"Acting is glamour but writing is hard work, so I'm going to be an actress"
About this Quote
Susann’s joke lands because it’s a self-own that doubles as a manifesto. She sets up a neat cultural binary - acting as sparkle, writing as sweat - then swerves into the “wrong” choice. The line is funny in the way a good hustle is funny: it pretends to be naive while quietly admitting it’s strategic. She’s winking at anyone who’s ever wanted the rewards of authorship (attention, status, access) without the lonely grind of the page. The punchline isn’t that she misunderstands labor; it’s that she understands the economy of glamour too well.
Coming from an author, the quip also drips with resentment and ambition. Writing is the serious craft that’s supposed to confer authority, but it rarely confers visibility. Acting, especially in mid-century American culture, is the shortcut to being seen. Susann is registering how fame operates: the public doesn’t just consume stories, it consumes faces. Her decision to “be an actress” reads as both capitulation and critique - a recognition that cultural legitimacy and cultural attention aren’t the same currency.
Context matters: Susann became a bestselling novelist in an era when women’s commercial fiction was frequently dismissed as “trashy,” even as it sold phenomenally. The line anticipates that double bind. If writing is hard work, it’s also hard to have that work taken seriously. Glamour, she implies, is not the opposite of labor; it’s a different kind of labor, one the culture rewards more openly.
Coming from an author, the quip also drips with resentment and ambition. Writing is the serious craft that’s supposed to confer authority, but it rarely confers visibility. Acting, especially in mid-century American culture, is the shortcut to being seen. Susann is registering how fame operates: the public doesn’t just consume stories, it consumes faces. Her decision to “be an actress” reads as both capitulation and critique - a recognition that cultural legitimacy and cultural attention aren’t the same currency.
Context matters: Susann became a bestselling novelist in an era when women’s commercial fiction was frequently dismissed as “trashy,” even as it sold phenomenally. The line anticipates that double bind. If writing is hard work, it’s also hard to have that work taken seriously. Glamour, she implies, is not the opposite of labor; it’s a different kind of labor, one the culture rewards more openly.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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