An Interview with Jia Tolentino
By Aalia Thomas, Pomona '21
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A staff writer at The New Yorker, Jia Tolentino is among the most prominent essayists of today. Her work casts a critical eye on popular culture—from TikTok to incels—in addition to art, politics, and her own personal experience. She published her first book, a collection of essays titled Trick Mirror, in August 2019. This interview was conducted in collaboration with the Scripps College Journal (SCJ). |
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SCJ: In your new book you talk about how you have to be a narcissist to be a writer. Do you need self-delusion to do anything that matters?
I don’t exactly think that’s true. I definitely don’t think you have to be a narcissist to be a person, or to do anything that matters. I mean, I actually think that being a narcissist is at odds with doing a lot of things that really matter. But I do think that self-delusion is, to some degree, natural and helpful. Even just to operate in the world right now without thinking about climate change every second of the day, a bit of a delusion but it’s necessary.
You write about such a wide range of topics, like reporting on the Weinstein trial but also talking about Cats and how it fits into our current cultural moment. Do you feel there’s some sort of common thread in what catches your eye?
Anything that provokes a really strong reaction. To me, if I would make my friend talk to me about it at dinner, then it’s worth writing about. It’s pretty simple, you know. And I feel lucky to be able to write about such different things. If I’m thinking about it in my off time, if I’m thinking about it after hours, then why not, right? And if it’s something like Weinstein, something like Cats, you know. I’ve had plenty a conversation about it in real life and that to me is the only marker.
Do you feel like you’ve had to work to get to a point in your career where you have that level of freedom?
I mean, I wrote for free for forever, I wrote for almost free for forever—but then when you’re writing for free on your own blog you can write about whatever you want. So in a way it took a long time for me to get paid to do it. The kind of great thing about the Internet is anyone can write about whatever they want. But it doesn’t mean that anyone’s gonna read it, so over time I just figured out how to do it in a way that felt kind of clear enough that it was worth talking about. I still kind of feel like I’m blogging. I still like the title “blogger,” you know? Bloggers get a bad rap, but blogging’s really fun.
SCJ: Is there anything trending right now that’s on your mind in general?
Oh my God, of course. Honestly, all I can think about right now is the primary, you know, I mean I think it’s like that for a lot of us. There are always lots of things on my mind, but I rarely—I don’t have opinions on a lot of things. It’s like the things I do have strong opinions on, I always write about them, and otherwise...
If your job requires you to come to some form of articulation about things, I’m really wary of getting sort of pundit-disease and forming conclusions on lots of shit when in reality my opinion doesn’t matter at all. And so I try to let my brain kind of float. I try not to think too quickly, because I think that is a pitfall of being a writer on the Internet, is that you can sort of be like “what’s my take?” And I think often it is better to have none. So I try to guard against that aspect of my job.
SCJ: You’re an essayist and a reporter, which seem like two things that you maybe have to reconcile somehow.
I actually think that essay-writing tends to—I mean traditionally people think of that as the more opinionated form, I think. In reporting traditionally, you're not supposed to show you have an opinion, but at The New Yorker it’s different because it’s not a newspaper. The things that I report there, I can show that I have an opinion, which I’m very grateful for because I’m not the kind of writer that couldn’t. I don't have the skill to conceal my point of view and I actually find it kind of dishonest when people pretend to have total objectivity, because it’s not real.
Speaking of opinion, there was a New York Times review that talked about your ambivalence being characteristic of millennial life-writing. Do you think ambivalence is a product of our time and that's why it plays a role in your writing?
I don’t know. I feel like it’s pretty audacious to say that this era invented ambivalence, but I do think that the one thing I end up writing about over and over is voluntary participation in destructive systems. Which again is not particular to our time, I’m sure all throughout at the very least the 20th century people have been saying that, but I do think there’s a certain way in which that’s become a dominant chord of this era. Nothing’s ever new, it’s just always exaggerated in certain ways, you know?
As individuals, it’s hard to disentangle from thought processes like “wearing makeup is empowering,” whether or not we recognize that such choices make us complicit in an unjust system. So how do we reconcile those individual choices with the good of the greater collective?
I mean, everyone’s answer is different, right? This is a question I got asked a lot, it’s like, what are we supposed to do when self-improvement is contained within capitalist patriarchal ideology, and yet self-improvement is undeniably attractive. Taking care of yourself is genuinely attractive for some really legitimate reasons. And the answer is, I mean, the mistake would be to spend all day thinking about it. I think one of the reasons I wrote that article and other things I’ve written on the subject, it’s just like untangling the situation so that I don’t get lost in thought it it anymore and can turn my attention elsewhere. I’d rather just be very clear about the incentives that are at work on me so that maybe I can act a little bit more freely and more clearly. Whatever I choose to do vis-a-vis my own makeup doesn’t fucking matter, you know what I mean? Like I think what’s more interesting is understanding the systems that are at work.
SCJ: On that question, you’ve spoken about feminism before as sort of an individualist distortion nowadays of what you think should be more about studying systems of power and so on. What can you say to women here about feminism and the framework of solidarity we should have as an alternative to the GirlBoss myth?
