A Girl Like I: An Autobiography

“No cérébrale could ever be happy as a Cinderella.”

Anita Loos's claim to fame is writing the worldwide bestseller “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.”

The novel was tangentially inspired by H.L. Mencken, whom she was in love with in 1926, but who was smitten with a blonde—whom Loos subsequently burned to ridicule. (Loos's none-the-wiser husband asked her to dedicate the novel to him, which she did.)

Nita didn't understand how Menck could be fascinated by a female who was less intelligent, less charismatic, less funny, and less pretty than she, until finally she identified the one thing the blonde had less of that mattered: melanin in her hair.

The most fascinating part of “A Girl Like I” is Nita's early life, culminating in her Hollywood touchdown in 1915 at age 27, mother attached.

The leitmotif of “A Girl Like I” is the financial power-relationships between the sexes that Loos observed throughout her life. Her relationship with her father, an amusing alcoholic sponge, was formative. In fact, Nita supported both father and mother from the age of about fifteen. Loos punctuates the book with a friend's declaration: “You sure are flypaper for pimps!”

Loos writes in a precise and formal style; a style so grammatically correct and tortuously witty as to be delicious to bluestockings—or cérébrales—like I.