You're definitely going to want to check out this interview with Jill Soloway, our very first! Grace contributor Jessica Dulong spoke to Jill in New York in September.
Here's a taste:
Grace: In Tiny Ladies, you wrote that at one time you “proudly touted the idea that the strongest feminist was one who was political and who knew how to shake her ass to take men for everything they were worth.†Has your idea of feminism changed since the days when “your main hobby was Being Cute�Jill: Well, I think I’m always in some manner of ambivalence about how "cute" I want to be. The questions I had then are the same questions I have now. Just how beautiful should we try to look? How much of ourselves do we give away when we try to make ourselves beautiful? They’re questions for me every day. Take the glamour shot on the book. I had all kinds of ambivalence about how pretty I wanted to look, you know? If I look more beautiful, will more people buy the book? If I present myself without my "face" on (as women in the South call their makeup—which is such a telling way to talk about it), will that send a stronger message about the potential of women to be accepted for who they are, without their masks on?
I actually went to the photo session and said to the photographer, "Do me a favor, I want to take a roll before I get my hair and makeup done." And he was like, "Are you sure?" And I was like, "Yeah! I just want to be photographed the way I’d be photographed if I was a male author coming to be photographed." Nobody would do anything to foof me up; he would just take some pictures of me. If I was slightly braver, or a little bit more of a real feminist, I would’ve used those pictures. But when I saw the ones I ultimately ended up using I was like, "Ooooh, who’s she? I want to hear whatever she has to say."