Jennifer Weiner, THE GRIFFIN SISTERS' GREATEST HITS: A Novel
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[0:44]Jennifer Weiner is the author of The Griffin Sisters' Greatest Hits.
[0:49]This is, I don't know, maybe your third, fourth time on this podcast, Jen is the number
[0:54]one, New York Times, best-selling author of 19 books, including that summer, big summer,
[0:59]misses everything in her shoes, good and bad, and a memoir in S.A.'s Hungry Heart.
[1:03]She has appeared on many national television programs, including that today show, and
[1:07]good morning America, and her work has been published in the Wall Street Journal in The
[1:10]New York Times, among other newspapers and magazines.
[1:13]Jennifer lives with her family in Philadelphia.
[1:16]This is part of our series at the Temple Emanuel Striker Center, and was originally an in-person
[1:22]event there, which is now being broadcast as a podcast.
[1:25]Next time, come see us in person.
[1:27]Hi, everybody.
[1:28]How excited are we to be here with Jen?
[1:30]Why are you today?
[1:31]Oh, my gosh.
[1:32]So, this is so great, because the book is all about fame and audiences and performances.
[1:39]And here we are on stage, so I'm just going to pretend that we're The Griffin Sisters.
[1:43]What do you think?
[1:45]I won't ask who's which one.
[1:46]Okay.
[1:47]Don't ask me to say anything.
[1:48]Can you say?
[1:49]Very, like, like a three-note range.
[1:52]I sound good from like middle C to like D, and that's kind of it.
[1:56]You want to try it now?
[1:57]No.
[1:58]Nobody wants that.
[2:00]Oh, my gosh.
[2:02]Okay.
[2:03]So, Griffin Sisters' greatest hits came out April 8th, tell everybody, has anyone read
[2:08]it yet?
[2:09]It just came out.
[2:10]Okay.
[2:11]I'm impressed.
[2:12]I'm impressed.
[2:13]Yeah.
[2:14]What's this book about?
[2:15]So, the Griffin Sisters' greatest hits is the story of two sisters, Cassie and Zoe
[2:17]Grossberg, as they start things, and they're, you know, go through the name change.
[2:23]They are pop stars in the early ots, so we get to revisit that wonderful time.
[2:27]Is it for me?
[2:28]Okay.
[2:29]Okay.
[2:30]Okay.
[2:31]You know, that wonderful era of Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson and Wilson Phillips
[2:37]and, you know, the not so great ways that women were treated back in the day.
[2:43]And then we encounter The Griffin Sisters in the present day, where we know that something
[2:48]terrible has happened.
[2:49]The band has imploded.
[2:52]One of the sisters is living in Alaska, kind of off the grid.
[2:55]The other one is a housewife and hadn't field New Jersey.
[2:58]She's a mom, and her daughter is trying to break into the industry.
[3:01]So her daughter goes looking for fame and fortune, and for answers as to whatever happened
[3:07]to The Griffin Sisters.
[3:08]Interesting.
[3:09]So where did this come from?
[3:10]Were you really curious about music?
[3:11]Are you just wanted to be on American Idol?
[3:14]Well, yes and yes, but our story begins in Alaska.
[3:19]My husband and I went on vacation about three years.
[3:22]It'll be three years ago this summer.
[3:25]And I'd always wanted to go and it's, if you haven't been to Alaska, 10 out of 10 recommend.
[3:31]It's beautiful.
[3:32]And here it's been to Alaska.
[3:33]Oh my gosh.
[3:35]Did you all go together?
[3:36]Was there was there a green piece that I missed?
[3:39]My why?
[3:40]I wanted to do a career.
[3:41]I had to list.
[3:42]Right.
[3:43]I wanted to do a cruise, but my husband is like anti-cruise.
[3:45]And so he set up this, like, we went to Seward.
[3:48]And we went to Homer.
[3:51]And we did all of the things we kayaked in the glacial lakes and we hiked up icebergs
[3:57]and saw all the sites and, you know, and then of course I'm eavesdropping, which is
[4:02]what novelists do.
