American Thighs Turns Heads

Clash Books has emerged as the biggest indie publisher in the United States, with a huge stable of writers, and in particular woman writers, with novels by Elle Nash, Lindsay Lerman, Autumn Christian, and now Elizabeth Ellen’s American Thighs. Clash’s books always look good—no pastels like almost every chick-lit book on the front tables of Barnes & Noble. Clash Books take risks which mainstream publishers can’t. Or won’t. These risks can include (but are not limited to) sex, body horror and non-PC/woke takes on life. That is, they won’t show what life should be like, but what it is like.

Elizabeth Ellen comes to Clash Books having already taken risks, with her online literary journal Hobart Pulp, and her indie publishing house, Short Flight/Long Drive Books. (Ellen published an essay of mine at Hobart). She created a literary kerfuffle a few years back in an interview with writer Alex Perez. It was nothing Ellen said, but rather Perez’s non-woke (though based) take on the current state of literature. It’s still up, and a good read, but despite the outrage (maybe actually because of it) Ellen stood her ground and kept it up. Writers told her that their agents advised them not to publish with Hobart or SF/LD. Ellen put up direct quotes from those writers in the header of the website.

Ellen’s new novel American Thighs has already created a stir.

The novel has an odd form: an fictional oral history, featuring interviews with dozens of people collaged together on a linear time line. An oral history implies a Big Event in the near past, which becomes the initial curiosity: what happened that was so big? The only other novel that has done this is the sci-fi zombie thriller World War Z, by Max Brooks. There are no zombies in American Thighs, where most of the action takes place in the small rural town of Elkheart, Indiana, with a road trip to Florida at the end.

The two main characters in American Thighs are Anissa and Taylor. The novels biggest “ask” is Anissa’s initial action. She’s a 30-year-old former child movie star who has left Hollywood for Elkheart to—in her mind—live the childhood she missed. She does so by enrolling in Dobson High School using the name of her 15-year-old daughter, Tatum, whom she left back in Los Angles with her (Anissa’s) mother.

It’s more complicated than that, but keep in mind that Alissa is/was an actor, and, as a couple of the interviewed adults from the school say, it’s hard to determine a young woman’s age. Mrs. Stone, the office secretary, says: “I don’t know. I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. It’s so hard to tell with teenagers; some come in here looking like babies, looking prepubescent, and others look twenty-six. Look like they’re in college already. Grad school… Are we supposed to question each one of them? Assume they’re lying about the information they’re provided the school? Do background checks? Visit their homes?”

Then there’s Taylor, the school’s most popular mean-girl. She has seemingly everything: rich family, 18-year-old senior boyfriend and happiness. Her initial interview sections make liking her difficult, but stay with her and you gradually see she’s miserable. Her dad’s absent, her mom overbearing, her boyfriend a frat dude asshole. Mostly, her life is a charade: she plays the part, because that’s the only thing she knows how to do.

Once Taylor latches on to Anissa/Tatum as her new friend, the novel shifts: it’s no longer about whether/how Anissa will be found out, but becomes a risky love story, when Anissa and Taylor fall for each other. Go back and check the ages: that’s a risky story to tell. But no matter how you feel about Anissa, Taylor becomes her authentic self because of that relationship, because of Anissa.

There’s no Thelma & Louise ending. The law comes down. Anissa gets prison, despite the fact that Taylor entered into their relationship enthusiastically. Taylor never gets to tell her side of the story (until this fictional oral history). In fact, no one in Elkheart, except Anissa, listens to Taylor at all. The State files the charges—claiming that Anissa brainwashed her. And here’s the most important part of American Thighs, where we see that society/authority/adults don’t think a teenage girl is capable of making her own decisions.

As Taylor says: “I heard this female politician saying on some female talk show yesterday something like, ‘just because our daughters are going through changes, getting hips and... doesn’t mean...’ Like, she meant now that they were menstruating and getting tits and shit, they weren’t women. But what are they then? What am I? I’m not a child. I’m not a girl. What are all the teen moms with children? With multiple babies. You 100% cannot be a child if you can procreate and give birth to a child… It’s like wishful thinking. Or like delusional thinking. It’s denying nature. It’s like being a climate change denier. You’re just flat out denying science, denying biology, when you say a female who’s gone through menstruation and can conceive a baby is a child.”

Though Elizabeth Ellen doesn’t make it explicit, there seems to be a connection, maybe a causality, between teenage girls not taken seriously, not having their own autonomy, and how those girls end up as mean-girl frenemies. Young women like Taylor—and Anissa to an extreme point—grow up sexualized, expected to be sexy, but with their sexuality controlled, or at least within certain controlled parameters.

Some readers will remain unconvinced. Some (most?) older women will argue that teenagers need adults protecting them and deciding for them, because they themselves didn’t know shit—weren’t capable of making rational decisions—when they were teenagers. To which Ellen might answer, were you ever given the chance?