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Book Review of The Sexual Education of a Beauty Queen, by Taylor Marsh

The Sexual Education of a Beauty QueenI won a copy of Taylor Marsh‘s The Sexual Education of Beauty Queen through Goodreads.

Description from Goodreads:
“The Sexual Education of a Beauty Queen” is at once memoir, commentary, enlightenment, and a little dose of self-help. Taylor Marsh was Miss Missouri and performed on Broadway, hosted a radio show, and starred in a one-woman show. She was also a relationship consultant for the nation’s largest newsweekly, edited the web’s first megasuccessful women-owned and -operated soft-core pornography site, worked as a phone-sex actress, and studied sexuality and relationships for years. She’s been single, a girlfriend, a mistress, and a wife. She has the inside track to what men want, what women need, and how we all tend to muck it up. As a political commentator and popular writer, Taylor is intelligent and inspiring. She blends personal experience, pop culture, and the politics of sex in an entertaining, engaging, and inspiring read.

Review:
This was not a big winner for me, for several reasons. This despite the fact that I actually agreed with a lot of her final conclusions, appreciated her take on feminism and thought some of what she had to say, especially about the church, was very brave. The problem for me was that I think she should have stuck with an academic argument and left out the autobiography. Because often the biographical sections just came across as braggy and cluttered up the message she was trying to convey. But let me break down a few of my more specific complaints.

Marsh tried to simultaneously hold onto her “I’m so innocent,” Midwestern beauty queen person and tell the reader about all the sexually liberated, kinky things she was doing. And it just didn’t work. They really are kind of mutually exclusive.

Further, despite presenting herself as ultra liberal and accepting—she talked to prostitutes like people, after all—the book is full of micro-aggressions against the same people and demographics she’s claiming to liberate. For example, stating that managing circus talent was the perfect previous experience for corralling the misfit strippers, models and XXX-raters who worked at a porn startup and denigrating the men who called the phone sex line for some of the more deviant fantasies. She seems to want to simultaneously be believed to be open and accepting of all fantasy, while also making it clear she maintains the moral and societal high ground. Again, it just doesn’t work.

Also, several events in the book feel very re-remembered. For example, she claims to have started working in a sex phone bank explicitly for the opportunity to talk to men about why they call for phone sex. I seriously doubt she was being that introspective at the time. Some of these re-remembrances go all the way back to childhood. This goes along with how grandiose she seems to feel her contributions to feminism have been, though the scale doesn’t seem to have been borne out in reality.

I get that this is an autobiography of sorts, but it’s also presented as a bit of a self-help, behind the curtain look at various aspects of the sex industry. But very little of that materializes. The author says over and over again, “I was…” or “I did” or some variation there of. She was the first editor of a soft porn internet site. She was the first person to introduce an alternative personals page to a syndicated newspaper. She interviewed dominatrixes and prostitutes. She worked for a sex phone bank. But she says very very little about these things other than that she did them and even less that I would consider particularly enlightening on the subject. The whole thing just comes across as a self-centered brag book. We learn about her boyfriends and her relationships and she dropped several references to her own previous publications, but I finished disappointed. I mean a whole chapter in the beginning is dedicated to what she watched on television growing up. And while some of the feminist critique of early Hollywood was interesting, I just didn’t care.

Worst of all, after telling the reader how bad rules on how to get a man are, even taking a website to task for swearing they wouldn’t and then doing it, she ended the book on a list of rules for how to get your man. She didn’t call it that, but that’s what it was. Sure, it starts with know what you want, which is great and more female centric than a lot of lists, but it’s still a ‘what to do’ list!

Put simply, a whole lot of this is about Taylor Marsh, not sexual education or sexuality or sex. And while that might work for some, it wasn’t enough to keep me interested. I mean, where are all those “Relationship Secrets from the Trenches” we’re promised. We never take our gaze off the narrator long enough to even realize we’re in a trench, let alone learn anything from it.

Addendum: It’s not really relevant in the content review of the book, but for those looking to read the paperback, it’s worth noting that the font can’t be any bigger that 10pt (it’s notably  smaller than standard) and it’s single spaced. I found it hard to read and I don’t yet have age related eye constraints.


What I’m reading: Coffee with cream

Mexico: Stories

Book Review of Mexico: Stories, by Josh Barkan

Mexico: StoriesI won a paperback copy of Mexico, by Josh Barken, through Goodreads. I had hoped that it would be a book I count toward my #DiverseRomanceBingo challenge, being as it is set outside the US/UK, which is one of the points. But despite being set in Mexico, I do not believe I can count it toward the challenge.

Description from Goodreds:
A powerful, deeply original short story collection about people living in Mexico whose lives are turned upside down by the violence and chaos of the drug cartels

The characters in Josh Barkan’s remarkable story collection Mexico are ordinary people—everyday citizens, expats, and travelers visiting the country for their own reasons—who find themselves inexorably caught up in and impacted by the criminality and brutality of the Mexican cartels. In these pages readers will meet a tourist who is kidnapped off the street, a teacher whose students risk death if they fall in love with the wrong person, a chef who must cook for a gangster under pain of death, a plastic surgeon forced to alter a fugitive drug lord’s appearance, and many more compelling and memorable characters suddenly thrust into harrowing, life-changing situations. But for all that the characters in Mexico have their lives touched by crime, these are much more than simple “crime stories.” Rather, they are complicated and deeply human tales that touch on universally recognizable themes such as a parent’s desire to connect with their children, an idealistic belief in young love, and the struggle to maintain faith in a world full of hardship. *

Review:
Another reviewer said, “To be honest, I’m not sure Americans really need to hear more violent stories about Mexican crime and corruption. Mexico is a beautiful country that still has much to offer. In my opinion, this book concentrates too much on the negative and gives a narrow view of the country in general.” And while I went into the book knowing it was focused on members of the drug cartels, I very early on felt the same as this reviewer and by the end my opinion hadn’t changed.

