May 13, 2021 • 55 mins
This week we’re joined by Jennifer Weiner, New York Times bestselling author of more than 17 books. Jennifer shares her path from newsroom reporter to novelist, how she developed life-long confidence, and the challenges of raising teenage daughters. This episode is dedicated to Jennifer’s incredible, wise, and hilarious mother, Fran, who passed just days ago. We wish Fran could hear the loving stories Jennifer shared with us.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Sam Edis and I'm Amy Nelson. Welcome to
What's Her Story? With Sam and Amy. This is a
show about the world's most remarkable women, their professional and
personal journeys. Together, we'll hear from Gold medalists, best selling authors,
and leaders of the world's most iconic brands. We're so
(00:24):
excited to welcome Jennifer Weiner to the show today. She
is the best selling author of seventeen books that have
sold over eleven million copies across the world. Her latest
release is the new novel That Summer. I have followed
Jennifer's career for a while. Um years ago I put
her on my twenty five Working Moms to Follow on
Twitter list for Forbes, and the way she tweets, it's
(00:47):
just obvious that she has such a spark and I
can't wait to hear her story. Jennifer, did you start
out wanting to be a romance no list? Well, I
always knew I wanted to be a writer. It was
always the only thing I was ever any good at.
You know, I loved being a reader, So I was
(01:09):
a reader before I was a writer, and then I
was a journalist for about ten years before I published
my first novel. I'm not sure i'd call myself a
romance writer. I'm not sure the romance community would claim me.
There's probably like not enough like love and sex stuff
in my books. But writing was always the only thing
I ever wanted to do. Okay, So you think of
(01:31):
yourself as what like when people say to you, what
do you do? What? How do you respond? Um? Well,
I usually say that I'm a freelance writer because that
just like ends all the questions right there. Like if
you say that you're a novelist, everybody's like, oh my god,
I have an idea for a novel. I want to
write a novel. Let me tell you about my idea
for a novel, which I know would be a huge
bestseller if I could only find like a long weekend
(01:53):
to write a book. And then I have to be like, oh,
well that sounds you know, so, isn't it. It's kind
of like saying like, I mean, it's almost like positioning
yourself as a starving artist when you're like an Oscar winner.
I mean, it's a little bit like saying I went
to college in New Jersey instead of instant. If you
say that you're a novelist, then what's the immediate follow
(02:13):
up question? Have you written anything that I've read? And
then you have to be like, well, I don't know
what you read like, I don't know if you read
like you know, because usually, and not to generalize, but
it's it's usually like the older white guys who get
like really in my face about it, you know, and
I'm like, well, what do you like to read? And
they're like Tom Clancy and I'm like, okay, then you've
probably never heard of me, you know, and we can
(02:35):
just like we can just move along. But you know,
if you say freelance writer, I mean, honestly, it all
ends up the same place because then they say, well
what do you write? And I have to say, well,
mostly fiction these days, you know, And then it's like, well,
have you written anything I've read? And then you're just
right back where you started. I don't have a good answer,
I really don't. I'm gonna I'm gonna start telling people,
(02:56):
I'm gonna account I'm gonna tell him I'm an accountant.
What if you say I'm a writer, and then it's
going to end up in the same place. I think
freelance is an odd word to use for what you do.
You have had seventeen bestsellers. Yeah, but I am, But
I am a freelancer. I mean, it's at the end
of the day, it's like, I don't you know, I
(03:16):
don't work for a company. I I don't go to
an office. I'm I'm a freelancer. I'm owning it. I'm
owning it. Another theme that I keep seeing coming up
in your life is women. You've written best selling books
about really strong, interesting women. When you went to college
in New Jersey, Sam you lobbied Dennierate Lobby before you
(03:37):
know to make the social clubs at your college co Ed.
You wrote your senior thesis in college about the way
pregnant women are portrayed in media. Have you always cared
about women? Like, where does that come from? Well, my
mom is a feminist. I grew up in a feminist household.
And when I was in my twenties, my mom actually
(03:58):
came out and she'd fallen in love with a woman,
and so like she told me and my siblings, and
we were all like shocked and sort of horrified a
little bit, because it's like, you know, there we all
were like in our twenties and It's like you just
don't want to think about your parents having sex, and
you especially do not want to think about them having
like more like interesting, adventurous sex than what you're having.
(04:19):
So like, the whole thing was just a huge, huge mess.
But I was always interested in, um, you know, I guess,
like what it means to be a woman in the world,
and you know, what are the limitations, what are the possibilities,
what still needs changing, what's different? What's allowed for women
(04:40):
that are my age that wouldn't have been allowed when
my mom was young? What could she do that her
mother couldn't. I don't know why, but all of those
questions have always always interested me. Let's not gloss over
what you just shared with us, which I saw in
her Instagram that your mom just got married partner of
seventeen years or eight years? Eighteen years, yeah, eighteen years.
(05:02):
So talk to us about that first conversation and then
how the relationship has evolved until now and your relationship
to it. Well, let me just take you back to
I think the year was probably ninety six, and my
brother Joe, my youngest. I'm the oldest of four, so
Joe is the youngest, and he was in college and
(05:22):
he had gone home to do his laundry, as you do,
and he called me up at work. I was a
reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer. And he calls me up
and he says, I think there's a woman living in
the house. And I'm like, what are you talking about?
And he's like, he's like, well, there's women's stuff here
and it's not friends. And I'm like, okay, well, maybe, like,
you know, she had a friend's day over something. He's like,
(05:44):
I found love letters in her bathroom. I'm like, what
were you doing in her bathroom? He's like, I needed
the nail clippers. You know, long story short. What do
I buy Joe every year for his birthday? Now? Mail clippers.
But so he'd found these letters that were like, dear Fran.
After six months, the fire still burned, Karen, and you know.
(06:06):
So he like read me these letters, and I was
just like, you know, my my world was shook. So
I called my mom, who was working at the time.
She was a teacher, and I waited until the end
of the school day because I'm considerate like that, and
I called her up and I said, um, you know, hey,
frand like, what's new? And she says nothing. And I'm like,
(06:26):
nothing going on, nothing you want to tell me? And
she's like, no, not not really. And I said, well,
Joe says, there's a woman living in the house. Like
I didn't want to leave with the love letters. I
wanted to like work up to it, you know. So
I said, like, Joe says, there's this one of living here,
and there's this pause, and then she says, oh, that's
my swim coach, right, And I said, fran, it's not
(06:48):
an Olympic year, Like, why is there a swim coach
living in your house? And then she's like, okay, well
that's Karen and and we're in love and she's moved
in and I gotta go by click and I'm just
sitting there. I'm sitting there like what just even happened
to me? Like, you know, five minutes ago, my world
was one way and now it's some other, total different way.
(07:12):
And I had to just be like, what was the
story of her marriage, Like what was the story of
the four kids? Like the four of us, I mean,
we're we just like compensating, and you know, had she
been really unhappy all that time and just felt like
she couldn't be who think who she authentically was because
(07:36):
she had always wanted children. She always was really clear
about that, and she just said, like there weren't ways
to do that in the seventies unless you were married
to a man. So, you know, I think that there's
things that you know even when you don't know them.
And I think that I kind of, like even before
my parents separated, even before they got divorced, even before
(07:58):
this whole thing happened with my mom, I think that
I was sort of like aware of like the tension,
you know, like that there's there's a difference between the
life that you want and the life that feels authentic
and the life that you're allowed to actually have. And
I think that tension has informed my work. But the
(08:19):
first girlfriend whose name was was Karen Um. She was
a smoker, and she sounded like Marge's sisters from The Simpsons,
and she was a separatist, which made things real interesting
because I have brothers, you know, and she'd say things
like I don't have much use for men, but you
two you're all right, you know to my brother. Like
(08:39):
it was all just like very and she was like
much younger than my mom. It was a whole scene,
and they didn't last very long. Um, we refer to
Karen as the lesbian training wheels in my family, Like
she she came off really quickly. And but my mom's
been with Claire for eighteen years now and they're really
really happy, and they're really really like well suited and
(09:02):
and good for each other. And we all really love Claire.
My daughters adore her. She's like their bonus grandmother and
it's really been nice. You talk a lot in your
work about secrets. Do you feel like this was a
family secret and do you feel like someone who's had
to keep secrets? Well, I'm not even sure how much
(09:23):
my mom was aware, Like we've asked right, Like, I
don't know what family holidays are like at your house,
but in my house, it's like you eat the big
like Thanksgiving meal or Passover meal or whatever, you do
the dishes, you put the food away, and then like
everybody sits down in the living room and we just
like grill my mom about her sexuality. You know. It's like,
(09:43):
especially when I got to be around the age that
she was when she first met Karen, I was like, so, Fran,
when did the urges start? And she's like, Jenny, I'm
not talking about this with you. I'm like I need
to know, um, you know, but right because like I'm
married now, man, like if this is gonna up and
I gotta I gotta plan for it. But it's funny,
(10:03):
like every once in a while, I will run across
some like Republican Christian trumpy type who's just like, why
are all the families on sitcom so dysfunctional? Why are
the husbands always so henpecked? Why is everybody cheating? Why
are there all these secrets? Why isn't anybody just normal?
(10:24):
And I always want to say and I never like
write to these people, but I always just want to
be like, normal people don't make for very interesting fiction.
Like it's really really hard to get like twelve episodes
of a sitcom out of like a happily married couple
where there's nothing going on and nobody's keeping secrets and
and everybody's telling the truth about everything, Like where's the
(10:46):
story there? You know? So, like when you're writing fiction,
you need your characters to want something. You need them
to start at one place and be trying to get
someplace else, you know. So I think that that's why
A lot of writers, not just me, but a lot
of writers will sort of deal with questions of family secrets,
(11:10):
and you know, like the illegitimate child who doesn't know
she's a legitimate, or the parents who were divorced who
haven't told their kids that they were divorced before they
married each other, or whatever whatever the story ended up being.
You know, I think in real life there's a fair
amount of that, and certainly I've run across the fair
amount of it. But I just think, like for fiction,
(11:30):
you need something like that for your plot or else
you just have nowhere to go with it. I remember
I once was an intern on the Vicky Lawrence Show
That's how Old I Am, and I was hosting the
guest and one of them was Iris Rayner Dart, who
wrote Beaches, and she said the hardest thing about being
a writer is that real life is stranger than fiction.
(11:53):
And I just I wonder when you look at people,
do you see them as like a Robert Altman movie,
where like, is something dark going on in every house?
Or do you see it as like people have white
picket fences and things are really normal? When how do
you see the world? I mean, I guess I've come
to accept, and certainly the older I've gotten that a
(12:14):
certain amount of darkness and dysfunction is just kind of
built into everybody. When I see a white picket fence,
I usually assume that there's like a body buried underneath it, somewhere,
possibly several generations ago. But you know, but also like
that's just my own imagination. Like I got to amuse
myself before I do anything else. So it's like, you know,
(12:37):
I'm always inclined to think that whatever I see, I'm like, oh,
there's a story there. And my kids are sometimes like what, Mom,
what's the store? I'm like, Oh, there's a story there.
