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[title]Megan Amram is the ultimate Twitter success story: Since joining the site in 2009, her absurd humor has earned her an enormous following and writing gigs for the Oscars and Parks and Recreation. Now, Amram takes her talent to print in a hilarious yet cuttingly insightful women's magazine/pseudo-science textbook, Science…for Her! With cutting wit and a brilliantly boneheaded narrator, Amram touches on biological potato clocks, advice from “Ayn Randers” and, when you least expect it, unexpectedly subtle commentary on sexual abuse, gender norms and other critical, controversial issues. Needless to say, she’s more than just jokes, and I spoke with the new author by phone to talk about her book.
How did you come up with the idea for this mock women's magazine/science textbook? It’s incredibly unique and original.
I'm glad to hear that! When I decided I wanted to write a book, I didn't know what I wanted it to be about, but I really wanted it to look interesting. So I sort of came up with the aesthetic before I had the premise. When I thought more about what satire I wanted to do and what I wanted that satire to say, I really wanted it to be a feminist text veiled in these horrifying jokes. It came to me, "Well, if the people who write these magazines don't think women can live on their own and find a boyfriend on their own, then the logical next step is that women don't understand anything, really, about how the world works.”
Was it particularly important for you to write a feminist text?
Yeah, totally! Over the course of writing it, a really amazing thing happened. The more you think about these things, like stereotypes toward women or pay inequality or any number of things that fall under the sexism category, it makes you more and more fired up. As I wrote this book, I got more and more vocal about these sorts of things. And I think that's sort of how it's supposed to work. As you grow up, you realize that there are great inequalities in the world, and all types, whether it's sexism or racism or toward sexual orientation or anything else, and you should get energetic about it. I talked with other writers who have been doing it longer than me, and they universally said that if you're going to create something, you should make it about something you care about.
First and foremost, I want people to laugh at this book. I didn't just write a manifesto, I wrote a comedy book. But I'm very proud and lucky that I was able to say something with my dumb comedy book.
You really did that successfully. How did you find that balance between the absurdism, the absolute ridiculousness that mocks Cosmo, and the more serious bits of it that bring up real cultural issues, like this notion of “legitimate rape”?
Even if the book seems crazy, everything was very deliberate. And I thought for a long time whether or not I should include that stuff about legitimate rape or anything about assault in the book, because while it's very clear to me that I am 100% supporting victims of these horrible crimes, I really wanted to make sure that no one who ever has been assaulted or raped would feel marginalized by what I was writing.
That’s a difficult line to walk.
I think that's why talking about "rape jokes" is such a hard thing to discuss because it's so nuanced. You could call the piece I wrote about legitimate rape a "rape joke," I guess, but it's so clearly making fun of Todd Akin, the crazy person who said these things. I thought it would be more irresponsible not to talk about those kinds of things because it is such a huge part of being a woman, whether or not it's ever happened to you. You're implicitly thanking every man you've ever been alone with for not taking advantage of you. This is something that's always in the back of all of our minds, “Oh, this might be the time that the person is crazy.” Violence toward women, and sexual violence toward women, makes me so angry. And the way I take that [anger] out is usually by writing in a very jolly, silly, dumb girl voice.
I'm so glad you put those parts in because even if it's veiled by humor, it’s going to make every reader think about these issues.
It is. That has been a tool for hundreds of years, back to the ancient Greeks writing political satirical comedy. But it's sugary medicine. I think satire can say a lot of things if you're in a character. Steven Colbert is the best at that.
I loved the video you made suggesting Ann Coulter should preorder your book.
I just thought we'd be best friends. I thought I was doing my civic duty and that she'd really like it, and we could hang out whenever she wants. This is an open call, if she's reading this.
Has she responded to the video?
No. I hope she's just playing hard to get, like when you're supposed to wait three days to call back a boy. I hope she's just nervous to talk to me.
Have you gotten any really negative reactions to the book yet? People who feel like you're just being too critical of this Cosmo culture?
Not for the book itself. But I really wanted it to look like a magazine; I wanted it to be as mistakable for a magazine as possible. There's no bio of me anywhere on or in the book. It's a fake bio of the fake Megan Amram. And people online have seen the cover and don't know who I am. They're saying things like, "Oh my God, this is setting women back so many years, I can't believe her. I'm a woman doctor, and she's making us look so stupid." This is exactly what I want. I want people to think it's real and start angrily discussing it, and then to look inside. I think it's clear pretty quickly that it's not a sincere science textbook. But there are books very similar to mine that are completely sincere.
Can you talk about the process of making the magazine-like cover a little bit?
That's the only reason anyone should write a book: so that someone will pay for a full-day glamour shoot. I'm pretty sure that's why Shakespeare wrote any of his plays.
There's a great section on "Fun ways to freeze your eggs," which is so relevant, because that topic's been in the news a lot lately. Just this morning, I saw an article with the headline, "Egg freezing: the perfect 30th birthday gift for women." And it was totally serious!
I wish I had written that. First of all, I'm 27 and my friends are just now starting to have children. And I think constantly, “Why are you allowed to have a kid?” It's not these people in particular, but just…why is anyone allowed to have a child? There should be a very rigorous testing process. We could use eugenics, that's a good way of deciding.
Maybe we'll all have children at 40 now. The thought of everyone freezing their eggs and having kids at, like, 80 years old…maybe that's cool. That would be fine, living in a world where everyone is Grandma-Mom. That's my show, Grandma-Mom. Coming to nowhere, next year.
Are there any books that inspired you while working on Science…for Her?
America: The Book is the one to go to when you're talking about fake textbooks. When I first read it in high school, I thought it was the funniest thing I'd ever read. I was so excited by that type of comedy, which was very smart but also very silly at the same time. And then things like The Onion and John Hodgman's and Amy Sedaris's books—these books that are very erudite and very well-written and then also so insane.
You have an Ayn Rand advice column in the book; have you seen John Hodgman perform as Ayn Rand?
I haven’t, but he's a friend of mine and we've talked about how funny it is. I wrote this piece purely based on the fact that it sounded like Ann Landers, and then I found out about his own performance—which is fantastic—and John and I are doing this powerHouse event together.
I hope he wears his Ayn Rand dress.
I'm just going to give him a very strict dress code. It will be the Ayn Rand dress.
Have you read anything wonderful lately that you'd like to recommend?
I really love short stories, and I just finished all of Karen Russell's short stories. I love them so much. I just finished Vampires in the Lemon Grove a second time. I think in my spare time I like to read serious things and dark things that have really great jokes in them, which is like George Saunders' style. They're not comedy, but they're so funny. That's my favorite style, in pretty much anything. Inherently very serious with great moments of comedy.