Reading is a Femininomenon
Same old story, time again - - - when the Brads and Chads came for me in the comments of a reel, I got fired up and wrote this diatribe. Enjoy "Female Rage (peed's reads version)"
Bookstagram has become one of my favorite “third places” over the last 2+ years of running @bck.reads with my best friends. But in the last couple weeks the Brads and Chads have popped my bubble of book blurbs and unserious inside jokes.
In a rare burst of creative energy, in an endeavor to revive our account after a period of light activity I started “remixing” reels. This was an easy way to make funny and relevant content without having to do my hair make-up, clean my room, and set up a tripod and light source. (Seriously, when people imply influencers and content creators have leisurely, low-maintenance careers it grinds my mf gears!)
Anyway…
I came across this hilarious video of a young woman who’s recently come off anesthesia and is offered a root beer slushie (they knew she was a fan of Coca-Cola). ICK! Her reaction is so wholesome and unfiltered, and when we find out the other option was blue raspberry everyone wonders why they’d even install a root beer flavor. Anywho, it was perfect for me!
When I saw it, there were only like 3 reels using the audio so I figured it wouldn’t get many views, but content is content. I first made it with the wording block “When they recommend a book written by a man.”
Then like a day later I made another remix with the words “When they suggest a book with no romance subplot”
They got some views but just the typical low numbers of mostly followers.
THEN like a week or two later I had another idea and made a third remix, this one with the words “When they suggest a nonfiction book for book club”
Y’all… this reel was normal like the others and then something happened and it blew up!!! I think this reel resonated with so many readers (who’s algorithms aren’t necessarily tuned into bookish content) that it escaped the bubble that is our followers and eventually even bookstagram. The original video also went viral (it has 17.3M views at the time of writing this). The subject of the video is just so funny and polite, it’s hard to dislike it. Most of our comments are about her reaction and not even our spin on it.
Anyway… this book club one blew up like none of our reels had before. As a result the associated reels garnered lots of traffic as well. While it’s been satisfying to have a little pocket of traffic to our page in the last 30 days (1.6M views and 176 new followers) it’s also pushed us into the algorithm of the enemy. [Yes, I realize using terms like “enemy” isn’t helping anything, but I’m a dramatic, unserious person and that’s my vibe.]
The Brads and Chads of the world have come across the original reel regarding male authors. They’re not happy about it, and they want me to know. Some of the charming feedback I’ve received (fortunately only in comments and none in the DMs) have ranged from “Yikes” to “Bigot.”
Here are some of the comments:
The Productive:
“Brandon Sanderson is also for the girlies give him a chance!”
The Irrelevant but Earnest:
“not trying to sound odd but i don’t think you can talk when we have books like haunting adeline and skin of a killer written by women which is straight up just rape that’s romanticized”
while the critic inside me wants to respond with the irrelevance of this post, I loved the self-awareness and that he knew his shit! Now I’ve never read Haunting Adeline for many reasons, including the one he included, I have many friends who loved it and the magical thing about books is that it’s a zero-harm game. There is no exploitation or victims when authors put their “depraved” thoughts on paper or when curious readers explore new fantasies. It’s the most safe space where you can indulge your fantasies guilt free! And I’m not sure what he meant about “Skin of a Killer”… perhaps a subtle Twilight reference? But to call that “straight up just rape” is preposterous.
The Rude:
“Yikes”
“Yeah that’s pretty cut-and-dry sexism huh?”
“What an interesting hill to die on”
“Casual misandry… 👎”
“Just pick the Brandon Sanderson up and put the smut down?”
Started a really cute convo about his books that I loved for the readers in our comments requesting and sharing book recommendations
Also prompted this response that I didn’t love as much: “no fr i’m reading project hail mary by andy weir and im genuinely confused how someone could just say all male authors are bad 💀”
“Trash take.” **
“Bigot” **
** “Hidden” by Instagram
& My Personal Favorite:
“This is the gayest post I’ve ever seen…”
It took everything in me not to respond with “THANK YOU!” Maybe I should just DM him a link to the ICONIQUE Hilary Duff PSA.
It is a joke! It was clearly an unserious post!
By no means did I mount a “hill to die on,” but I also have no interest in starting a dialogue with the Brads and Chads who are passionate enough to leave rude comments on a post that was obviously not made for them.
Not to mention… I read EIGHT BOOKS written by men in 2024. According to a Pew Research Study performed in 2016, 50% of Americans read 4 books or less each year. So I read twice as many books by men than most Americans did in total!
The “put the smut down” really irked me because to me that proved the point of my post. There are so many stories written by so many authors so that all readers can find the right books for themselves. I know who I’d recommend smut to, AND WHO I WOULDN’T!
My first reaction to some of these comments was to be self-reflective and question if I shouldn’t have posted it. I would be extremely offended if I saw a parallel post about being disgusted by the suggestion of reading a female author.
(But I probably would have scrolled and moved on like the civilized human I am.) But the more I pondered it, the less remorseful I became. Because we are still very much living in a patriarchy of oppression, and Goddess forbid I want to escape it from time to time and explore worlds created by women.
I hate it here so I will go to
secret gardens in my mind
People need a key to get to
The only one is mine
I read about it in a book when I was a precocious child
No mid-sized city hopes and small town fears
I'm there most of the year
Cause I hate it here
-I Hate It Here by Taylor Swift
While it is exciting to learn that female authors finally outnumber male authors, fret not! Male authors still significantly out-earn women.