I probably wouldn’t be saying anything that people don’t already know here. I mean, feminism is about collective good and not individual success. And I think most people know that, and I think that the GirlBoss wave has crested, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that that is empty. I think that with everything you see happening politically right now, you can just see people getting sick of that marketing language—it’s been going on for a long time, you know, since Dove Real Beauty it’s been the dominant paradigm of this quasi-feminist advertising. The alternatives are clear, and they’re clearly better.
I don’t exactly think that’s true. I definitely don’t think you have to be a narcissist to be a person, or to do anything that matters. I mean, I actually think that being a narcissist is at odds with doing a lot of things that really matter. But I do think that self-delusion is, to some degree, natural and helpful. Even just to operate in the world right now without thinking about climate change every second of the day, a bit of a delusion but it’s necessary.
You write about such a wide range of topics, like reporting on the Weinstein trial but also talking about Cats and how it fits into our current cultural moment. Do you feel there’s some sort of common thread in what catches your eye?
Anything that provokes a really strong reaction. To me, if I would make my friend talk to me about it at dinner, then it’s worth writing about. It’s pretty simple, you know. And I feel lucky to be able to write about such different things. If I’m thinking about it in my off time, if I’m thinking about it after hours, then why not, right? And if it’s something like Weinstein, something like Cats, you know. I’ve had plenty a conversation about it in real life and that to me is the only marker.
Do you feel like you’ve had to work to get to a point in your career where you have that level of freedom?
I mean, I wrote for free for forever, I wrote for almost free for forever—but then when you’re writing for free on your own blog you can write about whatever you want. So in a way it took a long time for me to get paid to do it. The kind of great thing about the Internet is anyone can write about whatever they want. But it doesn’t mean that anyone’s gonna read it, so over time I just figured out how to do it in a way that felt kind of clear enough that it was worth talking about. I still kind of feel like I’m blogging. I still like the title “blogger,” you know? Bloggers get a bad rap, but blogging’s really fun.
SCJ: Is there anything trending right now that’s on your mind in general?
Oh my God, of course. Honestly, all I can think about right now is the primary, you know, I mean I think it’s like that for a lot of us. There are always lots of things on my mind, but I rarely—I don’t have opinions on a lot of things. It’s like the things I do have strong opinions on, I always write about them, and otherwise...
If your job requires you to come to some form of articulation about things, I’m really wary of getting sort of pundit-disease and forming conclusions on lots of shit when in reality my opinion doesn’t matter at all. And so I try to let my brain kind of float. I try not to think too quickly, because I think that is a pitfall of being a writer on the Internet, is that you can sort of be like “what’s my take?” And I think often it is better to have none. So I try to guard against that aspect of my job.
SCJ: You’re an essayist and a reporter, which seem like two things that you maybe have to reconcile somehow.
I actually think that essay-writing tends to—I mean traditionally people think of that as the more opinionated form, I think. In reporting traditionally, you're not supposed to show you have an opinion, but at The New Yorker it’s different because it’s not a newspaper. The things that I report there, I can show that I have an opinion, which I’m very grateful for because I’m not the kind of writer that couldn’t. I don't have the skill to conceal my point of view and I actually find it kind of dishonest when people pretend to have total objectivity, because it’s not real.
Speaking of opinion, there was a New York Times review that talked about your ambivalence being characteristic of millennial life-writing. Do you think ambivalence is a product of our time and that's why it plays a role in your writing?
I don’t know. I feel like it’s pretty audacious to say that this era invented ambivalence, but I do think that the one thing I end up writing about over and over is voluntary participation in destructive systems. Which again is not particular to our time, I’m sure all throughout at the very least the 20th century people have been saying that, but I do think there’s a certain way in which that’s become a dominant chord of this era. Nothing’s ever new, it’s just always exaggerated in certain ways, you know?
As individuals, it’s hard to disentangle from thought processes like “wearing makeup is empowering,” whether or not we recognize that such choices make us complicit in an unjust system. So how do we reconcile those individual choices with the good of the greater collective?
I mean, everyone’s answer is different, right? This is a question I got asked a lot, it’s like, what are we supposed to do when self-improvement is contained within capitalist patriarchal ideology, and yet self-improvement is undeniably attractive. Taking care of yourself is genuinely attractive for some really legitimate reasons. And the answer is, I mean, the mistake would be to spend all day thinking about it. I think one of the reasons I wrote that article and other things I’ve written on the subject, it’s just like untangling the situation so that I don’t get lost in thought it it anymore and can turn my attention elsewhere. I’d rather just be very clear about the incentives that are at work on me so that maybe I can act a little bit more freely and more clearly. Whatever I choose to do vis-a-vis my own makeup doesn’t fucking matter, you know what I mean? Like I think what’s more interesting is understanding the systems that are at work.
SCJ: On that question, you’ve spoken about feminism before as sort of an individualist distortion nowadays of what you think should be more about studying systems of power and so on. What can you say to women here about feminism and the framework of solidarity we should have as an alternative to the GirlBoss myth?
I probably wouldn’t be saying anything that people don’t already know here. I mean, feminism is about collective good and not individual success. And I think most people know that, and I think that the GirlBoss wave has crested, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that that is empty. I think that with everything you see happening politically right now, you can just see people getting sick of that marketing language—it’s been going on for a long time, you know, since Dove Real Beauty it’s been the dominant paradigm of this quasi-feminist advertising. The alternatives are clear, and they’re clearly better.