You know. I think having a novelist for a mother
must be like my kids are going to be They're
gonna have a lot to tell their therapists some day.
I think it must be really interesting on know what
(13:00):
was your childhood? Like I have four kids, so curious
minds want to know. Well, okay, so my mom, my mom,
the closeted lesbian, was a teacher. She was a school teacher.
My dad was a child psychiatrist, so it was my
husband's dad's a child psychiatrists. I have all sorts of
theories about you are shrinks. Shrinks kids right, Like shrinks
(13:23):
kids and pastors kids were all messed up because, you know,
because we're supposed to be sort of like professional representations
of our parents skill or holiness. But I think that
my my dad, my father who died in twenty oh god,
how old is feeding down? My dad died in two
(13:45):
thousand and eight, and I think that he was one
of these doctors who was drawn to psychiatry because he
probably had some like undiagnosed or or untreated mental illness
of his own, you know. But it was I grew
up in Connecticut. I grew up in a suburb. I
grew up in this like very pretty, very preppy, very
(14:06):
waspy part of Connecticut. There weren't many Jews. Everyone was
kind of the same. There were no black families, no
Asian families, no Hispanic families, like everyone the same. And
you know, I grew up with a lot of privilege.
And then my dad left when I was sixteen, which
(14:27):
sort of meant that like the bottom fell out of
the paperbag that was our lives. And you know, because
my father was very inconsistent about paying his child supports,
So we went from being very comfortable and you know,
going on vacations and oh yes, you know, go to college.
Wherever you get in. Dad will take care of it too,
you know. Dad is no longer around to pay the bills.
(14:50):
So it's interesting. I got to sort of see two
sides of things, which is good again, good training for
a novelist. But yeah, I mean, and I'm I'm the
oldest of four, so you know, I was the I
was the big sister. I was the responsible one. I
remember when I graduated from college and I came home
and my mom saying to me, like, do not even
(15:12):
unpack your bags? And I'm like, what do you mean,
like not even to do my laundry? And she's like, no,
you are getting a job and you are moving out
of here, and I'm giving you tell September one, which
she did. And I got a job at a small
newspaper and moved out. You know, but like I had
to set the example for everybody else, so I did.
Is that when you started calling her fran? I don't
(15:34):
know when we started calling her friend. That's not funny.
But it's been longer, Mom, your fan fran. And now
for a quick break, what is your relationship with money, Like, Wow,
you know, I don't take it for granted. I can
tell you that, Like, I think I'm a lot more
(15:55):
aware of how much it matters and how hard it
is when you don't have enough, when you don't have
enough for what you need. And I'm trying to raise
my kids with a sense of the importance of money
and the importance of being able to provide for yourself.
But I also I don't ever want them feeling the
(16:18):
way that I can remember feeling, where you know, I
went to register for my classes in college sophomore year
and got like pulled out of the line because my
dad hadn't sent a check for my tuition, and you know,
had to like make the walk of shame to the
bursar's office and like you know, figuring out like what
kind of last minute loans I could take out so
(16:39):
I could take classes that fall. You know, I don't
want my kids ever going through anything like that, because
it's really scary and it's really destabilizing. And I think,
on the one hand, it made me very driven, and
you know, I wanted to be responsible for myself. I
wanted to be able to take care of myself. I
didn't ever want to feel like, you know, there was
(17:00):
a bill that needed paying and I wouldn't be able
to pay it. So on the one hand, I think
like what happened with my parents and what happened with
my dad like made me very driven and a very
hard worker. But I don't know that. I don't know
that it's a price I'd want my own daughters paying
to get those skills to do. Siblings, I'll go to
(17:22):
college too, they did. Yeah, so you know, I'm the oldest,
and then I have a sister who's like fifteen months
younger than I am, and she stayed in Connecticut to
go to college. Then my brother Jake went to Syracuse,
and then my brother Joe, the youngest, went to the
University of Connecticut, UM the six year plan. We all
(17:43):
Joe Joe took his time to get through college, but yeah,
everyone went and we all took loans out um, you know,
and like it was really hard, Like my dad would
show up out of the blue and like right, everybody
checks for like a semester and things would be great,
and then he'd kind of disappear again. It was very inconstant,
(18:05):
and that's the hardest thing of all I think is like,
if things are consistently one way, whether it's good or
whether it's bad, at least you know what's coming and
at least you know how to plan for it and
you know what to expect. But if it's like you know,
if you think it's going to be one way and
then everything changes, it's like, well, Jesus, what do I
do now? How do I fix this? How do I compensate?
(18:28):
You know, it was hard? It was hard. How did
your relationship with money as a child impact your relationship
with your first husband and your marriage today? Well, I mean,
you know, I think I've always been really like conservative,
Like I started a college savings fund for like a
(18:52):
child who did not exist yet. Like I remember selling
my first book, and like I knew I wanted to
have children, but I knew didn't want to have children
until like I had like money in the bank, you know,
like I didn't want them ever having to like walk
to the burster's office and take loans out. So I
remember like walking into like Melon Bank at the corner
of like second in Chestnut in Philadelphia, like I need
(19:14):
to open a college savings account, and they're like, Okay,
what's the child social Security number. I'd be like, well,
I'm not pregnant yet, but you know, so really really
I'm a planner exactly, you know, just really really kind
of if it was a choice between like taking a
really nice vacation or making two mortgage payments that month,
(19:34):
I'd be like, but think how much fun it will
be to know that we've made those two mortgage payments.
Like I was not a fun twenty seven year old.
I was just like, you know, but I think, like
financial insecurity shapes your life and and really, you know,
it puts the fear of God into you, like you
(19:56):
never want to be like scrambling for money. And I
was really um, and you know, again like questions of constancy.
Like when I married my first husband, I was a
newspaper reporter who had just sold her first novel and
I had I'd gotten like a two book deal and
(20:16):
it was a good two book deal. But I knew
that what happens with most people is you publish your
first book. It's not a huge success, just because most
first books, most books at all, just aren't huge successes.
And I just always figured that like fiction would be
sort of like extra money, like it would be money
to send a kid to private school or summer camp
(20:38):
or whatever. But I wouldn't be the breadwinner. My husband,
who was an attorney, would be the breadwinner. And then
my first book did very well. At the same time,
he was going through this sort of downturn in his
career that he completely rebounded from and is doing really
well now. But like, it was just this really unfortunate,
(21:01):
kind of crisscrossing thing, and I was just like, well,
this isn't the deal I signed up for. This isn't
how I thought things were going to be, And you know,
it was hard. It was hard, I think, you know,
I I really do think that it's still just hard
for lots and lots of men to be married to
someone who's earning more money than they are. Maybe I'm wrong.
(21:23):
I'd like to be wrong about that. I'd like it
if there were lots of men are like, nope, totally fine,
But you know, I just think it's men are still
they're raised to be the breadwinners, they're raised to be
the providers, and when a woman is out earning them,
I think that it's you know, destabilizing or emasculating, or
(21:43):
whatever word you want to use. It's hard. Have you
ever had this conversation with your daughters? Yeah? What do
they think of it? Well, you have to understand, so
my older daughter is going to be eighteen and a
couple of weeks, so anything out of my mouth is
just wrong. It's just autumn matically incorrect. So it's just
like whatever, mom. I had two teenage daughters, so I
(22:06):
could not relate more. Yes, and then my thirteen year old,
who is like the sweetest kid in the world. I
have no idea what I did to deserve her. She's
just like, all right, okay, And I'm like, and that's
why you always need your own money, and you always
need your own savings account and you don't ever you know,
merge if she's like all right, okay, But I mean,
how much of it is she taking in at thirteen?
(22:29):
I do not know. I guess we'll see, you know.
I I think like parents do the best they can,
and I think my parents did the best they could
with what they had resources available to them. I know
I'm doing the best that I can, and their dad
is doing the best that he can. So you just try,
you try, and you hope for the best. I want
(22:49):
to go back for a moment to the conversation about
the disparity when the female spouse is earning more, Right,
do you think that's a bigger problem or was it
your fame and you're rising star that was a bigger problem.
Oh boy, that's a good question, because you know, it's
like you walk into a party and one person's a
(23:10):
novelist and the other person is a corporate litigator. I
can tell you who they want to talk the other
party guests want to talk to more, and it's not
the corporate litigator. So it might have that. That might
have been a piece of it, you know, the money,
the fame, the public profile, the who gets to have
(23:31):
more fun doing what she does? I don't know, you know.
And it's just like you think all these times, or
at least I do, about like, you know, to choose
your own adventure books. So it's like if I'd ever
been given a choice of like, well, I could have
just kept being a reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer, you know,
earning what I was earning there, and you know, I
(23:54):
wouldn't have published books, wouldn't have been able to do
some of the things that I've been able to do
with the money that I've made, but I wouldn't have
gotten divorced. It's like, what choice would I have made
if both of those avenues had been available to me?
And I don't know what the answer is. I don't
So how did you meet your husband? Which one? Which one?
(24:16):
I'm on Number two? Your current husband, right, your your
current husband, my second and final husband, as I like
to call him. I'd tell him all the time, I'm like,
you're it. I'm like, if this doesn't work out, like
you know, it's over, it's over for both of us. Okay.
So we met at the very first job that either
of us ever had. I was a reporter at the
(24:37):
small newspaper outside of Well in central Pennsylvania. It was
in State College, Pennsylvania. It was my first job out
of college. It was his first job out of graduate school.
And I actually interviewed him for the job, like I've
been there about a year and there was a job opening,
and he came to interview and I got to take
him out to dinner, which was a very big deal
(24:59):
because as they were paying us sixteen thousand dollars a year,
so having the company like pick up dinner was huge.
And we just had this like great connection, and we
just like talked and talked and talked and talked and talked.
And I remember going to work the next morning and
saying to my editor, I'm like, you have to hire
this guy, and my editor saying, do you think he's
(25:21):
a really great reporter, and like I have no idea
that I really like him, so I would like him
to come work here, so please hire him. And we
dated for like three or four years, and I was
really ready to get married and he was at the job. Yeah, yeah,
he got the job. Yes, yes, so he got the
job and we dated, and it's very funny. I'm reading
a book right now about dating apps and how people
(25:45):
meet each other now versus how they used to meet
each other, because work used to be a totally acceptable
place to meet somebody, you know, like you could like
meet somebody in your workplace and and date. My Larns
met at work like the same way you did my dad.
I'd interviewed my mom, and I always say, like, he
would be arrested today for like Mary, like I probably exactly,
like I'd get like yanked into like some you know,
(26:09):
human resource office and like you know, lectured about sexually
harassing potential hires, which I didn't do. But that was
a place you could meet somebody. So like, we met
and we dated and I wanted to get married and
he didn't, so we broke up and I married my
first husband, and then you know, we were married, we
had two kids. The marriage wasn't working out, we separated,
(26:32):
and then Bill, my second and final husband, was still
single because he was waiting for me. I always say this.
He's like, I really wasn't. I'm like, yeah, you were.
You just don't know it. You just don't know that
you were waiting for me. So that's the story. And
I was just you know, he was in New York
and I was in Philadelphia, so I lured him down
here and we got married. What is his relationship like
(26:53):
with your career. He's really proud of me. He's really supportive.
