From Emmy award-winning comedy writer Jessi Klein, You'll Grow Out of It hilariously and candidly explores the journey of the 21st-century woman.
As both a tomboy and a late bloomer, comedian Jessi Klein grew up feeling more like an outsider than a participant in the rites of modern femininity.
In You'll Grow Out of It, Klein offers - through an incisive collection of real-life stories - a relentlessly funny yet poignant take on a variety of topics she has experienced along her strange journey to womanhood and beyond. These include her "transformation from Pippi Longstocking-esque tomboy to are-you-a-lesbian-or-what tom man," attempting to find watchable porn, and identifying the difference between being called "ma'am" and "miss" ("miss sounds like you weigh 99 pounds").
Raw, relatable, and consistently hilarious, You'll Grow Out of It is a one-of-a-kind book by a singular and irresistible comic voice.
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You'll Grow Out of It
From Emmy award-winning comedy writer Jessi Klein, You'll Grow Out of It hilariously and candidly explores the journey of the 21st-century woman.
As both a tomboy and a late bloomer, comedian Jessi Klein grew up feeling more like an outsider than a participant in the rites of modern femininity.
In You'll Grow Out of It, Klein offers - through an incisive collection of real-life stories - a relentlessly funny yet poignant take on a variety of topics she has experienced along her strange journey to womanhood and beyond. These include her "transformation from Pippi Longstocking-esque tomboy to are-you-a-lesbian-or-what tom man," attempting to find watchable porn, and identifying the difference between being called "ma'am" and "miss" ("miss sounds like you weigh 99 pounds").
Raw, relatable, and consistently hilarious, You'll Grow Out of It is a one-of-a-kind book by a singular and irresistible comic voice.
From Emmy award-winning comedy writer Jessi Klein, You'll Grow Out of It hilariously and candidly explores the journey of the 21st-century woman.
As both a tomboy and a late bloomer, comedian Jessi Klein grew up feeling more like an outsider than a participant in the rites of modern femininity.
In You'll Grow Out of It, Klein offers - through an incisive collection of real-life stories - a relentlessly funny yet poignant take on a variety of topics she has experienced along her strange journey to womanhood and beyond. These include her "transformation from Pippi Longstocking-esque tomboy to are-you-a-lesbian-or-what tom man," attempting to find watchable porn, and identifying the difference between being called "ma'am" and "miss" ("miss sounds like you weigh 99 pounds").
Raw, relatable, and consistently hilarious, You'll Grow Out of It is a one-of-a-kind book by a singular and irresistible comic voice.
Jessi Klein is the Emmy and Peabody award-winning head writer and an executive producer of Comedy Central's critically acclaimed series Inside Amy Schumer. She's also written for Amazon's Transparent as well as Saturday Night Live. She has been featured on the popular storytelling series The Moth, and has been a regular panelist on NPR's Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! She's been published in Esquire and Cosmopolitan and has had her own half-hour Comedy Central stand-up special.
Table of Contents
Tom Man 1
The Bath 8
Walking Through the Cloud 14
Dale 19
How to Get Older 27
All the Cakes 37
Bar Method and the Secrets of Beautiful Women 45
Poodle vs. Wolf 54
The Cad 63
Anthropologic 86
Types 92
The Bachelor 98
Connie 106
Carole King and the Saddest To-Do List Ever 116
The Lingerie Dilemma 124
How to Get Engaged 139
The Wedding Dress 156
Long Day's Journey into Porn 172
Leap of Faith 187
Ma'am 202
How I Became a Comedian 209
Dogshit 234
Get the Epidural 250
The Infertility Chapters 261
Acknowledgments 289
Interviews
Barnes & Noble Review Interview with Jessi Klein
In You'll Grow Out of It, comedian Jessi Klein describes a trip to the Chanel counter at Barneys to purchase a blush brush. The brusque salesman, giving her the once-over, asks, "Can I speak freely?" Klein writes, "I hated him but I also felt like he was about to tell me the most important thing any human has ever said to another." Speaking freely, the salesman declares, "Right now, your priority needs to be your undereye area." This feedback leads Klein to a fierce rant on priorities "forget paying your rent and maintaining your relationships. Put off charity work and don't worry about voting in the general election" but it also leads her to spend $150 on "a thingy of Chanel eye cream about the circumference of a bottle cap."
Many of the autobiographical essays in You'll Grow Out of It give hilarious voice to the ridiculousness of the pressures of femininity and to how vulnerable many women nonetheless are to those pressures. The funny riffs often suddenly give way to sincere emotion, as when Klein, the head writer and executive producer of Inside Amy Schumer (she has also written for Transparent and Saturday Night Live), addresses her experience with infertility. The book also features plenty of sharp feminist critique. In a piece on why she hates baths, Klein's jokes about 1970s Calgon commercials and Oprah's love of bathing build to a clever, Virginia Woolf–inspired analysis, with the author concluding that "getting in the bath is a kind of surrender to the idea that we can't really make it on land."
Klein answered questions about the book via email. Barbara Spindel
The Barnes & Noble Review: Some of the essays, in addition to being very funny, are unexpectedly moving. Did writing a book allow you to express yourself in a different way than writing for television or doing stand-up?
Jessi Klein: Definitely. One of the things I enjoyed most about writing a book was the freedom to go off on tangents that aren't necessarily hilarious but represent the kinds of things I think about. I'm a comedy writer and I love watching and creating comedy, but I also like having and expressing other feelings such as anxiety and hunger.
BNR: Writing for television is a collaborative process; writing a book is not. How do you compare the experiences?
JK: Well, being in a writers' room is usually a pretty raucous, fun environment. Writing a book is more of a lonely slog. That is why I drank white wine through so much of it.
BNR: Many of the essays are about the absurdity of the expectations placed on women. Do you think of your comedy as political?
JK: I think of my comedy as personal, but the personal is political. I think that's true, right? Yeah. It's true.
BNR: You had a baby during the writing of the book. Are you interested in writing about motherhood, which, like femaleness in general, comes with its own absurd expectations?
JK: I read a lot of baby books when I was pregnant, and NOTHING prepared me for how bananas the entire experience is. There should be a 1,000-page book whose sole topic is how to deal with the trauma of even just looking at your breast pump for the first time. I'm happy to give it a shot at some point.
BNR: In the essay "How I Became a Comedian," you reject the idea that you were brave for doing stand-up. But I'd describe some of these essays as fearless because, well, you're revealing embarrassing things about yourself in a book with your name on it. Do you feel brave now?
JK: Well, I don't feel brave, but I also don't feel embarrassed by anything I revealed in the book. Acknowledging that you look at porn isn't embarrassing. Voting for Donald Trump is embarrassing.
BNR: Did you have any models in mind while writing? What are some of your favorite books by comedians?
JK: I love the writing of Nora Ephron and David Sedaris and Cheryl Strayed. Moshe Kasher is a really funny comedian who wrote an incredible memoir called Kasher in the Rye that I was blown away by.
BNR: With so many women creating amazing comedy, will the debate over whether women are as funny as men die anytime soon?
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