A Tale of Two Titties by Meg Vondriska

Bjørn reviews A Tale of Two Titties: A Writer’s Guide to Conquering the Most Sexist Tropes in Literary History by Meg Vondriska.

From the brilliantly funny (and rightfully furious) creator of the viral Men Write Women Twitter account Let’s face it, women’s representation in literature really sucks. And that’s mostly because of the male authors who write female characters like they’re nothing more than playthings in their stories. Whether they have breasts like ripe peaches or curves like a racetrack, the literary ladies gracing the pages of bestselling books rarely serve a purpose beyond supporting a male character (or giving him something to fantasize about). But what are you supposed to do about it if you can’t even get a foot (or, I guess, a boob) in the door? You beat them at their own game. In this hilarious yet incisive guide, you’ll learn how to write women just like a bestselling male author―stereotypes, tropes, objectification, and all―so you can start dismantling the system from the inside. With thoughtful literary analysis, interactive exercises, and commentary that perfectly straddles the line between satirical hilarity and righteous indignation, A Tale of Two Titties is both an illuminating study of women’s representation in literature and an absurd (yet accurate) guide to writing through the male gaze.

It has taken me a long, long time to read A Tale of Two Titties, a book that has 292 rather small pages and 20% – if not more – of them is blank space for ‘prompts’ and ‘exercises’ the point of which is, ostensibly (this review might and will contain sarcasm) to teach women (and, I hope, gay men, how could we know how women titties work?) to become bestsellers.

The afterword – or rather ‘The Heart of the Matter,’ says: “Using humour as a tool to help people notice this kind of casual misogyny, instead of an accusatory ‘why didn’t you notice!’ voice, was one of the core goals of A Tale of Two Titties. If the only thing a reader takes away from this book is simply noticing, the workbook will have succeeded.” Thing is, this book is not funny. I mean, it would probably be funny to the exact sort of men who should notice the misogyny, but they’d instead cackle, Beavis-and-Butthead style.

Reader, I did not laugh.

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A Tale of Two Titties is a bitter, cynical, sarcastic, uncomfortable read. Why uncomfortable? Because all of it is true, from Poor James Patterson complaining about how now that women are allowed to write books there is simply NO SPACE for white men, to the frankly terrifyingly long list of quotes from Stephen King, complete with a footnote saying that the editor discouraged from making this list even longer, because lawsuits are even less fun than cantaloupe breasts. Why bitter? Because no matter how many followers Meg Vondriska (who created the delightfully horrible @menwritewomen article) is going to gather on X or how many copies of this book are going to sell, its contribution to what passes for ‘literature’ (one of the books quoted, The Circle by Dave Eggers, was literally the next read on my TBR) is going to hang somewhere around zero. Maybe I am projecting my own bitterness on A Tale of Two Titties, because I know and abuse the saying “oh, to have the self-confidence of a mediocre white man,” and the book pretends to teach the reader exactly that. Except most of the many quoted mediocre white men are sickeningly rich and famous. Oh, to have the bank account, the reviews, and the awards of a mediocre white man, I’d sigh, if the book didn’t explain in a disgustingly accurate way how to achieve that feat.

When I think of who would find this book funny, I envision a group of drunken blokes in a pub pulling the book away from each other to read the ‘best quotes’ and high-five each other, then use it as their own list of future reads, in case they are actually literate. (This time I am exaggerating. One of the examples is fecking Kazuo Ishiguro and I really, REALLY did not see this coming.) (Did you know that in the interest of historical accuracy of his fantasy series that has dragons in it George RR Martin included rape or attempted rape 214 times? So far?)

I found the ‘exercises’ and ‘prompts’ completely pointless. They didn’t even hammer the point further home, they hammered it through the wall until both the point and the hammer fell inside. One of my pet peeves has always been including ‘blank pages for the reader to fill’ inside books, which makes me feel like I have overpaid no matter how cheap the book is – I was promised 292 pages, not 252 sort of thing. The joke that runs throughout the book is that obviously we, everyone who is not a mediocre cis man who comes up with…creative descriptions for breasts, simply need to learn how to out-mediocre those men. The blank pages, though, are a joke that overstays its welcome. Another phrase I loathe in books is “take your journal…” but at least it doesn’t feel like padding.

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I said ‘loathe’. This is something so important to me I’m going to give it a separate paragraph. As in, section.

A footnote in ‘The Heart of the Matter’ says something that I feel is actually the key to understanding the why behind this book. My biggest pet peeve of all – the pet in question being Godzilla: the idea that ‘women’s literature’ is a genre. “Of course, there is no ‘men’s literature’ section, that’s just a bookstore.” Nailed. Can’t be repeated enough. And should be made illegal. I might be a noted male man of masculine gender, but despite my insistence that Storytellers belongs on the ‘women’s fiction’ shelves, it never made it there. Which it should. But I have a (whispers) p-e-n-i-s and therefore – as Vondriska tells – my section is the bookstore. Speaking of which, I wonder where A Tale of Two Titties will land in bookstores. I have a sickening feeling that “TikTok Made Me Read This!” might be its best shot.

It’s 2024. Apparently we are now very evolved and woke, etc. I just typed ‘women’s fiction’ into Amazon’s search box and the first result charts at #1 in the ‘women’s fiction’ category AND #2 in ‘women’s domestic life fiction’. The first result when I search for ‘men’s fiction’ is a ‘historical thriller’ and a ‘military thriller’ and definitely not a men’s battlefield life fiction. (Don’t make me laugh by suggesting ‘men’s domestic life fiction.’ Okay, I will check. *checks* Did you know Margaret Atwood’s Life Before Man is men’s domestic life fiction?)

I will stop here, because I’m doing the same thing Vondriska does in A Tale of Two Titties: driving the point home so hard the home might have collapsed and I keep going.

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I have once declared that I would spend a month reading solely books by women, except non-fiction. Then forgot I said that until the month was nearing its end and I realised I was already only reading books written by women – my two exceptions were a book on writing craft and a biography of Jony Ive. So, there’s a chance that I am not the right audience for A Tale of Two Titties. I like to round up my reviews by recommending the book to the ideal audience. But who is it?

People who follow @menwritewomen might not be able to take in the amount of reality – as I said, I had to read this in small chunks – because the reality is more grim and dark than grimdark when it comes to literary misogyny. And they have already noticed. Those who should notice are unlikely to read something longer than a meme. With breasts on it. As for me, I may be a gay man who works exclusively with female editors, but I felt guilty-by-association (men are my least favourite gender, and this is NOT a joke). People don’t like being made to feel guilty.  There is a reason why so many copies of books such as Let’s Talk About Race have sold, but so few have actually been read. (Rebecca, Not Becky might not be an excellent read, but what it shows really well is how many well-meaning allies bought the Deep and Important Books, only never quite found time to read past the title – BUT they switch from Ed Sheeran to a R&B Spotify playlist before the book club meeting, showing how greatly they have immersed themselves in racial diversity.)

I would like this book to become a compulsory read for creative writing students. And professors. And guest authors. And bestselling authors. Including The One Who Shall Not Be Named. Not that I think they’re capable of learning. And when I say ‘they’ I am not just making an invisible jab at The One etc., but most of the exact people who should read A Tale of Two Titties. The cover might mislead them, but not for long. Once the words start, and this is one of those books that have words in them, they’ll either rage about woke-blah-something, or simply “DNF at 1% because insert a reason I just invented not to seem sexist.”

PS. I really wouldn’t mind a foreword from Stephen King.

PS2. Stephen, this is a dare. Write that foreword, and I will both buy your next book and read it.