Living Oprah by Robyn Okrant: A Review

A review from an anonymous guest blogger:

I must admit I was excited when I downloaded Living Oprah on Kindle. I was anticipating one of two things: either a very easy unpretentious read with humorous anecdotes (along the lines of Confessions of a Shopaholic) or more of an investigative account analyzing the Oprah phenomenon from a critical standpoint (along the lines of Selling Sickness).

Well, a few pages in I realized that the book was neither. It was just a big yawn of predictable jokes and the author failing to explain what the point of her project actually was. Is she a crazy Oprah fan? Apparently not (at least she says she isn't, despite her countless recounts of how admirable, wonderful and inspiring Oprah is). Is she a critic ready to discuss openly the negative impact an Oprah-type show can have on its audience? Once again, hardly. Rather, the author positions herself as an intellectual who is above dressing up (sports bras and granny panties being her underwear of choice), an avid feminist (despite feeling a sense of trepidation before asking her husband's permission to embark on the project and going as far as doubting that her marriage will last through the endeavor. Umm, dramatic much?) and certainly not a fame seeker (after an extremely long explanation of why she wanted to remain anonymous, the author concedes to revealing her name for the sake of being interviewed). I was confused! But worst of all, certainly not entertained.


I will give you a couple of examples. Even though I could go on and on, I do not want you to experience the same sense of boredom to which I subjected myself.

The author makes fun of Oprah's suggestion that she purchase a pair of leopard-print flats. By making fun of it, all I mean to say is that she tells us she laughed at the suggestion hysterically. Ok, funny. Yet, further on in the book she falls in love with the shoes. Umm, I kept wondering: what was the point of that story?

The author makes fun of Oprah's fans who nearly worship her and go into a frenzy at her shows. She attends one of the tapings and stresses and underlines endlessly how different she is from all those other fans. Yet, she describes the overwhelming feeling of excitement she, too, succumbed to at the show. Ok, what was the point of this story?

She seems to criticize Oprah's suggestions to renovate, remodel and engage in other home-improvement projects. Yet, when she follows all these suggestions, she seems happy with the result.

She seems to criticize Oprah's constant dieting projects. Yet is really excited to have lost weight and shares several pictures of herself in a bikini to prove the point.

The author tries to show that watching every single episode of Oprah alienated her from her friends and loved ones. In order to prove the point, she tells us about her family's Thanksgiving dinner where she had to go upstairs to watch a taped episode of Oprah while her family was downstairs laughing and enjoying the holiday. Ok, again I am confused. What was the rush of watching the episode at that particular time? It was taped anyway. Well no, I do get it. It was a far-fetched attempt at creating drama and showing how hard the project was.

I forced myself to read the book to the end. I was curious to read the author's conclusion. After all, she spent 365 days following Oprah's every word of advice. So, is Oprah's show a god-send or an evil creation? Is following Oprah's suggestions detrimental or a great idea? But no, the conclusion is not about that. Actually, it's not about anything. It goes on and on to tell us how happy the author is living her own life and not following someone else's advice (again, despite the author's countless examples of her million-and-one insecurities listed throughout the book). I have one word to summarize my impression of Living Oprah: blah.

From Clarissa:

I have to confess that I was the one to recommend this book to the reviewer (without having read it.) I'm interested in this type of books (although not enough to read them myself :-)) because they represent a curious social phenomenon. One of the prime examples of this phenomenon is Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously. A blogger decided to follow Julia Child's recipes within a year and blogged about it. The experiment was so successful that it turned into an inane book and an equally inane film based on it. Robyn Okrant decided to do something even easier and simply attached herself to the image of wildly popular Oprah Winfrey.

Many people decided to do something similar and start some kind of project that would later morph into a book over even a movie. This is the book equivalent of reality TV shows. For the most part, even when the original idea is not bad (like in Living Oprah), the authors lack even the most basic sense of humor and intelligence that are needed to make the project a success.

