by Sady Doyle
“the city of incurable women”: Invention of Hysteria: Charcot and the Photographic Iconography of La Salpêtrière, Georges-Didi Huberman, p. 13.
“the camera likes her”: “The Girls of Salpêtrière,” Oliver Walusinski, MD, www.baillement.com/lettres/Girls_Salpêtrière.pdf.
“She closes her eyes, her physiognomy denoting possession”: Invention of Hysteria: Charcot and the Photographic Iconography of Salpêtrière, Didi Huberman-Georges, p. 144.
“tried to persuade me I was in love with my brother-in-law”: “Freud, Charcot and Hysteria: Lost in the Labyrinth,” Richard Webster, www.richardwebster.net/freudandcharcot.html.
“those females least embedded in the male ‘Culture’ ”: SCUM Manifesto, Valerie Solanas.
it was Girodias who told the world that SCUM was an acronym: The Manifesto has never been printed without reference to Warhol; a mention of the shooting in the author bio or preface, a quote from Solanas about why she wasn’t sorry on the back, or (in the e-book version I own) an actual photo of Warhol’s scars on the cover.
As art critic Catherine Lord points out: “Wonder Waif Meets Super Neuter,” Catherine Lord, www.ubuweb.com/historical/solanas/lord_on_solanas.pdf.
In one study, recovering alcoholics with greater tendencies toward shame: “Being Ashamed of Drinking Causes Relapse, Not Recovery,” Maia Salavitz, Time, February 7, 2013.
CHAPTER 4: DEATH
“No, no, no. I would never”: “Primetime: Special Edition,” November 2002, www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmofKdmQSeo.
“This interview … [from] when Whitney was still all drugged up”: “The 10 Best Moments from Whitney Houston’s Infamous Diane Sawyer Interview,” Matt Stopera, BuzzFeed, September 10, 2009.
“The Most Disturbing Moment”: “The Most Disturbing Moment from Whitney Houston’s 2002 Diane Sawyer Interview,” James Crugnale, Mediaite, February 13, 2012.
NME Magazine, which had nominated her: “Amy Winehouse Up for Villain of the Year,” Now Magazine, January 29, 2008.
“little scabs that raid her face”: “Up All Night with Amy Winehouse,” Claire Hoffman, Rolling Stone, July 10, 2008.
“remarkable musical achievements were often overshadowed”: “Amy Winehouse’s Death: A Troubled Star Gone Too Soon,” Jenny Eliscu, Rolling Stone, July 24, 2011.
the Elton John rewrite of “Candle in the Wind”: Which, of course, had been about Marilyn Monroe’s death in the first place; the celebrity death script was so well worked-out, by that point, that you only needed to make a few lyrical adjustments.
which became the best-selling single of all time: “Elton John: Biography,” Rolling Stone.
In 1999, The New York Times endorsed author Sally Bedel Smith’s posthumous diagnosis: “Shrinking the Princess,” Frank Kermode, New York Times, August 22, 1999.
“kissing Hitler”: Billy Wilder in Hollywood, Maurice Zolotow, p. 263.
“I’m the only director who ever made two pictures with Monroe”: Ibid., p. 264.
“I have been besieged by newspapermen”: Ibid., pp. 265–66.
A Ladies’ Home Journal profile of her was killed for being too sympathetic: “The Woman Who Will Not Die,” Gloria Steinem, PBS, 1986.
“An actor is supposed to be a sensitive instrument”: “Last Talk with a Lonely Girl,” Richard Meryman, Time, August 17, 1962 (republished in the Guardian).
“including the half-drunk bottle of champagne she used to wash the pills down”: “The Things She Left Behind,” Sam Kashner, Vanity Fair, September 30, 2008.
“the ‘Cadillac of caskets’ ”: “Death of Marilyn Monroe,” Wikipedia.
“I’m a sucker for blondes and she is the ultimate blonde”: “Hugh Hefner Talks About His Memories of Marilyn Monroe,” CBS Los Angeles, August 3, 2012.
“If I croak, if you don’t put me upside down over Marilyn”: “For Sale: Eternity with Marilyn Monroe,” Jeff Gottlieb, Los Angeles Times, August 14, 2009.
Bidding started at $500,000: It’s tempting to judge Elsie for this—the eBay auction is a particularly tacky touch—but you really shouldn’t. Given the nature of his last requests, Poncher is lucky his wife didn’t sell his skeleton to the nearest haunted house.
“I wish I was dead already”: “Lana Del Rey: ‘I Wish I Was Dead Already,’ ” Tim Jonze, Guardian, June 12, 2014.
