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    Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress: Tales of Growing Up Groovy and Clueless
    Unavailable
    Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress: Tales of Growing Up Groovy and Clueless
    Unavailable
    Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress: Tales of Growing Up Groovy and Clueless
    Audiobook13 hours

    Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress: Tales of Growing Up Groovy and Clueless

    Written by Susan Jane Gilman

    Narrated by Susan Denaker

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    The bestselling author of Kiss My Tiara returns with an original and entertaining memoir about childhood dreams, coming of age, ambition and family.

    Divided into three sections (Childhood, "Grape Juice and Humiliation"; Adolescence, "Not Just Horny but Obnoxious, Too"; and Adulthood, "Reality Says Hello"), the stories Susan tells are uniquely her own, but the themes she touches upon are universal. She reminisces about being the girl in school all the other girls were mean to (probably not helped by her penchant for running around in a tutu), growing up uncool and white in a Puerto Rican neighborhood, meeting Mick Jagger at a cocktail party at 15, and coming into her own as a writer and a feminist.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJan 25, 2005
    ISBN9781415916339
    Unavailable
    Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress: Tales of Growing Up Groovy and Clueless

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    Reviews for Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress

    4/5

    255 ratings21 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Entertaining! I don't know what else to say...
      I can't wait to read more of her books.
    • 4/5
      I quite enjoyed this, although it felt a bit disjointed towards the end: the last few chapters didn't flow on as closely from the previous ones, reading more like separate essays. There wasn't an essay on how she met her husband, for example.
    • 4/5
      Enjoyable, funny and extra readable, this memoir shed some light on a culture I am too old to remember.
    • 5/5
      The chapters relating her childhood are laugh out loud hilarious. Don't read this at a serious event!
    • 4/5
      This collection of essays is adorable. Growing up alongside Gilman, you feel like you know her, and like she captured some essence of what it was like growing up as you too. Of course, she changes from chubby little kid to perilously awesome overnight, which is a little strange, and unlike my experience, but still... very groovy.
    • 4/5
      Susan Gilman grew up in a "transitional" (pre-gentrified), mixed-race neighborhood on the Upper West Side of New York City during the 1970's which reminded me of the transitional neighborhood about an hour's drive away where I did some of my own growing up during the same time period. But Susan was quite a bit more adventurous than I was, and her upbringing was more influenced by the experimental culture of the time - family transcendental-meditation classes, for example. As she moved into her teens, drugs and sex became the most frequent areas of experimentation, as she became consumed with terror that she'd be the only girl in her high-school class still burdened with virginity at graduation. (No spoiler, but her fear was unfounded. However, it did ring a bell with me. I was in high school around the same time, before HIV and treatment-resistant STDs, and there was a sense among at least some of my classmates that they'd "get it over with" sooner rather than later - possibly at a party like any of the ones Gilman describes and that I was too much of a "straight" to be invited to.) College was more of the same, but as she developed her writing career through a mix of freelancing and offbeat staff positions - writer/reporter for a Jewish weekly newspaper, communications director for a freshman Congresswoman - she became obsessed with different things.Despite what I've mentioned in the previous paragraph, though, this is not a party-girl memoir. Gilman consistently places her experiences within the social and cultural framework of their times, reflects on them with insight and affection, and doesn't spare the embarrassing details. But Gilman's "cultural framework" includes a feminist consciousness which the reader can see emerging as her story builds, culminating in the essay that lends its title to the book. She's not the first woman who's fought to reconcile her feminism and intention to be the "Anti-Bride" with the longing to feel "like a bride" upon meeting the wedding-industrial complex, she's not likely to be the last, and her efforts to come to terms with the trappings of gender roles and The Big Day definitely struck a chord.Susan Jane Gilman has some great stories to tell, and an engaging and humorous way of telling them. I think women of our generation - the same generation I addressed in reviewing Gail Collins' history of the modern women's movement, When Everything Changed - will encounter a lot in Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress that resonates, from pop-culture references to adolescent feelings and fears to perceptions of the world around us, but I don't think the appeal of this book is by any means limited to my own age group. This is memoir of OUR times as much as the times of one particular woman.
    • 5/5
      A hilarious look into a life of a modern day feminist just trying to be true to herself. A must read. Appropriate for all college aged and beyond.
    • 4/5
      Really good/possibly forgettable. So no 5th star. I like that she is struggling between her feminist ideals and her love of smut and attention. Its all so familiar.
    • 4/5
