Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper

100 Books in One Year #31: Candy Girl: A Year In the Life of An Unlikely Stripper by Diablo Cody

Cannonball Read / Brian Prisco

Book Reviews | December 8, 2008 | Comments (12)

I loved Juno. LOVED IT. I get all wet and squishy for any sort of clever, unrealistic banter wrapped shot out by pseudo-hipsters. It’s why I love Kevin Smith. When I left the theatre, I was happy. I smiled. I don’t fucking smile. I’m a bitter, angry little troll who lives under an bridge, smashing pretty things with my internet connection. I used to be loving and huggable. Now, I am a prickly pear, who fidgets in lines, swears in traffic, and is filled with the brimming hate for my fellow humanity. So when Diablo Cody wrote a happy little film about a smart mouthed preggo and it won her the Academy Award I was THRILLED.

So I enjoyed the hell out of Candy Girl, which I breezed through in basically a day. It’s essentially the book, based on the blog that got her writing screenplays, which won her awards. The language is the same, full of clever little pop-cultural asides and pithy smart ass commentary, interspliced with swear words and big words interchangeably. Hate her all you want, but Cody is a Pajiban. She’s unapologetic, dorky, and crass. And it comes across big time in her writing.

Essentially, Diablo Cody fell in love with a dude on the internet, and moved to Minnesota to be with him. She took a unsatisfying job in a cube farm for an advertising agency. As a lark, she decided to throw caution to the wind and become a stripper. And so the bio basically covers her experiences: how her boyfriend dealt with it/encouraged her, how she kept it secret from her coworkers and friends, and how she as a Second Wave feminist coped with basically being a fucksock for old scraggly dudes for a few dollars. It gives an insight into the world of stripping from an intelligent chick and an awkward dancer.

Again, it reads smart ass and with wonderful style that’s essentially fresh blogging. It’s honest, it’s mean-spirited, and it’s interesting. People want to hate on Diablo Cody, and that’s fine. But the girl’s got style. And it works for this. Most people dismiss her as just that stupid stripper cooze who suckered the Academy into giving her overly precious movie an award. What people fail to realize is, she was a normal person like us, working a shitty desk job, unsure of her life, taking crazy chances. She parlayed her weirdness through a blog into a successful screenwriting career. How the fuck do you not back that? It’s part of the whole hipsters eat their own mentality that pisses me off with the blogosphere.

Candy Girl’s a bit directionless and sort of peters out towards the end, because basically Cody came, undressed, and left. There’s no happy ending or magic lesson learned or greater truth to behold. This dorky punk chick decided to show her goods for cash, and then she wrote about it. That’s about it. But she’s got a voice, and she uses it, and I liked it quite a bit. It’s not going to change your life, but it’s a quick read.

This review is part of the Cannonball Read series. Details are here and the growing number of participants and their blogs are here.

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Comments

Thank you. Well said. If nothing else, she has a voice as a writer and knows how to wield it.

I figured someone needed to say something nice before the Anti-Cody missles started flying right at you.

Posted by: Robert at December 8, 2008 8:15 AM

Good review, even if I'm not a fan (in fact, I'm the antithesis) of Cody/Juno. It's not that pseudo hipsters and unrealistic banter are a bad thing, but combine that with every male figure in the film pretty much being emasculated and ineffectual sounding boards for how "awesome" Juno was, and you've got a very limited scope for "the Junoverse" to exist. The excuse of, "oh well men do it, why can't we?" doesn't cut it with me. Men shouldn't be doing it either, and that's why Smith/Apatow are much better with the pseudo hipster genre. They aren't pretentious about it, and (moreso in Smith's corner) they don't peg one sex with too much of the trouble. Just because it's a "chick flick" doesn't give you a free pass to pass of shit as quality product. "Atonement" managed to have the "chick flick" tropes, while at the same time being entertaining and intriguing.

Simply put, "Juno" didn't have the heart "Clerks II" had, and I'd like to see Ms. Cody knock the chip off her shoulder and really impress. (I don't intend on seeing "Jennifer's Body", so she'll have to try to win me after that. When a movie names the not so hot best friend "Needy", I know that ship has sailed.)

Still, good review Prisco. I know this book serves a purpose, but for the life of me I can't see it; nor do I want to. If anyone needs me, I'll be in my corner of the world where I pretend Ms. Cody doesn't exist, while trying not being a jerkface about it.

Posted by: Mike R. at December 8, 2008 9:17 AM

There are no unlikely strippers.

