The Streisand Effect (*a different one)

Learning to silence my misogynist inner Gen-Xer. (With thanks and belated regrets to Babs.)

Barbra Streisand directing Jeff Bridges on the set of The Mirror Has Two Faces in 1996. Photo by David James

Back in May, I strongly identified with a post by food writer Alison Roman in which she confessed to dreading having to promote her work, and worrying if she didn’t promote it she’d fail, and no longer get to do the work she loves.¹

I thought about this Tuesday after Mark Yarm sent me a link to an interview he did with me about my career in “journalism” such as it is, and I wasted 10 minutes debating whether to just post the link on Twitter and Substack Notes and get on with my day, or wait for him to post it, after which I’d then repost. To the uninitiated it might seem as if there’s not much difference between these two choices, but to me there was a glaring one: I worried that if I posted it first, it would seem too self-promotional, too thirsty.

Eventually I realized even 10 minutes was too long to spend perseverating over something so trivial, that I had more pressing things to do, and so I went ahead and put it out there. Then I experienced what I do every single time I share my work (or anything about it) publicly: SHAME. My inner Gen-Xer admonishes me, “How dare you be ambitious, and call attention to yourself again, Lady?! [Turns out my inner Gen-Xer has some internalized misogyny to work through—more on that further down.] What’s wrong with you, presenting your work earnestly, rather than making a self-deprecating joke/apology for posting, so it seems as if you don’t actually care?” Because in Gen-X world, she who cares the least wins.

I still make the posts, but I do so while holding my nose, then putting myself through this nonsense. I do it each time I have the gall to…try to get my writing in front of people? Give the results of my hard labor some reach? As I write those words, intellectually I realize it’s foolish to even think twice about publicizing my work. But this shame is old and runs deeper than my intellect.

Some of it’s generational and gendered. Some of it’s left over from cut-throat competition and cruelty I encountered in journalism and media over the years. Some of it’s even older, left over from the tough girls in junior high and high school calling me “stuck up,” taunting me in the hallways when I had the nerve to audition for plays and musicals, again when I got parts, and yet again when I performed those parts onstage.

Good lord, I’m tired of feeling bad about trying hard and sharing what I sincerely believe is good work. I’d love to leave this nonsensical shame behind, but it’s complicated and deep-rooted. For now I’ll settle for seeing it and making sense of it.

***

Later on Tuesday, I was able to connect some dots between my shame and something I said in that interview—something having to do with the shaming of another woman that I was complicit in.

The woman was Barbra Streisand, someone whose work I’ve always admired and loved. From the time I was a kid, I had all her records and watched every one of her movies, over and over. I practically know Funny Girl, Funny Lady, What’s Up Doc, and Yentl by heart. As a teen, with my summer camp bunkmates, I listened constantly to Streisand-only mixtapes that would prompt an older boy to make me classic rock mixtapes, and try to persuade me to give up “Streisdand,” as he misspelled and mispronounced it, for Springsteen. It became the subject of funny comics I’d draw, and mail to him in the off-season.

But you wouldn’t know I was a super fan from the profile I wrote of Jeff Bridges for W Magazine in 1996, when I was on staff there. Here’s the story in a nutshell, from Tuesday’s interview:

What story of yours do you most regret?

In 1996, I interviewed Jeff Bridges for W Magazine, where I was a reporter, and I filed what I believed was a moving and fair portrait of a great actor and good person who has his priorities straight and doesn’t care about image or other bullshit. And my editors wanted something more sensational. So they made me schedule a second interview with him at a bar and not let him get any food. They literally said “liquid dinner.”

I captured him saying some really ungenerous things about Barbra Streisand, who was directing him in The Mirror Has Two Faces at the time. And my editor put those quotes in the lede. And I was mortified. And later, I saw Jeff Bridges at an event, and he took me to task. And the one good thing about that was that he did it kindly and privately, because he really is the mensch that I captured in my first draft.”

I can barely bring myself to look at that clip, let alone quote it for you here. I’m so happy it doesn’t exist online. The gist: Jeff Bridges is such an easygoing guy, he can tolerate working with overbearing control freak director/star Barbra Streisand, and leave the set smiling. Ugh. Gross. I perpetuated that horrible, misogynist double-standard that valorizes demanding, exacting male directors, but shames women directors for being that way.

Why shouldn’t Streisand be demanding and exacting when she’s directing and starring in a movie? Why shouldn’t she produce and direct properties she wants to star in? Why shouldn’t she star in a lot of movies? She’s fucking amazing! No one loses if Streisand works hard, demands that others do, and puts out her own star vehicles for people to enjoy (or not enjoy, or never watch if they prefer).

I let myself be part of the problem. When it happened, it made me so angry. I fought back, but not nearly hard enough. I was 30 years old, and didn’t have much power in my position—a position I’d fought hard to get as something of an outsider—but still, I should have fought harder.

The person I was fighting against was the very boss who would a few months later begin publicly, loudly hazing me in the newsroom, blaming me for errors much more likely made by his pet—a charming and attractive young dude who’d later publish a memoir recounting all his opiate-addled fuck-ups back then, who, despite his incompetence and dependence on a cadre of women colleagues to help him write even the shortest of assignments, would only fail upwards and upwards, thanks to the adoring editor in question.

This is the editor I had a hauntingly vivid dream about, out-of-the-blue in 2019, in which he profusely apologized to me. I was shocked, five days later, when he died after a long illness, and the obituaries started appearing. I have no firm beliefs in the supernatural or what happens around/after death, but in my mind this is what happened: That editor, after having read an advanced copy of his pet’s memoir, now knew I hadn’t been the one fucking up. On his deathbed, he had regrets for getting it wrong, and for being so verbally abusive to me that I quit. In his mind, he made amends, and somehow, through some quantum physics shit or whatever, those amends made their way to me.

***

Now I’d like to use quantum physics or whatever means might be available to me to apologize to Streisand (I guess Substack will have to do): I’m so sorry, Barbra!! Truly and deeply. I admire you so, and regret taking part in shaming you for your work ethic.

From now on, when I find myself squirming through the promotion of my work, or apologizing for how much of it I’m putting out there, I’m going to remind myself of Streisand’s boldness, doggedness, and above all, her refusal to let misogynist shame stop her from making her art, putting it out into the world, and calling attention to it.

1. I later learned Roman’s post was sponcon for the BetterHelp therapy app, but what she wrote still resonated.