Ballet flats, bangs & things that are back
Including sexy -- find out who's making can lit more sexy than sorry
I did two things this month that I thought I’d never do again. Things I thought I’d never be able to do again. I bought ballet flats and got bangs. Two things that, for me, go together like pumpkin and pie.
I had bangs for much of my childhood after my mom inflicted a mushroom cut on in me in pre-school. My high school sweetheart once cut a well-intentioned but poorly portioned blunt fringe for me. I discovered ‘breakup bangs’ and my long lost spine around the same time as the Olympics came to town. I had my coolest cool-girl bangs when I spent Christmas gallivanting around the former Austro-Hungarian Empire after university.
My last pair of ballet flats died around the same time as I froze my teeth off in Czechia. The soles peeled away from the toe caps in surrender to — or perhaps in protest of — the extreme working conditions I put them through. I wore them to their death, through the rain, shine, and more rain of Vancouver, long past they were fashionable in any sense.
I also had ill-advised bleach blonde bangs the day I found my first and most favourite pair of ballet flats dangling from a spigot in Le Chateau (rest in peace, forever home of all muy high school dance dresses). Two weeks later, I wore them to scale the roof of my old school’s gymnasium on a visit home, pretending they were less restrictive Scarpas as I perched on door hinges while my cousins hauled me up by the arms.
Like my school climbing and bleach blonde days, I thought ballet flats were long behind me. And yet, here we are. Loafers and quilted flats line every mall shoe store window, and I am wearing them and wondering if my feet were stronger then or did they just always pinch? Were they always ill-fitting and chafing? Or am I just weaker? Can I reclaim the kind of fortitude that permitted me to neglect arch support and weather warnings? Can we ever reclaim the kind of imperviousness that let us stand in lines on Water Street in the winter without a real jacket?
So, just know that I am sitting here writing to you with some brand new hot spots on my heels and the kind of bangs that would make 2008 tumbler proud. I ask you, what are you bringing back? And what are you happy to leave behind?
Bringing sexy back (to can lit)
This weekend, someone I had just met asked me what I was working on.
“I’ve got two drafts on the go,” I said. “One is a kind of classic sad can lit thing.”
He let out a full body sigh, his shoulders slumped and he looked at me so earnestly and sadly and said, “Really?”
He was so disappointed in me and he didn’t even know me.
“I know,” I said. “But the other one is about a young woman who gets swept up into a crazy scheme [I shared more descriptors I’m not putting in writing yet]. I’m calling it: [REDACTED].”
He guffawed and said he couldn’t wait to read it.
I laughed about this several times on my way home - the silliness of his sadness. Like he really meant, ‘please, dear God, not another national identity/sad/oppressive climate multi-generational immigration trauma story.’
Unfortunately for the world, I’m still very much working on that story, because it does feel true and good and like something I will one day either regret profoundly or be immensely proud of (and I don’t like doing things in half measures.) But the encounter did affirm for me that even the most erudite of people, those who translate Latin poetry and write profound literary critiques, are far more interested in going for a romp between the book covers.
The Canadian literary scene does not need another book like my sad white-lady can lit story. Instead, it craves the wild over the mild — books like Good Girl, Happy Hour, and Big Shadow. We want smart and sexy, and thankfully, publishers like Flying Books and Book*hug Press are out here, doing the lord’s work, and publishing books that make us snort and shield the page from view without fully transitioning into the category of smut.
Anna Fitzpatricks’ 2023 surprising and very-sexy novel Good Girl is comprised of a collection of BDSM sex scenes and attempts at survival as a young woman in the messy media landscape of 2015. As Lucy seeks a special sort of relationship, she makes the kinds of decisions you can only make at 25, engaging with the various men we roll our eyes at (ranging from the Burning Man ethically non-monogamous men on the internet and the ethically-questionable men with power), all while investigating the history of a '70s teen mag she finds in the book store she works in.
Anyone else who was making questionable yet personality-affirming choices at age 25 in 2015 will alternate between bubbling laughter, recognition, and a special type of shame. ‘Remember when we were young and broke and rich only in floundering relationships with ourselves and others? Weren’t we so pure then?’
Further down the nostalgia train line, set in the time before cell phones, internet access, and notably ‘helicopter parenting,’ Marta Balcewicz’s even-younger protagonist Judy is forced to visit libraries and sneak into seminars to chase the has-been punk rocker she strikes up a problematic friendship with in Big Shadow, all while documenting cloud shapes, waiting for the culty-cloud to take her, her cousin, and his friend away from all that is mundane and underwhelming in suburgatory. While less overtly sexy than Good Girl, Big Shadow dances the line between coming of age and disillusionment in a way that is simultaneously snarky, sexy, and innocent.
And while there are undoubtedly many more sexy books that Canadians have published in recent years, the singular story that captures the vibe so completely could only be Happy Hour, and in turn, the author/filmmaker/globe-trotting party girl, Marlowe Granados. We should be so lucky to claim such an irreverent and illustrious woman in our country and our literary scene. [note: you should subscribe to her substack]
True to voice in a way that few can be, and fewer still are rewarded or acknowledged for, Granados’ debut novel is a rollicking ode to the party girl. Perpetually skint but always stylish, pals Isa and Gala survive a summer in New York without work permits but with plenty of clothes to sell at flea markets. As they navigate the audacity and conceit of the social scene, where their charm, wit, and beauty never seem to be enough to transcend their class, you’ll wonder why shouldn’t a girl just have a good time?
While covering the spectrum of sexiness from sly, sultry Mamma Mia style ellipses, to kisses that mean both everything and nothing, to opening pages with BDSM scenes, these three books all share the same wry, acerbic wit that invites you in on the joke. Because while there is undoubtedly sex on the page, there is also an undeniable humour present in this wave of sexy can lit. It’s not the kind of humour that would appeal to Terry Fallis fans or win a Leacock anytime soon, but it’s the kind of humour I think we crave.
Why must can lit be so heavy, so dreary, so all-consumed with nation-defining? Why are Leacock winners so chock full of punchlines as bland as our parliament and riddled with Vinyl Cafe stories? What if we could one day be defined as a nation of sly, sexy, hilarious story-tellers?
This is admittedly very rich criticism of the Canadian literary landscape coming from someone who is working on a book whose central storyline has probably appeared on the can lit premise generator, but a girl can dream, can’t she?
(You can purchase these books directly from the publishers: Good Girl, Big Shadow, Happy Hour)
And now I must return to working on [REDACTED], my attempt to not be a part of the problem. Do you know someone sexy who appreciates sexy Canadiana? Why not share:
Goodbye from me, my bangs, and my bandaged feet.