“I’m a big jazz aficionado”: “Love, Death and Jazz: Seven Outtakes from Our Lana Del Rey Interview,” Fader, June 20, 2014.
“I was playing a gig in New Jersey, walking across the yard”: Billie Holiday: Wishing on the Moon, Donald Clarke, chapter 18.
“And I said to myself, new angle, new angle, new angle”: Ibid.
“I could play in theaters and sing to an audience of kids”: Lady Sings the Blues, Billie Holiday and William Dufty, chapter 19.
Articles “by” Billie Holiday, on the topic of her addiction: Billie Holiday: The Musician and the Myth, John Szwed, chapter 2.
“I’ll never forget that night”: Holiday and Dufty, chapter 1.
“[Instead] of treating me and Mom like somebody who went to the cops for help”: Ibid.
“beat the shit out of her so she sings good”: Clarke, chapter 14.
“Everybody was happy about the crowds”: Holiday and Dufty, chapter 20.
“When I sing, it affects me so much I get sick”: Holiday and Dufty, chapter 9.
“There is so much of human suffering, sensitivity and music in her voice”: Szwed, chapter 1.
“This reviewer is no squeamish prude”: Ibid.
“My book is just a bitch”: Ibid.
“I’m not supposed to get a toothache”: Holiday and Dufty, chapter 23.
“We’re all doomed, baby”: Szwed, chapter 1.
In the four weeks directly after her death: “Effect of the Death of Diana, Princess of Wales, on suicide and deliberate self-harm,” bjp.rcpsych.org/content/bjprcpsych/177/5/463.full.pdf.
The overall U.S. suicide rate rose by 12 percent: “The Science Behind Suicide Contagion,” Margot Sanger-Katz, New York Times, August 13, 2014.
CHAPTER 5: SHUT UP
“probably the stupidest thing I ever did”: “Tara Reid Opens Up About Plastic Surgery,” Amy Bonawitz, CBS News, October 13, 2006.
“I was smiling like a fool and people were snapping away”: Ibid.
“ ‘moving on’ from the botched breast augmentation”: “Tara Reid: The Truth About My Body,” Amy Eliza Keith, People, November 10, 2008.
“It wasn’t really the pictures that hurt me”: Ibid.
“I figured, I’m in Hollywood”: “Tara Reid Gets ‘Ugliest’ Breast Surgery Repaired,” ABC News, abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=2573773&page=1.
“I couldn’t wear a bikini”: “Tara Reid Opens Up About Plastic Surgery,” CBS News.
“the first American singer-songwriter”: “Lost Women Found,” Robert Forster, The Weekly, June 2009.
“you are bringing up the greatest critic we heard of in America”: “Vanishing Act,” Paul Collins, Lapham’s Quarterly.
she had been so sure that her popularity would “burn out”: “Back from the Wilderness,” Grace Macaskill, Scottish Daily Mail, November 19, 2005.
“Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman”: A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf, chapter 3.
“It was the relic of the sense of chastity”: Ibid.
“I was told you had once some thoughts of bringing Fanny out as a professional singer”: The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, Vol. 2, ed. Margaret Smith, p. 312.
“go back up into your quarters, and take up your own work”: “The Public Voice of Women,” Mary Beard, London Review of Books, March 20, 2014.
“Let the woman learn in silence, with all subjection”: 1 Timothy 2.11 and 2.12, King James version.
“angry woman who, by brawling and wrangling amongst her neighbours”: Duhaime’s Law Dictionary, www.duhaime.or
g/LegalDictionary/C/Common-Scold.aspx.
“[Women] are not even now as concerned”: A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf, chapter 3.
“As this is the first time that I ever took my pen”: “Letter from a Fugitive Slave,” New York Daily Tribune, June 21, 1853.
“I have not the Courage”: Harriet Jacobs: A Life, Jean Fagan Yellin, p. 129.
“Would you not think that Southern Women had cause to despise”: “Letter from a Fugitive Slave.”
“the spelling I believe was every word”: Yellin, p. 13.
Historian John Blassingame: Blassingame often comes off as a villain in this story, due to his dismissiveness. In fact, he’s one of the more respected and accomplished historians in this field—and, when Yellin found evidence that proved him wrong, he supported her fully.
“The story is too melodramatic”: “To Be Raped, Bred or Abused,” Henry Louis Gates Jr., New York Times, November 22, 1987.
“Reader, my story ends with freedom”: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs, chapter 41.
“Though impelled by a natural craving for human sympathy”: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs, Appendix.
