Tiger Beatdown blogger Sady Doyle's Trainwreck takes a close look at the women whose lives have been derailed to the shock and delight of the watching public. Beginning with Mary Wollstonecraft--known today as the author of the groundbreaking A Vindication of the Rights of Woman but recognized in her own time mostly as the suicidal mother of an illegitimate child--and working through history up to the much more recent rise (and subsequent fall) of Britney Spears, Doyle delivers an exploration of "the women we love to hate, mock, fear... and why."
Trainwreck covers the narratives of woman who are defined by "their sins and errors: Insensitive, provocative, promiscuous, off-the-wagon, crazy." Wollstonecraft and Spears sit side by side with Amy Winehouse and Sylvia Plath, Miley Cyrus and Marilyn Monroe, Paris Hilton and Princess Di, Charlotte Brontë and Billie Holliday. Unlike the stories that have followed these women throughout history, Doyle recounts their tales not to reveal, shame or judge, but to understand why we have done so. By examining the sins, options and roles, Doyle comes to posit that the trainwreck, ultimately, acts as a social symbol: she is what happens when women are too visible, too loud, too stubborn to adhere to the female virtues of the day.
Trainwreck is part history, part analysis and part encouragement; Doyle urges readers to make the future better than the past has been. "We can drown in it, the judgment and hatred we have for each other. We can tank women's lives, hold them under until they shut up or stop breathing. Or we can let it wash away." --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm