Here is my deep, shameful secret: I’m addicted to drugstore paperbacks.
I even sometimes fantasize about wanting to write them.
Now, let me clarify: I really only like the ones about neurotic career gals living in New York City, usually in their late twenties or early thirties, who keep fucking up and self-sabotaging their love lives. (Meanwhile, of course, their careers are on the right track, even if those careers are making them miserable.)
Why do I like these New York Times bestsellers? These newspaper-print $7.99 books blurbed by Entertainment Weekly and Glamour? Because they’re fun and light and easy . . . but, sometimes, I really hate the fact that I read (I mean buy) these books. And Emily Giffin’s Something Borrowed is no exception.
The #1 Reason I Hate This Book
I’m just going to come out and say it: This book is anti-gay.
I mean, forget about all the hetero-normative societal conventions and stereotypes that the entire book is based on, to start with, and just go with this:
p. 53: “Annalise was upset too, for her own reasons. ‘How come you two get to be twins and I’m left out? My bag is gay.’”
Context: 30-year old narrator, Rachel, is remembering how she and her best friend, Darcy, wound up with the same backpacks on the first day of fourth grade. This book’s copyright is 2004, so let’s assume Rachel is 30 years old in 2004. Fourth graders tend to be nine or ten years old. Let’s make her ten for easier math. 2004 minus twenty years = 1984. People were not using the word “gay” as an insult in 1984. Google search results say this phenomenon cropped up post-2008. So not only is this a glaring error, it’s just tacky and insensitive and gross.
The #2 Reason I Hate This Book
p. 74: “‘All right then. I’ll wing it,’ he says, flashing me his ‘I never skipped a night wearing my retainer’ smile.
Ha. It’s terrible.
(So terrible it’s awesome? Yes. So, to clarify: because I will never allow myself to write a line as awesome as this, I hate this book.)
The #3 Reason I Hate This Book
p. 129: “Darcy and I had been friends forever, but I think it was the first time that I realized the influence I have over her. I picked her wedding dress, the most important garment that she will ever wear.”
Ridiculous.
(But this book knows it. And does not care. And because I am probably the only person on the planet who cares about how this book does not care, I hate this book. Fuck wedding dresses, that’s what I say.)
The #4 Reason I Hate This Book
p. 270: Darcy “takes a bite and continues to talk with her mouth full. ‘I’m not dyking out or anything. I’m just saying you really are always here for me.’”
Seriously? (See #1.)
The #5 Reason I Hate This Book
Darcy hits on this guy Ethan, who rejects her, and from that point forward in her mind he’s gay–”it must be the only explanation” (p. 324).
Right.
Okay, some might argue that Darcy, the character we’re not supposed to like very much, is the gay-hating racist (yes, racist. See #6). Some might argue that she is these things because she’s the bad guy in this book. But this isn’t really the case. First, Rachel never calls her out. Nobody ever does. And, second, the author, Emily Giffin, wrote a sequel, Something Blue, which provides Darcy’s side of the story (how her backstabbing maid of honor, Rachel, stole her fiance). What this means is Darcy, in the end, is supposed to be likable, the victim of her best friend’s treachery. But this doesn’t change the fact that she hates gays (See #1 and #4) and is racist (See #6).
The #6 Reason I Hate This Book
p. 282: “‘She doesn’t speak English very well. She just kept saying that she ‘didn’t see no ring.’” Darcy imitates the maid’s accent. ‘I even took the phone. I told her I would give her a big, big reward if she finds it. The bitch isn’t stupid. She knows that two carats are worth about twenty million dirty toilets.’”
The only people of color in this book are maids and doormen.
But at least Rachel’s doorman, Jose, speaks English. For all the good it does anyone. The guy’s so stupid he–SPOILER ALERT–lets Darcy go up to Rachel’s apartment even though Darcy’s fiance, Dex, is upstairs in Rachel’s apartment, because Dex and Rachel have been having an affair behind Darcy’s back all summer long. Jose, who, all along seems to get it, apparently fucks it all up for everyone at the end of the book. Thanks a lot, Jose.
