Alix Kates Shulman

Sasha Davis recalls the experiences that followed her high school initiation into the rites of middle class society

Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen

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** spoiler alert **
           4.5/5 This is my Bell Jar!!!
Note: there is a very gruesome abortion scene.
"All the other assets that I had so carefully cultivated in my youth I had abandoned somewhere, half-formed, in the flood of matrimony, and now at twenty-four I was too old and frightened to go back and reclaim them. My early promises had all been broken; now all my fragile eggs were in this one worn basket."

“My sweet Sasha, one night you go to sleep a little girl, and the next day you wake up a young woman. You’ll be a lovely woman, Sasha.” But I knew I was not a woman. I was a child, frightened, unable to comprehend what was happening."


"They say it’s worse to be ugly. I think it must only be different. If you’re pretty, you are subject to one set of assaults; if you’re plain you are subject to another. Pretty, you may have more men to choose from, but you have more anxiety too, knowing your looks, which really have nothing to do with you, will disappear. Pretty girls have few friends. Kicked out of mankind in elementary school, and then kicked out of womankind in junior high, pretty girls have a lower birth rate and a higher mortality. It is the beauties like Marilyn Monroe who swallow twenty-five Nembutals on a Saturday night and kill themselves in their thirties."

"I studied audacity, determined that if I couldn’t be sure I had the power that comes with beauty, I would have another kind of power."

"Between fifteen and eighteen,” reported Dr. Watson, summarizing his vast scientific researches,
a female changes from a child to a woman. At fifteen she is but the playmate of boys and girls of her own age. At eighteen she becomes a sex object to every man.
Every man! By all means, I must perfect my glance."

"But it was only out of habit that I reassured him, for I knew after it grew back in it would never be the same."

"No matter how grand my schemes or fanciful my ambitions, my year abroad hadn’t dented the universe."

"As I took off my coat, aware of my hair twisted artfully on my head and my first resort to mascara, I sensed new possibilities."

“What do you want with me?” I asked with an impermissible seriousness.
“I? Why, to enjoy you,” answered Will.
His answer, appropriately airy, made it worse. I was sick of affairs; I had grown old being enjoyed."

"October: First word: pity (pretty)."

"But it was only out of habit that I reassured him, for I knew after it grew back in it would never be the same."

Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen

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