If I had a daughter, I’d make her read the first chapter of Stay Sexy & Don’t Get Murdered over and over again till she had it memorized. For the rest of us (women), it’s worth reading to remind ourselves not to shy away from telling a guy (whether he’s a stranger, or someone you already know) to “back the fuck off” when your gut is telling you something isn’t right.
Stay Sexy is part memoir and part how-to guide by 49-year old, Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark (38), two true-crime buffs and the creators of the #1, wildly popular podcast, My Favorite Murder whose biggest fans and followers call themselves “Murderinos.” The book rocketed to the top of the non-fiction bestseller charts the week it was published.
And, the title of the first chapter?
“Fuck Politeness”
Yep. The chapter title is, “Fuck Politeness.” That’s the chapter in which Georgia describes, in harrowing detail, a car ride she took alone with a man she barely knew. Lawrence was a regular where she was waitressing. He carried a portfolio of his photographs She writes: “He came off as this genuinely sweet guy that lived with and took care of his elderly mother.”
He asks if he can take some photos of Georgia sometime. She dresses up and figures they’ll walk around the neighborhood. “But” she writes, “he was waiting in his car. He motioned for me to hop in. Into his car. Alone with him.”
The minute she gets into his car she wishes she hadn’t. But she doesn’t say anything. “It was too late, right?” she writes. ” I hadn’t told anyone about this photo shoot, and looking back, it must have been because deep down I knew. I knew it was a mistake and that whomever I told would’ve called me on it and then I would have to tell Lawrence that I couldn’t go with him and he’d think I was a jerk. Better to just pretend everything is fine than have an awkward moment and someone thinking badly of me!”
Lived To Tell The Tale
So, Georgia goes along with it as the car climbs further into the mountains outside of Santa Monica, California. Then, they pull to a stop and Lawrence starts to take photos. And, when he suggests she take her top off, she goes along with that, too, even as she is remembering that not a few miles from that spot another woman was murdered by a guy who posed as a freelance photographer.
Even though we know that everything in Georgia’s case eventually turns out okay because she lived to tell this tale, it is, nevertheless, a harrowing account.
However, if you think the simple moral of this story is, don’t get into cars with strange men, you’d be wrong. Georgia goes much deeper into the incident to figure out why she did it, why she didn’t tell Lawrence to turn back, and why she didn’t tell him to stop the car so she could get out.
This is what she writes: “Little girls are taught to be polite […] and then these little girls turn into grown-ass women who’ve spent years being polite to the detriment of their own wants, needs and safety.”
Advice For All Women
“Fuck politeness is a life-affirming slogan,” say Kilgariff and Hardstark (in photo.) “It’s an art to master throughout your life. We’re giving you permission to act in your own best interests before considering anyone else’s […] Fuck the expectation that we always put other people’s needs first.”
And, it’s good advice not just for teenage girls. It’s for any woman, of any age, who has found it difficult to deal firmly with creeps who invade her space. Creeps who stand too close, or worse get a little touchy-feely, or whose eyes drift from your face down to your body when you’re talking to them — even if it’s a family friend or a neighbor, or a relative.
Fortunately for me, it’s a lesson my father taught me decades and decades ago. Anyone who makes you feel you’ve offended him, say if you turn down a ride in his car, is a dick, and you don’t need to worry about hurting his feelings, he said. That was his loud and clear message even though he didn’t really use the word, “dick.” That’s Kilgariff’s and Hardstark’s no-nonsense, straight talk.
“When someone tries to invade your space, they’re the dick here,” they write. “You can’t care what a dick thinks about you. They rely on that fear of judgment to keep you in their control. I always think it’s good just to say what you’re thinking aloud: ‘Whoa this is weird behavior. You seem like a predator. Goodbye.’ If he gets mad and yells, “Bitch!” at you, that doesn’t mean you’re a bitch. It means you were right.”
True-Crime
Stay Sexy & Don’t Get Murdered is also deadly serious when the authors comment on the idiocies of life that women have to tolerate when idiot men make idiot decisions.
As an example, they write about an alderman who proposed a curfew for women in a city where cops couldn’t outsmart a rapist who attacked at night at bus stops. “Wouldn’t the logical solution be a curfew for men between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five, matching the description of the rapist?” they ask — logically.
They also reserve special condemnation for men who try to blame the victims of assaults, rape and murder like judges who go easy on rapists because they decide a victim was to blame for wearing revealing clothing. (Or as happened just last week in New Jersey when a judge decided that because a 16-year old boy came from a “good home” he shouldn’t have been prosecuted for raping an inebriated girl, or for circulating videos of him sodomizing her to his friends.)
Their book, like their weekly podcasts, is a hugely laudable effort to “update the language around crimes and violence in a way that acknowledges a victim’s humanity.”
It is also a refreshing, informative — and often entertaining — mish-mash of references to true crime and real-life murders; of childhood memories (“my mom was a fucking badass”) and includes nuggets of indispensable advice that has stood the test of time: Get a job because “self-sufficiency is your first form of self-defense,” and “buy your own shit because as the saying goes there’s no such thing as a free lunch.”
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