“Dear Amy if it was the life of a Heroine”: Harriet Jacobs to Amy Post, Yale archive.
“Pity me, and pardon me, O virtuous reader!”: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs, chapter 10.
“I don’t think I changed fifty words”: Harriet Jacobs: A Life, Jean Fagan Yellin, p. 141.
“The brave deeds of Margaret Garner”: Ibid., p. 261.
One 2001 study found that women: “Men Rule: The Continued Under-Representation of Women in Politics,” Jennifer L. Lawless and Richard L. Fox, Women in Politics Institute & School of Public Affairs.
when men and women are deliberately given equal speaking time: “Language Myth #6: Women Talk More than Men,” Janet Holmes, PBS.
CHAPTER 6: SPEAK UP
“Dignity / Down Boy”: “Hilary Duff Stuffs Backpacks; Plus Lindsay Lohan, Fabolous, Foxy Brown, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears & More, In For the Record,” MTV News, June 14, 2007.
“[referred] to blocking out negativity”: “Britney Spears Names New Album ‘Blackout,’ ” Reuters, October 6, 2007.
“I don’t really want to talk about it any more”: The Late Show with David Letterman, September 21, 2007.
“Now see everyone’s watching”: “The Secret History of Britney Spears’ Lost Album,” Hunter Schwarz, Buzzfeed, April 27, 2014.
“an unwritten rule”: “Bloodshy & Avant,” Cafe.se, June 16, 2008.
When Mary Wollstonecraft was being demolished: Which, of course, raises the question of what an unflattering photo of Mary Wollstonecraft would look like. I choose to believe they’d have gone with the classic upskirt; those eighteenth-century dresses are pretty bulky, but if you crouched down low enough, I’m sure you could catch Mary showing ankle.
“Why did you marry the man you did? (or date the man you do?)”: “How to Start Your Own Consciousness-Raising Group,” Chicago Women’s Liberation Union, 1971.
“For every scientific study we quote”: “Consciousness-Raising; a Radical Weapon,” Kathie Sarachild.
“Our meetings were called coffee klatches”: Ibid.
“It is at this point a political action to tell it like it is”: “The Personal Is Political,” Carol Hanisch.
“In the absence of feminist activity”: “The Tyranny of Tyranny,” Cathy Levine.
“a pretty young mother of two children was found in a London flat”: “Books: The Blood Jet Is Poetry,” Time, June 10, 1966.
“A man in black with a Meinkampf look”: The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath, ed. Ted Hughes, pp. 222–24.
“a mint / by becoming Plath’s posthumous editor”: Rough Magic: A Biography of Sylvia Plath, Paul Alexander, chapter 6.
“Sexually predatory, rabidly ambitious, mentally unstable”: “The poet caught in the eye of the tornado,” Sunday Times, October 14, 2001.
“Hysterical insanity, whatever its momentary erotic appeal”: Sylvia Plath, ed. Harold Bloom, p. 2.
“[there] is a special place in hell for narcissistic mothers”: “Narcissistic Mothers,” Cyndi Lopez, PsychCentral.
“Plath’s poetry can be seen to be preoccupied with ‘borderline’ themes”: “Sylvia Plath and the Depression Continuum,” Anthony Ryle, September 2003.
Infinite Jest, like The Bell Jar: The books’ origin stories are so similar that, upon close consideration, the distinguishing line between male genius and female madness would seem to be “has footnotes.”* * Lots and lots of footnotes.
“It Happened to Me”: “It Happened to Me: I Let an Old Rich White Man Bankroll My Life … Even Though He Was Racist,” Anonymous, xoJane, May 2, 2014.
“I’m Being Stalked and Terrorized”: “It Happened to Me: I’m Being Stalked and Terrorized Because of My Fat Acceptance Movie,” Lindsey Averill, xoJane, April 25, 2014.
“I Was Suspended from My Teaching Job”: “It Happened to Me: I Was Suspended from My Teaching Job for Being Transgender,” Laura Jane Klug, xoJane, April 16, 2014.
“It Happened to Me: A Gynecologist”: “It Happened to Me: A Gynecologist Found a Ball of Cat Hair in My Vagina,” Michelle Barrow, xoJane, September 2, 2015.
“a place where women go to be selfish”: “Mixed Reviews for Jane Pratt’s New Website,” Alex Eichler, The Atlantic Wire, May 16, 2011.
CHAPTER 7: SCAPEGOAT
“now and for the foreseeable future”: “A.P. Says It Wants to Know Everything About Britney Spears,” Brian Stelter, New York Times, January 14, 2008.