He's an editor, which is fantastically helpful to have, like
a living editor, although he does most of his work
for Sports Illustrated and their house style is different than
Simon and Schusters, and also his interests are not the
same as as mine. Um, he watches a lot of
(27:15):
sports and I kind of don't care that much. But
he's really terrific, And he's just very very like, very
laid back, very easy going, very supportive. He's a really
great guy for my daughters to have in their life,
I think because he's just like another man who like
loves them unconditionally and supports them and thinks that they're
(27:39):
smart and brilliant and beautiful and all the things you
want your daughters to grow up believing about themselves. So
I feel really lucky. Does he or do your daughter's
or do you show up in your books? Yeah? I
mean definitely, There's there's pieces of me in in just
about every character I've written. There's pieces of my daughters
(28:01):
in just about every girl I've written. Um, so yeah,
I mean I think writers are cannibals and and scavengers,
and I think that like, if you live with a writer,
chances are you're going to show up in their books somehow,
Like some piece of you, some gesture that you make,
or some saying that you have, or some family story
(28:22):
or something is going to show up. It's just the
way it is. How are you as a parent? How
what would your daughters say about your parenting style? Well, um,
I think they'd say that I'm funny, I think I
think they'd say that. I mean, I don't know. It's
it's the eighteen year old is just like, so my
(28:44):
therapist is always just like, she's doing the work of
separation right when I'm just like, she's so mean to
me and she hates me. Sid She's like, but she's
doing the work of separating from you. This is what
she's supposed to do, Like she has to be her
own person. She's breaking away from you, she's breaking away
from the family of origin. And part of that is
just the sort of like repudiation, like she thinks you're
(29:06):
a dumb dumb and I'm like and she's like, yes,
I know. But I think that I hope that what
they would both say is that I've encouraged them to
be who they are, you know that I've like tried
to find the things they love and find the things
they're good at and support them as much as I
(29:26):
can and just encourage them and be present for them.
And but it's it's just it's so interesting because like
parenting in the seventies, it's like I remember when Lucy,
my older daughter, was born, and my mom came to
like help with the baby, and she's like where's the playpen?
And I'm like, oh, no, no, friend, we don't put
(29:47):
kids in playpens anymore, like you know, no more, no
more like baby jails, Like we don't do that. We
hold them, we wear our babies. And my mother is
looking at me like you have got to be out
of your freaking mind, like why would you do this,
Like put the kid in the playpen and go smoke
a Virginia slim and like have a mark. I was like,
my smoked and had tabs like they did. They all
(30:10):
smoked and they all drank tab and we all turned
out okay mostly, But you know, I'm just like, no, no,
I'm like the the eed a mommy must be organic.
She's like, I don't know what either of those words
mean in this context, like what is an et a mommy?
And why must it be organic? And I'm like, fran,
I'm the hormones in the milk, and she's you know,
I mean I think that I think my mom thinks
(30:32):
I'm crazy, you know, but I also think that within
you know, on the spectrum of sort of you know,
upper class white moms of this day and age, I'm
more normal than some of them are, you know, I've
tried not to be like a crazy helicopter parent. Like
when my daughter was going through the college application process,
(30:54):
like every I only sent a couple of emails to
the college counselor and everyone I would preface with like,
please tell me if I am being like that crazy,
annoying mom, because I really do not want to be
that mom, but you know I think that, Like I
tell Lucy this, Like when I applied to college, my
mom's like, yeah, sure, you know, you can apply to
(31:16):
five schools, but I'm not paying for any more than that.
And no, I'm not reading your essays, Like are you
kidding me? I have things to do. I'm not gonna
read your essays, Like if you want to get them type,
like here's ten dollars you can hire, you know, find
some secretary at the high school and see if you
can pare to type them for you. Like just completely
not plugged in the way that parents today are where
(31:39):
parents today really seem to treat it like it's a
referendum on them and on how well they've done. As
moms and dads talk to us about raising confident girls.
It's a theme in yours and it's something that Amy
and you are both obsessed with how do you think
about it? Well, I try so hard to, like I
(32:02):
want my daughters to feel good about how they look.
I want them to feel good about who they are
and what they can do and what their dreams are.
And I've tried to, like as much as I can,
like make our home like a safe space for them,
where whatever your hobbies are, whatever you want to do
with your time, like I will support you, I will
(32:22):
encourage you, I will help you as much as I can,
or as much as you want me to. But I
also know that like the world is the world, and
my daughters aren't gonna be able to live in a
bubble as much as I'd like to keep them inside
of one. You know, They're going to have to move
through the world in in female bodies. And you know,
(32:45):
it's like the first time my younger one got cat called,
like you know, and it was it was pretty mild,
and it was just you know whatever, but like I
wanted to go outside and and like burn the world down.
You know, I'm like, what do you mean you yelled
something about my child's tits? Like what what is wrong
(33:06):
with you? And and just like why is this still
the place where we find ourselves still. I mean it's hard,
it really is, because getting ready to send girls out
into the world and knowing how much the world still
needs fixing is hard. Yeah, were you always this confident? No?
(33:29):
I mean, well, I won't let me think. How am
I going to answer that? I mean, so, I think
I just like had no social skills, and so I
didn't really care if I was a weirdo or if
people thought I was a weirdo, like I skipped third grade,
which they don't do anymore because they realized it was
like creating like a class of just like kids with
(33:52):
absolutely no social skills. But like, you know, I had
this like huge vocabulary and no friends for a really
long time, and so I think like I was outspoken
because there was really no downside to it, Like the
popular girls were going to stop being friends with me
because they had never been friends with me to begin with.
So I guess I kind of was confident always in
(34:14):
a way. I just didn't care. Now for a quick break.
Jealousy is a theme in your books too. Is there
anyone that you're jealous of? Oh? My god, Yeah, I mean,
you know, I can still probably tell you the names
of the popular girls in my high school, and like
(34:36):
what they wore to school, you know, the brands of
the clothes that they had that I wanted and couldn't
get because my mom just didn't see the point of it,
or if I could convince her that there was a
point to it, we just didn't have the money for
it by then. But yeah, I mean, you know, and
I also grew up with a sister who's like very
(34:58):
close to me an age, who's just always been like
the thin, pretty one, and you know, I'm sure that
there's things about me that she envies and wishes that
she'd gotten, you know, when when God was sort of
handing out the okay, like you're going to be a
really talented writer, but you're going to be a size
too for your whole life and just not even have
(35:18):
to work at it. You know, maybe she would have traded.
I don't know, but yeah, I mean I think like
that's just part of the female condition. Is always the
female condition, and capitalism anyhow, it is just like always
looking at somebody else and wishing you had what they had,
because that's you know, that's how companies make money. It's
(35:39):
like if you just go to the gym, you could
have that body. Or if you just follow this diet,
or you get this plastic surgery, or you buy this
cosmetic or this dress or these shoes or this house
in this neighborhood, you know, and and you can buy
your way to the life that you want. And I
think that keeping us all sort of envious of one
another is a way of, you know, keeping the money
(36:01):
stacks stacking. Can we go back for a moment. It's
your first book. As you mentioned, books don't even sell
five thousand copies or more. Right, so your first book
became a hit. What went into that? And what would
you say to writers out there who have dreams so
that they're not individually asking you for favors or to
(36:23):
pick your brain the worst words ever? Right, but instead
we'll tell them in this podcast what you would say
to them. Okay, well, so good in bed was it
came out of a breakup. Like I had dated this
guy who I really thought I was going to marry.
This was after Bill, who I who I did marry.
This was somebody else and I, you know, madly in love,
(36:46):
head over heels, thought we'd be together forever. And then
we weren't, and I was a wreck and just totally
devastated and crying all the time and just talking about
him endlessly to my friends and like trying to stalk
Kim before the internet existed, which was super hard, like
I had to do drive buys and he lived two
hours away. It was a whole disaster. And I finally decided, like, Okay,
(37:11):
what do I know how to do? Like what can
I do to make myself feel better? And I thought, like,
I know how to tell a story. You know, I've
been an English major, I've been a journalist, I'd published
short fiction. I always been writing this whole time. And
I said, I'm going to write a story about a
girl like me and a guy like Satan, basically like him,
(37:32):
and I'm going to give the girl a happy ending.
And I gave the girl like all of my craziness,
like my whole messed up family, all that Michigans, all
of my insecurities, like you know, size sixteen body, gay mom,
dad who was out of the picture, all of it.
And I was able to do that because I didn't
(37:53):
have an agent, I didn't have a publisher, I didn't
have a publishing deal. I was just writing it really
for myself, like just to a use myself and get
myself out of this like terrible dark place that I'd
fallen into. And I think that what made the book
successful was I didn't kind of sand down the rough edges.
(38:15):
I just let it be authentically what it was, you know.
I let the character be authentically who she was, which
was different than any character that was out there at
the time. Like there really weren't plus size women even
in fiction, just even on paper where you think it
would be safe, Like it wasn't on TV or in
(38:36):
a movie where you have to look at her and
cast someone to play her. It was just like in
a book. But even even still, the only like quote
unquote fat women I remember reading about like they were
either like the funny best friends or they had to
lose a ton of weight before they got a happy ending.
And I just let my heroine be authentic. And I
(39:00):
think that authenticity is you know, when in doubt, that's
that's always the way to go. It's just like, do
something that's authentic and something different and have something to say,
And that's the secret to success. Talk about Philadelphia because
it is unusual for someone of your profile and success
(39:21):
to not only start out in Philadelphia, but to stay there. Yeah. No,
I mean whenever I have meetings, people are just like, so,
what part of New York do you live in? And
I'm like, the Philadelphia party, the part that's not your Um.
I mean, the thing is, like, I really like it here.
I liked working here as a reporter, as a newspaper reporter.
(39:43):
I liked living here as a mom. I've always been
like really really comfortable here and really really happy here.
And also I think I was able to sort of
watch other women my age, like trying to have families
into your city and just seeing how expensive that was,
(40:03):
how difficult that was, how competitive it was like just
watching um, you know, kids compete to get into quote
unquote the right preschool, like the Street Wife pre school,
and like I had to write like letters of recommendation
for my friends kids when they were like eighteen months
old to like get them right. And I'm just like,
this is madness. This is madness. Like in Philadelphia, you know,
(40:26):
how you get into the hot preschool. You you give
them a two hundred dollar deposit check and sign up
and that's it. So I never wanted to leave. I
like it here. I think there's lots of stories to
tell here, and I think for people, like you know,
there's lots of great books set in New York and
in l A. But I also think that sometimes people
(40:47):
want to read books that are set other places, So
it worked. Do you feel like you'd be more anonymous though,
if you were in New York, imagine you're a very
big fish in a small pond. In Philly, only when
I do my hair, only when I do the only
time I ever get recognized is like literally when I
am like coming right out of the hairdresser, and I mean,
(41:09):
I guess, you know, but only in so far, Like
in Philadelphia. I always just like the the meteorologists are
huge celebrities here, like it's true, you know, but people
here nobody, nobody really makes that big of a deal
about it. I mean, like sometimes my kids get embarrassed.
