The T Lo BOOK

Posted on September 04, 2012

You heard us. Book.

 

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We’re trying to act all cool and shit but ohmigod, you guys, there’s going to be a T Lo BOOK! Granted, we’ve been teasing you with the news for about a year now, but we got the go-ahead from on high and now we can finally pass all the news off to you, our precious unborn fawns.

Right from the get-go, when the idea of a T Lo book was first taking form, we knew that we didn’t want to simply duplicate our blog content. For one, very little of it translates well to book form and for another, why would anyone buy a book when you can get the content for free on the internet? No, kittens. We were going to have to find a way to keep the T Lo voice of loving bitchiness intact while finding something else to talk about besides red carpets and reality television. What better intersection of all the topics that get us fired up and opinionatin’ than the delusional world of the celebrity, darlings?

You see, we’ve always seen ourselves somewhat as “educated outsiders” to the world of celebrity. Unlike a lot of bloggers and media types, we have no desire to be famous ourselves or even to be a friend to the famous. In other words, we’ve never actually wanted to be on a red carpet because we find it much more fun to stand on the sidelines and crack wise about it. And because we’ve been standing on that sideline and cracking wise about celebrities for the last 6 years, we’ve built up quite the reservoir of information and opinions on them. You spend every day reading endless press releases from publicists and silly little “As a mother, a person, and an entertainer”-style self-aggrandizing interviews, and over time, you can’t help but form some opinions.

Well. WE can’t help it. We can’t speak for you.

Anyway, many, many years ago, in the earliest days of this blog, we briefly wrote a semi-tongue-in-cheek advice column. It was one of those things where we were struggling to find our way as bloggers and trying out anything once to see if it worked. For various reasons, we abandoned the idea after a few tries, but one thing always stuck with us and it’s been a cornerstone of our writing on the topic of red carpet fashion ever since. An early bitter kitten, before we’d even coined the term “bitter kitten,” wrote to us asking for style advice and described her physical self in less-than-flattering terms. As we said, this was early days for us and unlike today, where we are pretty much forced to ignore the many requests for style advice that float into our inbox every day, we gave this one a shot. Except we didn’t give our kitten much in the way of style advice at all. What we gave her was what we thought she needed more: blinding, nuclear-level self-esteem.

“Since you’re comparing yourself to the ridiculous celebrity images you’re getting bombarded with every day, why not take a page from their book? Why not be your own publicist, darling? Every day, before you leave the house, look in the mirror and tell yourself, ‘Everyone wants to be me or do me.

Delusional self-confidence, darling! Just like the stars!”

Last we heard, she was seen strutting.

But we felt bad. Our hobby-turned-career had us firmly entrenched as another cog in the massive celebrity ego-inflating machine and we couldn’t help thinking how it was affecting the many kittens out there, mistakenly thinking that life somehow gave them the short end of the stick when all they really needed was their own inner publicist to constantly tell them how fabulous they are.

What if we wrote something about all the ways in which celebrities essentially bullshit themselves and everyone around them into thinking they’re special? What if we looked – really looked – at all the things they do to get famous, stay famous, and hold on to that fame at any cost when it starts slipping away? What if we wrote something to help all those people out there in the dark realize that they are no different from celebrities and that all people are beautifully shaped, no matter what the fashion and gossip magazines tell them; that everyone is exactly who they need to be; that we’re all starring in our own movie; and that life is all about resisting the impulse to believe the world when it tries to tell you who you are?

Okay, what if we skipped that last part and just made fun of celebrities a lot?

Drumroll for the title, please…

 

Everyone Wants to Be Me or Do Me

A Fabulous & Opinionated Take on the Celebrity Lifecycle

 

First chapter’s called “Working on Your Craft,” last chapter’s called “Lifetime Achievement Award,” and the whole thing is about taking a funny and satirical look at the celebrity life-cycle from obscurity to infamy, with chapters along the way devoted to the casting couch, the red carpet, awards season, the epic breakup, acquiring children, the public meltdown, and all the many ridiculous tropes that play out over and over again every time anyone pays these silly people the slightest bit of attention. And while we’d never even dream of writing a self-help book (hence, the reason why we dropped the idea of an advice column), it’s full of the kind of takeaways that tend to show up over and over again in our writing. If there’s advice, it’s of the “Chin up; tits out, honey” variety. It’s really, for us, about being entertaining. We never worked so hard to pack in so many jokes in one piece of writing. We NEVER say this about anything we’ve ever written, but… it makes us laugh. It really does. And we hope it’ll make you guys laugh too.

ALSO! Illustrations will be provided by T Lo friend and favorite, Alex Cox, who did all those hilarious Project Runway toons for us, as well as the much-used caricature of us found at the top of the page! How awesome is THAT, darlings?

Anyway, the release date isn’t until February 2014 (from Perigee, a division of Penguin Books), so you have plenty of time to save your pennies. We want you to know that there was a significant portion of the book proposal devoted entirely to the Bitter Kittens and explaining to our publisher just how important this rabid little community is to our success. We really couldn’t have done it without you guys.

EDITED TO ADD: We are totally verklempt over the response and the well wishes. As to the many questions regarding/requests for a T Lo book tour, well… that’s up to you kittens, isn’t it? Don’t worry. You’ll get your marching orders closer to the release date. But until that faraway day, thank you all for your support, dolls. Now go call random people in the phone book and tell them how fabulous we are.

Do they still have phone books?

 

[Illustration: Alex Cox]

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