I like them all.

Posted by: bucdaddy at December 8, 2008 10:03 AM

Yeah...good review, all wet and "squishy."

Oh, and, don't forget your purse.

Posted by: BarbadoSlim at December 8, 2008 11:12 AM

I love Juno, both the movie, and the character. I wish I could find a girl like her in my high school. If only I could play Michael Cera's character in the movie.

I take it I'll like this. Plus, it'll wash out the memory of that awful Juno parody in Disaster Movie. Can I please write my hatred for these bastards in your third (sh)it list. I'll do anything, anything.

Posted by: George at December 8, 2008 11:35 AM

George,

You'll do anything, huh? Perhaps you should start by building a time machine and stopping your past self from seeing Disaster Movie. At the very least, you could stop you very recently past self from admitting that you watched that.

Posted by: pissant at December 8, 2008 2:45 PM

She's not a dork. No way. Dorks don't strip. She's really really really really really cool, in both a loveable and loathesome way.

Posted by: aejr at December 8, 2008 3:55 PM

Around Oscar time, I was ready to defend Diablo Cody from all slights because I though Juno was great and it seemed unconscionably sexist for people to rail at her simply because she had been a stripper. But then my brother forwarded me her blog. And I saw her on TV. She is one of the most god awful annoying, pretentious people on earth, who tries to hide the fact that she has no self-respect with a veneer of hipster. Blech. I hope she writes more good movies thought.

Posted by: Becks at December 8, 2008 4:12 PM

Ms. Cody did not impress me with her work. And it's not that I hate Juno because of it's hipness. I dont. The banter got old after a while but only because I had to keep explaining to my French husband what the hell they all where saying.

Seriously the movie hindged on how much I hated Cera...this young little man-star. Well, I still hate him.
Juno pissed me off because I saw no reason, whatsoever, for this Juno to stay with her impregnator. He was hardly in the film...except to strum the occasional guitar strings and stare silently in a way that most young woman find facinating. They think he's deep, he's thinking about Star Wars and Natalie Portman's midriff bearing battle gear.
And then, in the end, they strum guitars together and are oh so close...when before they could hardly speak to eachother without halting, overly emotional yet noncomittal sentances.
LAME.

Cody may be a hipster. She may have tattoos and have stripped and that's just fine. But my biggest caveat is she's only written one character that I found even a smidge endearing. That was Juno's step mother. I adored her character.

So while I probably will not read the book --because I've read BUST enough times to hear the normal-girl-to-stripper/prostitute/burlesque dancer/lesbian story played out in every facinating concievable manner ad nauseum ...I appriciate the review as a warning to stay away from it.
Cheers.

Posted by: MameV at December 8, 2008 4:57 PM

I liked Juno...it was quirky. We don't get a lot of quirky female centric things these days...most of it comes from the pseudo-hipster male perspective, which can be irksome and it all sorta sounds the same (although the boys tend to be a little heftier than the regular hipsters). I sort of like Diablo though, she has this adorable whatever sorta dorkiness...it's refreshing and real...sort of like Juno, which I really adored. Jason Bateman is hot too...again...*sigh*! At least they brought that back...Michael Cera, not so much...but he's dorky...

Posted by: ph at December 8, 2008 8:07 PM

Works like Juno and essentially anything with a bright color palette or kids walking around, unsupervised by their parents (and that's okay!), really get my goat. It brings out the idiots who can't describe the work as anything but "quirky" and "dorky."

I thought Juno was cute the first time I saw it, but that's because I kind of liked the actress and was also suffering a major headache from a night of drinking. Then I watched it sober with my boyfriend, and could not stop rolling my eyes. Teen pregnancy in a backwater town? Totally awesome! She makes a living room set on someone's front lawn whose mother hates her? That is like, sooooo independent and against like, the norm! She wears giant glasses in public and eats from a bucket of Slushie more than once a week? Then tries to hang herself with licorice rope? So rebellious and like, fun and junk!

Meh. I'll pass on this. Maybe I'll scan it if my friend buys it. (The only reason why I'm reading Twilight.)

Posted by: duckandcover at December 8, 2008 10:06 PM

I'm sorry, I liked "Juno" fine, I'm not a prude, and all I took away from this book is the that D Cody must be mentally ill. This is not the manifesto that proves sex work can be smart and feminist, this is a about a woman who moves across the country to marry a stranger who encourages her to dry hump other men for money.

Posted by: Morgan at December 8, 2008 10:20 PM

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