Like I was doing a fundraiser for Lucy school once
(41:31):
and she came home like in a in a mood,
and she's like, there's posters of you in my school
with your name on them, and I'm like, well, dude,
like we don't even have the same last name. She's like,
everyone knows you're my mom. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, man,
I didn't realize it was a bad thing, but I
guess it is. How do you deal with the changing
(41:54):
world in your writing? Like we talked earlier about your
your mother and what she was a out to do
in her forties or fifties, and you know, it's like
it is probably slightly different today, but maybe not enough different.
Like how do you deal with changing culture in your writing?
And like when you go back and read your earlier books,
do they still resonate with you and all of that? Well, yeah,
(42:15):
I mean it's it's interesting because Good in Bed is
being adapted right now, so somebody's writing a screenplay for it,
and I'm just remembering when I wrote it. Like what
happens is the main character is like goes through this
like horribly humiliating experience because her ex boyfriend publishes a
magazine article about her body. And I'm like magazine article,
(42:37):
Like you know, she has to like go to a
newsstand to like get the magazine to see what he's
written because there's no Internet yet, And I'm like if
this heart today, like you know, he'd be like the
curvy wife guy on Instagram, like he just put up
some Instagram post and then she lose her mind. You know,
I think all you can do is the best you
can do and try to keep up in a way
(42:59):
that feel is authentic. Like you know, I like to
do TikTok and that feels authentic and it doesn't feel
like a total like drain or like it's totally inappropriate.
But like when Snapchat happened and for a while they
were trying to like make authors do Snapchat, and I
was like, I will not be doing Snapchat. Would you
say that body acceptance has changed over the years since
(43:20):
you started writing. I do think there's been some progress.
And the reason that I say that is you can
go onto Instagram or you can go onto TikTok and
like type in the hashtag like body positivity or fat
acceptance or size inclusive or whatever, and you can see
just like women with bodies of all shapes and sizes
(43:44):
and ages and races just like living their lives doing
their things, you know, dancing, swimming outfits of the day,
bathing suit tryons, like whatever it is. And you couldn't
see that when I was a teenager or in my twenties,
Like I tell my daughters this all the time. I'm like,
you guys, get Lizzo, Like, do you know who I had?
I had Karnie Wilson hiding behind like a paper mache
(44:07):
boulder that just like had landed on the video set
because like they couldn't show her body and she wasn't
even that big, right, Like, So that has changed and
and I do see progress. I think there's still a
long way to go, but yeah, I mean I I
do think things are getting better, and I hope that
(44:28):
in some small way, like I've been part of that
change and part of that progress, and your book covers
seemed to represent that progress. Yeah, we're finally, finally, finally
getting some like actual like curvy women on my covers.
Like for a long time they were using photos, they
would buy stock photos, and for a long time there
(44:50):
just weren't any stock photos of plus sized people. So
like I was really like stuck. But but now they're
actually illustrating my covers and they're doing like commissioning art,
so they're going to actually be like a larger body,
which makes me very happy. That's amazing. Who are your
best friends? This is an amy question, but who are
your best friends? Um? So my best friends are my
(45:12):
friends Susan, who's like, these are two women who I
met like years ago when I first came to Philadelphia.
My friend Susan and my friend Elizabeth, and they're like
my Philadelphia girls. And we've you know, seen kids born
and parents die, and you know, we've just been part
of each other's lives for a really long time, and
I hope will continue to be part of each other's
(45:34):
lives for a really long time. Yeah, talk to us
about The Bachelor, because you are known for your tweets
about the bat Room. When I used to watch religiously,
I would go, literally I would be looking at your
Twitter feed while I was watching. I actually had to
give it up Donald Trump, of all the damage that
man has done. He made me quit the Bachelor after
(45:58):
all my years because what happened was the summer there
was a season of The Bachelorette and there was this
guy whose name was literally Chad, and he was this giant,
like meathead monster of a guy, like a total jerky bully,
and you know, he was like the one that you
(46:18):
knew the girl wasn't going to ever end up with him,
like in a million billion years, but you also knew
the producers weren't going to get rid of him because
he was good TV. So Chad was the guy that
you love to hate. And then you know, he finally
gets voted off the island and whoever the bachelorette was
picks her guy and they go off and and then
it was like I remember literally changing the channel and
(46:41):
it was the Republican primary debate and Donald Trump was Chad.
Like you could see it happening. You could see those
newscasters be like, there is no way America a k a.
The Bachelorette is going to pick this MIDI, this idiot meathead.
But he sure makes for good t V, so we'll
keep him around. And then I felt like they just
(47:04):
kept him around and kept him around and kept him around,
and then he was president and I'm like, this is
my fault, which you know, it wasn't entirely my fault.
It wasn't completely my fault. It wasn't a perfect parallel,
but I feel like there was some you know, Donald
Trump came from the world of reality TV, and I
(47:27):
feel like The Bachelor is one of those things that
made him plausible, and I just felt so bad. And
then also like I was just getting to a point
in my life and my daughters were getting to an
age where like it was just getting harder and harder
to justify, like as a feminist, as a mom. I
was just like, it's trashy, and it's silly, and it's degrading,
(47:48):
and they are finding absolutely any excuse they can to
put these girls in bathing suits. So lighting around. Okay,
what are you reading right now? I just finished Cynthia
Dupris Sweet Needs the Good Company, And I just started
a book called The Other Black Girl Who Leaves You
star Struck? Oh God, Harrison Ford, what is your night?
(48:10):
Tiler too? I watched TV with my husband. We're watching
The Americans right now, which I really really like. I
am usually in bed by like ten thirty. I read
for anywhere from half an hour to an hour, and
then I conk right out. How many more books will
you write? I don't know, you know, I never want
to look too far ahead, but I'm working on one
(48:31):
right now that I really really like, so I can
tell you at least one more. There's no way, it's
just one more. What would you do after that? I
don't know. I don't know. Learned Jula dants. I don't
know where is the first place to go after the
pandemic when this is all over. My husband and I
were supposed to go to Alaska last summer for my
fiftieth birthday, and we obviously did not get to do that.
(48:52):
So I think we'll go to Alaska and take that trip.
Here is all right, Blue, Here we go, noure no pressure.
First off, I was just admiring the smiles while you're
telling the stories, and you have a really amazing smile.
It really lights up the room. So my question is
in regards a body shame, and I have a twelve
(49:14):
year old daughter who has recently made me aware of
of men and there I guess weirdness around women who
have bigger body parts, but and she made me aware
of this and it made me now a whare of
what I do? You know? So it's really shifted my perspective.
(49:36):
So I would like to hopefully hear a story in
regards to maybe when you were a body shamed or
a cat called, because her perspective helped me change my behavior.
And I'm hoping that when a man hears this, maybe
his perspective change also. That's a really, really great question,
(49:57):
and a really important question too, because I think that
it can't be just on women to change the way
the world is. I think like men have to own
their piece of it, you know. But I guess. I mean,
the most recent example that I can think of is like, Okay,
(50:18):
so my my thirteen year old daughter, her school just
started up again in person and they finally were able
to start swim team up again. And she's like, you know,
she had he first swim team yesterday and she comes home.
I like, how was it? And she's like, well, the
swimming part was great. And I'm like, well, what wasn't great?
And she said, they made all the girls like stand
(50:39):
there in our bathing suits and the boys were all
just dressed because they all had their bathing suits on
like under their their shorts or their pants or whatever.
And I'm like, do you think the teacher like noticed
that or noticed it was weird? And she's like, no,
I don't think he did. I mean, it feels like
such a small thing, but I would say that, like, Okay,
(51:00):
whenever you're in a situation, especially with kids, especially with
young women, just try to put yourself in their place,
Like imagine you're the most insecure, the least confident, the
least comfortable of all of them, and just think, like
what can I do to like take this off of
her a little bit? Like what can I do to
(51:20):
put everybody on an even playing field? You know? Can
I just say, Okay, let's everybody get dressed now, or
just everybody get in the water right now? You know?
Like how can I treat kids so that they're all
the same and so that it's not just girls equal
their bodies and boys equal the integrity of who they are.
I think that's what i'd say. I feel like I
(51:43):
could have talked to Jennifer for hours, and I really
want to go to Philadelphia and have five drinks. So
we have to do that. She should be on our
our tour. She has to be. Uh. So, you know
the thing that the things I kept coming up for me,
I mean, she's just so insightful, but so much revolves
around the way she lives at the world and the
female condition is right, and I just think there's so
(52:04):
much to that in thinking of like how we see
the world but also how the world sees us, And
sometimes I overlook that, right, and I think it's just
it's just interesting to think about like how we move
forward and try to make that something different. Because when
she was talking about how with her sister, like, you know,
when she made the comment like if God was handing
out like you'll be a great writer, you'll be as
(52:24):
sized to like and maybe her sister would have wanted
to swap. There is no like that phrase wouldn't even
come up from a male perspective, right, And the world
is just so different for women it still is. Yeah,
I mean it's funny. I I see a lot of
brothers who are competitive, So I do think there's an
aspect or element of that that comes up for men.
But I see what you're saying. I think that one
(52:46):
thing that really struck me was her confidence came from
her childhood, right, So, like even though she had some
instability in her childhood, she also just clearly has like
an amazing mom who is a feminist and instilled a
lot of strength in her and that is what propelled
her to where she is today. I think you and
I Amy so often talk about who are the badass
(53:06):
CEO s, right, and we don't often talk about like
how great is it that there's a badass novelist and
how great is it that there's a badass woman infectious
disease doctor. Like, that's what gives me hope, honestly, because
she's not just out there writing these novels. She actually
is out there talking about politics to her followers. She
(53:26):
she really does use her microphone in a in a
really responsible way. Yeah she does, And she has an
amazing microphone, an amazing voice, and she's just there's there's
so much there And like I said, I think I
could have talked to her for about five more hours.
Well it's so funny because this morning I wrote you
aim and I was like, I really want I never
say this. I don't think I've ever said this in
my life, but I want to be Jennifer Weiner when
(53:47):
I grow up. And you're like, what, But there's just
I don't know what it is. She's really cool. It
was for me. It was interesting too to hear she does.
She obviously has like a really strong family unit and
has a lot of confidence from her childhood. But she
also like it wasn't like she was the most popular
kid in school right, and she didn't have everything she wanted,
(54:10):
but she just kept kind of kept moving forward. I
remember when my kids first started elementary school, and I
would hear some of the moms say, I just want
my daughter to be popular, and I was like, what,
I don't think anything good happens to the popular kids.
Like I was never the popular kid. I had my
group of friends, but I wasn't in the popular crowd.
I was like tangential. And I've always been like that
(54:31):
my whole life, like a handpicked my friends. And I
always thought the worst thing that it could happen to
my kids is that they get into the popular group
because they're chasing something and it's never something very good. Yeah,
I mean I think there's a lot to that. Thanks
for listening to What's Her Story with Sam and Amy.
We would so appreciate if you would leave her of
(54:52):
you wherever you get your podcasts, and of course connect
with us on social media and What's Her Story podcast.
