Box Girl: My Part Time Job as an Art Installation

by Lilibet Snellings

Overview

"Delightful . . . One part Joan Didion, one part Holly Golightly, Lilibet Snellings has given us, in Box Girl, a hilarious and utterly original account of coming of age in L.A. Winsome, witty, and startlingly honest, she takes us on a mental journey that touches on feminism and fast food, voyeurism and advertising, going broke and breaking away." --The New Yorker

When 22-year-old Lilibet Snellings moved to Los Angeles on a whim, she unintentionally became a "slash" to keep her head above water--a writer/waitress/actress/Box Girl. One night each week, Lilibet would go to The Standard Hotel in West Hollywood, don a pair of white boy shorts with a matching tank, touch up her lip gloss, and crawl into a giant glass case behind the front desk. There, she could do whatever she wanted--check email, catch up on reading, even sleep--as long as she ignored the many hotel guests who would point and ask the staff, "Is she allowed to use the bathroom?" (Yes.)

Dog-paddling through her twenties, Snellings resisted financial bailouts (for the most part) from her sweet Southern mother and business-oriented dad, while pondering her peculiar position as a human art installation. Was she a piece of art or a piece of ass? Was she allowed to read both Walt Whitman and US Weekly as she lounged in an oversized, waterless aquarium behind a hotel concierge desk? From misinterpreting a modeling agency interview as a talent audition, to avoiding Bond-girl-style deaths at New Year's Eve parties, Snellings shares and laughs at her many mishaps while living in LA.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781593765415
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	03/18/2014
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	338,743
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Lilibet Snellings was born in Georgia and raised in Connecticut. She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder and her MFA from the University of Southern California. For eight years she lived in Los Angeles, where she worked as a freelance writer, an on-camera reporter, a waitress, an extra in a Smirnoff Ice commercial, and a dead person in a music video. Her writing has appeared in The Huffington Post, Los Angeles Magazine, Anthem, Flaunt, and This Recording, among other publications. She currently lives in Chicago with her husband.

Table of Contents

Uniform 1

Box Girl Rule Sheet 2

Please Wear Undergarments 4

The Box 5

Could You Tidy It Up a Bit? 8

My Natural Habitat 10

Hello, Box Talent! 13

Prep 14

An Emotional Detroit 16

Oh the Horror 18

Bam 28

The Various Positions in My Rotation 31

She's Got a Good Booty for a White Girl 36

Underdog 38

Star Gazing 44

Not-So-Model Behavior 45

Paper Planes 62

I Am a Slash 64

Run Lilibet Run 70

Like Visiting Day in Jail 76

Dear Mr. Retoucher 78

Metamorphosis 81

Out There 83

I Am Not a Beagle 85

Only the Lonely? 87

Waitress 90

Anatomy of a Haircut 105

Entourage 110

Signs That You Have Made It 117

Signs That You Have Not Made It 118

Hooters vs. The Box 119

I Was a Box Bunny 123

Interview 127

The Zoo s 129

Sometimes I Play Pretend 132

A Million Little Pieces (of Paper) 141

Numb 146

Beach 147

Voyeur 150

True Facts About a Box Girl 154

Sometimes I Wish a Blackberry Was Still Just a Fruit The Big One 163

Tsunami 170

Scotch Please, Splash Soda 173

Alone 180

Smiling 81

I Love You 203

Diorama 204

Bathroom Choreography 205

Outside the Box 207

Amsterdam 210

Gobble, Gobble 212

Things Even I Am Unwilling to Do 213

Clare 215

Panopticon 218

Mom-Like 227

Weltschmerz 230

The Concierge Desk 243

I've Got the Over on Fifteen Minutes 246

Tired 247

Whitman 248

Editorial Reviews

"One part Joan Didion, one part Holly Golightly, Lilibet Snellings has given us, in Box Girl, a hilarious and utterly original account of coming of age in L.A. Winsome, witty, and startlingly honest, she takes us on a mental journey that touches on feminism and fast food, voyeurism and advertising, going broke and breaking away. Delightful!" --Dana Goodyear, The New Yorker

"A funny, whip-smart debut, Snellings' exposé of herself and Los Angeles gives new meaning to the phrase 'think inside the box.'" --Sandra Tsing Loh, The Atlantic

"A self-effacing and wryly humorous young voice in the tenor of Sloane Crosley and Lena Dunham" --Booklist

"During an era when we're all on virtual display, Snellings writes about coming of age while on literal display--and does so with great insight and heart. --Jane Borden, author of I Totally Meant to Do That

From the Publisher

2014-03-31
Debut memoir about the author's stint working at West Hollywood's Standard Hotel, where she was paid to spend a few hours in an enclosed glass box behind the front desk. Following her upbringing in Georgia and Connecticut, Snellings graduated from the University of Colorado with a journalism degree and decided on a whim to move to Los Angeles with friends. There, she floundered, working intermittently for a modeling agency, as a freelance writer, a waitress, an aspiring actress and, for one night per week, as a so-called "box girl." The last job was more conceptual than laborious, and Snelling offers every imaginable detail about her weekly hours in the box, which measured 15 feet long, 4 feet wide and 5 feet tall. Required to wear white boy shorts and a white tank top, Snellings earned $100 per shift (8 p.m. to midnight) and was forbidden, while inside the box, from making eye contact with guests or employees, eating or drinking. The box was furnished with only a mattress and pillow, so Snellings read, dozed, watched people and eavesdropped. Her parents, "firmly planted in the one percent," expressed concern over many of the author's choices. She could easily have relied on them for financial support but admirably decided to make her own living. She includes other stories, the vast majority of which are superficial, failing to form a cohesive narrative. One chapter, "True Facts about a Box Girl," is simply a list of random details, including the time she drank a bottle of hot sauce for $500. Snellings' light musings on the sexualized aspect of working in the box briefly touch on Gloria Steinem's 1963 article about going undercover as a Playboy Bunny. The author wonders "if Steinem would notice the obvious…metaphor: a woman locked below a glass ceiling." Occasionally funny and interesting, this one-note memoir eventually wears thin.

Kirkus Reviews