It's Terrible the Things I Have to Do to be Me: On Femininity and Fame

(Hardback)

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'Snow is witty, funny and sharp as a knife' Camilla Gudrova, author of Children of Paradise

'Snow writes with such kinetic, sensory power' Olivia Sudjic, author of Asylum Road

'An essential cultural critic' Lauren Elkin, author of Scaffolding

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How does an icon become an icon How did Anna Nicole Smith model herself on Marilyn Monroe What connects Lindsay Lohan with Elizabeth Taylor How is self-made beauty Pamela Anderson like trans bond girl Caroline 'Tula' Cossey

In a series of interconnected essays about pairs of famous women, award-nominated essayist and art critic Philippa Snow explores the echoes and connections between a constellation of female stars and lays bare the artful and gruelling demands of femininity - from the golden age of Hollywood to the Instagram era. Full of the fascinating, entertaining and lurid details you might expect from the lives of mega-famous celebrities, dissected with icicle-sharp intelligence and rendered in stylish, flamboyant prose, Philippa Snow's first full-length non-fiction work is a radically insightful book about the complex meanings and layers of femininity in a male-dominated world.

Author Bio

Philippa Snow is a writer based in Norwich. Her reviews and essays have appeared in publications including Artforum, the Los Angeles Review of Books, ArtReview, Frieze, the White Review, Vogue, the New Statesman, the TLS, and the New Republic. She was shortlisted for the 2020 Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize, and Which As You Know Means Violence was published by Repeater Books in 2022.