According to Cathryn Michon, The Grrl Genius Guide to Life
"is both a parody of a self-help book and the only self-help book that's ever
done any good for me." The steps that she describes in the book, from
admitting that you are a Grrl Genius to embracing your looks, your sexuality,
and the inevitable aging proces, are essentially a memoir, "twelve
interconnected stories that tell the story of my emergence into geniushood,
silly things I've done in my life that have also helped me realize who I am."
In addition to the book, Michon has another platform from which to promote
Grrl Geniusdom; as a stand-up
comic, she's been promoting the book by performing in comedy clubs across
the country. She's also one of the founders of the "Grrl Genius Club," a
monthly benefit performance that takes place at the Hollywood Improv, and
has featured comedians like Ellen Degeneres, Janeane Garafalo, Margaret Cho,
Kathy Griffin, Caroline Rhea, and Kathy Kinney. Michon's early writing
successes were in television, working on both half-hour comedies and hour-
long dramas, but she's easing off on that aspect of her career. One of the
aspects she's building up now is acting. "I've just signed a deal to host a show
for American Movie Classics," she informed me during our telephone
conversation, "which will essentially be Grrl Genius night at the movies. I'll
be presenting cool chick flicks, and we'll shoot it in New York, so I'll be doing
woman-on-the-street segments and interviews." Chances are it probably won't
include her hilarious riffs on great ladies of Hollywood and the 'hair gel'
scene from It's Something About Mary, but it's bound to be
entertaining...
RH: You celebrate Grrl Geniuses, but you also acknowledge the
potential existence of Enlightened Males. I like that.
(laughs)
CM: I got tired of reading books that had great information for women,
but with the default message that everything that was wrong with their lives
was really men's fault. I believe that where women are today is no longer
men's fault. I think the vast majority of men don't want women to be paid less
or sexually harrassed at work. Most men want women to be one hundred
percent equal, and the idea that they should live their lives feeling guilty for
being men is ridiculous. If you're a woman, and you take a job and you know
that you're getting paid less than the guy who's doing the exact same job, it's
not that guy's fault anymore. It's your fault for accepting less money.
That's why I believe in Enlightened Males as well as Grrl Geniuses. If a guy
makes the effort to tell every woman in his life that she cares about that she's
a genius... well, I always say that the one thing I want to happen as a result of
this book is that no man will ever again have to answer the question, "Do I
look fat in this?" Guys don't think you look fat in anything! They think you
look great in it, and that you'd look even better if you took it off!
RH: You'd done a lot of television writing before this. Were you
nervous about taking on a book-length project?
CM: Well, I'd done books before, but this one was much more personal.
So yeah, I completely freaked out. (laughs) But a bunch of people helped
me; I've been really fortunate to have an amazing editor, and such great
friends. I met one guy, Dannion Brinkley, a psychic who's written about his
near-death experiences...we share the same publisher and I actually met him
at my publisher's office. We were sort of having adjoining meetings and, you
know, you can think what you want about psychics, but he's an amazing guy.
He and his wife pretty much kidnapped me for the day and hauled me around
New York, encouraging me to finish the book. It was basically an all-day pep
talk, and that was what got me to the point where I could write the sensitive
portions of the book.
RH: You were going through a lot of personal upheaval while
you were writing.
CM: I was very distraught about being separated from my husband. We
were trying to keep the marriage together, but it wasn't going well, and we
ended up divorcing.
RH: It must be frustrating to try and write a book about how
you're getting your life together while your marriage is ending.
CM: It's heartbreaking, but that's part of the thing I think people like
so much about the book. Unlike a real self-help guru, I'm not saying I'm
perfect. And I'm not saying this divorce is anything for me to be proud of, or
to be ashamed of. It's what happened. So I'm a wreck--I'm still a Grrl Genius! I
don't have to wait to be perfect to love myself. I love myself every day.
RH: So being a Grrl Genius won't automatically solve all your
problems.
CM: Problems don't go away. No self-help program or shrink is going
to make your problems go away. But you can change how you relate to them,
how you get through them, and I just don't have the kind of crappy days that I
used to have anymore. When crappy things happen, I don't beat myself up. For
example, I've been travelling on this book tour, and I was supposed to have a
phone appointment with my shrink last week. I was really tired, and since I
was in New York, I was able to take a class in a yoga studio, and I completely
missed the call with my shrink. So it was the most expensive yoga class I've
ever had, but there's nothing I can do about that now, and the yoga class
helped me anyway. So I just have to say that part of my genius is sometimes I
forget things. Before, I would have beaten myself up for a week for being
stupid and disorganized. It happened, it's over; what's the point of telling
myself I'm an idiot? Nothing.
Words are really powerful. I could never do a real self-help program; I could
never stand in front of the mirror naked and say, "I'm beautiful and bountiful
and blissful!" Doing things like that left me cold; it felt stupid and it never
worked for me. To be able to say something sarcastic and over the top, like "I'm
a Grrl Genius!", actually does work for me. When you say something like that
all the time, it's amazing how your life and your attitude towards yourself
changes, and you find the courage to do all kinds of things.
RH: How long did it take you to write the book?
CM: There's two answers to that. On the one hand, the book
encompasses themes that I've been obsessed with and working on for nearly a
decade, but it was essentially written in the last three years. Of course, typical
me, eighty percent of that writing was in the last four months.
Nothing really happened to hold me back from writing. I'm always the thing
that holds me back. It's never external things, it's my insecurity, my fear of
not being good enough. That's the same thing that plagues most people,
though, and that's what this book addresses. Every day, I have to get up and
say, "Hey, I'm a genius! Get to work!"
RH: What comes next?
CM: I'm in the process of writing a sequel. This book was about what
happened when I accepted the fact that I'm a Grrl Genius, so the new book will
be about why you should be careful what you wish for--what happens when
your life radically changes because you decide to think better of yourself. I've
got some pretty good stories about that. (laughs)
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