[4:04]And what I'm realizing is that a great many people in Alaska seem to have left some
[4:09]prior version of themselves behind.
[4:12]I don't know how many of you guys remember this, but there was very briefly a dating
[4:16]show set in Alaska.
[4:18]It was called Bachelorette in Alaska, looking for love.
[4:22]And they took a bunch of young women from the big city and shipped them to Alaska where
[4:27]there are many, many more men than women.
[4:31]And the thing they kept saying on the show to these women was the odds are good, but
[4:36]the goods are odd.
[4:40]And you know, as I'm listening to people talk, I'm like, huh.
[4:44]So I started to think about a woman who ends up in Alaska and I could picture her in
[4:50]like this oversized parka kind of trudging around, carrying cleaning supplies.
[4:55]And I started to think, okay, who is she?
[4:57]How did she end up here?
[4:59]Like what is she running from?
[5:00]Who did she used to be?
[5:03]And then it was the, you know, I've always wanted to write about the music industry.
[5:07]I've always wanted to write about American Idol and shows like that.
[5:10]And so that's the off to the races.
[5:13]And how did you do your research?
[5:15]I said that you read a lot of books by former pop star.
[5:18]Yes.
[5:19]Many, many pop star memoirs.
[5:22]Many, many episodes of Total Request Live on YouTube.
[5:26]They're all there.
[5:27]I think my tips like frosted themselves.
[5:29]I watched so much.
[5:30]This is all one big excuse for you to watch.
[5:33]Pretty much.
[5:34]Pretty much.
[5:35]Yeah.
[5:36]Carson Daly.
[5:37]Boy.
[5:38]And I got a chance to revisit Jessica and Nick LaShay's reality show.
[5:43]And the great question that has played our times is chicken of the sea chicken or fish.
[5:48]Yes, indeed.
[5:49]We all remember.
[5:50]Excellent.
[5:51]That's so close.
[5:52]That's great.
[5:53]Yes.
[5:54]And one of my sister-in-law's works for a record label.
[5:56]So I got to sort of pick her brain about like how you would break out a star in the early
[6:00]odds.
[6:01]And I'm like, so they would just like, you know, they would cut a single and it would
[6:05]be released.
[6:06]And you'd send it to radio stations.
[6:07]And she's like, oh, my sweet summer child.
[6:09]That is not how it happened.
[6:11]And how it happened was you would get some young label executive to drive the artist from
[6:17]radio station to radio station when terrestrial radio was a thing.
[6:22]They would go to the stations.
[6:23]They would do like a little tiny desk concert.
[6:26]And then they would get back in the car and go to the next radio station.
[6:29]And my sister-in-law was the one who did this with Sarah Bareilles back in the day.
[6:33]So she had Sarah Bareilles in her car.
[6:36]And I got to hear all about that.
[6:38]And then I reached out to Diana DiGarmo, who was one of the OG American Idol, like got very
[6:45]far in the competition.
[6:47]And I asked her about like the audition process and the process of getting on the show
[6:51]and then being on the show.
[6:53]And she told me that when they have those huge cattle calls in each city where like 10,000
[6:58]people show up, they edit it to make it look like it happens over one day.
[7:04]But in reality, it takes like three or four days for them to get who they want to go
[7:08]on to the next round.
[7:10]And the contestants are told they have to wear the exact same clothes for three or four
[7:15]days in a row, you know, for continuity.
[7:17]So I'm asking Diana DiGarmo, like what did you do?
[7:20]And she's like, well, I was 16.
[7:22]So I was with my parents.
[7:23]They had rented an apartment and we had laundry facilities.
[7:28]I'm like, what did everybody else do?
[7:29]And she's like, they stunk.
[7:31]So lovely.
[7:33]Research.
[7:35]So the trappings of the novel are very fun, right?
[7:39]The music industry in fame and all this.
[7:41]But the book is about some deeper themes and some darker moments.
[7:46]We have loyalty and betrayal and mother, daughter, fractured relationships and just all
[7:52]this stuff of life.
[7:53]Tell me a little bit about how you went there.
[7:56]I'm always interested in relationships between women, whether it's mothers and daughters,
[8:02]sisters, friendships.
