Hey Ladies!

The moment I fell in love with The Toast as my internet home started with the words “Hey Ladies.”
The moment that I had second thoughts about going into pediatrics also started with “Hey Ladies!” In fact, in my previous life as a computer scientist, no one would ever have referred to a professional group as “ladies,” for gender reasons alone. But, as a senior medical student, all of my peers considering pediatrics were women, as was the altogether too cheery chief resident standing in front of us, gathering our professional attention with her false-friendly greeting: “hey, ladies!”

And, yeah, honestly, I love being a pediatrician, but my professional life is one where gender performance is scrupulously policed, and semi-social professional interactions are full of gender declarations, passive aggressive behavior and subtle status cues. So the way that Markowitz and Moss really capture a way in which women of a certain demographic interact with each other, and the nuance captured in a signature really spoke to me. (Normal conversations I have with my husband include lines like: “We can't hang out with her after she was so mean.” Him: “When was she mean?” Me: “In that e-mail you just read? Did you not see her punctuation marks??”) And no, it's not me and it's not my day-to-day life, but it completely captures where my professional and social life intersect. Perhaps because I am mostly an outsider, cleverly camouflaged to make my way onto these e-mail threads, I find seeing them exposed, dissected and ultimately lampooned hilarious.

But? I thought the blog entries were funnier. I think the pacing was better spread out over months (I binge read the book in two one hour sittings over two days) and that limiting the e-mails to one year lost some of the nuance that, for instance the Jen/Brad relationship took on in the blogs.

i thought this book was borderline unreadable and barely read half of it before giving up- it is a book i came across through no one's fault but my own (thank god none of my perfectly lovely friends recommended it to me) because i was innocently browsing the fiction section at my library and we all know by now that a book with interesting formatting, I am probably going to pick up! I love it when they are shaped funny or have weird quirks. Anyway, this book is written all through emails or texts and it is unbearably difficult to comprehend. Not to mention the fact that I'm pretty sure all of these women hate one another and yet they are supposed to be the best of friends... feels like a hate crime towards the idea of womanhood and the deep incredible love that can be held in female friendship.... all these women wanted to do was tear each other down and undercut one another's successes!! also it was the most millennial style of humor and "hey girlies" dialogue I've ever read!!!!! and as someone with a millennial sister, i know even THEY can be funnier and more self aware than this!!!! wow I am usually not so picky but this one was ROUGH