Samantha Irby Says It’s OK to Hate Your Body

As far as descriptions of writers go, “humorist” has an old-fashioned, almost quaint ring to it, the literary equivalent of haberdasher or lamplighter. But across four book-length collections — the newest is the best seller “Quietly Hostile” — Samantha Irby has always brought scabrously honest, never pat and, it must be said, operatically scatological vivacity to the humorous literary essay. “I’m a little different,” says Irby, who is 43 and was a supervising producer on the coming season of the divisive “Sex and the City” revival, “And Just Like That,” which premieres this month. “I have low self-esteem and put all of my mental illness on the page.” Which, of course, is the key to muddling through. “I can look at my life,” Irby says philosophically, “and find the jokes.”

A running theme in your work is that you’re a mess and you don’t understand how to make life go smoothly. But do you think other people are walking around thinking, I’ve got everything under control? I know people who have it together, which, when I look at them, I feel even worse. My wife is very put together. She knows where her stuff is, and she has routines. I see this in other people, and then I don’t know where my glasses are or where I put my shoes, and I’m like, “How am I getting through the same life they’re getting through?” In my writing, my goal is for people to be like, “Oh, she’s in the same [expletive] I’m in.” Because alone with your phone, it’s easy to feel like you are the only one who’s [expletive] everything up. Everyone’s like: “Look at my kids! Look at my friends!” I bet you eat whole grains and drink enough water, and I’m over here with brown piss and can’t move.

Some people have an attitude of acceptance about their bodies. Is that a way of thinking or being that’s accessible to you? For me, no. I admire people who wear shorts and crop tops. It would just never be me. Maybe I was born too early to get on the “I don’t give a [expletive] if you see my legs” thing. I have never had that relationship with my body, and I think it’s compounded by the Crohn’s and the arthritis that has come because of the Crohn’s. I can’t even move around the way I want. My brain is good; she’s never let me down. The body has always let me down. It would feel dishonest for me to be like, “I love my body, and you better love it too, because I don’t.”

Why don’t you like the beach? It’s hot. It’s dirty. The water is diarrhea — full of dead fish and bugs and baby diapers. Sand is disgusting. It gets everywhere. It’s impossible to clean. Do you need me to keep going?

I became aware in reading your stuff that you’ve written a fair bit about losing your parents. But no one ever asks you about grief. Is there anything you’d like to express about it? I don’t know if this is controversial, but I don’t miss my parents. If they were alive as the same people they were when they died, they would be a total drain and burden on my life. They died in 1998. It’s so long ago that it feels as if maybe I didn’t even have them. Do I know these people or are they a figment of my imagination that I have written about in these books? People don’t want to hear you talk like that, and I get it, but it’s real. I mean, my dad was born in 1936 and was a gambling degenerate. I can’t have that old-ass man — he would be stealing money from me. He would be showing up in the middle of the night like, “Hey, I live here now.” [Laughs.] The bad stuff outweighs the good. We had our time, and we moved on.

It’s funny. There are these cultural expectations for how we’re supposed to perform our feelings, but the performance is really about making other people comfortable. Yes! Whatever people’s relationships with their parents are, or any dead relative, I am just like: “Oh, you’re going to cry until you die? Fine.” But my attitude of like, “It’s kind of a relief” — not many people say that, and I feel like we should be able to! I’m such a bitch. You ever see a full adult bursting into tears over their parent who died a decade ago? Maybe their moms were so much better than my mom, but come on! Stop that! The thing is, people will [expletive] on you for not grieving enough, but if you’re a slobbering mess, they don’t want to touch you. They don’t want you to get snot on their shirt! When there’s a person like me, you should rejoice, because I’m going to make a joke about my dead mom and then we’re going to talk about something else. Putting a mess of a person back together? No one wants to do that. I was just asking how you were doing; I didn’t want to clean up a crime scene!

Sometimes I watch expensive stuff, and I can’t believe they spent so much money and couldn’t figure out how to make it good. No, that’s real. I think the thing that was the toughest was like, “Hey, we got these new Black and Brown writers in the room,” and everyone assumed that all the stuff they hated came from us. I mean, everybody was very sensitive. People were thoughtful about it. And to have people just be like: “That sucks. They weren’t even thinking.” No, maybe they were thinking too much. But I don’t know. This coming season, it’s all going to meld. [Laughs.] People will hate Season 2, too, but they’ll watch it.

There is this idea now that everyone is too sensitive about jokes. What do you think? I think I’m off the hook a little because my main target is myself, but the joke sensitivity is wild to me. I grew up on old Black stand-up comedians like Paul Mooney and Richard Pryor. I don’t take offense at anything. Not to make this the fat-people show, but my sincerest wish is that everyone had to live in a 300-pound body for a week. Because there are fat jokes even where there isn’t supposed to be jokes, and you don’t see us in the street holding up traffic with our big asses because there was a joke. It’s OK to be sensitive, but I don’t want to control what anyone else does. If I don’t like something, I don’t watch it, I don’t listen to it. But the thing now where it’s like, “I don’t like this; it shouldn’t exist”? That is insane to me. It’s too much, and the rules change too quickly. And I’m not doing it, David. I don’t give a [expletive]. As long as I’m not hurting anybody personally, I don’t care.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity from two conversations.

David Marchese is a staff writer for the magazine and writes the Talk column. He recently interviewed Emma Chamberlain about leaving YouTube, Walter Mosley about a dumber America and Cal Newport about a new way to work.

Source: Television - nytimes.com