Rax King wants you to know that she loves Creed, and she doesn't care who knows it. She was a big fan of Josie and the Pussycats and frosted lip gloss. She was even one of the many teens that smelled of Bath and Body Works warm vanilla sugar for years, and all of this is okay.  In the new book Tacky, Rax King uses fourteen essays to both explore maligned cultural phenomena and also explore her own history.  She is roughly the same age as myself, so it was really easy to latch onto her nostalgia for the things others cringe over.

A fair warning to readers that this book covers some pretty rough areas.  While talking about Jersey Shore, she explains how this helped her grieve for her father. When talking about the wonders of Guy Fieri, she tells readers about the abusive relationship she fled from. She uses Sex in the City to explore her sexuality, and being used by men in ways that are cringeworthy.  Rax is a podcast host, and that sheer honesty and explorative nature comes across in her essays. This book feels like a cross between a podcast confession and a therapy session, all with a topping of frosted lip gloss.

Tacky is available November 2, 2021.

A quick read for anyone who has only ever purchased early to mid 2000s emo t-shirts from Hot Topic (and for those of us whose first experience as a sales person may have been in their local mall at 19 - thank you Kirsten and Michelle). The book was easy to read in a way that I believe Rax King intended- I laughed when I was supposed to laugh and empathized when I was supposed to empathize. I didn't have to do any deep digging to identify with the author, which is not a bad thing. Though I came of age at the tail end of Warm Vanilla Sugar and Creed, the nostalgic feeling could easily be applied to any number of my teenage experiences: I'm thinking of my absurdly large high school Nirvana t-shirt and poster collection. Some of the satire left a little to be desired, and there were times where I wish we got a little more context, but not every book needs to be a deep dive into the author's regrets. I liked the book overall.

I don't always enjoy books of essays, but I was very intrigued by this one as it was written by a James Beard award winner. I enjoyed this very much! Unique and fresh, Rax King is a writer I will be keeping my eye out for in the future.

Well, here we are, the year of 2021, where the early 2000s are now being mined for nostalgia as the internet shrinks the gap between present and past. Be on the lookout for my personal essay collection about the halcyon era of 2014-2016, coming out Fall 2022.

While this is billed as a collection of essays exploring the aesthetic of “tacky,” the concept is defended only in passing. This is closer to a memoir of her childhood and sexuality, through the lens of pop culture, laundered and presented as a series of cultural essays. The common thread between the essays seems to be trying to figure out why men she has sex with inevitably let her down. Whatever cultural fascination she had at the time period of her latest conquest is grafted onto the story in an effort to provide it depth. She has all types of sex, which is cool! Sounds like a grand old time! Her own sexual appetite is endlessly fascinating for her, I’m sure, but not one that I’m interested in exploring at great length.

In addition, many of her arguments simply don’t stand up to common sense, unless, perhaps, you are drunk at 4 am in a Brooklyn speakeasy. Take, for example, the first chapter, in which she defends the sincerity of Creed. It’s a nice sentiment and I appreciate her standing up for sincerity, as no one likes a cultural elitist. However, she claims that narrow-minded critics could only slander Creed’s music as boring—both in lyrical content and musical composition.

Well, yeah…those are the two components of music? What else should they criticize? The production value? There are a handful of topics that all musicians dwell upon: loss, love, grief, ecstasy, and a few variations on those themes. What makes a song good or not is presenting those themes through lyrics, musical composition, and voice. There are, in fact, many many artists who also sing sincerely about those wellsprings, and they are more musically talented than Creed.

King loves a good strawman, intricately building them so she can take them down with sassy aplomb. This works well for Twitter but is less engrossing in a full-length project like this.

Listen to full episodes at https://bookclubbed.buzzsprout.com/.

When it comes to biographical nonfiction I’m a empathy reader, so I need to feel some kind of connection with/understanding of the author in order to truly enjoy the book.

When skating the surface of lifestyle choices and experiences, Rax King and I don’t have much in common. Except for a love of and non-judgment policy of all things tacky and collectively sneered at...So maybe we have everything in common?!

Whether we do or not, much of what King wrote resonated with me, even if the specific life experience she was describing isn’t something I can relate to.

There’s nothing I love more than highbrow writing about lowbrow topics, and we get that in spades here, running the gauntlet from Hot Topic to Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell. I’ve never been a Hot Topic gal but I appreciate its existence, and I will pantomime lip sync Meatloaf songs at any opportunity.

King has an incredible way with words, both the snappy and the emotionally resonant. From describing motorcycle as a feeling to waxing nostalgic about the mutual love of Jersey Shore she shares with her father, King perfectly encapsulates the why of our love for things that are unapologetically tasteless by public standards.

The best thing about what King does here is that you don’t actually have to like the exact same tacky things she does for the book to resonate. I can’t say I’ve ever been a fan of Creed, but as a fan of many other musical acts considered terrible by most people, I felt the hell out of what she was describing in this chapter. And somewhat hilariously, it kind of made we want to become a fan of Creed.

My lone gripe with King’s delightful memoir is regarding what I can only refer to as Infidelity Bloodsport. When it comes to things like drug use and sleeping around, I have a general non-judgment policy of “Not for me, but if you can engage in it without destroying your own life, go forth an enjoy.”

But I can’t abide the repeated action of sleeping with other people’s husbands, especially when it’s presented as an achievement. I’ve had it with women who identify themselves as feminists and then sleep with other women’s husbands. There is nothing feminist about doing something humiliating and destructive to another woman, whether you know her or not.

King repeatedly stresses that she knows this is wrong, yet it’s still easy to detect an undercurrent of glee in the idea that she has stolen a man. This isn’t an achievement. It’s just gross. Not as gross as the man cheating on his wife is, but pretty dang icky, especially for someone who is quick to point out the feminist failings of say, Sex and the City. While her observations about the show are correct, it’s a TV program and didn’t damage anyone’s actual existence. The same can’t be said for the author’s proclivity for snaking unavailable men.

It’s a shame there was so much of this included in the text, because it soured an otherwise flawless examination of popular culture. I applaud King’s honesty and the fact that she seems to be working on herself, but there’s still pride evident in her nasty behavior, which is disappointing coming from someone who says she hates anything “unkind.” None of this makes me think King is bad or terrible or somesuch in her heart of hearts. Mostly it just tells me that she is perhaps less self-aware than she thinks she is.

That aside, this book is well worth a read and full of fantastic and well-articulated observations about the things we perceive to be “Tacky.” Whether the shopping mall or Guy Fieri, King hilariously and poignantly describes what’s so, so good about things we’re instructed to think are so, so bad.