A Review By: Amelia
I believe–as the proud feminist that I am–that women are
just as funny as men. Women are cultured to not be funny by society which is a
real shame because if the female comic royalty has proven (Sarah Silverman,
Tina Fey, Amy Poehler just to name a few) women can be down right hilarious!
It’s why I make a point to try and read books like Suck It, Wonder Woman; they’re books written by women who are
funny, witty, sarcastic, insightful etc. etc., and have used those skills to
burst into usually male dominated fields to stake their own claim. Olivia Munn
managed to do this–and do it well! Unfortunately, her book… well, let’s say it
doesn’t really do her any favours.
Suck It, Wonder Woman
is a collection of humorous essays about Olivia Munn’s life as a Hollywood geek. This book also includes things like a
timeline of the great moments in geek history and her answers to the unofficial
geek FAQ. All in all, it’s a random book written by a random woman.
The author of the piece is Olivia Munn who is an
actress/mega-geek. On the G4 show Attack
of the Show! she’s known for her immaculate timing and scathing wit. She’s
graced magazine covers–from Entertainment
Weekly to Playboy–and has a loyal
fan base that have dubbed her Leader of the Nerds.
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| Pie is a heavy theme through the book |
The general plot behind Munn’s book is partly stories about
her life and partly observational/list and art based humour all seemingly
dispersed throughout the book at random. The book lacks any kind of formal
writing style and relays heavily on words oral filler words: like, right, and fuck/shit/really
any other swear word you can imagine being the ones that are repeated the
most. It does distract and annoy after a while but it’s not the worst part of
the book. Personally, I found the biggest problem with Munn’s life story was
that Munn was telling it! If I were her editor, I would definitely tell her to change
her tone. She talks about stories where she got called a slut for absolutely no
reason and how much it hurt and then in the next chapter she’s slut-shaming
other women. I mean, how does she justify doing a topless Maxim shoot as
empowering for her but degrading and shameful for other women There’s also parts
where she talks about her body issues and says that she can finally accept her
body nowadays but, from reading what she’s written, you see she’s only
comfortable with her own body by shaming everyone
else be they fat or skinny!
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| Munn on Maxim |
Overall, the tones and themes of Suck It, Wonder Woman probably weren’t meant to sound as bitchy as
they did but, honestly, that’s no excuse for it to have been in the book in the
first place! That’s not even mentioning her use of ‘all things feminine’ to be
inferior–sigh–what a piss off! One of many examples of this are in the chapter
where she talks about men getting sick and as soon as that happens they grow a
vagina. Really? You call yourself a feminists and that’s how you choose to
describe that? By putting down your whole gender as weak and pathetic? So,
yeah, those unnecessarily misogynistic bits really got my hackles up, but when
she’s talking about other things–her family, school life, or just random
stories–it can be readable.
My final thoughts on Suck
It, Wonder Woman are that it’s so-so. The misogynistic tone and phrasing on
Munn’s part were disgusting (to say the least) but hearing about her life was
at least entertaining. I mean, sure, it’s not a literary masterpiece, but did
we really expect it to be? I’d give it 2 and a quarter stars out of five:
enjoyable one-fifth of the time, okay two-fifths of the time, and horrid
two-fifths of the time. All in all, she’s got no reason to believe herself
better than Wonder Woman and I can definitively say that you can read Suck It, Wonder Woman if you love Olivia
Munn, but avoid it if you feel anything
else for her!
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