"Are you the loudest woman this town has ever seen?" Or, a plea to stop telling women they need to edit

A few (okay MANY) words on why we should leave wordy women alone and encourage them to BE TOO TALL.

I want to tell you a secret. Please, come closer, lean in. Quiet please, shhhhh, she has something important to say…

I. HATE. BEING. “SHUSHED.”

Being shushed is my biggest pet peeve and has been since I was a precocious teen with a volume problem. If you’re imagining the classic Will Ferrell SNL skit, you know, the one where he cannot control the volume of his voice, then you’re 85% there. That was me in high school with a pony tail and a retainer; that is me today with a sassy bob and a little more self-awareness.

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Exhibit A. Me L-I-V-I-N-G loud and not being shushed (heart hands).

As an adult, I’ve been shushed by friends and strangers alike. I’ve been shushed in places where I would expect to be shushed like libraries, movie theaters, and speakeasies (so many speakeasies). I’ve been shushed in the moment—“you’re being too loud.” I’ve been shushed rhetorically—people who interrupt, abruptly change the subject, or are overly distracted during conversations.

I DIGRESS... The way someone shows up to a conversation can be silencing. I’m sure I’ve been guilty of this at some point, but I value quality time for this reason. I believe that a large part of creating safe spaces for your friends, family, partner, coworkers, etc., hinges on your ability to be completely present in the moment and actively listening while you’re there. Otherwise, you are “shushing” without using the “shhh” verbal cue.

My working theory as to why I’m so enraged when I’m shushed is twofold: my reverence for polite social graces and my deeply held belief that women are over-edited. Seemingly, these are contradictory, but politeness is basic kindness—I’m not overly concerned with arbitrary social etiquette. In other words: just be nice, mind your own business, and LET ME BE TOO TALL.

Exhibit B. My 2024 sartorial mood board—aptly named “BE TOO TALL.”

Social graces aside, I’m focused today on the unfortunate practice of over-editing women’s art and experiences, as prompted by a recent headline that made my vision blur red with rage: “On ‘The Tortured Poets Department,’ Taylor Swift Could Use an Editor.” Apparently click-bait headlines about overly-verbose, pathological people pleasers is like the yeast to my rising loaf of opinions—my pet peeve was activated, and I have things to say. Now pass the butter.

I’m well-versed and well-steeped in wordy women¹—they are the organic matter that helped my writing sprout into this Substack. And, Well…Actually, I adore Jane Austen’s flowery prose. I am awestruck by Virginia Woolf’s expertly rambling lines. I will happily stroll through the familiar words of Little Women or Middlemarch or Jane Eyre over and over again. Earlier this month, I waxed poetically and verbosely about Gertrude Stein as my literary godmother. I’m not just into the classic wordy women, either. I am drawn to the world-building and character depth in fantasy books written by authors like Sarah J. Maas, Deborah Harkness, Rebecca Yarros, and Jennifer L. Armentrout. A “modern” critic could categorize many of the women authors I love as “in need of an editor.” Maybe sometimes pieces get published that could have used a heavier editing pen! My intention here is not to argue against editing in general. To the contrary, I see tremendous value in editing. But, an edit should be what it should be. And, no you cannot edit the preceding sentence for me!

My definition² of “edit” is to enhance that which is already there. A true edit is not simply “cut all extraneous words” or “pare down to only the meat of the thing”—that is a short-sighted, ill-informed exercise, even for poetry. I’m not a Serious Poet by any measure, but as an amateur poetry appreciator, I say this with confidence. An edit should be a curated process, and an understanding of the intent and message of the underlying art. Sometimes less is more, but sometimes it’s not, despite what Hemingway bros would want you to believe. The devil is in the details, and I want full, visceral, colorful, wild descriptors of the guy—horns, flames, and all.

