A review by mrsthrift
Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls by Alissa Nutting
2.0
I wanted to read this book for so long that I can't remember the original reason i wanted to read it but finally the stars aligned and I did. It's a collection of short stories about women with various "unclean jobs," including deliverywoman, porn star, cat owner, gardener, knife thrower, zookeeper, alcoholic, etc.
Alissa Nutting plays with how gender works, along with the messy violence, gross bodily functions, and the uglier sides of desire and lust. I am certain this author identifies as a feminist, if you know what I mean. The women in these stories are not in control of their agency, and the men are almost entirely exploitative, mean or misogynistic. There are a lot of funny moments. There is a lot to think about in these pages. Several stories explore fucked up relationships with moms, but most of the conflict is of the romantic man-woman variety. The characters and settings are quite strange: for example, a game show where the winner has anal sex on the moon with the main character, a porn star, or another story with an older woman who is desperately sexually attracted to the garden gnome who comes alive at night to express his virility.
There is explicit material in many of these stories - call it visceral or call it raunchy, whatever you prefer -it's a hallmark of a certain type of feminist fiction written in a sort of time by a certain type of person. I'm not trying to say that it feels very "third wave feminist," just that there are a lot of sexual encounters and sexual elements, among all kinds of woman, of all ages, but certainly not with other women.
I especially liked "Ant Colony." "When space on Earth became very limited, it was declared all people had to host another organism on or inside of their bodies." A vain, beautiful actress has holes drilled into her bones to house a colony of ants. At first, it seems like a perfect solution, as she can't feel the ants and they aren't visible so they don't affect her work. "I can tell you this: I did love how invisible the ants were. They were creatures that seemed to consider themselves neither important nor beautiful.” She begins to sense them inside her, and then they begin to eat her from the inside out. The actress leaves her obligations and life behind to become “Eat, Walk, Lift, Chomp.” This story tapped into my long-standing obsession with bot flies, but it was creepier and sadder than any bot fly infestation I've ever thought about. So, there's something in that.
This book offers some interesting tropes to the world of quirky, dark humored, feminist fiction. Nutting gave me something beyond the same rehashed narratives and themes I've come to expect from that type of book. I was, however, colossally disappointed and grossed out by the single trans woman character in the unfortunately-titled "She-Man." The character fell flat and the plot was so predictable. The former prostitute trans woman goes stealth, gets a nice boyfriend with a decent job, a little dog and her own business that allows her to make money off her creativity. Her former pimp tells her boyfriend about her history. The dog gets killed, the boyfriend kicks her out, and then he tells a bunch of bigoted white supremacists that she's a man. The white supremacists beat her to death in an alley after she makes an impassioned plea for life, invoking their sisters, mothers, wives.
I literally cannot understand why this author can write so many interesting stories with unconventional narratives about women, but cannot think of any story involving a trans woman that isn't "exposed, rejected, killed." It is exhausting to me to think of how far we have come on this and yet, here we are, Alissa Nutting writing "She-Man" in the year 2011. At least she didn't try to tackle the subject of race amirite? Small favors.
And that's the crux of this collection for me. It's on point with a lot of feminist issues that define my political life (abortion, sexuality, money, careers, mothering, daughtering, caring for animals, morality, infection, disease, drugs, political guilt, porn, aging, etc) but it seems to fall short in the ways that it could have been exceptional and different. There was an opportunity here, and this book took the easy way out.
You could make excuses for it, like yes, it is fiction and it doesn't make some higher claim to be the perfect modern feminist fables. The fact is, I'm writing about this interesting book that was written in my lifetime by someone who is probably on the spectrum of my social/cultural/political community and I'm saying, this book should have been better than that and I'm not going to stop asking for something better. I just can't.
Alissa Nutting plays with how gender works, along with the messy violence, gross bodily functions, and the uglier sides of desire and lust. I am certain this author identifies as a feminist, if you know what I mean. The women in these stories are not in control of their agency, and the men are almost entirely exploitative, mean or misogynistic. There are a lot of funny moments. There is a lot to think about in these pages. Several stories explore fucked up relationships with moms, but most of the conflict is of the romantic man-woman variety. The characters and settings are quite strange: for example, a game show where the winner has anal sex on the moon with the main character, a porn star, or another story with an older woman who is desperately sexually attracted to the garden gnome who comes alive at night to express his virility.
There is explicit material in many of these stories - call it visceral or call it raunchy, whatever you prefer -it's a hallmark of a certain type of feminist fiction written in a sort of time by a certain type of person. I'm not trying to say that it feels very "third wave feminist," just that there are a lot of sexual encounters and sexual elements, among all kinds of woman, of all ages, but certainly not with other women.
I especially liked "Ant Colony." "When space on Earth became very limited, it was declared all people had to host another organism on or inside of their bodies." A vain, beautiful actress has holes drilled into her bones to house a colony of ants. At first, it seems like a perfect solution, as she can't feel the ants and they aren't visible so they don't affect her work. "I can tell you this: I did love how invisible the ants were. They were creatures that seemed to consider themselves neither important nor beautiful.” She begins to sense them inside her, and then they begin to eat her from the inside out. The actress leaves her obligations and life behind to become “Eat, Walk, Lift, Chomp.” This story tapped into my long-standing obsession with bot flies, but it was creepier and sadder than any bot fly infestation I've ever thought about. So, there's something in that.
This book offers some interesting tropes to the world of quirky, dark humored, feminist fiction. Nutting gave me something beyond the same rehashed narratives and themes I've come to expect from that type of book. I was, however, colossally disappointed and grossed out by the single trans woman character in the unfortunately-titled "She-Man." The character fell flat and the plot was so predictable. The former prostitute trans woman goes stealth, gets a nice boyfriend with a decent job, a little dog and her own business that allows her to make money off her creativity. Her former pimp tells her boyfriend about her history. The dog gets killed, the boyfriend kicks her out, and then he tells a bunch of bigoted white supremacists that she's a man. The white supremacists beat her to death in an alley after she makes an impassioned plea for life, invoking their sisters, mothers, wives.
I literally cannot understand why this author can write so many interesting stories with unconventional narratives about women, but cannot think of any story involving a trans woman that isn't "exposed, rejected, killed." It is exhausting to me to think of how far we have come on this and yet, here we are, Alissa Nutting writing "She-Man" in the year 2011. At least she didn't try to tackle the subject of race amirite? Small favors.
And that's the crux of this collection for me. It's on point with a lot of feminist issues that define my political life (abortion, sexuality, money, careers, mothering, daughtering, caring for animals, morality, infection, disease, drugs, political guilt, porn, aging, etc) but it seems to fall short in the ways that it could have been exceptional and different. There was an opportunity here, and this book took the easy way out.
You could make excuses for it, like yes, it is fiction and it doesn't make some higher claim to be the perfect modern feminist fables. The fact is, I'm writing about this interesting book that was written in my lifetime by someone who is probably on the spectrum of my social/cultural/political community and I'm saying, this book should have been better than that and I'm not going to stop asking for something better. I just can't.