[8:05]And it just seems like when you start reading pop star memoirs or even just talking to
[8:13]your friends, like it's never easy.
[8:16]It's never smooth sailing the whole way through.
[8:20]You know, and that sister relationship, I think, is particularly fraught.
[8:24]So I'm the daughter of a mother who had one sister.
[8:29]I myself have one sister and I am now the mother of two daughters.
[8:33]And I remember my mom would always say when my second child, my daughter Phoebe came along,
[8:40]Phoebe is going to be Lucy's best friend for Lucy's entire life.
[8:44]Like Lucy will never have a friend, like Phoebe.
[8:47]And so far it's been true, even though it hasn't always been easy for the two of them.
[8:51]I remember when Phoebe was like eight years old, I looked at her computer and I looked
[8:56]at her like Google history and it was all like, how to tell if sister is bullying.
[9:01]And being bullied by sister, what to do?
[9:04]Sister is big bully, like, and I was just like, I'm not seeing any of this.
[9:08]So evidently I missed a couple things, but, you know, never easy.
[9:12]Wow.
[9:13]Do you mind if I read a little bit?
[9:14]Go for it.
[9:15]This is a section I found so interesting.
[9:16]And as I'm reading, it's all about what music does for us and how it's really answering
[9:21]a conversation.
[9:22]And I feel like you could substitute music with books.
[9:25]So think about that.
[9:27]It's really quick, don't worry.
[9:28]I won't take up too much time.
[9:29]Let's see.
[9:31]So Russell, who is one of the leading characters in the book, says, I think popular songs
[9:36]get popular because they're saying something true, something that feels real, that resonates.
[9:42]Even if it's just a song about partying and having fun and the best ones combine that
[9:48]with music that strikes a chord, so to speak.
[9:51]And so he says, so where do we start?
[9:53]And Russell says, well, what do you want to talk about when you're saying what do you
[9:57]want to say?
[9:58]So he asks, you mean like a...
[10:00]message, not exactly a message, Russell said,
[10:02]more like a conversation with the audience,
[10:05]with give and take, Zoey frowns,
[10:07]but we're performing and they're listening, she said.
[10:10]So how is it a conversation?
[10:12]I'm condensing all this.
[10:13]Cassie spoke up, people have questions.
[10:16]Songs are the answer.
[10:18]Yeah, poor Zoey is just so far out of her league with this.
[10:22]She thinks that she wants to be famous, right?
[10:27]So Cassie is a prodigy.
[10:30]Cassie is incredibly talented, has all of this ability,
[10:33]but does not know how to deal with other people.
[10:38]And Zoey has very little talent, but she's beautiful.
[10:43]And she has this like will to power.
[10:45]Like she wants to be famous more than anyone has ever wanted
[10:49]anything.
[10:50]And she imagines that, you know, this guy, Russell,
[10:56]who's going to be the band's songwriter,
[10:57]is just going to like show up and give them a song.
[11:00]And they're going to sing it, and it's going to be a hit.
[11:03]And she doesn't understand that there's like a process to it.
[11:06]So if the question that Cassie ends up answering,
[11:10]which is how do you deal with loneliness?
[11:12]How do we get through the world and deal with love?
[11:15]What is the question you're asking and answering with this novel?
[11:19]I think it's a question.
[11:22]I mean, there's lots of questions.
[11:23]But I think it's like, what is the price of having a gift?
[11:28]I think that's one of the big ones that the people in this book
[11:30]are wrestling with.
[11:31]Because Cassie has, like I said, she has all of this talent.
[11:35]And when we meet her, she's like run off to Alaska.
[11:38]She's not performing.
[11:39]She's not writing music.
[11:40]She's like left that world behind.
[11:42]And the question that she struggles with is,
[11:45]what is the obligation that this gift has given me?
[11:49]Like, if I have a gift, do I have a responsibility to use it?
[11:54]So I think that's one of the questions.
[11:58]I think it's how do we heal generational trauma, right?
[12:01]Like there's mothers and daughters and mothers and daughters
[12:04]and everybody's screwing up in a variety of interesting ways.
