One Day, Hard and Clear is set in the early 2000s. I’d written a version of the ending about fifteen years ago, and as I kept writing backwards, to when the characters were teenagers, it went back to around 2004.
Our teenage years often become lifelong arsenals of nostalgia. Each decade, details change, then resurface, like low-rise jeans and platform shoes. In 2004, we had social media, but it was Myspace; Atkins instead of keto. Then, as always, female bodies were public property, disputed, under constant inspection. Pop culture — television, transactional dating guides built on gender stereotypes, tabloids and high-gloss magazines — all provided the template for how we should look, interact, and exist in the world.
Like these magazines’ ubiquitous do this, not that lists, here are six pieces of toxic advice from their pages, and seven books to read as the antidote.
Don’t Read:
“Spare us... your number of sexual partners. Too many lovers, you’re a slut. Too few, you’re a prude. You can’t win, so don’t attempt to play.”
— Cosmo, November 2001
“If it jiggles, keep it covered. If you have a flat stomach, go ahead and flaunt that belly button.”
— Redbook, April 2002
“Some habits are good for your health, bad for your looks.”
— Glamour, October 2003
“Flat shoes don’t flatter (her).”
— In Touch, July 2007
“Obeying flat-out commands from our women makes us feel like wusses, so don’t force us…to deny you — try these psychological ploys... engage your guy’s inner Trump by asking for much more than you want.”
— Cosmo, November 2001
“If you join your coworkers in buying a doughnut, you might get hooked. Worth remembering.”
— Redbook, April 2002
Instead, Read:
Mayflies by Cassandra Caverhill (Finishing Line Press)
“I see why you needed/to blow up your life,” — these nostalgic poems feel like calligraphy in black Sharpie, elegant and blunt.
Fake It So Real by Susan Sandford Blades (Nightwood Editions)
From the first lines, I loved Gwen, this novel’s main character: sweaty, punk rock, assertive and indomitable.
Girl Dinner by Jamie Kitts (emergency flash mob press)
I wish I’d read these poems as a teenager. In the span of a few lines, they vault deftly from pop culture kitsch to sublime, unswerving hope, considering our bodies, their complexities, and the ways we sustain them.
Thimbles by Vanessa Shields (Palimpsest Press)
A tribute to the author’s nonna, these are genuine and emotional poems about memory and matriarchal love.
The Last Analog Teenagers by Abigail E. Myers (Stanchion Books)
Set in the 90s, these stories follow awkward, bookish, ambitious girls applying to college, instant messaging, and shoplifting Cucumber Melon at Bath & Body Works.
Normal Women by Ainslie Hogarth (Strange Light)
One of the funniest, most relatable novels about marriage and motherhood with a subtly uncanny atmosphere.
Rebellion Box by Hollay Ghadery (Radiant Press)
This book was amazing: erasure poetry, Anne of Green Gables, the Rebellion of 1837, and “Cosmic Script,” a beautiful poem about motherhood, anxiety, comets and stars.
Anne Baldo is a writer from Windsor, Ontario, and her latest novel is One Day, Hard and Clear.