Tina Fey’s Bossypants delivers everything you hoped it would. Humour, honesty, punchy one-liners and a whole lot of cleverly disguised feminism in the form of flatulent jokes. There is not one single dull page in this book and the jokes just keep rolling.
It is not so much a memoir as it is Tina sitting down across from us and simply sharing the weird, wonderful and bizarre events that have happened in her life that tend to revolve around comedy. While it is written in chronological order, and has an incredible chapter all about her father who comes across like Tony Soprano, it is heavy on story-telling and strong opinions.
Tina opens up to us like a friend, sharing her concerns and proudest moments of her career. She struggles with the ratings of her show 30 Rock, but achieves the greatest comedic moment of her life playing Sarah Palin’s comedic twin. She offers forceful and impressive arguments for working mothers and breastfeeding while confiding in us her concerns in having a second child.
If you think comedy isn’t for women, or that women aren’t funny, then you need to think again. Tina writes brilliant one liners, absolutely tears down the men in her Saturday Night Live office for peeing in jars, then takes on the internet trolls and sends them running home crying to their mothers. “Tina Fey is an ugly, pear-shaped, bitchy, overrated troll,” writes one critic, to which Tina says it is unfair to call her an overrated troll since this critic has never seen her guard a bridge. For all they know, she could be the best bridge guarding troll this world has ever seen. Then she signs off with “now go to bed you crazy night owl! You have to be at NASA early in the morning, so they can look for your penis with the Hubble telescope.” Ouch.
We all know that Tina is a strong feminist without shoving it down your throat. The chapters entitled “Remembrances of Being Very Very Skinny,” “Remembrances of Being a Little Bit Fat,” and the hilarious “Amazing, Gorgeous, Not Like That,” are full of wisdom and kicks to the balls of a society forcing women to look a certain way. On being skinny, she remembers she “once took a bag of sliced red peppers to the beach as a snack,” and sleeping with “a pillow between my legs because my bony knees clanking together kept me awake,” and on being a little bit fat, she remembers “my boobs were bigger,” and “if I was really ambitions, I would get a Whopper Jr. at Burger King and then walk to McDonald’s to get the fries. The shake could be from anywhere.” Tina describes photoshoots as “THE FUNNEST!” “When you inevitably can’t fit into a garment…reinforcements are called in to push on both sides of my ribcage until the zipper goes up.” But when push comes to shove, she prefers that feminists do her photoshopping because “they leave the meat on your bones…they leave in your disgusting knuckles but they may take out some armpit stubble.”.
Fey’s writing is strong, the book flows easily from one chapter to the next and it leaves you wanting more. If you are a Tina Fey fan, then you will want to grab this book. She really is a boss.