Review: Okay Fine Whatever

Recap: Courtenay Hameister has been living in a state of anxiety and dread for years. She knows it. She’s accepted it as her way of being. And then she decides to step down from her job as a host of a popular NPR show, knowing that working on the show in a less-showy capacity will eliminate a fair amount of her stress. She’s right, but she quickly realizes in order to better handle her anxiety, she cannot only step down but also must step up and face her fears.

Courtenay Hameister begins a new mission, calling it her Okay Fine Whatever (OFW) Project, during which she must suck it up and say “okay, fine whatever” to all the things that scare her. For a year-and-a-half, she follows this mantra as she dives into a sensory-deprivation tank, goes on 28 first dates, visits a sex club, dates polyamorous men, books a session with a professional cuddler and gets high while writing with her coworkers.

For better perspective, it’s worth noting we’re not talking about a young, hot twenty-something embarking on all this but a mid-40’s woman who never had experience in any of these areas. This is exactly why these leaps of faith are much more than simply “experimentations” but they’re explorations of self-discovery and opportunities to flex her bravery muscles, which only sets her up for the next big thing in her life.

Analysis: Doused in dry humor and brave bluntness, Okay Fine Whatever may have been the exact perfect book to read in the middle of a pandemic. Though compartmentalized into little vignettes, it’s a book that forces you to step back and look at the bigger picture. It’s not about her crazy shenanigans, but about the baby steps she’s taking toward being up to the something bigger in her life. She’s doing the things she needs to do to take a massive leap at the end, and that’s more than I can say for most people.

It must be said that the concept feels a little redundant. Grey’s Anatomy writer/producer/creator Shonda Rhimes wrote the book Year of Yes a number of years ago with a similar idea: say yes to all the things that scare her. But the things Hameister embarks on versus Rhimes are completely different, as is her writing style and voice. So while similar in nature, they’re not necessarily that similar in tone.

Hamesiter is uproariously funny and weird and goes in unexpected directions. Her honesty is astounding; I know I wouldn’t feel comfortable writing half the things she wrote about, let alone doing them. Massive kudos to Hameister for letting it all hang out there.

Get it in hardcover for $14.79.

Or get it on your Kindle for $11.99.

Review: Unbearable Lightness

Recap: There’s a voice in Portia de Rossi’s head. There’s a voice telling her she’s disgusting. And fat. And lazy. Ugly. Stupid. Worthless. It’s a voice that’s been there since she was a little girl, pushing her to work harder at everything, including her job, her weight, her sexuality. It’s a voice that’s only grown louder over the years until it becomes a constant and piercing ringing in her ears.

In Unbearable Lightness, actress Portia de Rossi writes honestly about her struggles with an eating disorder, being gay and fame and success. She writes about her young modeling career, her journey from Australia to America, the pull she felt to be “pretty” and “perfect” and “straight” in order to attain success in Hollywood.

She writes about the embarrassment and crying fits while doing fittings for her first big job on “Ally McBeal” and her divorce from her husband, knowing she was in love with women in her life. She opens up about the vomiting after eating Mexican food or ice cream, the incessant cycle of binge and purge, of running up and down the stairs for an hour to eliminate the calories she’d already eaten.

Reading this book, one comes to learn Portia de Rossi was an extremely unhappy woman for a very long time, a woman living in fear, in a state of inner isolation and violence, striving for something more while only allowing herself to feel less.

Analysis: This book came recommended to me by a good friend, and though I don’t know much about Portia de Rossi or her work, I read it anyway. And I’m glad. As someone who overcame an eating disorder years ago, I identified with so many of her disordered thoughts around food. I remembered those days. But the degree to which de Rossi obsessed was on another level that seems unimaginable.

Her ability to access those thoughts directly, to state them plainly without judgement or shame is astounding. Her bluntness and honesty and beautiful, yet dark language are impressive. Not every “celebrity memoir” is necessarily well-written. This one is. She has a poetic way of describing the deranged thoughts coursing through her mind.

The book details her slow and steady declines and culminates in the moment where she needs help. It was an interesting way to end the book, rather than giving us the full rollercoaster ride of worsening and getting better. She offers an epilogue, but it’s written from the voice of so many years later that it’s hard to piece together exactly what the journey was from start to finish. And maybe that was the whole point — to NOT offer glimmers of hope amid shiny stars and rainbows, but to be REAL. And real is not always nice.

Get Unbearable Lightness in paperback now for $16.99.

Or on your Kindle for $12.99.