“one shot of Britney slowly spiraling into insanity”: “Bald Britney Spears Was the Dot-Com Boom Era for Paparazzi,” American Ex-Pap, Defamer.
“habitual, frequent and continuous drug user”: “The Tragedy of Britney Spears,” Vanessa Grigoriadis, Rolling Stone, February 21, 2008.
“Britney Spears extends a honeyed thigh across the length of the sofa”: “Britney Spears, Teen Queen: Rolling Stone’s 1999 Cover Story,” Steven Daly, Rolling Stone.
“You want to be a good example for kids out there”: Ibid.
“Spears’ pink T-shirt is distended”: Ibid.
“This guy jumps up on the stage”: “Britney Spears: The Girl Can’t Help It,” Chris Mundy, Rolling Stone, May 25, 2000.
“I don’t want to be part of someone’s Lolita thing”: Ibid.
“Alone in the house one night, she hid from a prowler”: Daly.
COCAINE, MORE SECRET SURGERY: “You HAVE to See Kylie Jenner’s Reaction to a Mag Cover Claiming She’s ‘Destroyed by Fame,’ ” Hannah Orenstein, Seventeen.
“former employees remember [him] laying out a four-act cover drama”: “How In Touch’s Duggars Coverage Has Changed Tabloid Journalism,” Anne Helen Petersen, Buzzfeed, June 16, 2015.
“some little woman, standing by my man”: “Hillary’s First Joint Interview—Next to Bill in ’92,” CBS News, February 1, 2013.
“stayed home and baked cookies and had teas”: “Nightline Transcript: Making Hillary Clinton an Issue,” PBS, March 26, 1992.
“a buffoon, an insult to most women”: Ibid.
“The damage had been done”: Ibid.
“Then, there’s Clinton”: Ibid.
“lit up a cigarette to punish her smoke-allergic husband”: “Hillary Clinton: First Lady of the Lamp,” Snopes.com.
“she engaged in sexual relations but he did not”: “Washington Post Special Report: The Starr Report,” Washington Post.
“I was never going to see the president again” and “pain in the neck” and “many phone calls” and “distraught and sometimes in tears” and “highly emotional lady”: Ibid.
“Any normal person would have walked away from this”: Ibid.
“blow-job queen”: “How Does It Feel to Be America’s Blow-Job Queen?,” Ian Rothkerch, Salon, March 1, 2002.
“I just knew he was in love with me”: Starr Report.
“My first job out of college was at the White House”: “Shame and Survival,” Monica Lewinsky, Vanity Fair, May 31, 2014.
“Isn’t it interesting that Bill doesn’t go for women”: “New York Supergals Love That Naughty Prez,” Francine Prose, New York Observer, February 9, 1998.
“Hillary Clinton changed her hairstyle one million times”: Ibid.
“I think [Hillary] would actually be more effective”: Ibid.
“she has so much power over his mind”: Ibid.
“narcissistic Loony-Toon”: “Hillary Clinton: Monica Lewinsky a ‘Narcissistic Loony Toon,’ ” CBS News, February 10, 2014.
“Hillary Clinton wanted it on record”: “Shame and Survival,” Vanity Fair.
“just another crackhead”: “Didn’t she almost have it all?,” Rebecca Traister, Salon, April 12, 2006.
She is not allowed to use her cell phone: “Control of Britney Spears’ Life Is Her Father’s Prerogative,” Los Angeles Times, February 27, 2009.
“a prisoner”: “Why Do We Talk About Britney Spears Like She’s Not a Prisoner?,” Michelle Dean, Flavorwire, December 11, 2013.
“a feminist role model for single working mothers”: “Miss American Dream,” Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Medium.
“Oh, I loved it”: Ibid.
“most admired woman anywhere in the world”: “Gallup: Hillary Clinton ranked most-admired woman in U.S. for record 20th year,” Michael Walsh, Yahoo!, December 28, 2015.
“somebody who can take her into a room”: “Keith Olbermann’s Idea for Beating Hillary: Literally Beating Hillary,” Rachel Sklar, Huffington Post, May 2, 2008.
“Stop Hillary!”: “Stop Hillary!,” Doug Henwood, Harper’s Magazine.
a Photoshopped image of her eating a baby: Doug Henwood, Twitter.
CHAPTER 8: REVOLUTIONARY
“Anne ux. Richard Walker being cast out of the church of Boston”: Curious Punishments of Bygone Days, Alice Morse Earle, p. 74.
“No brawling wives, no furious wenches”: Ibid., p. 16.
“One of the latest, and certainly the most notorious”: Ibid., p. 37.
