Wetlands

"This is a recent book by a German writer. It caused huge controversy when it came out because she writes explicitly about her very special sex life. It’s one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. It’s so absurd and really twisted. Oh, I couldn’t tell you! You’d be shocked. It’s about a girl who is twenty-something and in hospital for a haemorrhoid operation, but she gets a terrible infection and it’s a really humiliating situation. There’s a lot about body fluids. You get to follow this special girl called Helen and her thoughts. She’s flirting with a male nurse and she wishes her parents would get back together. Then there’s a dark story from her childhood and she isn’t sure if the memory is real or not – a memory of her mother trying to kill her and her little brother. It’s very unusual to read a book that shocks you, but this book shocked me. It was painful to read some of it because it’s just so disgusting. But at the same time it’s liberating. While there is all this explicit stuff about her body, it is also a brilliant outburst against the sexism about and against our bodies that women have internalised – that we must shave and wax and trim our bodies. This is a woman who does whatever she likes, in a macabre way, without the least bit of guilt. It’s an attack on the beauty industry. It’s not an erotic novel. One men’s magazine put her at the top of a list of the world’s least sexy women. That’s what’s so liberating. She’s not trying to be sexy or convenient for men. She’s disgusting and strange. Sure, but the idea of not having hair on your legs is just cultural convention. Beauty trends have varied, so it’s not something that is part of the status quo. I think there are still huge problems within families and relationships. Women are still the ones doing 90% of unpaid household work, and we are supposed to work as well and take care of the children like a family project leader.That makes many women miserable, because it stresses them and takes all their time and creativity away. These are important hours stolen from us. That’s the revolution I would like to see happen first. If women were liberated from this – if men and women shared equally the responsibility of children and the running of the family – it would be a big change in many women’s lives. If men took responsibility as fathers and did half the cooking and cleaning, it would be a huge revolution."