[12:08]And it's like, how do we fix it?
[12:10]How do we move past it?
[12:11]How do we stay connected to the people that we love?
[12:14]And how do you work through with a balance of love and envy
[12:21]that is a sister relationship sometimes?
[12:24]So interesting.
[12:25]Oh my gosh.
[12:26]So in the book, obviously, these are Jewish sisters.
[12:29]And here we are at the Striker Center.
[12:31]Hope you all had a good Passover.
[12:33]I'm very excited.
[12:34]I'm like, I will never have more bread than I've had in the last,
[12:37]like 20, a couple hours.
[12:38]But anyway, in the book, you mentioned briefly
[12:41]that they changed the name at the advice of the manager
[12:44]from the Grossberg sisters to the Griffin sisters.
[12:46]And Cassie has all these reflections on her dinners with her
[12:50]and the brisket and all of that.
[12:52]Tell me about how Judaism affected the story
[12:54]and where they always going to be Jewish.
[12:57]Tell me about that.
[12:58]So first of all, I just would like to acknowledge
[13:00]that I dodged the terrible bullet of the Passover birthday.
[13:04]My birthday is March 28th.
[13:06]And so every once in a while, I'm faced
[13:08]with the sad reality of the Matsumil birthday cake.
[13:12]And there's nothing worse.
[13:14]There's nothing sadder than that.
[13:16]It just should not be so sorry.
[13:18]It's just one of those things that should not exist.
[13:20]But yeah, there it is.
[13:21]And it's got frosting ice cream cake.
[13:24]Ah, I don't know, I'm old.
[13:28]I'm old, I want cake.
[13:29]Okay, so Judaism, I don't think that the sisters
[13:32]were initially Jewish.
[13:33]I think my editor actually said they should be Jewish.
[13:37]And I was like, and as soon as she said it,
[13:38]I was like, of course they should be Jewish.
[13:40]Because like I said,
[13:42]there is a grand tradition of Jewish artists
[13:45]who either like hide their Judaism
[13:47]or sort of downplay their Judaism
[13:50]or just pretend they're just New Yorkers
[13:53]instead of being specifically Jewish New Yorkers.
[13:56]You know, and of course Jews tell stories, right?
[13:59]And that's what the songs do too.
[14:01]So it felt like a very natural thing.
[14:04]You know, and then it was just a question of like,
[14:06]okay, you know what holidays are they celebrating?
[14:08]What foods are they eating?
[14:10]Like how are they moving through the world
[14:12]as Jewish women, which is something
[14:14]with which I am intimately familiar?
[14:16]So in today's climate in this poked post October 7th world
[14:20]to have two female Jewish protagonists
[14:23]is a statement in and of itself.
[14:25]How do you feel about that?
[14:27]How has it been?
[14:28]I know the books just come out,
[14:29]but how did you feel launching these characters
[14:32]into this world?
[14:32]Yeah, wow.
[14:34]The way that I sort of operate as an author
[14:37]is I really try to stay away from good reads
[14:42]and Amazon and any place that might have me
[14:44]on a list of like, do not buy this author.
[14:47]She's a Zionist or whatever.
[14:49]Like I just, people can say whatever they want.
[14:52]And I, the older I get, the more I realize
[14:55]that other people's opinions of me
[14:56]are like none of my business, right?
[14:58]Like I can't change them.
[14:59]I, so there's no point in having that information
[15:03]in my brain, right?
[15:04]I mean, I, you're right though,
[15:08]like having Jewish protagonists is a statement.
[15:11]And it probably would have saved me some grief maybe
[15:14]to have them not be Jewish.
[15:16]But, you know, I'm a Jewish woman.
[15:20]I've been open and outspoken about that
[15:24]for my entire career ever since Good and Bed
[15:27]with Kenny Shapiro who was very Jewish.
[15:30]And I feel like, you know, Jews tell stories.
[15:34]That's how we've survived as long as we have.
[15:37]You know, we are people of the book
[15:39]and we are people who share our stories and our history.
[15:43]It was really important to me for them to be Jewish.
