The New Yorker Radio Hour - Jenny Slate Gets Dressed

Episode Date: November 22, 2019

Jenny Slate is on tour for her new book “Little Weirds.” It comprises short, strange essays, many of which involve clothing and how we present ourselves to the world. While Slate was in New York, the fashion columnist Rachel Syme paid her a call at her hotel room. Together, they rifle through Slate’s suitcase and analyze what she had packed for her appearances as a début book author, and what those choices said about her. Syme finds to be Slate a kindred spirit: someone for whom getting dressed is a complex but pleasurable business. Sweater vests, top buttons buttoned, and other choices are dissected. “More and more,” Slate says, “I want to turn away from things that are designed for men—or a certain man, I should say, to be fair. ” Her authorial wardrobe, Slate says, expresses a simple credo: “I know who I am, I know what’s going on, I’m not freaked out, and I think I’m allowed to be here.” New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Hi, oh my God, we're on the radio. Hi. I'm Jenny. Hi, Rachel. Hi, Rachel. Rachel Seim writes a regular column for The New Yorker on fashion, style, and consumer culture. And recently, she went to pay a call on Jenny Slate, who was passing through town. All of the snacks are compliment. So please feel free.

Jenny Slate is an actress, comedian, author, and one of the most fashionable celebrities I know of. She thinks of clothes as performance as a form of pleasure, as a blend between play and political statement. Like me, she's a woman who feels the tension

between feminism and looking feminine. Her Netflix special and her new book, Little Weirds, both deal with that. I asked her to read a passage from her book. Hello, I changed from the white cotton nightgown with light blue embroidery on the collarbone into a very smart outfit for living in the day. A cream-colored skirt with a grid of white and pleats all the way around, an accordion of cotton. The pleaded skirt is the color of tea with lots of cream. Traditionally speaking,

it is the color of tea with too much cream and sugar in it. The skirt is the tone of a slightly warm dessert drink hiding in a cup, a secret, gentle, creamy treat for me while everyone else drinks a darker, more serious, scalding thing. Jenny is currently on tour for her book. And since clothes are so important to her, I went to her hotel to rifle through her suitcase and see how she packed. So what kinds of thoughts were you having

when you put these things in the suitcase for this tour? That really everything should try to be as navy colored as possible because that's a color that makes me feel like I'm doing better than I probably am. So Navy is a theme of this tour. Yeah, it's like there's not going to be any like raspberry, you know, like it's just, like, I need to calm down. It's very curled channing. Ravberries. Yeah, I need to calm down a lot. So. It feels very businesslike to me. It does. Yeah. That's interesting. Like, Navy to me always feels like it's the color of like flight attendants. Because it feels like you're going, yeah. I was just going to say the Navy is not a joke. It's just not a funny

color. Like I remember when Betty White came to SNL and she was the host, she would only wear Aqua. And she was like, because that's the only funny color. I was just like, what? Aqua is a really funny guy. Who has ever taken Aqua seriously? And this here is a white cotton blouse. Hold on. So the collar is always starched and I button it all the way up to the top and I like it to be tight around my neck because it makes me feel like a nice like swan or a duck or something like that. So you're a top buttoner. Mm-hmm.

I wonder what kind of person you were imagining that you would feel like on this book tour in so much as like, does it feel academic studios or more like a celebratory, like coming out party for your book? Or what was the sort of, you know, image you had in your mind that you projected as you were packing these things of yourself as an author. I know who I am. I know what's going on. Yeah.

I'm not freaked out. And I think I'm allowed to be here. It's a lot more mature than I sometimes, not that I feel immature in my mind, but sometimes I just feel, I feel like vulnerable like a child. And so I think it's important. Like when I travel, I really, really dress like a woman who, you know, knows where her checkbook is and doesn't have like a purse full of trash. a sweater vest is an item that I feel like is not often seen in the wild.

