Leigh Stein on the rise and fall of the #GirlBoss and her new novel, Self Care

The Unspeakeasy With Meghan Daum

Meghan Daum

Society & Culture

4.7 • 855 Ratings

🗓️ 2 August 2020

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"It feels so good to feel like you're on the right side of history." In this episode of the podcast, Meghan talks with novelist Leigh Stein, whose wickedly satirical new novel Self Care sends up internet influencers and Goop-flavored millennial startup culture while also slyly poking fun at the commodification of social justice activism. Leigh discusses the feminism, capitalism, and "performative workaholism" that inspired her novel and talks about how she went from being "part of the woke mob" to embracing more nuanced discussions. Leigh Stein is the author of four books, including the novel Self Care. From 2014-2017, she ran a secret Facebook group of 40,000 women writers, in her role as cofounder and executive director of Out of the Binders/BinderCon, a feminist nonprofit organization. She's been called a "leading feminist" by the Washington Post and "poet laureate of The Bachelor" by The Cut. Self-Care has been called "highbrow brilliant" by New York Magazine's Approval Matrix and is on numerous must-read summer book lists, including those of Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Publisher's Weekly and Vulture. Visit Leigh at www.leighstein.com

Transcript

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0:00.0	Then it was time for a shower.
0:05.0	I had a mold-resistant and antimicrobial chrome shower head so I wouldn't get cancer.
0:10.0	First, I washed my hair with Christoph Robin, purifying shampoo with jujube bark extract.
0:16.0	And then, while my hair mask was soaking, I double cleansed with Kiel's midnight recovery botanical
0:22.2	cleansing oil, followed by a glycolic acid face wash by Kate Somerville.
0:27.1	On my body, I used exfoliating yoga soap, made with shay butter and marine nutrients, with an aquatic
0:32.8	bouquet of sea kelp and coconut.
0:35.3	On my vulva, I used drop of hope from lush, made with rapeseed oil and tofu.
0:41.1	Hello and welcome to The Unspeakable.
0:43.5	I'm your host, Megan Dome.
0:45.4	My guest is Lee Stein, author of the hilarious and slyly wicked satirical novel, Self-Care,
0:52.3	which you've just gotten a taste of, and which was published last month
0:55.5	by Penguin Random House.
1:00.7	Lee Stein, thank you for joining me, and congratulations on your new novel, self-care.
1:07.7	And I'm not just saying this because you're on the show.
1:10.3	In fact, it's the reason I asked
1:12.1	you to be on the show. This novel is so hilarious and so smart in so many ways. And I just
1:18.2	absolutely loved it. So congratulations. Thank you so much. Can you just start by telling us a little
1:26.6	bit about what it's about?
1:28.1	I could try to summarize it, but it's probably better that you do.
1:32.2	Sure.
1:33.4	So My NALS self-care is about female co-founders of a wellness startup called R-I-C-H-U-A-L.
	...

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