BOSSYPANTS

Once in a generation a woman comes along who changes everything. Tina Fey is not that woman, but she met that woman once and acted weird around her.

See, even the back cover is funny! I don’t normally gravitate toward large-print, wide-spaced, photo-on-the-cover celebrity/entertainment/humor books, but I love Tina Fey and think she’s a great comedy writer as well as a seemingly swell person, so not surprisingly, I acquired (as a thoughtful birthday gift from Friend M), read, and enjoyed her book. This collection of short, mostly biographical essays is a quick read; it’s full of Fey’s wry, self-deprecating humor, but also thoughtful and honest about her experiences as a nerd, woman, actor, writer, and mom. It was especially interesting to read the last chapter, in which she explores her indecision about having a second child—she wants one, but knows it could perilously interrupt her career at its peak (or as she calls it, her “last five minutes of fame”) and put her TV show’s staff of 200 people out of work (“I thought 30 Rock would be canceled by now”)—given that since its writing, she had obviously made up her mind; she recently announced her pregnancy, and 30 Rock will return midseason to give her a maternity break, which seems to work out well for everyone—except possibly me, who will miss it in the meantime.

But it’s Fey’s smart, snarky feminism I love the best, as in the piece where she responds to fictional (but obviously based on reality) Internet hate mail. Here’s her answer to the complaint that she ruined SNL, is only famous because she’s a woman and a liberal, and isn’t funny:

Huzzah for the Truth Teller! Women in this country have been over-celebrated for too long. Just last night there was a story on my local news about a “missing girl,” and they must have dedicated seven or eight minutes to “where she was last seen” and “how she might have been abducted by a close family friend,” and I thought, “What is this, the News for Chicks?” Then there was some story about Hillary Clinton flying to some country because she’s secretary of state. Why do we keep talking about these dumdums? We are a society that constantly celebrates no one but women and it must stop! I want to hear what the men of the world have been up to. What fun new guns have they invented? What are they raping these days? What’s Michael Bay’s next film going to be?