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Refinery29
  • 10 years ago
Jessi Klein reads an excerpt from her new collection of essays, You’ll Grow Out Of It.

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Transcript
00:04Hi! Oh, is that way too loud? Or is that right? This feels okay? Because for me it feels real
00:11bad.
00:12And a pen fell, and also I have already sweat pitted through here, but like I'm sure you can't
00:20see it on the internet. So forget I said that. Thanks all for coming. I'm going to just read
00:27a little bit of a chapter called Poodle vs. Wolf. And quickly, just thank you so much,
00:36Julie, and thank you so much, Vanessa, and everybody at Refinery29. Okay, a little Poodle
00:40vs. Wolf. One late night when I was working at SNL, I wandered out of my office for a break
00:46and saw that some random TV in the hallway was tuned to an interview with Angelina Jolie.
00:51I think it was with Charlie Rose who was shamelessly hitting on her. This is great.
00:54This is totally comfortable. Thank you. Great. Even better. That's what it needed.
01:05Hitting on her as is his want when he interviews a pretty lady. I wandered over to watch, as did
01:10Emily, one of the senior writers there at the time, and an all-around hilarious and fabulous lady.
01:15We both stared at Angelina in awe. Isn't it amazing, Emily asked, that we're the same species she is.
01:22It doesn't even feel like we are the same species.
01:26I know, I said, and I continued the riff. It's like with dogs. A poodle and a wolf are both
01:32technically dogs.
01:33But based on appearances, it doesn't make any conceivable sense that they share a common ancestor.
01:39We decided that some women are poodles, and some women are wolves. And no matter what a wolf does, like
01:45put on makeup or a thong,
01:47it will still be a wolf. And no matter what a poodle does, like put on sweatpants, it will always
01:51be a poodle.
01:52Classic poodle-wolf moment. I'm on my way to meet my friend Tracy for breakfast and decide to wear my
01:57new dress,
01:58which I love, a black dress with white butterflies and pockets from Agnes B,
02:02which is a pricey French retail chain that represented the highest echelons of fanciness to me as a kid.
02:06I had never gone in, ever. But a couple of months earlier, I was drawn in by the butterfly dress,
02:11and looking in the mirror, I thought I looked really pretty and girly, like Zooey Deschanel, but from Europe,
02:16and decided to spend an ungodly amount of cash on this poodle feeling I had.
02:20So I enter the subway in my butterfly dress and start to walk slowly to the end of the platform,
02:25waiting for men's heads to turn, while I practice saying in my head,
02:28take a picture, it'll last longer, even though no one is looking.
02:33And then this other woman walks in right behind me, and everything changes.
02:36She is clearly a dancer, or a former dancer, but who cares? Look at her.
02:40She has long, perfect legs that are all one tawny color,
02:43not a speckled mixture of winter greens and veiny blues like mine are.
02:47And she's wearing short jean shorts and a plain denim shirt,
02:50and her hair is sloppily piled on top of her head with a cheap clip.
02:53She is stunning. You can feel everyone's energy shift as all men on the platform cycle through their quick
02:59glance-up-glance-away thing that they think will keep them from being caught looking.
03:02We catch you looking. We always catch you looking.
03:05I then do the secret embarrassing thing of purposely getting on the same subway car as her
03:09so I can keep looking at a pretty person.
03:12I am not a lesbian, but looking at her gives me a feeling of pleasure.
03:16She is wearing red lipstick and looks basically like Meena Suvari
03:19at the exact moment in American Beauty that Kevin Spacey fantasizes about fucking her on a bed of rose petals.
03:26Hope it's okay to say that.
03:28Should have asked earlier.
03:29This woman is a classic poodle, by which I mean she is effortless.
03:33It doesn't matter what she is wearing, as this woman isn't especially stylish.
03:37But because she's a poodle, she looks good in anything.
03:40She will always look like an ocean breeze, short of donning a Nazi uniform on Halloween.
03:44And even then, you'd forgive her just that one time because it's Halloween and she's so pretty,
03:48and that means she's a good person who didn't mean it.
03:52When someone is a poodle, you just want to be near her.
03:54My own attempt at poodleness suddenly seems like a silly farce.
03:57As it is obvious, I am just a wolf in poodle's clothing.