I'm really into vests right now. And I think that I might be having just like a big, big, big reaction to what quote-unquote sexy clothes are supposed to look like. Like more and more I want to turn away from things that are, I don't know, like I just feel like they're designed for men or for a certain man, I should say, to be fair. there. And I actually think it's really sexy to wear a sweater vest. It's kind of collegiate. Yeah. It's a little bit like secretarial. Yeah, I just think it's sexy to be like this is like the sweater vest itself is a beautiful object. And yeah, I think it's a sexy move to say,

I know what beauty is and I put it on myself and that entire conversation has happened with me and myself about how I want to look when I look at myself in the mirror. And I start from there. And you'll be lucky to be included in that. And when I dress, I am role playing in a way. Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I wanted to ask you a little bit more about that. Like, you know, clothes are definitely part of it. But just the sense of getting up in the morning and figuring out sort of what you're going to be. Yeah. It's a process of self-construction, right? Yeah. And I don't know.

first of all, right now I feel like I feel like I have this special out and my book and that I have been like talking about myself constantly for two weeks and now I feel like I'm like just sort of like a douche but I'm very interested in this conversation but I'm about to say something that could be douchy but it's that sometimes my eyes pop open I'm so pumped to be alive again which happens to me every morning I love waking up and then I just feel like the dreams are still echoing in my mind. There's like a lot ahead of me that I have forgotten about half of it and and I feel overwhelmed. And dressing myself is like a very, very important part of settling down. Like you just put on this lovely silk blouse over here, for example. It's really, really beautiful.

But I put that on and it's just like a, it's like a balm, but in the form of a blouse. And sometimes it's very hard for me to deal with who I am while I'm picking out the the clothes because sometimes I'm a person that deeply needs to please other people. So you're cognizant of the idea that you'll be seen? Yeah. And so it's like, okay, am I going to pick something that I'm choosing and maybe no one would ever know but because I'm begging for acceptance or am I picking something because it just makes me feel comforted and in control.

And I try to go for the second one all the time because it is, I think, a fool's errand to try to anticipate what other people are going to like about how you look. Oh, that lesson is like fairly hard one. Oh, yeah. I mean, I hardly ever learn it. Like, that's why you know every day. But I'm learning it again. But I will say that there is something about talking about fashion and the way that you

want to do it and that I want to do it with you, that it's. that it's really a question of how are we sustaining ourselves? How can we be here? And how can we remind ourselves that the details actually, the details are the things that create a better experience out of something that could have just been neutral or something that could have felt heavy as a default? Yeah, I mean, it's interesting to me

because I feel like the way that writing about or reading about or thinking deeply about fashion has been sort of sidelined into this it's not for me category. It's so funny to me because it's one of getting dressed as one of the only universals in our culture. It's like when people are like, I don't care about fashion. I'm like, well, you cared about fashion this morning

when you didn't leave your house naked. It's so funny to me when it gets sort of like put in this box that people don't want to touch. Have you ever read anything that Virginia Woolf wrote about like frock consciousness? Yes. Yes. You know, like there was a moment when basically like

dresses became buttoned down the front and the garments changed and you didn't need someone else to help you get dressed and it didn't signify whether or not you were rich or poor you know like the the bustle is gone now and so um there's this idea of of the power that you have when you get your own self dressed you know certain women always dress themselves who were like the ladies in waiting but the right you know there was a sense of you would have a dresser if you wanted to wear anything like personal finery wise right and there is a shift into buying your own personal finery and being in your own personal finery and virginia like notoriously um did a lot of writing in her head when she would go two neighborhoods over to the market to buy um stockings for herself it was her

favorite errand so she would often um she was like very invested in making trips to find things that she wanted you know yeah it was a pilgrimage for her Yeah, I'm in charge of my own finery. Yeah. Thank you, thank you. The New Yorker's Rachel Syme, speaking with Jenny Slate. Slate's comedy special, Stage Friday is on Netflix, and her new book is called Little Weirds.

I'm David Remnick, and that's our show for this week. Have a terrific Thanksgiving, and please join us next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tuneiards with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Cario, Riannon Corby, Karen Frulman, Kalalia, David Krasnow, Caroline Lester,

Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino. With help from Morgan Flannery, Alison McAdam, Mung Faye-Chem, and Emily Mann. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Turina Endowment Fund.