Hiiii girlies. So I applied for a Fall Writing Residency (pretty on brand of me to plan to get hired at two jobs and then immediately ask for two weeks off because I was going to Portland to work on my novel). I went into this application with stars in my eyes and butterflies in my tummy and alas, it did nawt work out. So, because this personal essay is my little darling I wanted to share it on my blog. Let me know what you think!
I never felt unpopular until I made a Facebook account. I was a tween that treasured alone time even before mastering masturbation, and the life I dreamt of existed behind young adult book covers decorated with pink convertibles and neutered sexual tension. In fact, I didn’t enjoy sleepovers as much as I enjoyed reading about them. I was so lost in literature that it took social media for me to take note of all the events I wasn’t invited to. The internet launched me into a world where I was something to be embarrassed about. No one wanted to hang out with the fat girl that has to be told by the teacher to wear a bra. Seventh-grade self-awareness forced me to pay particular attention to my image. In order to secure an invite anywhere, I downloaded calorie counters and Doodle Jump onto my iPod Touch. I saved my babysitting money to buy a nutrition plan I saw on Pinterest. I was learning that being a woman is a brand I can buy.
My teenage years were spent reblogging Tumblr posts about suicide and wanting to be sad enough for someone to write about. Seventeen magazine talked about the dangers of self-harm, so I snapped a pink razor in half instead of crying in front of the mirror again. It felt feminist to destroy a tool that the patriarchy pressured me into buying. I tried to write the word “ugly” on my hips and grimaced at the blood pooling with my coconut oil conditioner in the shower. To be a writer during the era of personal essays meant surviving the worst and writing about it. It was easy to think I was living through the worst when I had access to the internet and circumstantial family trauma. My dad had lost his job in the recession and feminism was expensive. I couldn’t afford the activism I defined myself by, so I returned to writing.
I attended an all-girls high school. It was the kind of world where maintaining the image of 2010s feminism was almost as mandatory as the plaid skirts. We read books by women writers and talked about our weekend plans. Most peoples’ laptops were covered in cursive and candy-colored stickers for all the causes they supported. Feminism came in pink, baby blue, and glitter. We were told that uniformity encouraged learning. This primarily white institution attempted to convince us that erasing differences is an act of rebellion. We were all women, and we had to work together. Rumors still spilled like plastic vodka bottles.
I believed I was engaging in politics because I wasn’t able to exist outside of them. My friends and I fought with all-boys schools on Twitter about the need for feminism. I talked about the sexual harassment that occurred at my after-school job. I tried to call out slut-shaming. We appeared to be the future liberals wanted. We leaned in and discussed the women of color that the Lean In theory excluded. We watched documentaries about trans children in English class. We liked each others’ Instagram posts and shared our pronouns in our social media bios, yet no one seemed surprised that our classmates only came out as queer after graduation.
Once I’d had enough of performing popularity, I did what every angsty teen should do at the brink of young adulthood—I packed my bags and ran away to Ohio. It took three more years of hating where I was for me to remember that writing is essential. I was accepted as an editor for my college literary magazine and another world opened up. My fellow editors and I watched the trailer for Lady Bird, talked about our favorite essays, and explored the city of Dayton. Raspberry Moscow Mules opened doors to giggling about Patti Smith, Joan Didion, and our closeted sexualities. Our world was hidden within a world of beer cans, hockey jerseys, and hookups. We joked that we were turning an Ohio party school into a liberal arts university. We’d spent too many hours reading theory to feel connected to anything other than critique and contempt.
I graduated from college at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. I felt gaslit by the girl boss feminism I’d grown up in. Instead of aspiring for a millennial pink workspace, I spent most of the pandemic wondering why I took out student loans to learn about all the ways the world is bad. Despite academia’s promises, a creative writing and gender studies degree didn’t teach me how to imagine new worlds. Life inside the classroom tethered me to timelines and allowed me opportunities to get lost in literature. But it takes living in the real world to learn how to tell my story.
My love of the young adult genre, obsession with oversharing online, and interest in sexual politics are why I want to write a young adult novel that encompasses the fun aspects of the college experience while also playing with the complexities of sexuality, gender, and the internet. I want to understand and undermine the ways that the sex-positive feminist movement encourages women to excel within the relationship scripts that already exist. I aim to depict the ways that the movement for sexual abundance excludes people while also honoring bodily autonomy and the value of pleasure.
Unpopped is a fictional upmarket young adult novel. It's a first-person narrative told through the eyes of Erin, a sexually inexperienced college sophomore who questions her sexuality after meeting Delilah, the president of her puritanical Midwestern University's underground sex-positivity club, Triple X. Blinded by Delilah's breasts and acidic wit, Erin stumbles into the role of Triple X’s anonymous sex blogger—Frida Nipple. Protected by her pen name, Erin uncovers that Triple X—and Delilah—promises more than a good time. Perhaps commodifying intimacy can cost more than the price of Erin's first vibrator. Influenced by Jia Tolentino, Judy Blume, and Leigh Stein, Unpopped is a coming-of-age tale that explores sex-positivity, friendship, and queerness with a few laughs in between.
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