In his brilliant Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, Chris Hedges says:

Celebrity culture encourages everyone to think of themselves as potential celebrities, as possessing unique if unacknowledged gifts.

People readily turn away from the unhospitable reality, where achieving fame and fortune requires hard work, dedication, and sacrifice, and plunge themsmelves into the world of make-believe, where they are entitled to everything just because. As a result, the publishing market will keep saturated with insipi books like Living Oprah: My One-Year Experiment to Walk the Walk of the Queen of Talk.

What Does It Mean That There Will Be No More Oprah?

Everybody loves Oprah. She is intelligent, articulate, courageous, smart, and beautiful. Everybody admires her and wants to be like her, and that's a given**. However, I think it is a great sign that Oprah is planning to cancel her show. Several years ago, her show managed to be interesting and relevant from time to time. In the recent years, however, it has turned more frivolous and more oriented towards bored rich housewives than any other segment of the population.

In the midst of a severe economic crisis, where most people are going out of their head with worry over how they will be able to pay the bills next month, The Oprah Winfrey Show has turned into a mean joke. The titles of the most recent episodes of the show demonstrate why Oprah doesn't know how to be relevant any more.

11/23 - "Inside Sex Addiction Rehab." Imagine the kind of people who believe in the existence of "sex addiction." You definitely do not get more housewifely than that.

11/25 - "Remembering Ted Kennedy: Vicki Kennedy's First TV Interview." Of course, interviews with the spouses of important dead people can only interest those who have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with their lives.

12/02 - Perms, extensions, highlights…secrets exposed! Then, why Beyonce's sister Solange chopped it all off. Plus, Oprah's own hair history unraveled!

And here are some of the announcements for the future shows:

• Calling all overweight moms!
• Are you a military wife?
• Calling all weight loss winners!
• Need help throwing a dinner party or birthday bash

The time has passed when this society could afford a huge number of people whose only occupations were eating, losing weight, doing their hair, and feeling horrified over the sad fact that sex exists and other people actually enjoy it. The state of the economy is forcing many people to forget these trivial interests and start having a real-world existence. Dedicating all of your meagre intellectual capacities to analyzing the color of your poop (an actual topic of one of The Oprah Show episodes) is not something too many people can afford to do right now.

Maybe the age of self-satisfied navel-gazing of upper middle class Americans is over. I hope that the upcoming cancellation of The Oprah Show is a sign of that. Maybe we can all finally forget about dieting and start thinking and talking about important stuff.

** To top off her great qualities, Oprah likes the Kindle and promoted it on her show, which makes her my hero. You can see Oprah with her Kindle in the picture above.

Oprah Participates in Marginalizing Female Sexuality

Today's Oprah Show decided to make a contribution to the ever-growing genre of shows that otherize female sexuality. The show's title is "Why millions of women are using porn and erotica?" Evidently, the answer that women do it for the exact same reason as men is still unacceptable for Oprah's conformist viewers.

At the very beginning of the show, we are offered a suggestion that women watch porn for the storyline. Several people that Oprah interviews reiterate this idiotic idea. Then, the porn star Jenna Jameson announced that she only ever had 3 or 4 sexual partners, which sounds a little weird since people who have 3 or 4 partners are usually capable of remembering the exact number. Even people as dumb as Jenna Jameson. Then, everybody lost interest in sex and proceeded to discuss how much money this porn star made at every stage of her career. The subject of money was discussed with the type of glee that people of other cultures often reserve for discussions of sex.

Of course, after I realized that this was the only original contribution this show was going to make to the topic, I stopped watching. God, what wouldn't people say to themselves and to their audiences composed of bored suburban housewives in order to alleviate their nagging suspicion that other people might actually enjoy sex.

Shows like this are this puritanical culture's way of exorcising its profound fear of female sexuality. It saddens me that Oprah, who is a pretty intelligent woman, would want to participate in something so stupid.