What's Her Story with Sam and Amy is power by
my company The Riveter at The Riveter dot c O
and Sam's company, park Place Payments at park place payments
dot com. Thanks to our producer Stacy Para, our social
media manager Phoebe crane Fest, and our male perspective Lou
(55:14):
Burns H
Hi, I'm Sam Edis and I'm Amy Nelson. Welcome to
What's Her Story? With Sam and Amy. This is a
show about the world's most remarkable women, their professional and
personal journeys. Together, we'll hear from Gold medalists, best selling authors,
and leaders of the world's most iconic brands. We're so
(00:24):
excited to welcome Jennifer Weiner to the show today. She
is the best selling author of seventeen books that have
sold over eleven million copies across the world. Her latest
release is the new novel That Summer. I have followed
Jennifer's career for a while. Um years ago I put
her on my twenty five Working Moms to Follow on
Twitter list for Forbes, and the way she tweets, it's
(00:47):
just obvious that she has such a spark and I
can't wait to hear her story. Jennifer, did you start
out wanting to be a romance no list? Well, I
always knew I wanted to be a writer. It was
always the only thing I was ever any good at.
You know, I loved being a reader, So I was
(01:09):
a reader before I was a writer, and then I
was a journalist for about ten years before I published
my first novel. I'm not sure i'd call myself a
romance writer. I'm not sure the romance community would claim me.
There's probably like not enough like love and sex stuff
in my books. But writing was always the only thing
I ever wanted to do. Okay, So you think of
(01:31):
yourself as what like when people say to you, what
do you do? What? How do you respond? Um? Well,
I usually say that I'm a freelance writer because that
just like ends all the questions right there. Like if
you say that you're a novelist, everybody's like, oh my god,
I have an idea for a novel. I want to
write a novel. Let me tell you about my idea
for a novel, which I know would be a huge
bestseller if I could only find like a long weekend
(01:53):
to write a book. And then I have to be like, oh,
well that sounds you know, so, isn't it. It's kind
of like saying like, I mean, it's almost like positioning
yourself as a starving artist when you're like an Oscar winner.
I mean, it's a little bit like saying I went
to college in New Jersey instead of instant. If you
say that you're a novelist, then what's the immediate follow
(02:13):
up question? Have you written anything that I've read? And
then you have to be like, well, I don't know
what you read like, I don't know if you read
like you know, because usually, and not to generalize, but
it's it's usually like the older white guys who get
like really in my face about it, you know, and
I'm like, well, what do you like to read? And
they're like Tom Clancy and I'm like, okay, then you've
probably never heard of me, you know, and we can
(02:35):
just like we can just move along. But you know,
if you say freelance writer, I mean, honestly, it all
ends up the same place because then they say, well
what do you write? And I have to say, well,
mostly fiction these days, you know, And then it's like, well,
have you written anything I've read? And then you're just
right back where you started. I don't have a good answer,
I really don't. I'm gonna I'm gonna start telling people,
(02:56):
I'm gonna account I'm gonna tell him I'm an accountant.
What if you say I'm a writer, and then it's
going to end up in the same place. I think
freelance is an odd word to use for what you do.
You have had seventeen bestsellers. Yeah, but I am, But
I am a freelancer. I mean, it's at the end
of the day, it's like, I don't you know, I
(03:16):
don't work for a company. I I don't go to
an office. I'm I'm a freelancer. I'm owning it. I'm
owning it. Another theme that I keep seeing coming up
in your life is women. You've written best selling books
about really strong, interesting women. When you went to college
in New Jersey, Sam you lobbied Dennierate Lobby before you
(03:37):
know to make the social clubs at your college co Ed.
You wrote your senior thesis in college about the way
pregnant women are portrayed in media. Have you always cared
about women? Like, where does that come from? Well, my
mom is a feminist. I grew up in a feminist household.
And when I was in my twenties, my mom actually
(03:58):
came out and she'd fallen in love with a woman,
and so like she told me and my siblings, and
we were all like shocked and sort of horrified a
little bit, because it's like, you know, there we all
were like in our twenties and It's like you just
don't want to think about your parents having sex, and
you especially do not want to think about them having
like more like interesting, adventurous sex than what you're having.
(04:19):
So like, the whole thing was just a huge, huge mess.
But I was always interested in, um, you know, I guess,
like what it means to be a woman in the world,
and you know, what are the limitations, what are the possibilities,
what still needs changing, what's different? What's allowed for women
(04:40):
that are my age that wouldn't have been allowed when
my mom was young? What could she do that her
mother couldn't. I don't know why, but all of those
questions have always always interested me. Let's not gloss over
what you just shared with us, which I saw in
her Instagram that your mom just got married partner of
seventeen years or eight years? Eighteen years, yeah, eighteen years.
(05:02):
So talk to us about that first conversation and then
how the relationship has evolved until now and your relationship
to it. Well, let me just take you back to
I think the year was probably ninety six, and my
brother Joe, my youngest. I'm the oldest of four, so
Joe is the youngest, and he was in college and
(05:22):
he had gone home to do his laundry, as you do,
and he called me up at work. I was a
reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer. And he calls me up
and he says, I think there's a woman living in
the house. And I'm like, what are you talking about?
And he's like, he's like, well, there's women's stuff here
and it's not friends. And I'm like, okay, well, maybe, like,
you know, she had a friend's day over something. He's like,
(05:44):
I found love letters in her bathroom. I'm like, what
were you doing in her bathroom? He's like, I needed
the nail clippers. You know, long story short. What do
I buy Joe every year for his birthday? Now? Mail clippers.
But so he'd found these letters that were like, dear Fran.
After six months, the fire still burned, Karen, and you know.
(06:06):
So he like read me these letters, and I was
just like, you know, my my world was shook. So
I called my mom, who was working at the time.
She was a teacher, and I waited until the end
of the school day because I'm considerate like that, and
I called her up and I said, um, you know, hey,
frand like, what's new? And she says nothing. And I'm like,
(06:26):
nothing going on, nothing you want to tell me? And
she's like, no, not not really. And I said, well,
Joe says, there's a woman living in the house. Like
I didn't want to leave with the love letters. I
wanted to like work up to it, you know. So
I said, like, Joe says, there's this one of living here,
and there's this pause, and then she says, oh, that's
my swim coach, right, And I said, fran, it's not
(06:48):
an Olympic year, Like, why is there a swim coach
living in your house? And then she's like, okay, well
that's Karen and and we're in love and she's moved
in and I gotta go by click and I'm just
sitting there. I'm sitting there like what just even happened
to me? Like, you know, five minutes ago, my world
was one way and now it's some other, total different way.
(07:12):
And I had to just be like, what was the
story of her marriage, Like what was the story of
the four kids? Like the four of us, I mean,
we're we just like compensating, and you know, had she
been really unhappy all that time and just felt like
she couldn't be who think who she authentically was because
(07:36):
she had always wanted children. She always was really clear
about that, and she just said, like there weren't ways
to do that in the seventies unless you were married
to a man. So, you know, I think that there's
things that you know even when you don't know them.
And I think that I kind of, like even before
my parents separated, even before they got divorced, even before
(07:58):
this whole thing happened with my mom, I think that
I was sort of like aware of like the tension,
you know, like that there's there's a difference between the
life that you want and the life that feels authentic
and the life that you're allowed to actually have. And
I think that tension has informed my work. But the
(08:19):
first girlfriend whose name was was Karen Um. She was
a smoker, and she sounded like Marge's sisters from The Simpsons,
and she was a separatist, which made things real interesting
because I have brothers, you know, and she'd say things
like I don't have much use for men, but you
two you're all right, you know to my brother. Like
(08:39):
it was all just like very and she was like
much younger than my mom. It was a whole scene,
and they didn't last very long. Um, we refer to
Karen as the lesbian training wheels in my family, Like
she she came off really quickly. And but my mom's
been with Claire for eighteen years now and they're really
really happy, and they're really really like well suited and
(09:02):
and good for each other. And we all really love Claire.
My daughters adore her. She's like their bonus grandmother and
it's really been nice. You talk a lot in your
work about secrets. Do you feel like this was a
family secret and do you feel like someone who's had
to keep secrets? Well, I'm not even sure how much
(09:23):
my mom was aware, Like we've asked right, Like, I
don't know what family holidays are like at your house,
but in my house, it's like you eat the big
like Thanksgiving meal or Passover meal or whatever, you do
the dishes, you put the food away, and then like
everybody sits down in the living room and we just
like grill my mom about her sexuality. You know. It's like,
(09:43):
especially when I got to be around the age that
she was when she first met Karen, I was like, so, Fran,
when did the urges start? And she's like, Jenny, I'm
not talking about this with you. I'm like I need
to know, um, you know, but right because like I'm
married now, man, like if this is gonna up and
I gotta I gotta plan for it. But it's funny,
(10:03):
like every once in a while, I will run across
some like Republican Christian trumpy type who's just like, why
are all the families on sitcom so dysfunctional? Why are
the husbands always so henpecked? Why is everybody cheating? Why
are there all these secrets? Why isn't anybody just normal?
(10:24):
And I always want to say and I never like
write to these people, but I always just want to
be like, normal people don't make for very interesting fiction.
Like it's really really hard to get like twelve episodes
of a sitcom out of like a happily married couple
where there's nothing going on and nobody's keeping secrets and
and everybody's telling the truth about everything, Like where's the
(10:46):
story there? You know? So, like when you're writing fiction,
you need your characters to want something. You need them
to start at one place and be trying to get
someplace else, you know. So I think that that's why
A lot of writers, not just me, but a lot
of writers will sort of deal with questions of family secrets,
(11:10):
and you know, like the illegitimate child who doesn't know
she's a legitimate, or the parents who were divorced who
haven't told their kids that they were divorced before they
married each other, or whatever whatever the story ended up being.
You know, I think in real life there's a fair
amount of that, and certainly I've run across the fair
amount of it. But I just think, like for fiction,
(11:30):
you need something like that for your plot or else
you just have nowhere to go with it. I remember
I once was an intern on the Vicky Lawrence Show
That's how Old I Am, and I was hosting the
guest and one of them was Iris Rayner Dart, who
wrote Beaches, and she said the hardest thing about being
a writer is that real life is stranger than fiction.
(11:53):
And I just I wonder when you look at people,
do you see them as like a Robert Altman movie,
where like, is something dark going on in every house?
Or do you see it as like people have white
picket fences and things are really normal? When how do
you see the world? I mean, I guess I've come
to accept, and certainly the older I've gotten that a
(12:14):
certain amount of darkness and dysfunction is just kind of
built into everybody. When I see a white picket fence,
I usually assume that there's like a body buried underneath it, somewhere,
possibly several generations ago. But you know, but also like
that's just my own imagination. Like I got to amuse
myself before I do anything else. So it's like, you know,
(12:37):
I'm always inclined to think that whatever I see, I'm like, oh,
there's a story there. And my kids are sometimes like what, Mom,
what's the store? I'm like, Oh, there's a story there.
You know. I think having a novelist for a mother
must be like my kids are going to be They're
gonna have a lot to tell their therapists some day.
I think it must be really interesting on know what
(13:00):
was your childhood? Like I have four kids, so curious
minds want to know. Well, okay, so my mom, my mom,
the closeted lesbian, was a teacher. She was a school teacher.