Back to the Times article. I didn’t merely huff and puff and scroll away. I forced myself to read the article to confirm it wasn’t titled this way simply for the aforementioned click-bait purposes. Much to my personal satisfaction (and simultaneous dismay): I was right to be outraged. The article was true emotional warfare to my demographic of women—the humanities-loving, book-club-going, wine-drinking, Jane-Austen-and-SJM-reading, Swiftie Millennial:

“As the album goes on, Swift’s lyricism starts to feel unrestrained, imprecise and unnecessarily verbose. Breathless lines overflow and lead their melodies down circuitous paths.”

The article does not go on to acknowledge that her fans luxuriated in the unrestrained, imprecise and unnecessarily verbose lyrics. Instead, the article further condescends to explain poetry as a concept [insert your own flummoxed dismay here]:

“But poetry is not a marketing strategy or even an aesthetic — it’s a whole way of looking at the world and its language, turning them both upside down in search of new meanings and possibilities. It is also an art form in which, quite often and counter to the governing principle of Swift’s current empire, less is more.

Sylvia Plath once called poetry “a tyrannical discipline,” because the poet must “go so far and so fast in such a small space; you’ve got to burn away all the peripherals.” Great poets know how to condense, or at least how to edit. The sharpest moments of “The Tortured Poets Department” would be even more piercing in the absence of excess, but instead the clutter lingers, while Swift holds an unlit match.”

While Swift holds an UNLIT match???? I let out an exasperated sigh as I continue to pontificate here, sparing you a fiery rant about how this is categorically false. What I will say is that I don’t begrudge anyone for an opinion. I may disagree with that opinion and want to present a ten-point bulleted list as to why that person should change their opinion. But, and I mean this truly, if someone has listened to a good cross-section of Taylor Swift’s discography and still doesn’t like her—that’s not my hill to die on. I don’t believe that everything worth liking in this world should be liked by everyone. I try not to “yuck” anyone’s “yum.”

This article, though, feels like more than “just an opinion,” because it’s based on an assumption that Taylor Swift is a self-proclaimed “Tortured Poet”, which is completely missing the point. It feels like a trend in and of itself to yuck a Swiftie’s yum, especially using one of Swift’s admittedly important influences (Sylvia Plath) against her. It’s also criticism based on the assumption that poetry has to look or sound a specific way. But why? Isn’t art and beauty to a certain degree in the eye of the beholder—and aren’t there billions of eyes on Swift’s discography and re-records saying THIS IS BEAUTIFUL ART. Why does her poetry have to fall in line when it’s obvious she is making art that people (including myself) are ravenous to consume? Also, did Sylvia Plath perform her poetry in stadiums around the world, with 40+ costume changes, intricate set designs, and three hour run time? This is a different beast entirely. I’m not diminishing Sylvia Plath’s work; I’m merely making the argument that Swift’s work is more than just the words or poetry—it’s that and autobiographical performance art.

Taylor Swift herself has said that she writes “wordy” songs. This album is full of rage, irony, and satire and the nuance of all three. The operative word here is nuance, and nuance doesn’t always mean highly edited or curated word choice. Sometime in order to adequately explore the nuance, it requires us to meander. Sometimes a certain amount of circumlocution drives the point home better than just saying the thing. Sometimes that very thing we’re exploring needs theater! It needs verbosity! The very nature of the thing demands the adequate vocabulary to properly do it justice!

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This isn’t just about Taylor Swift, either. Are you ready for a Jane Austen example? You knew it was coming! Luckily for us, I just finished an annual reread of Pride & Prejudice, so I am PREPARED for this task.³ A passage that gets me every time is the scene where Mr. Darcy first proposes to Lizzie. Her response is passionate and emotional, of course, but it’s also exceptionally verbose and—dare I say—wordy.

“From the very beginning—from the first moment, I may almost say—of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form the groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.”

I will resist the urge to close read this for us today, but I will point to one phrase in particular which I think really drives my thesis home: such as to form the groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike. Sick burn, bro. And what a point she is making! Lizzie could have simply said “pardon me sir, but I decline because I dislike you”—clean, simple, and satisfies the edit-loving critical standard. Maybe to the critics a more poetic choice would have been for her to say less.

