The Empress Book Club 📚 Join us in conversation w/ Kirsten Miller - THIS weekend - May 4th! 11am(pt)/2pm(et)
Plus, does your brain do THIS? 🧠 Does it autotune for sh*tty men?
The Empress is a newsletter for curious midlife women 🗞. If you love it, why not consider supporting it? For less than a coffee a week, you’ll gain access to all of our articles, our book club, journaling prompts, VIP coaching, and live events. To sponsor any number of our newsletters, events, and clubs, simply click here.
Fellow Empresses, Happy Monday…
In Empress Book Club Happenings…
We will be in conversation with Kirsten THIS Saturday, May 4th at 2 pm EST/11 am PST. Registration is now open. We hope you can join us!
I’d read the book in hardcover but only recently decided to revisit it by listening to the audiobook in advance of our chat. Something interesting happened…
January Lavoie, who performs the book, is a gifted audiobook narrator. As a listener, you are never lost among the characters; all are well-drawn, defined, and easily recognizable from the other.
As I listened to her read the men’s characters—particularly their dialogue with the women—I don’t think I registered just how despicable they were behaving until I heard January read it aloud. Over my years in advertising and entertainment, I may have turned down the volume or even put on blinders to that type of speech. It may have been an act of self-preservation at the moment, or maybe it was a form of malignant optimism—i.e., “Oh, they can’t really despise us that much. Can they?” But hearing Lavoie reading the men’s characters—I was struck by how horrified I was by them—but it’s nothing I haven’t heard hundreds of times before. My brain has just turned the volume down on those voices—a sort of self-conditioning.
But how much do we all do this? How much do we autotune for sh*tty men?
Let us know your thoughts below in the comments or discuss with the author herself!
Yours in Grandeur & Deep Sh*t,
For more info on the Empress Book Club, its mission, and how it works, click here.
p.s. If you are so inclined, follow us on IG for flash content & upcoming giveaways. We’re at @the.empress.age. We’d love to see you there!
Looking forward!
I just told a neighbor that I will likely never date again. I am SO over men, in general. Over their mansplaining. Over their defensiveness. Over their willful disregard for opinions other than their own. Over their ignorance on how women’s bodies work. Over their self-righteous Not All Menning. I’m just done. Over it. I am wildly supportive of that 4B movement in Korea. You go, ladies! We are tired of your shit, men. Do better. I posted a meme the other day that I felt in the deepest parts of my soul: The biggest lie of the patriarchy is that women were created from man’s rib. The truth is that WOMEN are the origins of life. All men come from a woman’s womb.