Book Review: Bossypants

Tina Fey’s Bossypants is not new, but I’ve always been a fan of hers and after reading Mindy Kaling’s Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? and absolutely loving it I wanted to read another life story type book by a comedienne.

Bossypants is undoubtedly funny and I enjoyed reading it, but I’ll be honest, I wasn’t laughing out loud like with Mindy Kaling’s book. That book had me trying to not laugh out loud while on a plane! Where Kaling’s book really took readers through her life and everything that shaped her to be who she is today (constantly conscious of her body/weight and obsessed with comedy from a young age), Fey spends much more book time focusing on her career once she had already “made it”. Sure, she does tell some stories from her childhood and a few from her years as a teen working at a theater camp, but the focus isn’t really on how she broke into the business. She talks a lot about how hard she worked on Saturday Night Live as a writer and then how creating “30 Rock” was even more hard work and time consuming. She gives a lot of lessons she’s learned and tips on being a boss as a woman and I think it’s great to hear from someone who despite being famous is really rather normal tell you what she’s learned as a female, as a boss, and as a female boss.

Some of the funniest moments in the book I think are when she recounts her teenage years and how just “unstylish” she was. I’ve picked out 2 to share with you guys…

1. When writing about a house party she was at she wrote, “My ex and the dancer made a brief appearance, but I held my head high. I was wearing my best Gap turtleneck and my dates were two adult lesbians, so yeah, I was pretty cool.“
2. When describing her style in her late teens, “By nineteen, I had found my look. Oversize T-shirts, bike shorts, and wrestling shoes. To prevent the silhouette from being too baggy, I would cinch it at the waist with my fanny pack. I was pretty sure I would wear this look forever.”

I just love how honest she is when she writes and that she’s not afraid to totally poke fun at herself. I think we all have moments from our childhood and/or teen years where we think back or look back at pictures and think to ourselves, “What was I thinking?!” But I would guess a good number of us would cringe at the thought and try to forget about it because it’s just too embarrassing. So good for Tina to not only share these embarrassing moments with the world, but to totally own them!