Instead, Austen paints a picture with many colors and layers—from the first moment, selfish disdain, the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed upon to marry. The reader has already seen each of these sides of Darcy by this point in the novel—should she have edited out the prose that obfuscates the message? Hell no! If we did, the effect would have fallen flat, and frankly would have been out of character for Lizzie. Austen’s language is not plain because the character is not plain; her syntax is not streamlined because the character’s thoughts are layered; her punctuation is not pared down because the character is flustered and emotional.

Exhibit C. More EFFERVESCENT STORIES from LOUD WOMEN; less SHUSHING.

Human nature is messy. Art helps us understand, sort, and process the mess. It helps us know we are not alone, and our feelings and emotions are both unique and ubiquitous. This is why we love Austen. This is why we love Swift. In one of her acoustic sets during The Eras Tour, Swifts said:

That’s my process, right? I go through something in life. I feel extreme feelings about it. I think I might be the only person to have felt that way. I write a song about it, it goes out into the world, you shout the lyrics back at my face — I don’t feel alone anymore.

The Times article missed this point—that working through the big feelings in a verbose way is exactly why artists like Taylor Swift strike a deep chord with fans. The lack of “editing” is how she communicates the feelings around the smallest man who ever lived, or the alchemy of her new relationship, or the intensity of feeling guilty as sin in a situationship, or the shame around being dubbed the bolter, or the lack of control over how her story, her manuscript is received. Like, come on! This is the point!! And, to be perfectly clear, I don’t think I actually agree that she didn’t have an editor—I just think her intended version was edited in the way she wanted to communicate the emotions and that is the version we got.

Taylor Swift’s entire existence is a curated version of herself. In other words, her self and her image are already edited—so we want art that is also edited? We want to strip the rest of the humanity from her persona? For the sake of art? I am constantly baffled that we are still here requiring women to be “perfect” or “put together” or “edited” in the way critics or society dictates.

The antidote, perhaps, is an extension of my earlier post about taking the female gaze a step further from its sartorial intent—inhabiting our inner strange feathered lady. At the very least, let’s stop assuming wordy women lack editing, foresight, or some sort of required restraint to make what they have to say worthwhile art. And, for the love of Elizabeth Bennett, please stop shushing the loudest woman this town has ever seen.

Postscript

For those feeling extra nerdy, I needed a competing definition of “poetry” to center myself. Here’s what renowned English essayist William Hazlitt had to say about poetry in his lecture “On Poetry in General” in 1818. I’ve bolded the bit that resonated with me when writing this missive.

Poetry is the language of the imagination and the passions. It relates to whatever gives immediate pleasure or pain to the human mind. […] Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for any thing else. It is not a mere frivolous accomplishment, (as some persons have been led to imagine) the trifling amusement of a few idle readers or leisure hours—it has been the study and delight of mankind in all ages. Many people suppose that poetry is something to be found only in books, contained in lines of ten syllables, with like endings: but wherever there is a sense of beauty, or power, or harmony, as in the motion of a wave of the sea, in the growth of a flower that ‘spreads its sweet leaves to the air, and dedicates its beauty to the sun,’—there is poetry, in its birth. If history is a grave study, poetry may be said to be a graver: its materials lie deeper, and are spread wider.

1. Quick reminder that I am a bona fide English lit nerd—I have a bachelor’s degree in literature, I wrote my honors thesis on 18^th century English literature (specifically on women authors of the time), and my favorite class in undergrad was a senior seminar on Virginia Woolf where we read her entire catalog. 

2. Merriam-Webster’s definition of “edit” is:

1a: to prepare (something, such as literary material) for publication or public presentation

b: to assemble (something, such as a moving picture or tape recording) by cutting and rearranging

c: to alter, adapt, or refine especially to bring about conformity to a standard or to suit a particular purpose

3. If you’ve never listened to the book on audio, I highly encourage you to do so. There’s something about hearing Mrs. Bennett’s high-strung affectations read aloud that really lifts the spirits. Trust me on this. I rent the Duke Classic version from the library.

Also, here are some other passages I love:

“You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.” (Mr. Darcy to Lizzie, spoiler alert!)

“An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.” (Lizzie’s father to Lizzie)