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But women like Alanis don't have any desire to rein in their emotions, no matter what the reaction will be. They can't stand the repression and self-control it takes to be mysterious. Mystery works for women like Chrissie Hynde and Patti Smith and Sleater-Kinney's Corin Tucker, women whose lyrics are subtler, more poetic and intriguing and just out of reach. But women like Alanis are too impatient for self-censorship -- they want to share everything, all the time, with everyone. No more small talk, damn it! No more batting the eyes and slowly giving in. Let's get to the truth! Let's make a real connection, already! "Is she perverted like me?" Just answer the damn question!

Women hate Alanis for the same reasons they hate the parts of themselves and the parts of their lives that they can't control. This is the fear that fuels our fascination with cancelled weddings. To think of the lilies and irises wilting in their crystal vases, the wedding cake being eaten by the family for weeks afterwards, the monogrammed towels, engraved silver and personalized stationery arriving after the fact, each new package carrying with it a fresh wave of humiliation. But worst of all is the talk: thousands of guests, each calling their friends to retell the story, creating their own narrative, replete with a moral that hints that another woman could have avoided this. The jilted bride must have lost control, she must have abandoned mysteriousness and said too much.

There are so few openings in pop culture for the rough edges Alanis celebrates. Most videos give us quick cuts of polished, pretty, shimmying girls. There are no cracks through which to spot reality, no moments where the focus blurs, where the starlet loses her composure. Her mascara smears, she feels self-conscious for a second, the cameraman eyes her ass and it throws her off her routine.

Alanis' literal, clunky lyrics unveil a world that's all smeared mascara and missed cues. She's no great wordsmith, but her style is subversive in its utter lack of pretension or self-consciousness. While Britney Spears and Mariah Carey don Wonderbras and smile coyly and squeeze their cleavage together throughout meticulously choreographed videos, Alanis sits her bare ass on a subway seat and opens her big mouth to scream. That's intentional vulnerability and exposure -- she knows exactly how negative and ruthless the reaction will be, and that's why she does it.

Mascara does smear, and perfectly nice women get left at the altar, and husbands leave their wives, and girls have sex for the wrong reasons, and lives unravel in millions of ways that aren't shiny or intriguing or tough. Women know all too well that no one wants to know about the chips in the paint, the loose ends and the way we often cling too much, or act too needy or lose control. These glimpses don't represent the whole of what a woman is capable of, but they represent exactly the parts that women wish to disown publicly and whisper about behind closed doors. It's not mysterious, it's not remotely sexy, but it's honest and it feels like a holiday from bullshit, a tiny respite from the burden of being a woman in a world that scoffs at womanly behavior. When we see Alanis with her bare ass on the plastic subway seat, we admire her for embodying our worst nightmares, for being painfully honest and embarrassing herself in ways we never could. Alanis has the courage to glorify the imperfect and the vulnerable, and most of all, to tell the truth.

Adrienne Rich writes, "Women have often felt insane when cleaving to the truth of our experience. Our future depends on the sanity of each of us, and we have a profound stake, beyond the personal, in the project of describing our reality as candidly and fully as we can to each other ... When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her."

I asked the would-be bride if she ever told new friends or dates about getting left at the altar. "Yeah, I do. I bring it up a lot, actually." She thought for a second, then smiled. "You've got to admit, it's a great story."
salon.com | May 17, 1999

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