Mexico has such a bright and varied culture and focusing so narrowly on this one aspect felt very much like reinforcing the painful stereotype that all Mexicans are involved in the violent drug trade—the women as victims and the men as jefes and/or henchmen. What’s more, I went in search of a bio of the author, thinking that my opinion might be altered if he is himself Mexican and writing from a place of emotion and familiarity. But he is a Yale educated, world traveling, white, American male and that just seems to make this writing feel even more like perpetrating a harmful stereotype from a place of safe privilege. When I started the book, I’d hoped Barkan would pull it off but I’m afraid he didn’t.

Further, to title the book just Mexico, as if it encompasses all of and only Mexico is adding insult to injury; especially since these aren’t stories about Mexicans. They’re stories about Americans in Mexico. But Americans, outsiders, who pretend to speak with an insiders’ knowledge and authority. They all naturally paint a bleak, unflattering picture of the country (with nothing positive to balance it out), in which corruption reigns supreme, cruelty is pervasive, women are dismissed and plenty of Mexicans die pointlessly, but never the American. Mexico and its people are just props for their northern neighbors to learn lessons and make decisions and act big. It felt VERY judgmental and appropriative to me. How did no one in the publishing process notice this? Were they all just too busy, as I imagine them, congratulating themselves and each other on writing/publishing gritty, down and dirty, important works about those poor unfortunates down south to pause and consider how nationalistic it might be?

As with any story collection some stories are better than others, but the fact that they all have a similar overriding factor, even as the themes and details differed, meant that I felt that repetition and eventually started to bore. Only one had any significant female characterization in it. All the others were full of men who were basically clones of one another. Many of them even had essentially the same transformative experience. The writing itself is ok, nothing to write home about, but not bad. It does tend toward pretension though, and there is a certain subtext of affluence to it that only adds to that impression. I do really like the cover, so there’s a positive note to end on.

*As a side note, it really annoys me when blurbs read more like reviews than book synopses. Maybe that’s just me though.


What I’m drinking: Homemade, iced Organic Golden Peach tea from St. Dalfour.

Moments in Time

Review of Moments in Time (Moments in Time #1-3), by Karen Stivali

I won a signed copy of Karen Stivali‘s Moments in Time (#1-3) from Just Love Romance. I read it as part of my #DiverseRomanceBingo challenge, as it contains a bi character, Jewish characters and is written by an #OwnVoices author.

Description from Goodreads:

Moment of Impact
Beyond Collin Fitzpatrick’s dorm room, the students of his conservative college think he’s straight, as does his Catholic family, who’d disown him if they learned the truth. Inside, he’s safe with his sexy roommate Tanner D’Amico. Tanner wants to show the world how much he loves Collin, but Collin’s not sure he’s ready for the impact stepping outside will make.

Moment of Truth
Collin expected to spend another summer fixing cars and working at the college pizzeria. Instead, he’s living in a beach house on Fire Island, and for the first time, he and Tanner can publicly be known as boyfriends. Being “out” takes some getting used to, and doubt and jealousy threaten their happiness. Collin and Tanner must confront the truth or risk losing it all.

Moment of Clarity
Spending the summer on Fire Island brought Collin and Tanner closer than ever, but back in their conservative college town, new challenges confront them.

When Collin’s relationship with Tanner becomes an issue in his brother’s custody battle and Tanner struggles with feelings for his heartbroken friend Wendy, Collin wonders if everyone would be better off without him. In order to save them both, Tanner must make it clear his love for Collin is all that matters.

Review:

Hmm, there is plenty to appreciate here. It’s a sweet read about two university-aged guys falling in love. And it is sweet. It’s nice to see a confident bi character. It’s nice to see Catholic and Jewish characters. It was nice that the guys didn’t go from virginal to straight porn sex in an instant and that sex could be something other than penetrative. I liked that there wasn’t a lot of angst about who did what to who and what that did or didn’t make them. I liked Collin coming exploring himself for the first time and Tanner’s patience with him. And I just plain liked Collin and Tanner.

However, the plot often felt like little snippets of life between extended sex scenes. There was far too much sex for me. Not that I mind a lot of sex, but the balance of sex to plot felt too heavily weighted toward sex. I got bored with it. I thought a lot of the conflict felt contrived (and often predictable) and the easy way everything miraculously resolved itself in the end was too pat and easy to be believable.

Lastly, I had major concerns with the representation of women in the novelettes. There are basically only six women in the whole book. One is the classic saintly mother. Of the other five, one was willing to abandon her friends for a boyfriend and willing to steal another’s lover. A second was a wife/mother who cheated on her husband, abandoned her children and was vilely homophobic. A third was a homophobic mother that disowned her gay son and the last was a girl who actively pursued a man she knew to be in a committed, monogamous relationship. I get that this is a book about men loving men, but why does that mean women are so often only presented as the enemy? As if we can only be saints, which less face it removes them from the human realm and consideration, or dangerous to the male characters in the book?

For the most part however, I enjoyed this and have no real qualm recommending it to readers.


What I’m drinking: Loyd: The Magical Experience Flowery Earl Grey (seriously, that’s what it’s called!) I’d add a link, but it’s kind of frightening, in this day and age, how little web presence Loyd tea apparently has.