Susan Jane Gilman is a wonderful writer, and Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress is hysterically funny. Side-splittingly, pee-in-your-pants funny.

I must give you an example: In the title essay, Gilman describes the day she first tried on her wedding dress — a moment she intended to be the token "I tried" before giving up and buying a vintage red dress. After a series of nasty experiences and rude shoppers, Gilman finds herself in a frothy, lace, Victorian number, completely antithetical to her politics and self-image, and to her shock, she falls completely in love with it.

After wearing the dress and standing in front of the mirror for FOUR HOURS, Gilman comments:

What can I say? I was having a total ideological meltdown right there in the middle of David’s Bridal salon. Because this was not what I was supposed to look like. This was not who I was supposed to be. This dress was symbolic of everything I’d railed against, everything I feared and fought again [sic]. Putting it on hurtled me closer and closer to becoming Superbride, Susie Homemaker, Giant Mammary Mom.

I was supposed to be the Anti-Bride, goddamn it! I was not some insipid girlie-girl dolled up like a parade float. But in that dress, with the tiara, I was intoxicated with myself. I felt gorgeous, indomitable. And I loved it. And I hated myself for loving it. Yet I couldn’t stand to take it off.

Equally hilarious is Gilman’s story about writing an article on gay and lesbian rabbis for The Jewish Week.

Seventeen Jewish mothers called that week to find out if Gilman was single and available to date their daughters. The whole queer Jewish journalism community embraced and welcomed her as a new member.

What I LOVE about Gilman’s writing is that although the stories are phenomenally funny, her struggle to be true to herself and honest with the reader is fully present.

After writing the story about gay and lesbian rabbis, Gilman spent an agonizing night out with a group of lesbian journalists she’d been admiring and hoping to meet for years, only to be accepted and welcomed under false assumptions.

Instead of enjoying the evening, Gilman tries to figure out a way to come out as heterosexual without ruining the evening. And it isn’t because she’s homophobic. It’s because she gets that she’s being shown the vulnerable side of this community, and being given the privileges it has available, at least mostly because they think she’s one of them. She doesn’t want to take advantage, or hurt anyone’s feelings.

I love this book. I love it so much I may go buy her other book, Kiss My Tiara.