[15:47]And I don't know.
[15:48]I mean, if it's, if it's cost me some sales,
[15:51]if it's earned to me some grief,
[15:52]I think that's something I can live with, okay.
[15:56]I mean, I feel like you're doing okay.
[15:57]Okay, okay, okay.
[15:59]You're too kind.
[16:03]So interestingly, fame is part of the book.
[16:06]And you are a famous author.
[16:09]You've been doing this forever.
[16:10]Well, I mean, I think a famous author
[16:12]is like being the famous potter, you know?
[16:14]Like, because you can go to the grocery store
[16:17]and like literally no one will bother me
[16:19]unless I've just had my hair done.
[16:21]And I look like my author photo.
[16:22]Like most of the time I can move through the world
[16:25]like totally incognito, which is really, really nice.
[16:28]Or every once in a while somebody will be like,
[16:30]I love your books and I'm like, thanks.
[16:31]And, you know, when my kids were little,
[16:33]they would be like, but I see you're with your children.
[16:35]You know, probably because Lucy was like,
[16:37]given them the stink eye.
[16:39]The scorching stink eye.
[16:40]Like leave my mom alone.
[16:42]But so fame.
[16:43]Yeah.
[16:44]I don't know.
[16:45]Hotters every list.
[16:45]Your famous potters everywhere are celebrating.
[16:47]They're mentioned in this project.
[16:48]Right.
[16:49]Oh, but how do you feel?
[16:51]Because in the book, fame is not a good thing necessarily.
[16:55]It is a monster that they have to contend with.
[16:58]And to your earlier point, a consequence of
[17:01]using your gift to its fullest.
[17:03]How have you wrestled with that?
[17:05]I know it's not the same as being a pop star,
[17:07]but it is, you do have a higher profile
[17:09]that you have to wrestle with.
[17:14]I mean, I guess, okay.
[17:17]So this book is haunted by the spirit of Carney Wilson.
[17:23]Okay.
[17:24]Because I remember the video for Hold On
[17:28]and maybe you do too.
[17:30]And it was set on the beach.
[17:32]So Wilson Phillips, it's Carney Wilson
[17:35]and Michelle Wilson and China Phillips.
[17:38]China and Michelle are sort of thin, you know,
[17:42]stereotypically, you know,
[17:44]conform, beauty standard conforming.
[17:46]And they're on the beach in these like lovely,
[17:49]appropriate slip dresses.
[17:51]And Carney Wilson, who was plus size,
[17:55]not even like tremendously plus size, you know,
[17:58]just, she was a bigger girl.
[18:00]And she was on the beach in a pant suit,
[18:03]which I would have found really shocking and upsetting
[18:05]even if I had not owned that exact same pant suit.
[18:08]Like, I'm looking at this and then, you know,
[18:11]in the course of this video, they are hiding her
[18:14]like behind a grand piano, like also on the beach
[18:17]or behind like boulders or like,
[18:19]they're doing these quick cutaways of like just like
[18:21]this much of her face as if we would experience
[18:26]terrible consequences if we actually saw a plus size woman.
[18:31]And I mean, authors like we're not expected generally
[18:35]to look any kind of way.
[18:36]Like we, I once heard the National Book Awards described
[18:40]as like the Oscars for the lumpy.
[18:43]And that really like spoke to my soul.
[18:45]Like I'm in the right line of work, you know?
[18:48]Because you, nobody expects us to be especially attractive
[18:53]or especially polished.
[18:54]And you spend like 50 weeks out of the year
[18:57]in like pajama bottoms and ancient t-shirts.
[19:02]Music's different, right?
[19:04]Like these young women have to fit a mold.
[19:08]They have to conform to a beauty standard.
[19:13]And in the arts, that was a really hard thing to do.
[19:17]Like Jessica Simpson, you'll remember,
[19:21]got absolutely brutalized by the tabloid media
[19:25]for showing up in high-waisted mom jeans on stage.
[19:29]I mean, people acted like she'd like done something
[19:32]really terrible.
