MFA Bitch

Dear Lisa,

If MTV Books is smart enough to publish your novel, I’ll take back everything I ever thought and said about them. It’ll feel a bit like the first time I saw the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video and believed there might actually be hope for mainstream culture.

Of course, when you become a pop culture phenom, you will have to claim (as many have done before you) that this was really, honestly, the last thing you wanted. They can even interview me and I’ll corroborate the claim. I’ll say, “Lisa always said she never cared whether she got published or not. It was always about the art, not the money or fame or any of that.” Which is true. And at the same time, not at all.

For my part, I have more pressing concerns than my art these days. I have discovered that my jeans hang down so low in the back that I routinely expose myself to passersby. This was explained to me rather succinctly by a carload of young men who drove by shouting out the car window: “Kick Crack!”

What they didn’t know was that while my ass was exposed to the street, I was handling an infant who was screaming for his pacifier. What they couldn’t know was that my jeans are too small because I just gave birth. What they will never understand is that this “crack” of mine is here to stay, despite the expectations of society that if I don’t hide my postpartum body indoors, I should at least hide it inside an oversized pair of mom pants. These crack jeans are cool, damn it. And I’m gonna wear them.

So, consider my crack a feminist statement. It is the symbol of my rejection of the bullshit patriarchal paradigm.

Or maybe I just need bigger jeans.

Yours in sisterhood solidarity,

Jessica