Summary and Analysis of Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

Based on the Book by Lindy West

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• Publisher: Worth Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781504044752
• Topic: Study Aids
• Subtopic: Study Guides

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Summary

Lady Kluck

As a fat, young girl, Lindy West doesn’t know what she wants to be when she grows up, but she knows she isn’t the stuff of princesses and astronauts. The only people who look like her on TV are Lady Kluck (the fat chicken from Disney’s Robin Hood), a cross-dressing Baloo from The Jungle Book, Miss Piggy (powerful, but a little rape-y), and the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland (mean and murderous). Lindy relates to Marla Hooch (A League of Their Own) because she is the epitome of competence and unfuckableness. The shortlist also includes Ursula the Sea Witch (The Little Mermaid), Mrs. Potts (Beauty and The Beast), and an elderly woman with dangling arm fat (The Adventures of Pete & Pete).

Need to Know: The world isn’t kind to ugly, fat, and aggressive women. Mothers or monsters—both with no sex appeal—are their limited professional choices.

Bones

Society casts fat people as unappealing moral failures, teaching Lindy to shrink (socially, if not physically). The term “big” is exchanged with “fat” to spare her feelings, though strangers feel no compunction about telling her she’s way too large. Lindy starts to avoid certain activities, places with narrow aisles, and rickety chairs. As her friends lose their baby fat and grow into adults they become tall and graceful (some to their detriment), while she remains stumplike. She feels cheated—until she realizes that the “perfect body” is a lie. Who gets to decide what a woman’s body should look like? Men? Makeup and clothing companies? There is no “perfect body,” there is only what a lot of people have agreed upon. When most of the world’s population doesn’t fall into that category, why does society still compare themselves to it?

Need to Know: Calling adults fat infantilizes and desexualizes them. It’s a feminist issue because it shackles women in shame and hunger. Women have been taught that unless they conform to a certain ideal—skinny—they are unfeminine and unworthy of love and success.

Are You There, Margaret? It’s Me, a Person Who Is Not a Complete Freak

Childhood suits Lindy, but puberty—with menstruation, hormonal flux, and acne—is unbearable. Lindy is horrified by the blood that appears monthly—it’s gross, it’s dirty, and it’s something to be kept hidden. Period anxiety is the result of a taboo that turns a natural bodily function into a disgusting process. Why is a woman’s blood gross, but the blood from a skinned knee is not? It’s called misogyny. It’s the belief that women’s bodies are mysterious and unclean, and are therefore not worth providing health care for. But half of the population gets periods, and periods are no grosser than other bodily fluids. So, why, in a country where half of the population has periods and uteruses, do women have to fight so hard for healthcare? Women need to be proud of their bodies, speak up, and ditch the shame.

Need to Know: Most women, to some extent, absorb society’s pervasive negative views of their own bodies. There is a taboo that women’s bodies are defective male bodies, and that having “outie” genitals instead of “innie” genitals makes you a more rational human being.

How to Stop Being Shy in Eighteen Easy Steps

Today’s self-help economy offers no magic bullets; change is slow and hard. Lindy, incredibly shy as a child and overly aware of her size and weight, lists the 18 stepping stones that got her from quiet to loud. She lists a string of embarrassments—from peeing in her pants in third grade, to flipping over a picnic table while eating pizza in front of the band YACHT, to getting called out for loud sex by her handsome apartment manager, to neglecting to tell the man she lost her virginity to that it was her first time and then bleeding all over his bed, to watching Trainspotting with her parents—that didn’t kill her. Life goes on, people forget, and you should just pick yourself up and go live.

Need to Know: Humiliation rarely has life or death consequences. The stuff you think will kill you only makes you realize that you’re a lot stronger than you thought.

When Life Gives You Lemons

Lindy buys a pregnancy test (and toilet paper—a decoy purchase so the checker won’t notice the pee stick). She got pregnant by a boyfriend who made her feel lonelier than when she was alone, prompting her first grown-up decision: to have an abortion and, eventually, to break up with her boyfriend. The abortion sets in motion positive changes in her life, as well as opening her eyes to how complicated it is to get an abortion. Also, talking about an abortion is still taboo. The reality is that life is complicated and everyone ending a pregnancy has a unique story; some are dramatic and regretful, while others are a relief and uninteresting. Abortion is a medical procedure that made Lindy’s life better. Not being able to have one...

Table of contents

• Title
• Disclaimer
• Contents
• Context
• Overview
• Summary
• Cast of Characters
• Direct Quotes and Analysis
• Trivia
• What’s That Word?
• Critical Response
• About Lindy West
• For Your Information
• Bibliography
• Copyright