My dad was a child psychiatrist, so it was my
husband's dad's a child psychiatrists. I have all sorts of
theories about you are shrinks. Shrinks kids right, Like shrinks
(13:23):
kids and pastors kids were all messed up because, you know,
because we're supposed to be sort of like professional representations
of our parents skill or holiness. But I think that
my my dad, my father who died in twenty oh god,
how old is feeding down? My dad died in two
(13:45):
thousand and eight, and I think that he was one
of these doctors who was drawn to psychiatry because he
probably had some like undiagnosed or or untreated mental illness
of his own, you know. But it was I grew
up in Connecticut. I grew up in a suburb. I
grew up in this like very pretty, very preppy, very
(14:06):
waspy part of Connecticut. There weren't many Jews. Everyone was
kind of the same. There were no black families, no
Asian families, no Hispanic families, like everyone the same. And
you know, I grew up with a lot of privilege.
And then my dad left when I was sixteen, which
(14:27):
sort of meant that like the bottom fell out of
the paperbag that was our lives. And you know, because
my father was very inconsistent about paying his child supports,
So we went from being very comfortable and you know,
going on vacations and oh yes, you know, go to college.
Wherever you get in. Dad will take care of it too,
you know. Dad is no longer around to pay the bills.
(14:50):
So it's interesting. I got to sort of see two
sides of things, which is good again, good training for
a novelist. But yeah, I mean, and I'm I'm the
oldest of four, so you know, I was the I
was the big sister. I was the responsible one. I
remember when I graduated from college and I came home
and my mom saying to me, like, do not even
(15:12):
unpack your bags? And I'm like, what do you mean,
like not even to do my laundry? And she's like, no,
you are getting a job and you are moving out
of here, and I'm giving you tell September one, which
she did. And I got a job at a small
newspaper and moved out. You know, but like I had
to set the example for everybody else, so I did.
Is that when you started calling her fran? I don't
(15:34):
know when we started calling her friend. That's not funny.
But it's been longer, Mom, your fan fran. And now
for a quick break, what is your relationship with money, Like, Wow,
you know, I don't take it for granted. I can
tell you that, Like, I think I'm a lot more
(15:55):
aware of how much it matters and how hard it
is when you don't have enough, when you don't have
enough for what you need. And I'm trying to raise
my kids with a sense of the importance of money
and the importance of being able to provide for yourself.
But I also I don't ever want them feeling the
(16:18):
way that I can remember feeling, where you know, I
went to register for my classes in college sophomore year
and got like pulled out of the line because my
dad hadn't sent a check for my tuition, and you know,
had to like make the walk of shame to the
bursar's office and like you know, figuring out like what
kind of last minute loans I could take out so
(16:39):
I could take classes that fall. You know, I don't
want my kids ever going through anything like that, because
it's really scary and it's really destabilizing. And I think,
on the one hand, it made me very driven, and
you know, I wanted to be responsible for myself. I
wanted to be able to take care of myself. I
didn't ever want to feel like, you know, there was
(17:00):
a bill that needed paying and I wouldn't be able
to pay it. So on the one hand, I think
like what happened with my parents and what happened with
my dad like made me very driven and a very
hard worker. But I don't know that. I don't know
that it's a price I'd want my own daughters paying
to get those skills to do. Siblings, I'll go to
(17:22):
college too, they did. Yeah, so you know, I'm the oldest,
and then I have a sister who's like fifteen months
younger than I am, and she stayed in Connecticut to
go to college. Then my brother Jake went to Syracuse,
and then my brother Joe, the youngest, went to the
University of Connecticut, UM the six year plan. We all
(17:43):
Joe Joe took his time to get through college, but yeah,
everyone went and we all took loans out um, you know,
and like it was really hard, Like my dad would
show up out of the blue and like right, everybody
checks for like a semester and things would be great,
and then he'd kind of disappear again. It was very inconstant,
(18:05):
and that's the hardest thing of all I think is like,
if things are consistently one way, whether it's good or
whether it's bad, at least you know what's coming and
at least you know how to plan for it and
you know what to expect. But if it's like you know,
if you think it's going to be one way and
then everything changes, it's like, well, Jesus, what do I
do now? How do I fix this? How do I compensate?
(18:28):
You know, it was hard? It was hard. How did
your relationship with money as a child impact your relationship
with your first husband and your marriage today? Well, I mean,
you know, I think I've always been really like conservative,
Like I started a college savings fund for like a
(18:52):
child who did not exist yet. Like I remember selling
my first book, and like I knew I wanted to
have children, but I knew didn't want to have children
until like I had like money in the bank, you know,
like I didn't want them ever having to like walk
to the burster's office and take loans out. So I
remember like walking into like Melon Bank at the corner
of like second in Chestnut in Philadelphia, like I need
(19:14):
to open a college savings account, and they're like, Okay,
what's the child social Security number. I'd be like, well,
I'm not pregnant yet, but you know, so really really
I'm a planner exactly, you know, just really really kind
of if it was a choice between like taking a
really nice vacation or making two mortgage payments that month,
(19:34):
I'd be like, but think how much fun it will
be to know that we've made those two mortgage payments.
Like I was not a fun twenty seven year old.
I was just like, you know, but I think, like
financial insecurity shapes your life and and really, you know,
it puts the fear of God into you, like you
(19:56):
never want to be like scrambling for money. And I
was really um, and you know, again like questions of constancy.
Like when I married my first husband, I was a
newspaper reporter who had just sold her first novel and
I had I'd gotten like a two book deal and
(20:16):
it was a good two book deal. But I knew
that what happens with most people is you publish your
first book. It's not a huge success, just because most
first books, most books at all, just aren't huge successes.
And I just always figured that like fiction would be
sort of like extra money, like it would be money
to send a kid to private school or summer camp
(20:38):
or whatever. But I wouldn't be the breadwinner. My husband,
who was an attorney, would be the breadwinner. And then
my first book did very well. At the same time,
he was going through this sort of downturn in his
career that he completely rebounded from and is doing really
well now. But like, it was just this really unfortunate,
(21:01):
kind of crisscrossing thing, and I was just like, well,
this isn't the deal I signed up for. This isn't
how I thought things were going to be, And you know,
it was hard. It was hard, I think, you know,
I I really do think that it's still just hard
for lots and lots of men to be married to
someone who's earning more money than they are. Maybe I'm wrong.
(21:23):
I'd like to be wrong about that. I'd like it
if there were lots of men are like, nope, totally fine,
But you know, I just think it's men are still
they're raised to be the breadwinners, they're raised to be
the providers, and when a woman is out earning them,
I think that it's you know, destabilizing or emasculating, or
(21:43):
whatever word you want to use. It's hard. Have you
ever had this conversation with your daughters? Yeah? What do
they think of it? Well, you have to understand, so
my older daughter is going to be eighteen and a
couple of weeks, so anything out of my mouth is
just wrong. It's just autumn matically incorrect. So it's just
like whatever, mom. I had two teenage daughters, so I
(22:06):
could not relate more. Yes, and then my thirteen year old,
who is like the sweetest kid in the world. I
have no idea what I did to deserve her. She's
just like, all right, okay, And I'm like, and that's
why you always need your own money, and you always
need your own savings account and you don't ever you know,
merge if she's like all right, okay, But I mean,
how much of it is she taking in at thirteen?
(22:29):
I do not know. I guess we'll see, you know.
I I think like parents do the best they can,
and I think my parents did the best they could
with what they had resources available to them. I know
I'm doing the best that I can, and their dad
is doing the best that he can. So you just try,
you try, and you hope for the best. I want
(22:49):
to go back for a moment to the conversation about
the disparity when the female spouse is earning more, Right,
do you think that's a bigger problem or was it
your fame and you're rising star that was a bigger problem.
Oh boy, that's a good question, because you know, it's
like you walk into a party and one person's a
(23:10):
novelist and the other person is a corporate litigator. I
can tell you who they want to talk the other
party guests want to talk to more, and it's not
the corporate litigator. So it might have that. That might
have been a piece of it, you know, the money,
the fame, the public profile, the who gets to have
(23:31):
more fun doing what she does? I don't know, you know.
And it's just like you think all these times, or
at least I do, about like, you know, to choose
your own adventure books. So it's like if I'd ever
been given a choice of like, well, I could have
just kept being a reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer, you know,
earning what I was earning there, and you know, I
(23:54):
wouldn't have published books, wouldn't have been able to do
some of the things that I've been able to do
with the money that I've made, but I wouldn't have
gotten divorced. It's like, what choice would I have made
if both of those avenues had been available to me?
And I don't know what the answer is. I don't
So how did you meet your husband? Which one? Which one?
(24:16):
I'm on Number two? Your current husband, right, your your
current husband, my second and final husband, as I like
to call him. I'd tell him all the time, I'm like,
you're it. I'm like, if this doesn't work out, like
you know, it's over, it's over for both of us. Okay.
So we met at the very first job that either
of us ever had. I was a reporter at the
(24:37):
small newspaper outside of Well in central Pennsylvania. It was
in State College, Pennsylvania. It was my first job out
of college. It was his first job out of graduate school.
And I actually interviewed him for the job, like I've
been there about a year and there was a job opening,
and he came to interview and I got to take
him out to dinner, which was a very big deal
(24:59):
because as they were paying us sixteen thousand dollars a year,
so having the company like pick up dinner was huge.
And we just had this like great connection, and we
just like talked and talked and talked and talked and talked.
And I remember going to work the next morning and
saying to my editor, I'm like, you have to hire
this guy, and my editor saying, do you think he's
(25:21):
a really great reporter, and like I have no idea
that I really like him, so I would like him
to come work here, so please hire him. And we
dated for like three or four years, and I was
really ready to get married and he was at the job. Yeah, yeah,
he got the job. Yes, yes, so he got the
job and we dated, and it's very funny. I'm reading
a book right now about dating apps and how people
(25:45):
meet each other now versus how they used to meet
each other, because work used to be a totally acceptable
place to meet somebody, you know, like you could like
meet somebody in your workplace and and date. My Larns
met at work like the same way you did my dad.
I'd interviewed my mom, and I always say, like, he
would be arrested today for like Mary, like I probably exactly,
like I'd get like yanked into like some you know,
(26:09):
human resource office and like you know, lectured about sexually
harassing potential hires, which I didn't do. But that was
a place you could meet somebody. So like, we met
and we dated and I wanted to get married and
he didn't, so we broke up and I married my
first husband, and then you know, we were married, we
had two kids. The marriage wasn't working out, we separated,
(26:32):
and then Bill, my second and final husband, was still
single because he was waiting for me. I always say this.
He's like, I really wasn't. I'm like, yeah, you were.
You just don't know it. You just don't know that
you were waiting for me. So that's the story. And
I was just you know, he was in New York
and I was in Philadelphia, so I lured him down
here and we got married. What is his relationship like
(26:53):
with your career. He's really proud of me. He's really supportive.
