Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants: Based on a True Story [Hardcover]

Jill Soloway (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 30, 2005

When Jill Soloway was just thirteen, she and her best friend donned the tightest satin pants they could find, poufed up their hair and squeezed into Candies heels, then headed to downtown Chicago in search of their one-and-only true loves forever: the members of whichever rock band was touring through town. Never mind that both girls still had braces, coke-bottle-thick glasses and had only just bought their first bras...they were fabulous, they felt beautiful, they were "tiny ladies in shiny pants."

Now that Jill is all grown up and a successful writer and producer, she can look back on her tiny self and share her shiny tales with fondness, absurdity and obsessive-compulsive attention to even the most embarrassing details. From the highly personal (conflating her own loss of virginity and the Kobe Bryant accusations), to the political (what she has in common with Monica and Chandra), to the outrageously Los Angelean (why women wear huge diamonds and what they must do to get them), "Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants" is a genre-defying combination of personal essay and memoir, or a hilarious, unruly and unapologetic evaluation of society, religion, sex, love, and -- best of all -- Jill.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

There's one joke that Soloway, writer and co-executive producer of Six Feet Under, keeps coming back to, about a little girl who tells her mom a boy has paid her to climb a telephone pole. Her mom keeps telling her he just wants to see her panties... so the girl says she's "fooled" him, by taking them off. It's an apt metaphor for Soloway's view of women's situation today, which, she says, is ruled by the "Porno-ization of America," with younger women wanting breast implants and white boys thinking pimps are the height of cool. Soloway's rants are right-on and entertaining, too, probably because she includes herself among the occasionally deluded. She recounts her own 1970s upbringing as a liberated child who thought she might become president, only by seventh grade she'd "forgotten what Bella Abzug looked like" and gotten her "Ophelia card stamped." Fortunately, she recovered to become a delightfully sex-positive "Jewess" ("a word invented by others to conjure someone bossy... that I have reappropriated as prideful") who can joke about her cute "Jewish bush," her fun lesbian sister and her own unaccountable attraction to "Toolbelts" (hunky construction worker kind of guys). Soloway's book is an amusing work of feminist humor.
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Review

"Sisterly, smart, funny, and vulgar, Soloway's debut deserves a space on the shelf beside David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs." -- Entertainment Weekly, Editor's Choice, September 16, 2005:

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Free Press (August 30, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 074327217X
• ISBN-13: 978-0743272179
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #983,858 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow oh wow, October 6, 2005

By 

James W. Doyle "bookwhore" (Hollywood, CA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants: Based on a True Story (Hardcover)

First of all, you should be warned: don't start the book at night unless you don't need to get up early. I started this book last night at midnight. At some point (around two a.m.) I felt like I was on the coolest sleepover ever, the kind every gay boy wanted to have but couldn't with the coolest girl in school who let you brush her hair. So I had oreos and milk, and they were the Halloween ones that make the milk orange, and I stayed up more. At five a.m., I was mad at Soloway, the way you get mad at babies for being so cute. I didn't "laugh out loud" at times, I drew in breath, and went, "God, she's brilliant." And then I wished I could braid her hair. I'm buying this book for everyone I know. Of course, it'll be hard, since I missed work today and maybe won't have a way to make the money to buy the book for everyone I know, 'cause I was up all night. So whatever. I have a huge crush on Jill Soloway.

17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jill Soloway: deserves own special category of funny, August 29, 2005

By 

TruthGraceGroove "writer" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants: Based on a True Story (Hardcover)

After years of reading Jill's pieces and seeing them performed at her writers' reading series, Sit N' Spin, I am so excited that she's compiled this book.

Jill is not simple to categorize. I suppose this book feels a bit like David Sedaris and a touch like Sandra Tsing Loh... but her voice is singular. Jill is funny without shortchanging her more serious subject matters; sexy but not sleazy; proudly Jewish without leaning on the "neurosis" crutch; feminist without dissing men.

In this book, she reminisces about her younger years -- most notably in a chapter about the much older man to whom she lost her virginity. She unflinchingly describes the vulnerable awkwardness and self-doubt (her best friend was "prettier")that made her, at 17, such an easy target for the man she'd later disparagingly refer to as "Lotion Bag." The story is hilarious even while it disturbs us and makes us feel protective of that teenaged girl. Jill has strong opinions -- about women, about men, about sexuality -- and while she never sacrifices her story to put forth an agenda, her points do land.

I love it when Jill zeros in on embarrassing secrets -- her chapter on her secret dislike of dogs made me laugh out loud. This is one of those books that makes it seem easy to write a book -- because Jill's storytelling is so skilled that the work is effortless. You feel like she's sitting beside you on the couch, having a glass of wine and ranting articulately till you laugh so hard you pee in your pants.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I second the "all-nighter" review, December 30, 2005

By 

Lauren E. Bacon (Vancouver, BC, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants: Based on a True Story (Hardcover)

Okay, I didn't stay up all night like Mr. Doyle, but I started this book before bed and it was the first thing I grabbed the next morning. I'd consumed it whole by noon. What a fabulous, fierce, funny and brilliant read. I felt like I'd found a new friend -- one whose affection for Andrea Dworkin *and* Annie Sprinkle, feminist analysis and self-deprecating humour is infectious and engaging. (And for those of you who are turned off by the word "feminist", I suspect you have a good chance of enjoying this book too -- Soloway doesn't subscribe to stereotypes.) I'm feeling a strong need to re-watch all of Six Feet Under just to get another dose of this amazing writer.