Name: armoni mayes's review of Trainwreck by Sady Doyle
Item: Trainwreck
Rating: 5
Author: armoni mayes

Sady Doyle

She’s everywhere once you start looking for her: the trainwreck. She’s Britney Spears shaving her head, Whitney Houston saying, “crack is whack,” and Amy Winehouse, dying in front of millions. But the trainwreck is also as old (and as meaningful) as feminism itself. From Mary Wollstonecraft—who, for decades after her death, was more famous for her illegitimate child and suicide attempts than for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman—to Charlotte Brontë, Billie Holiday, Sylvia Plath, and even Hillary Clinton, Sady Doyle’s Trainwreck dissects a centuries-old phenomenon and asks what it means now, in a time when we have unprecedented access to celebrities and civilians alike, and when women are pushing harder than ever against the boundaries of what it means to “behave.” Where did these women come from? What are their crimes? And what does it mean for the rest of us? For an age when any form of self-expression can be the one that ends you, Sady Doyle’s book is as fierce and intelligent as it is funny and compassionate—an essential, timely, feminist anatomy of the female trainwreck.

The Women We Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear . . . and Why

Trainwreck

Crystal L

She s everywhere once you start looking for her: the trainwreck. She s Britney Spears shaving her head, Whitney Houston saying, crack is whack, and Amy Winehouse, dying in front of millions. But the trainwreck is also as old (and as meaningful) as feminism itself. From Mary Wollstonecraft who, for decades after her death, was more famous for her illegitimate child and suicide attempts than for"A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" to Charlotte Bronte, Billie Holiday, Sylvia Plath, and even Hillary Clinton, Sady Doyle s"Trainwreck"dissects a centuries-old phenomenon and asks what it means now, in a time when we have unprecedented access to celebrities and civilians alike, and when women are pushing harder than ever against the boundaries of what it means to behave. Where did these women come from? What are their crimes? And what does it mean for the rest of us? For an age when any form of self-expression can be the one that ends you, Sady Doyle s book is as fierce and intelligent as it is funny and compassionate an essential, timely, feminist anatomy of the female trainwreck."

The Women We Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear and Why

armoni mayes

The trainwreck, the woman we love to hate and fear to be. Doyl lays out in three parts how the trainwreck comes to be at the forefront of our vision and gossip. Doyl covers Britney Spears (of course), Whitney Houston, Valerie Solanas, Billie Holiday, and Monica Lewinsky/Hilary Clinton just to name a few. In each section Doyl gives us an example of the female celebrity that enacted that kind of media trainwreck and how we are all responsible and culpable in how it played out. 

I absolutely loved this book and think it is a must read for anyone interested in social commentary on female celebrities and just gossip/media in general. She also discusses a lot about how men are given grace and leeway in situation that woman would never be allowed to have. 

Instead of trying to articulate more about this book to convince you to read it, i’m going to post some of my favorite quotes to convince you to read it…

“Women hate trainwrecks to the extent that we hate ourselves. We love them to the extent that we want our own flaws and failings to be loved. The question, then, is choosing between the two; whether we’ll continue to demand that women in the public eye act as our personal scapegoats, for the crime of being human, or whether we’ll go ahead and admit that—to quote a former president; I apologize in advance for this one—we feel their pain.”

“We do sometimes seek them out for reasons of pure schadenfreude, or internalized misogyny. We can use them as projection screens for our own fears and failings, or look to them to confirm that we’re doing our own gender correctly. It’s understandable that we would: Women are punished, cruelly, for failing to be appropriately feminine, and there are dozens or hundreds of ways to get it wrong.”

“Hillary and Monica themselves as the scapegoats for second- and third-wave feminism, respectively: The second wave told women to work for equality and advance in the workplace, which Hillary did, and was hated for doing, and the third told women to embrace their sexuality and see femininity as a source of power, which Monica did, and was hated for doing.”

✨Tyler ✨

this was incredible. I had over a 100 highlighted passages! 
it's easy to read but filled with lots of good information.
the postscript is about Clinton losing the election and how it fits into the wrecking of women. it's definitely about pop culture but not as much as you would think. I loved this.

Amanda Autumn Berrey

Three stars

A brief synopsis: A deep dive into humanity’s constant need for a “Trainwreck” (a female celebrity gone off the rails in the worst ways). Why do we need trainwrecks? Who needs them most? What does it take to be a trainwreck? How long have trainwrecks existed? Why do women purchase degrading tabloids? This book discusses it all. It is the ugly truth 

Review: I want to start by making one thing clear: although I did not rate this five stars, I still think everyone should read it. But, I must be objective. I heard about this book via Crime Junkie’s Patreon feed. It was brought up because the podcast hosts’ were discussing the conservatorship looming over Britney Spears. I was super excited to read this because it has been quite a while since I’ve read a book that isn’t fiction. And I have a tendency to love opinion pieces. There were so many times in this book where my jaw was practically on the floor because of the amount of good points that were made. The author brings up all the issues of the 2000s (my childhood) and put them in ways that I had never even thought of. She speaks of “trainwrecks” from the 1800s-present day, and it’s sad that not much has changed in the way that women judge each other. As I said before, I think this book is for anyone and everyone. I rated it three stars because it rambled a little and I felt that it didn’t have to be as long as it was

Crystal L &
Trainwreck by Sady Doyle

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