He's an editor, which is fantastically helpful to have, like
a living editor, although he does most of his work
for Sports Illustrated and their house style is different than
Simon and Schusters, and also his interests are not the
same as as mine. Um, he watches a lot of
(27:15):
sports and I kind of don't care that much. But
he's really terrific, And he's just very very like, very
laid back, very easy going, very supportive. He's a really
great guy for my daughters to have in their life,
I think because he's just like another man who like
loves them unconditionally and supports them and thinks that they're
(27:39):
smart and brilliant and beautiful and all the things you
want your daughters to grow up believing about themselves. So
I feel really lucky. Does he or do your daughter's
or do you show up in your books? Yeah? I
mean definitely, There's there's pieces of me in in just
about every character I've written. There's pieces of my daughters
(28:01):
in just about every girl I've written. Um, so yeah,
I mean I think writers are cannibals and and scavengers,
and I think that like, if you live with a writer,
chances are you're going to show up in their books somehow,
Like some piece of you, some gesture that you make,
or some saying that you have, or some family story
(28:22):
or something is going to show up. It's just the
way it is. How are you as a parent? How
what would your daughters say about your parenting style? Well, um,
I think they'd say that I'm funny, I think I
think they'd say that. I mean, I don't know. It's
it's the eighteen year old is just like, so my
(28:44):
therapist is always just like, she's doing the work of
separation right when I'm just like, she's so mean to
me and she hates me. Sid She's like, but she's
doing the work of separating from you. This is what
she's supposed to do, Like she has to be her
own person. She's breaking away from you, she's breaking away
from the family of origin. And part of that is
just the sort of like repudiation, like she thinks you're
(29:06):
a dumb dumb and I'm like and she's like, yes,
I know. But I think that I hope that what
they would both say is that I've encouraged them to
be who they are, you know that I've like tried
to find the things they love and find the things
they're good at and support them as much as I
(29:26):
can and just encourage them and be present for them.
And but it's it's just it's so interesting because like
parenting in the seventies, it's like I remember when Lucy,
my older daughter, was born, and my mom came to
like help with the baby, and she's like where's the playpen?
And I'm like, oh, no, no, friend, we don't put
(29:47):
kids in playpens anymore, like you know, no more, no
more like baby jails, Like we don't do that. We
hold them, we wear our babies. And my mother is
looking at me like you have got to be out
of your freaking mind, like why would you do this,
Like put the kid in the playpen and go smoke
a Virginia slim and like have a mark. I was like,
my smoked and had tabs like they did. They all
(30:10):
smoked and they all drank tab and we all turned
out okay mostly, But you know, I'm just like, no, no,
I'm like the the eed a mommy must be organic.
She's like, I don't know what either of those words
mean in this context, like what is an et a mommy?
And why must it be organic? And I'm like, fran,
I'm the hormones in the milk, and she's you know,
I mean I think that I think my mom thinks
(30:32):
I'm crazy, you know, but I also think that within
you know, on the spectrum of sort of you know,
upper class white moms of this day and age, I'm
more normal than some of them are, you know, I've
tried not to be like a crazy helicopter parent. Like
when my daughter was going through the college application process,
(30:54):
like every I only sent a couple of emails to
the college counselor and everyone I would preface with like,
please tell me if I am being like that crazy,
annoying mom, because I really do not want to be
that mom, but you know I think that, Like I
tell Lucy this, Like when I applied to college, my
mom's like, yeah, sure, you know, you can apply to
(31:16):
five schools, but I'm not paying for any more than that.
And no, I'm not reading your essays, Like are you
kidding me? I have things to do. I'm not gonna
read your essays, Like if you want to get them type,
like here's ten dollars you can hire, you know, find
some secretary at the high school and see if you
can pare to type them for you. Like just completely
not plugged in the way that parents today are where
(31:39):
parents today really seem to treat it like it's a
referendum on them and on how well they've done. As
moms and dads talk to us about raising confident girls.
It's a theme in yours and it's something that Amy
and you are both obsessed with how do you think
about it? Well, I try so hard to, like I
(32:02):
want my daughters to feel good about how they look.
I want them to feel good about who they are
and what they can do and what their dreams are.
And I've tried to, like as much as I can,
like make our home like a safe space for them,
where whatever your hobbies are, whatever you want to do
with your time, like I will support you, I will
(32:22):
encourage you, I will help you as much as I can,
or as much as you want me to. But I
also know that like the world is the world, and
my daughters aren't gonna be able to live in a
bubble as much as I'd like to keep them inside
of one. You know, They're going to have to move
through the world in in female bodies. And you know,
(32:45):
it's like the first time my younger one got cat called,
like you know, and it was it was pretty mild,
and it was just you know whatever, but like I
wanted to go outside and and like burn the world down.
You know, I'm like, what do you mean you yelled
something about my child's tits? Like what what is wrong
(33:06):
with you? And and just like why is this still
the place where we find ourselves still. I mean it's hard,
it really is, because getting ready to send girls out
into the world and knowing how much the world still
needs fixing is hard. Yeah, were you always this confident? No?
(33:29):
I mean, well, I won't let me think. How am
I going to answer that? I mean, so, I think
I just like had no social skills, and so I
didn't really care if I was a weirdo or if
people thought I was a weirdo, like I skipped third grade,
which they don't do anymore because they realized it was
like creating like a class of just like kids with
(33:52):
absolutely no social skills. But like, you know, I had
this like huge vocabulary and no friends for a really
long time, and so I think like I was outspoken
because there was really no downside to it, Like the
popular girls were going to stop being friends with me
because they had never been friends with me to begin with.
So I guess I kind of was confident always in
(34:14):
a way. I just didn't care. Now for a quick break.
Jealousy is a theme in your books too. Is there
anyone that you're jealous of? Oh? My god, Yeah, I mean,
you know, I can still probably tell you the names
of the popular girls in my high school, and like
(34:36):
what they wore to school, you know, the brands of
the clothes that they had that I wanted and couldn't
get because my mom just didn't see the point of it,
or if I could convince her that there was a
point to it, we just didn't have the money for
it by then. But yeah, I mean, you know, and
I also grew up with a sister who's like very
(34:58):
close to me an age, who's just always been like
the thin, pretty one, and you know, I'm sure that
there's things about me that she envies and wishes that
she'd gotten, you know, when when God was sort of
handing out the okay, like you're going to be a
really talented writer, but you're going to be a size
too for your whole life and just not even have
(35:18):
to work at it. You know, maybe she would have traded.
I don't know, but yeah, I mean I think like
that's just part of the female condition. Is always the
female condition, and capitalism anyhow, it is just like always
looking at somebody else and wishing you had what they had,
because that's you know, that's how companies make money. It's
(35:39):
like if you just go to the gym, you could
have that body. Or if you just follow this diet,
or you get this plastic surgery, or you buy this
cosmetic or this dress or these shoes or this house
in this neighborhood, you know, and and you can buy
your way to the life that you want. And I
think that keeping us all sort of envious of one
another is a way of, you know, keeping the money
(36:01):
stacks stacking. Can we go back for a moment. It's
your first book. As you mentioned, books don't even sell
five thousand copies or more. Right, so your first book
became a hit. What went into that? And what would
you say to writers out there who have dreams so
that they're not individually asking you for favors or to
(36:23):
pick your brain the worst words ever? Right, but instead
we'll tell them in this podcast what you would say
to them. Okay, well, so good in bed was it
came out of a breakup. Like I had dated this
guy who I really thought I was going to marry.
This was after Bill, who I who I did marry.
This was somebody else and I, you know, madly in love,
(36:46):
head over heels, thought we'd be together forever. And then
we weren't, and I was a wreck and just totally
devastated and crying all the time and just talking about
him endlessly to my friends and like trying to stalk
Kim before the internet existed, which was super hard, like
I had to do drive buys and he lived two
hours away. It was a whole disaster. And I finally decided, like, Okay,
(37:11):
what do I know how to do? Like what can
I do to make myself feel better? And I thought, like,
I know how to tell a story. You know, I've
been an English major, I've been a journalist, I'd published
short fiction. I always been writing this whole time. And
I said, I'm going to write a story about a
girl like me and a guy like Satan, basically like him,
(37:32):
and I'm going to give the girl a happy ending.
And I gave the girl like all of my craziness,
like my whole messed up family, all that Michigans, all
of my insecurities, like you know, size sixteen body, gay mom,
dad who was out of the picture, all of it.
And I was able to do that because I didn't
(37:53):
have an agent, I didn't have a publisher, I didn't
have a publishing deal. I was just writing it really
for myself, like just to a use myself and get
myself out of this like terrible dark place that I'd
fallen into. And I think that what made the book
successful was I didn't kind of sand down the rough edges.
(38:15):
I just let it be authentically what it was, you know.
I let the character be authentically who she was, which
was different than any character that was out there at
the time. Like there really weren't plus size women even
in fiction, just even on paper where you think it
would be safe, Like it wasn't on TV or in
(38:36):
a movie where you have to look at her and
cast someone to play her. It was just like in
a book. But even even still, the only like quote
unquote fat women I remember reading about like they were
either like the funny best friends or they had to
lose a ton of weight before they got a happy ending.
And I just let my heroine be authentic. And I
(39:00):
think that authenticity is you know, when in doubt, that's
that's always the way to go. It's just like, do
something that's authentic and something different and have something to say,
And that's the secret to success. Talk about Philadelphia because
it is unusual for someone of your profile and success
(39:21):
to not only start out in Philadelphia, but to stay there. Yeah. No,
I mean whenever I have meetings, people are just like, so,
what part of New York do you live in? And
I'm like, the Philadelphia party, the part that's not your Um.
I mean, the thing is, like, I really like it here.
I liked working here as a reporter, as a newspaper reporter.
(39:43):
I liked living here as a mom. I've always been
like really really comfortable here and really really happy here.
And also I think I was able to sort of
watch other women my age, like trying to have families
into your city and just seeing how expensive that was,
(40:03):
how difficult that was, how competitive it was like just
watching um, you know, kids compete to get into quote
unquote the right preschool, like the Street Wife pre school,
and like I had to write like letters of recommendation
for my friends kids when they were like eighteen months
old to like get them right. And I'm just like,
this is madness. This is madness. Like in Philadelphia, you know,
(40:26):
how you get into the hot preschool. You you give
them a two hundred dollar deposit check and sign up
and that's it. So I never wanted to leave. I
like it here. I think there's lots of stories to
tell here, and I think for people, like you know,
there's lots of great books set in New York and
in l A. But I also think that sometimes people
(40:47):
want to read books that are set other places, So
it worked. Do you feel like you'd be more anonymous though,
if you were in New York, imagine you're a very
big fish in a small pond. In Philly, only when
I do my hair, only when I do the only
time I ever get recognized is like literally when I
am like coming right out of the hairdresser, and I mean,
(41:09):
I guess, you know, but only in so far, Like
in Philadelphia. I always just like the the meteorologists are
huge celebrities here, like it's true, you know, but people
here nobody, nobody really makes that big of a deal
about it. I mean, like sometimes my kids get embarrassed.
