Girl Logic (Shlesinger)

Girl Logic:  The Genius and the Absurdity
Iliza Shlesinger, 2017
Hachette Book Group
264 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781602863231


Summary
From breakout stand-up comedian Iliza Shlesinger comes a subversively funny collection of essays and observations on a confident woman's approach to friendship, singlehood, and relationships.

Girl Logic is Iliza's term for the way women obsess over details and situations that men don't necessarily even notice.

She describes it as a characteristically female way of thinking that appears to be contradictory and circuitous but is actually a complicated and highly evolved way of looking at the world.

When confronted with critical decisions about dating, sex, work, even getting dressed in the morning, Iliza argues that women will by nature consider every repercussion of every option before making a move toward what they really want. And that kind of holistic thinking can actually give women an advantage in what is still a male world.

In Iliza's own words: "Understanding Girl Logic is a way of embracing both our aspirations and our contradictions. GL is the desire to be strong and vulnerable. It's wanting to be curvy, but rail thin at the same time. It's striving to kick ass in a man's world while still being loved by the women around you.

"This book is also for me, because apparently expounding on a stage for two hours a night wasn't enough. (Trust me, if I could start a cult I would, but I hate the idea of deliberately dying in a group.)" (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—February 22, 1983
• Where—Dallas, Texas, USA
• Education—B.A., Emerson College
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California


Iliza Vie Shlesinger is an American comedian. She was the 2008 winner of NBC's Last Comic Standing and went on to host the syndicated dating show Excused and the TBS comedy/game show Separation Anxiety. Currently, she hosts a late-night talk show called Truth & Iliza on Freeform. In 2017, she published a memoir and collection of humorous essays titled Girl Logic: The Genius and the Absurdity.

Early life
Shlesinger was born in Dallas to a Reform Jewish family. She attended the private Greenhill School and participated on the school's improvisation team and also performed with ComedySportz Dallas. She started college at the University of Kansas for but transferred aftervher freshman year to Emerson College in Boston, where she majored in film. At Emerson, Shelesinger was a member of the campus's comedy sketch group, Jimmy's Traveling All Stars, and refined her writing and editing skills.

Career
Shortly after graduating from Emerson, she moved to Los Angeles, California, to pursue stand-up comedy. Becoming one of the most popular members of the Whiteboy Comedy group of standup comedians in Los Angeles, she headed to the stage at The Improv in Hollywood.

In 2007, Shlesinger won Myspace's "So You Think You're Funny" contest and has been featured as the G4 network's Myspace Girl of the Week. Her television credits include E! Network's Forbes Celebrity 100, TV Guide's America's Next Top Producer, Comedy Central Presents (Season 14 Episode 18), John Oliver's New York Stand Up Show, Byron Allen's Comics Unleashed, and History Channel's History of a Joke. She has written for Heavy.com and had her own show on GOTV's mobile network.

In 2008, Shlesinger became the first woman, and the youngest, winner of NBC's Last Comic Standing, in the series' sixth season. She was twice selected, by other comedians, to compete in the head-to-head eliminations, and won each time. She appeared in The Last Comic Standing Tour.

Shlesinger contributed to Surviving the Holidays, a History Channel holiday special, with Lewis Black, and narrated the 2009 documentary Imagine It!² The Power of Imagination. In 2010, she released an on-demand comedy video, Man Up and Act Like a Lady, and an on-demand comedy album, iliza LIVE, on her website, via The ConneXtion. Around the time of these releases, Shlesinger appeared in a business comedy video series for Slate.

Shlesinger hosted The Weakly News on TheStream.tv from July 7, 2007 to April 9, 2012. She also hosted Excused, a syndicated American reality-based dating competition series, which ran from 2011 to 2013. She co-stars in the 2013 film Paradise and began a podcast called Truth and Iliza in August 2014. Featuring celebrity guests & personal friends, the semi-weekly podcast is a forum for discussing things which bother her and those on the show, with punk theme song performed by Being Mean to Pixley.

Albums
Shlesinger's first comedy album and video, War Paint, was recorded at the Lakewood Theater in Dallas, Texas, and released on Netflix in September, 2013. Her second stand-up special, Freezing Hot, was recorded in Denver, Colorado, and premiered on Netflix in January, 2015.  Her third Netflix stand-up special, titled Confirmed Kills, was recorded at The Vic Theatre in Chicago, Illinois, and premiered on Netflix in September, 2016.

Other
Shlesinger was comic co-host of StarTalk Radio Show with Neil DeGrasse Tyson for season 7, episode 12 titled "Cosmic Queries: Galactic Grab Bag," post date: 20 May 2016.

On July 13, 2016, the ABCdigital original short-form digital comedy series Forever 31, created by and starring Shlesinger was released. Truth & Iliza began airing on May 2, 2017. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Released 11/14/2017.)

Book Reviews
Iliza is funny, fierce, and lightning fast, but don't let all that wit and beauty fool you — she's a feminist with the heart of a mommy, a truth teller who just wants us all to feel better so we can get what we want, dammit! She's thought long and hard about why women are so hard on themselves, and she's not afraid to say she's been there herself, which has endeared her already to millions of fans. Take my advice: take her advice. Iliza is a comedian wrapped in social critic wrapped in the good friend you need.
Robbie Myers - Elle, editor in chief


A successful comedian tries to square gender stereotypes with the realities of how women really live…. Unfortunately, the intended lessons are often lost in the author's frenetic chatter.… [T]his reads like a series of theories not yet fully formed.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Girl Logic … then take off on your own:

1. How would you describe the tone of this book? Is it chatty, light, serious, angry, engagingly friendly? Were you pulled in right at the beginning … or a bit further in … or not at all?

2. Are you familiar with Iliza Shlesinger's stand-up comedy? If you are or not, do you think it helps (or would help) readers appreciate Girl Logic? Does she write like a stand-up comedienne talks? Does her brand of comedy translate to the page, or is it lost in translation?

3. Shlesinger talks about her upbringing. How did her childhood and early years prepare her for stand-up, a fiercely competitive and rigorous career?

4. What does she have to say about her treatment on the road by her male counterparts?

5. Some readers have complained that Shlesinger's observations about women are overly generalized and unhelpful. Some found her examples irrelevant — they didn't relate to a pair of designer trousers possibly changing their lives. Does some of the material in the book strike you similarly: as overly broad or irrelevant? Or is this just mild carping? What are your thoughts? Are any of Shlesinger's observations, suggestions, and insights helpful to you? Does age, older or younger, play a role in how a reader might experience the book?

6. How do the workings of the female mind differ from the male mind. Does the explanation ring true — does it make sense to you?

7. So … why are women so hard on themselves?

8. Describe the theory of Girl Logic and its many conundrums. Shlesinger, for instance, believes that women's desires are often in conflict with one another. What are examples from you own life?  What else does Shlesinger have to say about GL? Does anything in particular resonate with you?

9. Do you find some of Shlesinger's language offensive, bordering on offensive, or refreshingly honest?

10. What are some of the take away tips you got from Girl Logic? Consider, for example, the author's advice about cultivating both confidence and courage to be different? What else struck you?

11. Is this a book that males, young or old, could or should read? Would you pass it on to one?

(Questions issued by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

top of page (summary)