Whip Smart: A Memoir

admin — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Here's a confession: I've never actually read a memoir before, so I went into Melissa Febos' cleverly titled Whip Smart with complete ignorance. As a result, I'm not sure if the book's half-plot, half-retroactive dime-store psychological self-exploration formula is typical of the genre or not. Either way, I found the real-life narrative of a twenty-year-old college student turned self-destructive sex worker simultaneously engaging, sickening, unflinchingly honest, and enormously annoying.

Febos' story is certainly uncommon. As a straight-A student at New York City's The New School in the early 2000s, she decided to become a dominatrix, not because she was particularly strapped for cash or because she became seduced by the BDSM scene or even because she was bored. She makes the case at the beginning of the memoir that it was either that or stripping. "The vulnerability of stripping had always disturbed me; it seemed too easy to be condescended to, to be humiliated," Febos writes. "My need to be in control had always trumped the allure of being so desired." A couple of calls, a short interview, and a few training sessions later, the author is plunging headfirst into the world of dominant-on-demand women and the wealthy men they serve.

As the story advances, it's hard to believe that anyone performing the kinds of acts she did (for the small salary of seventy-five dollars an hour, given the extreme things she was asked to do) would exalt themselves above a stripper, who is never required to urinate, defecate, or spit on their clients, as Febos frequently did. She manages to do it, repeatedly, while separating her dominatrix sessions from other types of sex work because she didn't get nude or allow her clients to have sex with her (although she did frequently have sex with the men, with the help of a strap-on). It's this frequent, repetitive holier-than-thou diatribe about her position within the sex trade that makes the book annoying.

Hand in hand with her top-of-the-sex-industry lines were hollow words about female empowerment and her mother's feminism, which apparently was seriously misconstrued in it's transference to the next generation. Take this scene where she decides to fess up about the new job: _Instinctively, I tried to appeal to my mother's feminist, therapist values...The women I work with, they're amazing, strong, educated, creative women. It's not like I'm a prostitute or something. I'm in control of everything that happens. It's empowering._Empowerment and feminism are obviously not the same thing, while being paid to serve as a sex object (nude or not) is a form of prostitution. Febos' lines aren't from any feminist playbook; they're just ways the author—always used to feeling like the smartest person in the room—justifies her profession, which she admits was, at times, demoralizing and plain disgusting. Because of the exchange of currency that occurred in "the dungeon," she and her co-workers were objects fulfilling a dominant sexual fantasy for the men without actually being dominant. Dominance, also, isn't synonymous with feminism or empowerment, as is often insinuated in this memoir.

While the story revolves around life in the dungeon and it's crazy cast of characters, Febos also weaves a parallel story of her heavy drug use, which occurred concurrently with her dungeon ascent and descent. There are also the other bad habits that she reveals—like randomly stealing books from Barnes & Noble and lying at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings—all of which are eventually resolved as Febos becomes stronger in her power over her addictions.

Despite our differing opinions on women, society, and sex work, I admired Febos' willingness to tell the whole truth in the least preachy way possible. Although it was evident that she thought (and maybe still thinks) many of her actions were commendable because of their shock value and adversarial relationship to social and sexual norms, it takes some serious guts and huge (ahem) balls to pull off publishing this type of story. For that reason alone, Whip Smart is an absolute must-read.

Cross-posted from Uptown Literati

Written by: Whitney Teal, April 25th 2010

The Opposite of Me

admin — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Sarah Pekkanen

Washington Square Press

Lindsey Rose’s life is perfectly in order when The Opposite of Me opens: She’s hours away from being made a vice-president at a large advertising firm, she weeks away from owning a piece real estate in a tony New York neighborhood, she’s got a closet full of designer clothes, and, oh, she’s only twenty-nine years old. Sarah Pekkanen’s debut novel may sound like a familiar chick lit story, but over the course of nearly 400 pages, it wades into deeper waters.

At the book's beginning, the heroine is comfortable with being the successful, smart, and serious twin to Alex's breathtaking beauty, charm, and popularity. The two have orbited around each other since birth, but were never able to connect until an unexpected and catastrophic chain of events bring Lindsey back home to the DC suburb of Bethesda. Here, with her two hilarious and long-bickering parents, sister, and a childhood friend who’s always had a not-so-secret crush on her, Lindsey begins to discover and embrace her true self. Though The Opposite of Me is billed as being about sisters (and it is, in a way), the central theme seems to be identity, which even the four markers that divide the book suggest: “Success,” “Home,” “Jump,” and “Trading Places.”

Lindsey’s characterization of her twin was disturbing to me at first because the smart = ugly and pretty = dumb stereotypes for women are, generally, false. Because readers meet Alex first through Lindsey’s jealous eyes, I found the prettier twin to be unreal. Yet, I identified with the sisters. As the story unfolds and Alex is allowed to speak and feel and express herself on her own terms, readers see that there’s a lot more to her than meets Lindsey’s eye, including a devastating diagnosis that throws the entire trajectory of the novel a-plop.

As grown women, some of us would like to believe we were born with our personalities, that all of our little quirks were predestined by nature. But anyone with a sibling—particularly one of the same sex—knows that, as much as our DNA plays a part, our identities can also be formed by a desire to compete with or be different from our familial relations. In this regard, Lindsey’s extreme Type A personality juxtaposed against Alex’s seemingly carefree and lovable nature seems a lot more believable and relevant, as if years of rubbing against each other had molded polar opposite personalities.

The meat of this story involves many of the issues that engross twenty-somethings: career, family, and relationships. Both women are initially presented as perfect fodder for bragging parents, but as each begins to discover hidden talents, the sisters commit to the rough-and-tumble work of living lives of passion. Pekkanen successfully leaves many of the genre’s cliches in the trash, but that didn’t stop the writer from indulging in a few tried-and-true chick lit plot points, including The Makeover. After sexifying her image and going on a six page shopping spree, our heroine makes one last stop for new shoes.

"Your boyfriend’s going to love them," a salesperson tells Lindsey.

"Boyfriend?" I said, winking. "Don’t you mean boyfriends?"

"You go girl!" she said.

What’s not to love about that?

Written by: Whitney Teal, April 13th 2010