’s book, All the Women in My Brain: And Other Concerns, she writes a little bit about what it is to relinquish the desire to curate yourself to be small enough and easy enough to make people (mostly men) a little more comfortable:
“It’s taken thirty-five years for me to realize that stopping and wondering aloud what you want your life to look like isn’t unleashing bear spray in a nursing home. It’s just what you’re supposed to do. Girlhood fucks you in this way. It’s hard to learn to dream when you’ve spent all your energy trying to be one for someone else.”
I spent a lot of time making myself a whole lot smaller and easier to make people (mostly men) feel comfortable with who they have asked me to be.
I have worn fake smiles that make my cheeks hurt and twitch at the end of the night when I take off the “no makeup makeup” and unpin the twenty pins used to achieve a messy “effortless” bun. I have swallowed arguments and interjections for the sake of letting the person I am being talked at by walk away feeling right and smart and full of ‘such good points.’ I have laughed off my feelings and excused my confessions of needs and expectations by saying that, ‘I’m being dramatic,’ just to allow someone else to feel better about making no effort to meet any of my needs at all.
I have done all of these things for the sake of being easily consumed, I think, but I don’t want to be easy anymore. I don’t want to swallow myself anymore; choking on my muchness isn’t on the books. I am too full of things to write and stories to tell to waste my energy on making myself digestible.
So I’m giving up on hiding the too-muchness. Or apologizing for it. I’m tired of it, I’m bored by it, and it has only ever benefitted the people in my life who maybe want me smaller so that they can feel bigger. No thanks.
“I am tired of sinking down to a lower place to be with men. I am tired of throwing a tarp over some of my personality so that the shape of my identity suits some gross man a little better, for whatever shitty things he needs to do in order to keep his boring identity erect and supreme. I have many grievances and no place to set them down, and I am cranky from having to shoulder this burden of reactions, like I am a fucking Ox that should carry your unsellable wares.”
-Jenny Slate
I think about that one monologue in Frances Ha. You know the one, I’m sure you do. The one where she talks about what she wants. The one where she is so deeply earnest and vulnerable at a table full of people who aren’t really open to it, who are, maybe, thinking to themselves, ‘this girl is too much.’
That monologue, that performance, is, a little bit, the thesis of this, I guess. Or the thesis of me, maybe, I’m not sure. Because when I watched it for the first time, when I’ve rewatched it (which happens very often), yes, I see and recognize that she is sharing parts of her soul with people who didn’t necessarily ask for it or want it to be shown to them and yes, that’s an uncomfortable feeling both for her and for the people she’s with, but I would so much rather be the person who is allowing themselves to feel and express the things that stir within themselves than to be the person at the party who avoids eye contact and changes the subject to something small, casual, chill. When I watch that moment, I know how she feels. Because god, I have been that person, who is so full of a feeling that needs to be shared, even when the person you’re sharing it with doesn’t get it.
And, in truth, isn’t it better to be the person who has too much to say?
In Eve’s Hollywood, Eve Babitz (another too-much lady I love), writes,
“So it turned out that power was the quality of knowing what you liked. An odd thing for power to be.”
I know what I like. I know the power in having feelings and wants and needs and putting a spotlight on them all, rather than pinning them away behind a strand of hair designed to fall just right, in an artfully disheveled way.
The truth is, all of the parts of myself that have been described as too much are the parts of myself that create the things that matter to me. I suspect the same can be said of all the women I admire, the women I’ve quoted here. I would not be able to make what I make were it not for my too much-ness.
I will close this ramble out with just one more quote.
This one I read every day. It is the closest I will get to a prayer or a motto. It is tattooed on my heart.
As the image of myself becomes sharper in my brain and more precious, I feel less afraid that someone else will erase me by denying me love.
-Jenny Slate
The image of myself is not complete; it doesn’t need to be, though. It gets sharper and clearer every day.
My muchness is precious, meant to be seen and shared, not tucked away and packaged into easily swallowed sound bites.
So here’s to being too much and letting it shine. Because really “too much” is only too much for people who aren’t brave enough to be anything at all.
So good and true and honest and female.
It should be published in Vogue, or anyone of those women’s magazines where you should have a column!
Xxx