silly girls
This Week in Reading
The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy
The Dud Avocado follows the adventures of Sally Jay Gorce, an American abroad, as she traipses across Europe. There is no way to describe the plot except as a romp—nothing too consequential ever really happens: Sally Jay goes to the beach, Sally Jay acts in a play, Sally Jay sleeps with an Italian diplomat, Sally Jay loses her passport. She is warm and bright and vivacious and nothing she does seems to matter too much. In short, she is a silly girl.
What makes a silly girl? Is it the fact that people don’t take her seriously, or, is it the fact that she doesn’t take herself seriously? The silly girl is not necessarily dumb-- in fact she is often highly educated and witty. She is bold, but never described as brave. She lives exclusively in the present tense, but no one thinks she is mindful. Silly girls are liked but not respected— they giggle and sunbathe and slosh their champagne flute all over the host, but she’s so sorry, and really the host doesn’t mind in the slightest, its perfectly alright, don’t feel bad.
There is a perceived careless to the silly girl; she falls sideways through her life, tripping and smiling, all shrugs and sunny apologies. Her actions seemed unplanned, unconsidered. Things just happen to her. And with this perceived carelessness comes a perceived resilience. If a person is so frivolous and casual and off hand, surely, nothing can cut too deep. A pink rubber ball of a girl that can be tossed around, and always bounces back fresh and new as ever. If she is so careless, we assume that she must not care, and if she does not care, well, it really doesn’t matter how we treat her.
Am I a silly girl? I do not think so. Though I am indeed ridiculous, I take my ridiculousness too seriously to truly be silly. My intentions are not gentle enough, I am too demanding. I am far too aware to embody the breezy good cheer that comes so readily to them.
The silly girl is Sally Jay Gorce, is Eve Babitz, is Frenchy from Grease, is Caroline Calloway. The silly girl is the ancestor to today's basic bitch. The silly girl is often blonde but the silly girl is not Marilyn Monroe, whose inner darkness was always glimmering beneath the surface. The silly girl has no inner darkness, or at least not any we are willing to acknowledge. Like the basic bitch, the silly girl is a concept rooted in sexism, stemming from the belief that femininity is inherently foolish and those that partake in the trappings of it are foolish in extension.
Though the concept of the silly girl is dependent on girlishness and sweetness, the silly girl is not necessarily innocent. She’ll hop into bed readily enough, but she lacks the power and sophistication of a femme fatale. She is well intentioned, if she has intentions at all. We conflate harmlessness with an inability to be harmed. The internet called Caroline Calloway a scammer and she was baffled, because she has been a silly girl her whole life. How can she be a con artist if no one has ever believed she had agency? How can she be a scammer if she has told her entire life narrative with herself as the object, not the subject?
I have met silly girls, liked them, befriended them. I have loved silly girls without ever respecting them. I have loved them without taking them seriously. Shame on me! It is the most unkind thing you can do—to not take someone seriously. To presume that their inner world is not worthy of exploration, or doesn’t exist at all. To write someone off as simply surface, and furthermore, to decide that surface cannot ever be compelling in its own right. The silly girl is easy to fall in love with but difficult to love. We think that things just happen to silly girls, and by extension, we think that silly girls just happen to us. What is a silly girl? A silly girl is just a woman whose agency we refuse to recognize. We interact with them the way we would interact with a chair.
We are given the attention and respect that we demand, and silly girls make no demands. She needs nothing, ask for nothing, except for perhaps a glass of white wine and a kiss in an elevator. We think only seriousness deserves to be taken seriously. Maybe the silly girl moves through the world so easily because she is actually more at ease in her life than the rest of us, makes no demands because she needs so little. And in turn—we have condemned her breezy confidence as shallowness.
Futher Reading:
As previously discussed, I don’t read Old Books, and written in 1958, this book was honestly Too Old for me to truly enjoy. It felt similar in tone to Eve Babitz, the original silly girl, so if you liked this one, I’d recommend Black Swans or Eve’s Hollywood, both by Eve Babitz.