Quick thoughts:
I’m a big fan of The Hairpin, which Zimmerman runs, and in particular a big fan of the unashamedly girly sensibility that I think some unnamed Internet people might be calling “sexist” or “anti-feminist.” It’s okay to flirt at parties, guys! It’s okay to have crushes, guys! These are all very real parts of being a 20-something-blogger-freelancer-any-kind-of-female-person-in-New-York, which is what Zimmerman is. We’ve (women’ve) fought long and hard to be allowed to be whatever we want to be, so please, let her be that, without complaint.
That said, parts of this piece read as amateurish, right? Is it just me? It’s not an issue of being unprofessional—again, anyone’s allowed to do that, and if it makes for an interesting profile, then fine by me. But this isn’t an interesting profile. It’s not even really a piece about Chris Evans. It’s a fun story about a week or so in Edith Zimmerman’s life—and that kind of meta-profile feels like something a college kid would try to pass off on a journalism professor, twelve hours after the assignment deadline.
Ryan O’Connell, over at Thought Catalog, loves that Zimmerman’s piece “describes the bizarre task of interviewing a celebrity…which is something writers rarely, if ever, touch on.” I totally agree that more writers should talk about how bizarre it is to interview someone; it’s so often awkward, or fake, or a power struggle, and diving into those dynamics can make for really great writing. But Zimmerman only sort of goes there. She says that “I couldn’t quite figure out if [Evans] was a goofy, warm, regular dude or just playing the character of goofy, warm, regular dude in order to charm a female reporter,” and spends most of the piece trying to position herself relative to that maybe-real, maybe-fake charm. But there’s no real effort made to probe beyond that; no follow-up call to Evans or his friends or family to get their take on real vs. fake; no time spent pondering why the exchange is strange or what it means that it’s strange. It’s great that she can describe how weird it is to be a reporter sometimes, but I wish she’d done more with that feeling.
One last critique: I read a lot of both The Hairpin and Thought Catalog, and I worry that all of their pieces (and this GQ piece) amount to the same thing. They’re written by young people in New York trying to be the best young people in New York, and more importantly, trying to get other people to watch them be the best. These sites are different from Gawker and New York Magazine and even The Awl (the Hairpin’s big bro)…but ultimately, aren’t they all writing from sort of the same place? I’d like to read an essay or a profile that is just good writing, for writing’s sake. Reporters in the background. No fun or intimate anecdotes, no branding, no being the best. Just writing. Please.
listen girlie yr makin it too hard on the rest of us ammah-tagoe sisters when you be all smart and shit. imma run away from this family one day and never come back =[
