Actor, comedian, and now author Lauren Weedman has worked the media spectrum, from theater at the Empty Space to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to a Dave Eggers anthology. Nothing has inspired such a vitriolic response as her article in Glamour last July.
Weedman had been in Los Angeles performing Wreckage, her funny and brutally self-deprecating solo show about a fucked-up lie and its colossal fallout. In a fit of pissy college caprice, Weedman said she had been raped, setting off a series of increasingly high-stakes events. The lie returns to haunt her years later when her husband abandons her during a move to California. (Seattle Central Community College commissioned Weedman to perform Wreckage for a media-studies class; evening performances are open to the public.)
An editor from Glamour saw a mention of Wreckage in the LA Weekly and asked Weedman to write an article.
"People in L.A. hear about the show and it's all: 'That's fabulous! We have to do that! Rape lie! Cha-cha-ching!'" Weedman said. "But Glamour said, 'This is a great story. We're about women and women's voices.'" Weedman agreed, over friends' warnings. "I didn't do a fashion magazine because I thought it would be comedy, but I wanted to talk about the lying—having something intensely happening inside you and trying to match your outside world to your inside world."
As writers and editors inevitably do, Weedman and Glamour disagreed about the article. "I wrote it in my voice and she totally rewrote it to sound like some mall girl: 'I dunno what I was think-ing! I was feeling fat—a-gain. I hate myself! Believe me, I know you do!' Every time I fought them, they were like: 'Lauren, all the lip gloss testers just looove your piece.' And it was a lot of money. And they kept harping on my being a novice: 'You don't know what you're doing.'"
(Weedman may be a novice, but she's no slouch writer. Her first short story—"Diary of a Journal Reader"—appeared in Seattle lit mag Swivel and was picked by Dave Eggers to run in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2005; Sasquatch Books will publish a collection of her short stories next spring.)
The resulting article was a disaster. Weedman hated it—and so did readers. She received a mountain of hate mail and was excoriated on the Glamour message boards: "They were saying 'I hope she does get raped someday...' It was horrible."
Then the talk shows started calling: Oprah, Montel Williams, Tyra Banks. "All the black shows were like, 'Let's get that crazy white lady. Girl is stupid—lied about rape!' Because that's what they know: I lied about rape and I've been on television. Then Dr. Phil called. I realized it was just about the sensationalism of being a really fucked up girl."
The hubbub has settled but Weedman is working on the best revenge one can have on a pushy editor—she's writing a short story.