[19:33]And the terrible thing was like she'd gained a little weight
[19:36]since she'd played Daisy Duke in the Duke's of Hazard
[19:38]movie.
[19:39]You know, and Britney Spears got bullied for like weight gain,
[19:43]weight loss, you know?
[19:44]And she was in the process of having a breakdown,
[19:48]like in slow motion right before our very eyes.
[19:51]And I remember just consuming that like it was
[19:55]gossip, you know?
[19:56]Like, oh my God, she's attacking the tabloids
[19:58]with an umbrella.
[20:00]shaving her head, she had a quickie marriage in Vegas,
[20:03]like what is going on with Brittany?
[20:05]Not realizing that it wasn't performance,
[20:10]that it wasn't for show,
[20:11]and that the industry was really doing a number on her.
[20:17]So I wanted to talk about that,
[20:19]and then I wanted to ask the question,
[20:21]like, have things gotten any better?
[20:23]And I would love to say that they have.
[20:27]I'm not sure that they actually have,
[20:29]but I think the first part of finding a solution
[20:34]is admitting that you have a problem.
[20:36]And so I think that maybe what this book will do
[20:40]is make some people think about the way we spoke
[20:43]about those women, the way we treated those women,
[20:46]the way journalists covered those women,
[20:49]and maybe try to do a little better for the next generation.
[20:53]You've written so much about body positivity,
[20:56]and that is of course part of Cassie's character.
[20:58]How do you feel about today's pop stars
[21:00]who have lost a lot of weight, like Adele and Meghan Trainor,
[21:04]and all of that?
[21:05]So I know that what we're supposed to say
[21:08]is that any women's decisions about her body are her own,
[21:12]like nobody signs a pledge of, you know,
[21:15]I will remain a certain size to be a role model
[21:18]for this group of people.
[21:20]By the same token though,
[21:22]like when I saw Meghan Trainor,
[21:24]the woman who's saying all about that base,
[21:27]like showing up, looking like one of the Barbie doll skinny bitches
[21:31]that she made fun of in that song,
[21:33]it sort of felt like seeing another one of my friends
[21:36]being swept off the decks of the Titanic, you know?
[21:39]It's like, oh, we lost another one.
[21:41]You know, there she got Lizzo.
[21:42]Lizzo has lost weight, you know, Adele has lost weight.
[21:45]Rebel Wilson has lost weight.
[21:47]I mean, and I get it.
[21:49]Like, I think it's really, really hard
[21:52]to exist as a high profile woman in a larger body,
[21:56]and you become a target for like,
[21:59]everybody is projecting all of their own issues,
[22:04]their own craziness, their own desires,
[22:06]their own fears onto the screen that your body becomes
[22:10]when you are a famous woman.
[22:13]You know, it's tough, and I do, I mean,
[22:17]part of me is looking at this new class of weight loss drugs
[22:20]and wondering like in 20 or 30 years,
[22:23]are we going to even have larger people anymore?
[22:27]Part of me remembers Fenn Fenn, though,
[22:29]which was the hot diet drug of the 90s,
[22:33]that, you know, that was the ozemphic of then,
[22:37]until they realized that it was causing women to have heart attacks,
[22:40]right?
[22:41]And then the women didn't want to give it up.
[22:43]They were just like, I'll take my chances.
[22:45]I don't want to gain my weight back,
[22:47]and this world's messed up, that's all I got.
[22:52]I will say, I'm on Munjaro, I'm very open about it.
[22:56]I've lost like 30 plus pounds.
[22:58]And the thing that is the best not to make this an ad
[23:01]is not anything about my body, but my brain
[23:04]that you stopped thinking about often
[23:05]with all the time.
[23:06]Did you see that Weight Watchers filed for bankruptcy?
[23:09]I used to be a Weight Watchers leader, FYI,
[23:12]if any of you were ever in my groups.
[23:14]The last time I did Weight Watchers,
[23:17]it was the fiber that they were really pushing.
[23:21]You weren't supposed to count your calories,
[23:24]and you could have extra points
[23:26]if you were eating really high fiber foods.