04:02My butterfly Agnes B dress with pockets may as well be a Ziploc bag filled with old shrimp.
04:09Does this all sound too self-deprecating?
04:11Because I don't mean it to be.
04:13It's just that I am in awe of poodles,
04:15these magical, lovely women who inherently radiate femininity.
04:18They are not necessarily the most beautiful women or even the prettiest.
04:22They just seem, without trying at all, to always be in sync with their yin quality.
04:26That's the girl one, right?
04:28Like an iPhone in constant communication with its cloud.
04:31If you're still confused about what a poodle is, just think about this.
04:34The girl from Ipanema was obviously written about a poodle.
04:38No one would ever write that song about a wolf.
04:41Famous poodle women, Angelina Jolie, Karen Knightley, Charlize Theron.
04:47She's not French.
04:50Famous wolf women, Helena Bonham Carter, Tina Fey, Jennifer Aniston.
04:56Jennifer Aniston is actually a very interesting example here.
04:59I have friends who think she is a poodle and argue that the reason she is a poodle
05:03is that she's beautiful, and she is very beautiful.
05:06But being beautiful is not what makes you a poodle or a wolf.
05:10There are millions of beautiful wolf women out there.
05:13It's how much of the beauty feels like work and like maintenance.
05:16Aniston is stunning, but I always have the impression that her beauty comes with an enormous price tag.
05:22Getting your hair to be the color of a sunbeam passing through a lion's mane doesn't come cheap.
05:28And yes, in Hollywood, everyone's beauty is expensive, but there are a few ladies who seem like they're keeping very
05:33high tabs
05:34permanently open at every groomer in town.
05:37And yes, Jennifer would be stunningly beautiful even if she did nothing.
05:40But it's the fact that she chooses to do everything that tells me she is a wolf.
05:47If you look at her high school yearbook picture where she has thick eyebrows and an ever so slightly bigger
05:52nose,
05:52you can see she felt like a wolf.
05:54I'm certain she still feels like one.
05:56She'd probably feel like a wolf no matter what happened in her life,
05:59because once a wolf, always a wolf,
06:01but nothing will really make you feel like a wolf,
06:03like your husband leaving you for a poodle.
06:08I have always clearly been a wolf.
06:10I grew up knowing nothing about manicures or pedicures or embellished bras.
06:14When I got my period at age 13 on Yom Kippur,
06:20thank you,
06:21my mother gave me that crazy elastic belt thingy
06:24that women used in the 50s with a weird pad that had extra fabric at both ends
06:28so you could tie it onto plastic clips that dangled from the belt.
06:32Most of the readers who would know what I'm talking about here
06:34are probably dead.
06:36My mom is here.
06:37I love my mom.
06:38But when I think back on it, really, it was unavoidable.
06:41We were a wolf family.
06:44Poodle characteristics.
06:45Poodles are confident.
06:46Poodles are always late.
06:48Poodles laugh a lot.
06:52Wolf characteristics.
06:54Wolves need to eat more than poodles do.
06:57Both larger amounts and more frequently.
07:01I often wonder if I could wave a wand
07:03and magically transform myself from a wolf to a poodle, would I?
07:07Most of me says no.
07:08I'm proud of being a wolf.
07:10My wolf upbringing is responsible for my personality,
07:13for my compassion for the rest of the pack.
07:15As a wolf, I am a diamond in the rough.
07:17I crack jokes.
07:19My whole life is about trying, about speaking up in order to be seen,
07:24about howling with laughter or howling out how I see the world.
07:27But there is another part of me that immediately yells,
07:30yes, I would give anything to feel that poodle confidence,
07:33to feel comfortable as a woman,
07:35like my body is my perfect home,
07:37to be the girl from Ipanema and sway down the street
07:40emitting an intoxicating hormone
07:42like a female deer spritzing the air from under my perky white tail.
07:46I'd love to be one of those women who sleeps naked,
07:49who never has to buy her own drink,
07:51who wears makeup only when she feels like it,
07:53who took ballet for years and still carries that motion in her bones,
07:57dancing down the street, never a bad angle,
08:00completely unselfconscious.
08:02Poodle versus wolf, you guys.
08:07And as a wolf, I am already dripping in sweat.
08:11But it's perfect.
08:12It illustrates the point.
08:13Okay, cool.