Upon her Sunday night triumph, I just had to dust off this review of Jill Solaway’s book Ladies in Shiny Pants from one of my now-defunct blogs. Enjoy!
Jill Soloway is a talented screenwriter, director, and TV show creator who has written for television shows like Six Feet Under, Grey’s Anatomy, The United States of Tara and most recently, the critically acclaimed Transparent. And this past Sunday, Soloway won a much-deserved Emmy for best director for directing an episode of Transparent.
Along with her sister, Faith, Jill has written the live shows The Real Live Brady Bunch and The Vagina Pageant. She’s a professional colleague and friends with Diablo Cody and has written for several anthologies. And in 2005, Jill’s collection of essays Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants: Based on a True Story was published.
In Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants, Jill tells us about her younger years growing up in the Chicago in the only white and Jewish family in the neighborhood, and the years that followed. At only 13, Jill and her friends would don their tightest, shiniest clothes and go to concerts hoping to meet their rock and roll heroes. Jill figured if she met her favorite musician, he would see past her young age, and fall madly in love with her. Of course, her rock and roll dreams never came true, and thusly, led her on a path of romantic confusion
A few years later, Jill loses her virginity to an older man. This doesn’t destroy her, yet she readily admits that her vulnerability and feeling less-than her prettier friends made it easy for this man to get her into bed before she was truly ready for such intimacy. However, Jill does show a sense of humor about the entire situation, later calling this guy “Lotion Bag” because he was always asking about a bag he carried around that carried his lotion.
As she gets older, Jill faces the world of being a grown up, and what it is like to be a young woman trying to navigate a post-feminist world, where getting breast implants is supposed to be empowering, yet she can’t help but watch the Miss America pageant year after year. Jill admits she feels some connection to Monica Lewinsky and the murdered intern Chandra Levy. She’s honest about her attraction to both cop bars and guys she calls “toolbelts”-hot construction workers.
Post-college Jill ends up in Los Angeles and finds success as a screenwriter, producer and comedian. But despite her success, she can’t help but snark on the absurdity that is Hollywood and her life.
Jill is funny, honest and very self-deprecating. She doesn’t shy from calling herself a feminist and she’s proud of her Jewish heritage. The over-use of exclamation points can get out of hand at times, but I see this book as a conversation with your excitable friend who uses her hands in conversation a lot. Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants reminds me a bit of People are Unappealing by Sara Barron, which I reviewed quite a while ago. Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants is a fun summer read that will make you cringe, make you say, “Right on!” and totally entertain you.
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