The #7 Reason I Hate This Book
Can you believe it? It’s a movie! Starring Kate Hudson, Ginnifer Goodwin, and John Krasinski. I feel like, you know, only shitbooks like this get made into movies starring Kate Hudson, Ginnifer Goodwin, and John Krasinski.
(Will I see it? You know it. Just as soon as it’s on-demand at Netflix. For the record, I hate this book.)
The #8 Reason I Hate This Book
If I cared more, this would be potentially interesting: Jose’s character doesn’t make the cut for the film version.
The #9 Reason I Hate This Book
Someone out there is probably thinking: Why is this bitch taking this so seriously? To this person, I say: You’re probably missing the point of this post.
The #10 Reason I Hate This Book
I’m going to get hate mail over this post. I know it.
(And when I do, I’m going to post it here publicly.)
* * * UPDATE / CORRECTION * * *
Using the word “gay” as an insult was, in fact, common practice in the ’80s. According to the first result that pops up in the Google search that I linked (this BBC article), “By the 1980s it was finding its way into schools as a playground insult.”
So, I eat my words.
Way to be historically accurate!
Guess I’m the asshole!
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>The only people of color in this book are maids and doormen.
oh man that reminds me of American Psycho, and I love that book. Maybe I’ll read this and enjoy it in the same way (“same way” being understanding that all the characters are terrible, terrible people).
I would love to be the English teacher who gets the comparative analysis of American Psycho and Something Borrowed.
Does Christian Bale jump rope in tighty whiteies in this book?
No hate mail from me. I don’t tend to read such books, but I’m somewhat fascinated by them nonetheless, and I especially love seeing them deconstructed. :) I know “gay” wasn’t used as an insult in 1984, but it was certainly used regularly in my high school in the late 90′s. I wonder if Phoenix kids were somehow ahead of the trend…
I think what I love/hate most is how these books/movies further the idea that women are really unhappy with and unfulfilled by their careers because what they’re really looking for is rich husbands. And until they find a rich husband, they just have to keep being miserable (in their penthouse apartments, in their Jimmy Choos, etc.).
But that stuff is tolerable. Because it’s so goofy.
What’s not tolerable is a main character/narrator who does not call out her nasty best friend when she makes ignorant and insensitive remarks. I expect at least this much from mass market paperbacks that tend to have larger contemporary audiences than some of the literature we discuss on this site. I expect at least this much from the editors of presses/publishers as large and important as St. Martin’s/MacMillan.
I definitely remember “gay” being used as an insult in middle school, which would have been the mid to late 80s for me, and possibly elementary school. And I don’t think anyone would accuse Mobile, Alabama, of being ahead of its time.
I must have been living under a rock. Seriously!
Oooooooh, man. You’re so mean. Did you even see that diamond on the front? That’s class. I wanna drink the cover, it looks like a strawberry milkshake. I think you should read it again. Kate Hudson doesn’t pick movie adaptations of bad books. Point-settia-match.
True, Kate Hudson is like an all-star American Sweetheart. I wonder if the movie-version of Darcy will be a racist, gay-bashing bitch. If she is, then Kate Hudson might be branching out, trying more challenging characters.
probably not, because kate hudson has never done anything challenging
Kate Hudson is the perfect pick for Darcy . . . because she’s so pretty/perfect you just can’t help but want to hate her. But you can’t because usually she seems so nice. But Darcy’s mean and insensitive and cruel. So there’s plenty of reason to hate her. It’s like, you’re allowed to hate her. It’s a win-win.
That trick she did at that donkey show in Tijuana looked pretty challenging to me.
Wait… maybe I’m getting her confused with someone else. These Hollywood types all look the same to me.
YOU MADE ME WIKIPEDIA “DONKEY SHOW”!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donkey_show
Hahaha:
“More recently the term has been used to describe a situation that has become a ‘complete mess.’”
That’s quite a phrasal evolution. Ha.
This sounds a lot like her BRIDE WARS character.