[23:28]So I found these brownies that were like,
[23:31]they had so much, they were like, you know,
[23:34]I mean, you would spend a day and a half on the toilet,
[23:37]but it didn't matter,
[23:39]because the brownie tasted delicious,
[23:40]and it could work in your plan.
[23:42]But I mean, that is the other thing I think about, right?
[23:45]Like almond moms, right?
[23:49]Who were the daughters of slim-fast grandmas?
[23:52]Who gave birth to calorie deficit TikTok influencers, right?
[23:57]Are we losing like a language
[24:00]that women have been speaking to each other
[24:02]for years and years and years,
[24:04]once because if Weight Watchers goes down,
[24:07]like that's the last bastion
[24:09]of this is all about self-control and willpower, right?
[24:14]You know, like when Oprah talked about taking ozempic,
[24:16]Oprah was a stakeholder in Weight Watchers,
[24:19]like that was sort of the banner,
[24:21]like it's not just about willpower,
[24:24]and it's not a moral failing.
[24:26]Like there's something like chemical going on in your brain.
[24:30]I mean, it's, we're living in interesting times,
[24:33]we really are.
[24:34]But yeah, you know, but with daughters in my house,
[24:38]like I'm very aware of like,
[24:42]I want my daughters to be happy in their own skin
[24:45]no matter what their size.
[24:46]I want them to be happy, I want them to be healthy,
[24:48]I want them to feel beautiful.
[24:50]And I really do my best to kind of model
[24:54]as well as I can, like how I want them to be.
[24:59]So, you know, and some days are better than others, absolutely.
[25:04]One other element of the story is Cassie,
[25:07]when she was younger, had she lived now
[25:10]might have been diagnosed as neurodiverse?
[25:12]Yes.
[25:13]And yet because of her age, she was not.
[25:15]And she's now coming out into the world again,
[25:18]into an environment where that's completely acceptable.
[25:21]What would have happened had Cassie been born later?
[25:24]Like what if she was a teenager now?
[25:26]What do you think the story would have been?
[25:27]I mean, I think that we're still a little slower
[25:31]to diagnose high functioning women
[25:34]than we are boys who like trains a whole lot.
[25:37]Like, you know, they just, it's like,
[25:39]there's your diagnosis, but a woman,
[25:41]I think who's like on the spectrum somehow.
[25:43]But, you know, you see sometimes on social media,
[25:48]like where are all these autistic people coming from?
[25:51]We didn't have them when I was a kid,
[25:53]and it's like, well, yeah, you did.
[25:54]You just called them weirdos, though.
[25:56]Like, there wasn't this awareness of like,
[25:59]what's really going on here.
[26:01]So, yeah, I mean, I do think that Cassie
[26:05]probably would have had some kind of diagnosis
[26:07]and probably would have gotten some kind of support
[26:10]more than what she got,
[26:12]which was basically her parents telling her sister
[26:15]that it was her job to help Cassie navigate humanity,
[26:20]which really wasn't fair to either one of them
[26:22]when you think about it.
[26:23]True.
[26:24]Okay, so what is coming after this book?
[26:26]Can we have a sneak peek?
[26:27]Oh boy, yes.
[26:28]So, I am working on a book.
[26:30]So, this book we sort of dealt with pop stardom
[26:33]in the early aughts.
[26:35]The next one, we have a character
[26:36]who was a supermodel of the 90s, okay?
[26:39]And the book begins when our protagonist,
[26:43]whose name is Ellie wakes up,
[26:46]and her phone is blowing up,
[26:47]and like, everyone in her life,
[26:49]her best friend, her 20-something-year-old daughter,
[26:53]people she hasn't heard from in decades are like,
[26:56]did you know about this?
[26:58]And she's like, did I know about what?
[26:59]And her friend, best friend, is like,
[27:01]look at Instagram, and she looks at Instagram
[27:03]and discovers that her ex-husband is dating
[27:07]this former supermodel who was renowned
[27:10]as the most beautiful woman in the world.
[27:13]And she kind of doesn't know what to do with that information.
[27:15]Because on the one hand,
[27:16]she's been divorced from this guy for a long time.