Like I was doing a fundraiser for Lucy school once
(41:31):
and she came home like in a in a mood,
and she's like, there's posters of you in my school
with your name on them, and I'm like, well, dude,
like we don't even have the same last name. She's like,
everyone knows you're my mom. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, man,
I didn't realize it was a bad thing, but I
guess it is. How do you deal with the changing
(41:54):
world in your writing? Like we talked earlier about your
your mother and what she was a out to do
in her forties or fifties, and you know, it's like
it is probably slightly different today, but maybe not enough different.
Like how do you deal with changing culture in your writing?
And like when you go back and read your earlier books,
do they still resonate with you and all of that? Well, yeah,
(42:15):
I mean it's it's interesting because Good in Bed is
being adapted right now, so somebody's writing a screenplay for it,
and I'm just remembering when I wrote it. Like what
happens is the main character is like goes through this
like horribly humiliating experience because her ex boyfriend publishes a
magazine article about her body. And I'm like magazine article,
(42:37):
Like you know, she has to like go to a
newsstand to like get the magazine to see what he's
written because there's no Internet yet, And I'm like if
this heart today, like you know, he'd be like the
curvy wife guy on Instagram, like he just put up
some Instagram post and then she lose her mind. You know,
I think all you can do is the best you
can do and try to keep up in a way
(42:59):
that feel is authentic. Like you know, I like to
do TikTok and that feels authentic and it doesn't feel
like a total like drain or like it's totally inappropriate.
But like when Snapchat happened and for a while they
were trying to like make authors do Snapchat, and I
was like, I will not be doing Snapchat. Would you
say that body acceptance has changed over the years since
(43:20):
you started writing. I do think there's been some progress.
And the reason that I say that is you can
go onto Instagram or you can go onto TikTok and
like type in the hashtag like body positivity or fat
acceptance or size inclusive or whatever, and you can see
just like women with bodies of all shapes and sizes
(43:44):
and ages and races just like living their lives doing
their things, you know, dancing, swimming outfits of the day,
bathing suit tryons, like whatever it is. And you couldn't
see that when I was a teenager or in my twenties,
Like I tell my daughters this all the time. I'm like,
you guys, get Lizzo, Like, do you know who I had?
I had Karnie Wilson hiding behind like a paper mache
(44:07):
boulder that just like had landed on the video set
because like they couldn't show her body and she wasn't
even that big, right, Like, So that has changed and
and I do see progress. I think there's still a
long way to go, but yeah, I mean I I
do think things are getting better, and I hope that
(44:28):
in some small way, like I've been part of that
change and part of that progress, and your book covers
seemed to represent that progress. Yeah, we're finally, finally, finally
getting some like actual like curvy women on my covers.
Like for a long time they were using photos, they
would buy stock photos, and for a long time there
(44:50):
just weren't any stock photos of plus sized people. So
like I was really like stuck. But but now they're
actually illustrating my covers and they're doing like commissioning art,
so they're going to actually be like a larger body,
which makes me very happy. That's amazing. Who are your
best friends? This is an amy question, but who are
your best friends? Um? So my best friends are my
(45:12):
friends Susan, who's like, these are two women who I
met like years ago when I first came to Philadelphia.
My friend Susan and my friend Elizabeth, and they're like
my Philadelphia girls. And we've you know, seen kids born
and parents die, and you know, we've just been part
of each other's lives for a really long time, and
I hope will continue to be part of each other's
(45:34):
lives for a really long time. Yeah, talk to us
about The Bachelor, because you are known for your tweets
about the bat Room. When I used to watch religiously,
I would go, literally I would be looking at your
Twitter feed while I was watching. I actually had to
give it up Donald Trump, of all the damage that
man has done. He made me quit the Bachelor after
(45:58):
all my years because what happened was the summer there
was a season of The Bachelorette and there was this
guy whose name was literally Chad, and he was this giant,
like meathead monster of a guy, like a total jerky bully,
and you know, he was like the one that you
(46:18):
knew the girl wasn't going to ever end up with him,
like in a million billion years, but you also knew
the producers weren't going to get rid of him because
he was good TV. So Chad was the guy that
you love to hate. And then you know, he finally
gets voted off the island and whoever the bachelorette was
picks her guy and they go off and and then
it was like I remember literally changing the channel and
(46:41):
it was the Republican primary debate and Donald Trump was Chad.
Like you could see it happening. You could see those
newscasters be like, there is no way America a k a.
The Bachelorette is going to pick this MIDI, this idiot meathead.
But he sure makes for good t V, so we'll
keep him around. And then I felt like they just
(47:04):
kept him around and kept him around and kept him around,
and then he was president and I'm like, this is
my fault, which you know, it wasn't entirely my fault.
It wasn't completely my fault. It wasn't a perfect parallel,
but I feel like there was some you know, Donald
Trump came from the world of reality TV, and I
(47:27):
feel like The Bachelor is one of those things that
made him plausible, and I just felt so bad. And
then also like I was just getting to a point
in my life and my daughters were getting to an
age where like it was just getting harder and harder
to justify, like as a feminist, as a mom. I
was just like, it's trashy, and it's silly, and it's degrading,
(47:48):
and they are finding absolutely any excuse they can to
put these girls in bathing suits. So lighting around. Okay,
what are you reading right now? I just finished Cynthia
Dupris Sweet Needs the Good Company, And I just started
a book called The Other Black Girl Who Leaves You
star Struck? Oh God, Harrison Ford, what is your night?
(48:10):
Tiler too? I watched TV with my husband. We're watching
The Americans right now, which I really really like. I
am usually in bed by like ten thirty. I read
for anywhere from half an hour to an hour, and
then I conk right out. How many more books will
you write? I don't know, you know, I never want
to look too far ahead, but I'm working on one
(48:31):
right now that I really really like, so I can
tell you at least one more. There's no way, it's
just one more. What would you do after that? I
don't know. I don't know. Learned Jula dants. I don't
know where is the first place to go after the
pandemic when this is all over. My husband and I
were supposed to go to Alaska last summer for my
fiftieth birthday, and we obviously did not get to do that.
(48:52):
So I think we'll go to Alaska and take that trip.
Here is all right, Blue, Here we go, noure no pressure.
First off, I was just admiring the smiles while you're
telling the stories, and you have a really amazing smile.
It really lights up the room. So my question is
in regards a body shame, and I have a twelve
(49:14):
year old daughter who has recently made me aware of
of men and there I guess weirdness around women who
have bigger body parts, but and she made me aware
of this and it made me now a whare of
what I do? You know? So it's really shifted my perspective.
(49:36):
So I would like to hopefully hear a story in
regards to maybe when you were a body shamed or
a cat called, because her perspective helped me change my behavior.
And I'm hoping that when a man hears this, maybe
his perspective change also. That's a really, really great question,
(49:57):
and a really important question too, because I think that
it can't be just on women to change the way
the world is. I think like men have to own
their piece of it, you know. But I guess. I mean,
the most recent example that I can think of is like, Okay,
(50:18):
so my my thirteen year old daughter, her school just
started up again in person and they finally were able
to start swim team up again. And she's like, you know,
she had he first swim team yesterday and she comes home.
I like, how was it? And she's like, well, the
swimming part was great. And I'm like, well, what wasn't great?
And she said, they made all the girls like stand
(50:39):
there in our bathing suits and the boys were all
just dressed because they all had their bathing suits on
like under their their shorts or their pants or whatever.
And I'm like, do you think the teacher like noticed
that or noticed it was weird? And she's like, no,
I don't think he did. I mean, it feels like
such a small thing, but I would say that, like, Okay,
(51:00):
whenever you're in a situation, especially with kids, especially with
young women, just try to put yourself in their place,
Like imagine you're the most insecure, the least confident, the
least comfortable of all of them, and just think, like
what can I do to like take this off of
her a little bit? Like what can I do to
(51:20):
put everybody on an even playing field? You know? Can
I just say, Okay, let's everybody get dressed now, or
just everybody get in the water right now? You know?
Like how can I treat kids so that they're all
the same and so that it's not just girls equal
their bodies and boys equal the integrity of who they are.
I think that's what i'd say. I feel like I
(51:43):
could have talked to Jennifer for hours, and I really
want to go to Philadelphia and have five drinks. So
we have to do that. She should be on our
our tour. She has to be. Uh. So, you know
the thing that the things I kept coming up for me,
I mean, she's just so insightful, but so much revolves
around the way she lives at the world and the
female condition is right, and I just think there's so
(52:04):
much to that in thinking of like how we see
the world but also how the world sees us, And
sometimes I overlook that, right, and I think it's just
it's just interesting to think about like how we move
forward and try to make that something different. Because when
she was talking about how with her sister, like, you know,
when she made the comment like if God was handing
out like you'll be a great writer, you'll be as
(52:24):
sized to like and maybe her sister would have wanted
to swap. There is no like that phrase wouldn't even
come up from a male perspective, right, And the world
is just so different for women it still is. Yeah,
I mean it's funny. I I see a lot of
brothers who are competitive, So I do think there's an
aspect or element of that that comes up for men.
But I see what you're saying. I think that one
(52:46):
thing that really struck me was her confidence came from
her childhood, right, So, like even though she had some
instability in her childhood, she also just clearly has like
an amazing mom who is a feminist and instilled a
lot of strength in her and that is what propelled
her to where she is today. I think you and
I Amy so often talk about who are the badass
(53:06):
CEO s, right, and we don't often talk about like
how great is it that there's a badass novelist and
how great is it that there's a badass woman infectious
disease doctor. Like, that's what gives me hope, honestly, because
she's not just out there writing these novels. She actually
is out there talking about politics to her followers. She
(53:26):
she really does use her microphone in a in a
really responsible way. Yeah she does, And she has an
amazing microphone, an amazing voice, and she's just there's there's
so much there And like I said, I think I
could have talked to her for about five more hours.
Well it's so funny because this morning I wrote you
aim and I was like, I really want I never
say this. I don't think I've ever said this in
my life, but I want to be Jennifer Weiner when
(53:47):
I grow up. And you're like, what, But there's just
I don't know what it is. She's really cool. It
was for me. It was interesting too to hear she does.
She obviously has like a really strong family unit and
has a lot of confidence from her childhood. But she
also like it wasn't like she was the most popular
kid in school right, and she didn't have everything she wanted,
(54:10):
but she just kept kind of kept moving forward. I
remember when my kids first started elementary school, and I
would hear some of the moms say, I just want
my daughter to be popular, and I was like, what,
I don't think anything good happens to the popular kids.
Like I was never the popular kid. I had my
group of friends, but I wasn't in the popular crowd.
I was like tangential. And I've always been like that
(54:31):
my whole life, like a handpicked my friends. And I
always thought the worst thing that it could happen to
my kids is that they get into the popular group
because they're chasing something and it's never something very good. Yeah,
I mean I think there's a lot to that. Thanks
for listening to What's Her Story with Sam and Amy.
We would so appreciate if you would leave her of
(54:52):
you wherever you get your podcasts, and of course connect
with us on social media and What's Her Story podcast.
What's Her Story with Sam and Amy is power by
my company The Riveter at The Riveter dot c O
and Sam's company, park Place Payments at park place payments
dot com. Thanks to our producer Stacy Para, our social
media manager Phoebe crane Fest, and our male perspective Lou
(55:14):
Burns H
Hosts And Creators
Samantha Ettus
Amy Nelson
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