She looks 12 years old here. She looks like Dakota Fanning.
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3984832512/tt0491152
Did you ever see Amy Poehlr’s Dakota Fanning Show sketch on SNL? Hilarious.
So funny!
I wonder if the movie-version Darcy will be John Krasinski. He might finally do well in a movie if he plays a bigot. And then Kate plays, um, Ethan.
Weirdly enough, John Krasinski plays Ethan, this dude who gets all of like one single chapter in the book.
I can imagine that in the movie version of this book, there needed to be a best-friend character that isn’t Darcy. In the book, the narrator (Rachel) spends A FUCKLOT of time talking to herself/thinking to herself/narrating/agonizing about how and why she’s sleeping with her best friend’s husband-to-be. Obviously she can’t do this in the movie. It’d just be poor Ginnifer Goodwin looking perplexed and guilty and pleased and sexually satisfied.
So it seems, based on casting, that John Krasinski/Ethan becomes a bigger character than he is in the book.
Usually the male best friend becomes a love interest, though, right? (Unless he’s gay? Whoa, maybe in the movie version, Ethan IS gay?)
I assumed just from looking at the poster, knowing nothing about the source material, but knowing far too much about romantic comedies, that Colin Egglesfield would be the diversion, and Krasinski the one she ends up with.
If she ends up with Krasinski, then the movie took A LOT of liberties.
Mmm, milkshake books.
Hehe.
Um, I think the author makes a cameo in the movie holding the sequel?
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm2424551424/tt0491152
And I will probably see it in the theater.
::sigh::
YOU MADE ME LOL!
:(
:)
:/
Best Internet post of 2011.
Actually, people were using the word “gay” as an insult in 1984….I was 14. I don’t think it was used in the same way exactly as now – but was certainly used as an insult from one individual to another.
this makes sense.
“That’s so gay” was the expression I didn’t think existed before the 90′s.
Using the word “gay” as insult or inferring something was lame was huge in the 80′s. I was in 6th grade in 1984 and came home crying because someone said to me, “You’re so gay.” I had no idea what it meant, but I knew she was trying to hurt my feelings.
But I know in the early 2000′s, it was definitely known that it was not okay to use that word that way. I was having a dinner with some friends when one of the girls said, “That’s so gay.” and our Lesbian friend said, “No it’s not. But I am.”
It’s just taken a while for some 80′s children to stop saying it.
Oops. Missed your update….Not sure it was a playground insult exactly though :)
This post put a huge grin on my face. I read this book solely because I’ve a massive crush on Ginnifer Goodwin.
:) Who doesn’t!?
Cool post Molly.
I am totally not defending this book but…kids used “gay” as an insult when I was in grade school. I was in grade school in the mid- to late-1980s. Yes, we were all assholes.
And if I had read to the end of the post I would have seen the addendum. and now I’M the asshole.
This post is hilarious and yes, that cover makes me want a strawberry milkshake something fierce. :)
It saddens me to see that Ginnifer Goodwin is involved in the Something Borrowed adaptation. She was fabulous in Big Love, a show I was/am obsessed with. It’s like I’m sixteen and I’m seeing an ex out on a date with someone I hate.
There are entire worlds I know nothing about. Thoroughly enjoyed the post.
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finally, a review that “hates” Something Borrowed!
I REALLY truly hated this book, yet felt compelled to spend a huge amount of time reviewing it too: http://meezly.blogspot.com/2011/05/book-15-something-borrowed.html
Molly-are u 12? Not all on google (internet) is true. OMG! I was 17 in 1983 and we were using gay as a joke, harmless insult since I was a kid. ‘Got BenGay? How long?’ That was huge to those of us on the playground in the 70′s. What we didnt have was using the F word in every format -verbal or written, like ur blog or article, whatever this is but WHY? No other word intelligently expressed ur thoughts? But back to the topic of ‘Something Borrowed’, really dude? Really? WTF? (if u are 12, I thought you would get that question in the most basic and pop culture-like terms!
I hate the movie, and probably the book (in which I do not think i will waste my time on it)