You Play the Girl: On Playboy Bunnies, Stepford Wives, Train Wrecks, & Other Mixed Messages

Written by Carina Chocano

Narrated by Amy McFadden

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR CRITICISM
A FINALIST FOR THE PEN/DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL AWARD FOR THE ART OF THE ESSAY

"If Hollywood's treatment of women leaves you wanting, you'll find good, heady company in You Play the Girl."—ELLE

As a kid in the 1970s and 80s, Carina Chocano was confused by the mixed messages all around her; messages that told her who she could be—and who she couldn’t. Dutifully absorbing all the conflicting information the culture has to offer on how to be a woman, Chocano grappled with sexed up sidekicks, princesses waiting to be saved, and morally infallible angels who seemed to have no opinions of their own. She learned that "the girl" is not a person, but a man's idea of what a woman should be—she’s whatever the hero needs her to be in order to become himself. It wasn't until she spent five years as a movie critic, and was laid off just after her daughter was born, however, that she really came to understand how the stories the culture tells us about what it means to be a girl limit our lives and shape our destinies. She resolved to rewrite her own story.

In You Play the Girl, Chocano blends formative personal stories with insightful and emotionally powerful analysis. Moving from Bugs Bunny to Playboy Bunnies, from Flashdance to Frozen, from the progressive ’70s through the backlash ’80s, the glib ’90s, and the pornified aughts—and at stops in between—she explains how growing up in the shadow of “the girl” taught her to think about herself and the world and what it means to raise a daughter in the face of these contorted reflections. In the tradition of Roxane Gay, Rebecca Solnit, and Susan Sontag, Chocano brilliantly shows that our identities are more fluid than we think, and certainly more complex than anything we see on any kind of screen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Dec 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9781978605237

Carina Chocano

CARINA CHOCANO is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine. Her writing has also appeared in Vogue, Elle, Rolling Stone, and many other publications. A former staff film and TV critic at the Los Angeles Times, she has been a TV and book critic at Entertainment Weekly and a staff writer at Salon. She lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews for You Play the Girl

[kellswitch_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Reading this book was a very interesting experience. I don’t disagree with anything she says in this book, in fact I agree with most of it, and yet I found I had a hard time relating to her experiences and examples, mine were just so radically different at times even though I believe we are the same age.One example I can give is how the movie Flashdance affected her, I can’t relate to what she described because I never saw that movie and never wanted to, but the description of her experiences felt valid from what I remember of the 80’s. It was this way throughout most of the book. And I actually feel this made this book even more relevant and valuable to me, I feel it is very important to recognize that no one experiences culture in the same was as anyone else and yet we are all shaped by it for both good or ill. Overall this was a very quick read, very accessible and engaging and it made me think and reevaluate the culture and times I grew up in be seeing someone else’s experiences.

[mickyfine · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Chocano's collection of essays takes a critical look at various elements of popular culture and dissects just what they have to say about women and our place in society. Or at least they do some of the time. Unfortunately, this collection was more miss than hit for me. There were some essays where Chocano would start exploring a film or tv show but I never could figure out her central thesis. There were a couple essays where Chocano was a presence but I never really felt like I connected with her. And I have to admit that any essay that cites Foucault always leaves me leery (I blame an hour-long class in undergrad spent dissecting the meaning of a single Foucault sentence for my dislike). The essays aren't bad, just not quite what I was expecting and more on the academic end of the spectrum than I'd expect of a book that had been marketed at a general audience.

[lauriebrown54 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Carina Chocano is the essay writer I wish I was. She examines how pop culture treats women and girls- and how it affects us. From Katherine Hepburn and how her image had to be toned down for people to accept her movies; ‘I Dream of Jeannie’ and ‘Bewitched’ (how two insanely powerful women constantly deferred to men); to the huge Disney princess phenomena wherein a princess is someone to be saved by a man or presented to a man. ‘Desperate Housewives’, ‘Real Housewives’, ‘Desperately Seeking Susan’, ‘Flashdance’, the misogyny in ‘Can This Marriage Be Saved’- in a women’s magazine, no less, ‘Thelma and Louise’, ‘Pretty Woman’, Disney, ‘Mad Men’ and a lot more all come under her feminist microscope. And while you can tell she’s very frustrated by the way the media presents women, she is always entertaining and easy to read. I’d love to read what she thinks about ‘Wonder Woman’ and the new Dr. Who! Five stars out of five.