At the end of the day we spend our days in male-focused institutions and are inundated by the male gaze in all forms of media. Women only make up 25% of screenwriters and about a third of television writers. The Bechdel Test became a thing for a reason! So give me a freaking break if I don’t want to read more women written by men in my spare time.
You can go listen to Roe Jogan and I’ll go re-watch Barbie for the 4th time.
Google AI pulled these stats for me
Women are underrepresented in film and television writing, and the gender gap varies by role, platform, and program type: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Film
In 2023, women made up 25% of movie writers in the United States. Women are also underrepresented in comedy programs, where they make up only 30.2% of writers. [4, 6]
Television
Women make up 30% of writers on broadcast programs, 31% on cable programs, and 35% on streaming programs. Women are also underrepresented in children's and entertainment programs, where they make up only 26.2% and 21.2% of directors, respectively. [2, 4]
Other roles
Women make up 22% of directors, 23% of writers, 27% of producers, 29% of executive producers, and 30% of editors. [1]
Number of women on a film
In 2023, 72% of films had 0 to 4 women in the roles considered, 24% had 5 to 9 women, and 4% had 10 or more women. [3]
Representation of women creators
Programs with at least one woman creator have a higher percentage of women in other key behind-the-scenes roles. [2]
Age
The average age of women screenwriters is lower than that of men. In 2023, the average women screenwriter was 46.7 years old and the average man was 51.3. [7]
Generative AI is experimental.
Every woman who has ever dated knows the male book trends of that era.
I had a friend once say “If one more man talks about Breath on a date I swear to God…. If you need to read a book to learn how to breathe, you’re out of the running as a potential reproductive partner!”
I’m sure it’s a great book full of insights. But she found her breaking point after being mansplained the respiratory system on THREE separate first dates. She’s a nurse practitioner and they probably didn’t make it all the way through the first chapter. Be so for real right now.
It irks me beyond belief when men exclusively read non-fiction and make that a personality trait.
(One of my number one readers and favorite men may fall into this category, but we’ve had discussions about it and he knows I respect his reading choices JUST LIKE HE DOES MINE AND HE DOESN’T BELITTLE MY READING HABBITS TO ELEVATE HIS OWN!)
And we all know that the fantasy bros love their Brandon Sanderson and Red Rising. And I never want to yuck anyone’s yum, so I am beyond glad those books found their rightful place in the hands of their dedicated readers. But I know what gets me through high page count books, and it’s a little bit of spice. A touch of angst can carry me through hundreds of pages of world building. I’ve heard from readers I respect (who loved these books) that I will not like them.
And of course the real girlies on the front lines of heterosexual dating know if they see The 48 Laws of Power on their coffee table to RUN.
That being said, one time a man emailed me a kindle download for Brando Sando’s The Way of Kings before we’d even had our first date because he heard about our 24 hour read-a-thon and I thought that was HOT AS HELL!
Long-story-longer
Read whatever the f^ck you like! And don’t disrespect other people’s taste or creations. Books are never “bad” or “trash” or even “guilty pleasures” they’re just, say it with me, “not for me.”
That being said this post has inspired me… maybe one day I will post a “Yuck Your Yum” piece just to get my hot takes out there.
tl;dr:
Ladies, you know what I mean
And you know what you need and so does he
But does it happen? (No)
But does it happen? (No)
Well, what we really need is a femininomenon (a what?)
-Feminomenon by Chappell Roan
The books linked are with my bookshop.org affiliate links. If you purchase them by through these links I may receive a small commission.
Hyper-fixation du jour: OxfordLemon
I have been following @oxfordlemon on Instagram for a while and am obsessed with her memes! In December I was trying to use up my “digital credits” on Amazon from delayed shipping dates before they expired and decided to finally give Split or Swallow by Lindsay Straube a shot. It looks weird and sexy and that’s what I love to read!
How surprised was I when my favorite bookish meme account posted saying that there was one day left to order their book before it was being taken off Amazon to be traditionally published?! This was the final call for the original cover.
So like any self-respecting, fiscally-irresponsible, book-loving, 30 year old should, I ordered a physical copy! I wasn’t even halfway through the first page by the time I became obsessed with her writing. It’s just as unserious, derpy, and self-aware as I’d expect from the creator of some iconic memes and centered on a solacious taboo suitor competition. You know “suitor-tutor” is one of my FAVORITE tropes and this is that in the extreme!
On her website you can read the first chapter to see if it’s to your liking! The new version releases on 2/25 and it’s taking all of my will power to finish it before I pre-order to determine if I actually “need” the pretty new cover with sprayed edges.
Good news! It appears
may be about to launch her own SubStack! (When I typed out her IG handle, the sub gods tried to tag her stack (linked above) but when I went to subscribe, it failed. Maybe it’ll become active closer to pub date? Who knows! Let me know if you are able to subscribe!)
The back of the original edition only has this. Need I say more? This is my sense of humor.
If you want to purchase any of the books mentioned in this article, please consider using my affiliate link with my favorite independent book store, The Ripped Bodice, or using my referral link to libro.fm for an audiobook!
Oh Bless their hearts! Brads and Chads are so sensitive these days. Can’t they take a joke?