      Like many younger authors who have written memoirs, Gilman hasn't had that many experiences that are truly fascinating. Unlike many of those other authors, though, she adeptly turns even mundane experiences into funny or touching ones for the reader. She also did a good job of tying her more unusual experiences to common themes of childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood to which I could relate. This is a well-written book.
    • 4/5
      My mom passed this book down to me after she finished reading it. She said it was cute and I might enjoy it.It was and I did.It's interesting, yet perhaps predictable, that my expectations tend to be lower for books which I chance upon in this manner.Expectations, while unavoidable, are dangerous. It's too bad that we can't experience every new book, movie, musician, TV show, etc. with a clean slate.But that's not what I'm talking about here.Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress is a memoir of a woman growing up in New York City in the 70s.This book was enjoyable and mildly amusing. Through most of it, it was a quiet smile or a slight chuckle, although I have to admit that I laughed out loud several times as she was discussing her experiences as a new ex-pat in Geneva.Gilman self-effacingly describes her foibles as a misfit in a way that makes it hard not to relate to her, even if your experiences do not mirror hers.
    • 4/5
      I really liked this book. Her narration is funny and entertaining. You can really root for her.
    • 4/5
      A nice tale of highlights in the life of a writer. Made me realize how unavoidable some things are in life due to social pressures.
    • 4/5
      I found this while wandering through the bookstore - something about the picture on the cover and the use of the word "pouffy" in the title intrigued me. The first few pages had me laughing out loud in the store, so I had to buy it. Glad I did - this book is hilarious!
    • 5/5
      I absolutely loved this book. It's so humerous! Gilman really takes a light hearted look back at her life and it's something that I related to immediately. This is one of my favorites and I recommend it all the time!
    • 4/5
      This book had a few funny moments, and one in particular that made me laugh out loud, but I didn't think it was as great as the author's other book- Kiss My Tiara : How to Rule the World as a SmartMouth Goddess. Still, it was an entertaining read. I liked that the author started off with tales of her childhood and slowly went on to share stories about growing up and eventually becoming an adult. I would definitely be interested in reading more books like this.
    • 4/5
      This book is hilarious.
    • 5/5
      Very honest and funny about the life of the author. The story brought back so many memories of growing up in a city near Boston.
    • 5/5
      This is my "desert island" book. If I had to keep only one book, this would be it. As Ms. Gilman describes her childhood and teenage years, it is laugh out loud funny. ALERT: 1. Do not read this book at any serious occasion 2. Be sure you have emptied your bladder before reading this book (After the teenage years, the descriptions are not as hilarious).
    • 2/5
      This is a great book of essays about growing up girl. The author explores her childhood growing up in New York, the child of middle class liberals. If you want fiction in the same vein, go for [book:The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing].
    • 2/5
      Susie Gilman wants us to believe she's subversive, a feminist. Yet, despite her strong, sardonic voice and a writing style that seems filched from Dave Sedaris, she's completely lacking in substance. Her comedic memoir--which in inexplicably arranged into chapters, despite the fact that it lacks a cohesive plot line--is largely without substance. Nearly every chapter describes how Gilman intended, in one way or another, to bedifferent, but she defaults to the expected societal roles time and time again. For example, in one of the strongest chapters, Gilman describes her teenaged obsession with the Rolling Stones. When she finally meets Mick Jagger (and this is the type of book where these sort of things happen--Gilman was obviously raised white, wealthy, and blessed), he tells her she has nice tits. She should be horrified, she informs us, because she's a feminist, but clearly she's tickled pink. I think this was supposed to be somehow chilling but, like later chapters which describe her, among other things, buying a traditional white wedding gown, it just feels expected. Gilman's just not that weird, only privileged enough to think she is. In this way, Hypocrite in a Poufy White Dress constitutes the worst sort of chick-lit. By presenting herself as a subversive feminist, Gilman tries to convince her readers that they can still be feminists and get all giggly when men compliment their anatomy. But the problem was that I was utterly unconvinced--and her shallow life story did little to persuade me.
    • 3/5
      The first two sections of this book made me laugh out loud regularly; Gilman recounts her childhood and adolescence in loopy, original prose that is delicious, occasionally dazzling. enjoyed the book overall but felt the final section, which describes Gilman's university experiences and early career (ending with her recent move to Switzerland), loses much of the charm of the earlier chapters. Gilman's account of her parents' divorce is unbelievably whiny, and her story of working in Washington is almost hopelessly naive — here the "clueless" of the subtitle certainly rings true. Women in their thirties may find Gilman's embarrassed enchantment with her wedding dress poignant, but her bride stories are so much better when Susan Jane is a kindergartener who insists on wearing a tutu to class every day. Hypocrite is definitely worth your time, but don't expect insightful feminist analysis or deep cultural commentary. Gilman is at her best in the voice of a girl becoming a young woman, and I hope she will continue to mine this vein.