[27:19]On the other hand, she finds herself feeling some kind of way
[27:23]about the two of them performing their romance
[27:28]on social media.
[27:30]So, it's about the nature of love.
[27:34]It's about writing and stories
[27:36]because Ellie and her ex-husband are both authors
[27:40]of very different kinds of books.
[27:42]It's about fame, it's about social media,
[27:45]it's about performance versus reality,
[27:47]and what we portray versus how we really are.
[27:50]All the things, and there's a really funny scene
[27:54]in a JCC changing room that I'm very proud of,
[27:57]where Ellie is accosted by somebody who's like,
[27:59]you're an ex-husband, did you see?
[28:01]And the woman is just, Ellie describes her
[28:03]as she's naked except for a few strategic puffs
[28:06]of talcum powder.
[28:07]And she's struggling to keep her eyes
[28:10]above the woman's neck as she's like being interrogated.
[28:13]So, I'm having fun.
[28:14]Oh my gosh, and you often write for the New York Times,
[28:17]do you have an op-ed coming out, Sam?
[28:18]You know, it's interesting, the weight stuff.
[28:21]Like, I want to talk about all of the formerly body
[28:27]positive women who have gotten very thin
[28:30]and what does it mean?
[28:32]And weight watchers sort of going down.
[28:35]And also, the blue origin astronauts who were all very glam,
[28:44]which I'm going to give them a pass on
[28:46]because I feel like any woman who knows
[28:49]she's going to be photographed at in newspapers
[28:51]is going to do some glam.
[28:54]But they all had, it looked like they all went
[28:57]to the same like hair extension place
[28:59]and the same eyelash extension place
[29:00]and the same like sculpted makeup face,
[29:03]like there seems to be a kind of flattening going on
[29:07]in terms of like the kinds of bodies
[29:09]we're allowed to have and the kinds of faces
[29:11]we're allowed to have.
[29:13]And I'm really, really interested in that.
[29:16]Interesting.
[29:17]Yeah, so we'll see.
[29:19]What advice would you give to someone
[29:21]who's starting out a writing career today?
[29:24]Oh, that's a good question.
[29:26]For the longest time, I would tell people,
[29:30]I had this like Pat answer,
[29:31]I'm like, get a job at a small newspaper
[29:33]in a part of the country where you've never lived before.
[29:37]I can't tell people that now
[29:38]because there are no more small newspapers
[29:40]in parts of countries where people haven't lived before.
[29:43]And I'm like, well, what am I supposed to do now?
[29:45]Like tell them to go write quizzes for BuzzFeed.
[29:47]I think if you want to be a writer,
[29:50]you're going to be a writer, writer's right.
[29:52]And you do it whether you have an agent
[29:54]or they have a publishing deal,
[29:56]whether you have any of those things.
[29:58]Because if you have a story to...
[30:00]Pell and your writer, you are going to find a way to tell that story.
[30:04]And the advice I give to young people is just to read, you know, because I don't think you can
[30:09]be a writer unless you are a reader and you love words and you love stories and you love the whole
[30:14]process of creation. So I tell young people to read as much as they can and to write as much as they
[30:22]can. And, you know, I've got like 25 pages worth of more specific advice on my website,
[30:28]which is JenniferWiner.com because I'm really creative. But I'm also like I'm running a fellowship
[30:35]in Philadelphia with like this local literary nonprofit where we chose six women who are all in
[30:40]the process of writing either their first novels or their first short story collections. And we
[30:46]gave them some money and I have office hours once a month where they can like come pick my brain,
[30:53]I read their work, I give them feedback, I talk to them about the process of like finding an
[30:58]agent and finding a publisher and how all that goes. So I really, you know, now that I am middle-aged
[31:06]and mid-career as they put it, if they're being nice about it, I do think a lot about the next
[31:12]generation of women writers and like how I can leave the door open for them and sort of leave
[31:16]things a little better than how I found them and make it a little easier than it was for me
[31:22]back in the day. Amazing. Thank you, John. You're welcome.
[31:25]Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi, formerly momstone have time to read books.
[31:31]If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens
[31:37]and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and bye the books.