Thirty Days of Short Reviews #20: Long Red Hair

Meags Fitzgerald's first quasi-memoir, Photobooth, was mostly about her interest in analog photo booths, but it also addressed her own life in some regards. Her newest memoir, Long Red Hair, (Conundrum Books) is a fascinating take on relationships, sexuality, attraction and individual boundaries. Flashing back to her childhood and teen years and then flashing forward to a close friendship, we see how Fitzgerald was always allowed by her parents to express her own individuality in many ways, but still felt and feels constrained by many of society's expectations.

One key early section involves Fitzgerald bursting in on her mom (on the toilet, no less) and expressing her anger over not having been told about menstruation. Fitzgerald considered this no less than a betrayal by her body and was angry that men didn't have to go through it as well. That leads to her horrible realization that "It's better to be a boy than a girl". That said, Fitzgerald eventually embraced being a girl, especially in how her friendships made her feel and how they were when they were together, like they "didn't have to behave".

There's a running theme of magic in this book. Dungeons and Dragons was a family tradition, and she became a magic-user, using her high score in intelligence rather than charisma (because she wanted her character to be pretty). That became a rather obvious metaphor in how Fitzgerald's life has played out, but magic became something slightly different. There's a fascinating scene where Fitzgerald has a pretty friend over for a sleepover, and she suggests to her friends that they pretend to be witches. There's a sexual undercurrent to all of this (though still perfectly innocent), which may have contributed to her friend's discomfort, along with the "satanic" overtones. For Fitzgerald, the concept of magic was a binding force, a secret language for girls to speak. Indeed, the last line spoken by her friend Elise is "You'll figure it out, Meags. You've got lots of magic in you".

What Fitzgerald is trying to figure out is not so much her sexuality, especially as her big announcement to her family that she was bisexual was met with no drama whatsoever. (Indeed, the humor of that scene was just how hard Fitzgerald was trying to shock her parents, to no avail.) Instead, the dilemma left at the end is just how to negotiate a successful relationship path without losing herself. Polyamory is mentioned as one model, but what's left unsaid is that the friendship between Fitzgerald and Elise is a kind of relationship. Not a sexual or romantic one, per se, but still an intimate friendship. This book is an interesting departure point of sorts, as what Fitzgerald ultimately does is reject easy binary distinctions in favor of something a little fuzzier and intersectional. This book is less about revelations and big moments than it is a number of smaller moments connected across time in unexpected ways. Fitzgerald's beautiful pencil art and use of color in her gently naturalistic drawings makes reading the book a real pleasure, even moreso than Photobooth. Ultimately, this book shows how identity can continue to evolve over time, even as circumstances and choices from the path still influence the future.

Looking Out, Looking In: Photobooth: A Biography

Meags Fitzgerald's Photobooth: A Biography is an interesting collision of an obscure aesthetic subculture, a technological subculture and a historical subculture. It's both a history of photobooth machines around the world and how her growing obsession with them shaped her as an artist and even a person. The book folds in Fitzgerald's journeys in working with, thinking about and talking to others about photobooths. On that level, the book is what it is: a lively history of a mostly forgotten technology whose initial appeal was bringing a new technology to the masses at an affordable price. Her naturalistic style and obvious hours of research shine in this regard, bringing to life the many different models, styles and technological advances in each machine, as well as the historical context that made each change necessary. Fitzgerald's line reminds me a lot of Jessica Abel, especially when she worked on her Radio project.

While photo booths still exist today, they are digital photo booths, which give a different quality of photo than the old analog booths. Of course, this does lead her to question her devotion to analog booths and wanting to save them and raise attention to their unique qualities, because the chemicals that make them work are highly carcinogenic. In general, Fitzgerald shows a healthy skepticism toward her own obsession, though she feels obligated to see it through to the end with a certain sense of self-deprecatory humor. She knows what she's doing is slightly deranged but can't quite help herself. Along those lines, I loved the scene where she flew to a convention and met her "tribe" for the first time: other big-time enthusiasts, experts, and mechanics, many of whom knew far more than she did. For a fan, meeting someone who speaks their language can be an overwhelming experience, and that was certainly the case with Fitzgerald.

One thing that Fitzgerald didn't touch on was the inherent and obvious narcissism of her self-photo obsession with the analog machines, as she kept a record of thousands of shots over the years of herself. It's no wonder than an Italian photographer thought that he could seduce her by flattering her with an offer of a photo shoot, but she shot him down because narcissism is not the same thing as vanity. She wasn't vain at all, just obsessed with image and of aligning her identity with a particular, disappearing method of capturing this image. Even with all of her misgivings, the compulsive nature of her activities (especially with regard to spending money she didn't quite have) points to someone not quite in control of their actions, even as they're aware of it.