In Reese Witherspoon’s book, lots of teacups, not much whiskey
Reese Witherspoon’s new lifestyle book “Whiskey in a Teacup” was published earlier this month, sending many of my — and maybe your — sorority sisters into a heart-eye-emoji frenzy, if their Facebook feeds are to be believed.
It’s the rule in newspaper writing that after first reference, a writer is supposed to refer to her subject by his or her last name. But my girl Reese is the rare actress that feels like she’s a part of me. Over the years, the 42-year-old has showed me that nothing’s out of reach — whether it’s getting into Harvard (“What, like it’s hard?”) in “Legally Blonde,” hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in “Wild” or winning an Oscar for best actress in real life. So I’m going to refer to her by her first name because that’s who she is to me.
That’s why it hurts so much to write this: I have conflicting feelings about this book, which I’m fairly certain is the very last reception Reese wanted. And therein, I believe, lies the problem — it feels like Reese wants everyone
who reads this to love her a little bit more when they reach the last page. I get that. And, in a lot of ways, that’s all many of us want. But at my age, I’ve learned that I don’t have time to fake Instagram-filtered perfection with my friends. And I love a girls night loaded with real talk.
In the opening chapter, Reese writes that she chose the name of the book in reference to and reverence of a saying her grandmother Dorothea had, that Southern women are “whiskey in a teacup” because of their combination of beauty and strength. This book is lovely. Truly. But I’m a little disappointed that it’s more teacup than whiskey.
This book is as beautiful as the heart-faced goddess herself, and I know just where to put it in my Pinterest-inspired apartment. It comes with recipes I’m dying to try, including her approach to fried okra (one of my all-time favorites), her cheddar biscuits and a take on baked brie that includes whiskey.
But even as I found myself “fan-girling” throughout the read, I still couldn’t help thinking that the entire book was written as a marketing tool. And allow me here to make up a word: It’s “y’all-washed.”
Every part of Reese’s upbringing discussed here is immediately brought back to the fact that it’s so quintessentially Southern. Road trips are a Southern thing. Quilts are a Southern thing. And hey y’all, did you know that fireflies are a Southern thing?
I grew up in upstate New York, where my dad drove a hay truck for a living, and we slept in tents at the edge of our favorite alfalfa field on hot summer nights. Am I Southern now?
To me, her insistence that all the Norman Rockwell moments of her youth are inherently tied to geography rang hollow. You know those cringe-worthy moments when a politician is caught on video adding forced twang and folksiness to a stump speech south of the Mason-Dixon line? That’s what I felt in so many of the forced “y’alls” in this book. But the difference here is that Reese isn’t carpetbagging. She’s actually Southern, having been born in New Orleans and raised in Nashville. And she’s actually telling the stories of her childhood.
But only the pretty parts. And when she did give us a peek at something slightly less than perfection, it was still aspirational. For instance, one of the most stunning spreads in the book is a series of shots of Reese wearing her hair in perfectly arranged hot rollers as she drives in what looks like a Cadillac.
Curling hair is a four-step process for her. And Step 3 is where we see Reese get a little crazy:
“Three: Get into the car to go wherever you’re going with the rollers in your hair,” she writes. “Pro tip: Roll down the window to let the outside air cool the rollers. The whole drive, pray you do not see any ex-boyfriends or current crushes until your hair is finished.”
She explained the process to her daughter, Ava, who “thinks I’m nuts.” Celebrities, they’re just like us! This is a sweet, humanizing anecdote, and snaps to her for including it. But this little bit of quirkiness is the only moment we get to see anything even akin to warts in what I was hoping would be an all-access look into Reese’s life.
And in case you were wondering, yes, I did try Reese’s roller trick. I did not look that cute, and I’m fairly certain I saw the woman in front of me in traffic Wednesday morning try to snap a picture of me to text her friends. So even when Reese is at her lowest, her level of perfection — at least as portrayed in this book — is still way out of reach for a Wanna-Be-Witherspoon like me.
I remember reading a great article about Reese in the New York Times, back in 2014, just as “Wild” was about to be released. In it, she talked about people’s perceptions of her as America’s Sweetheart, and the blowback she knew she’d receive for her portrayal of Cheryl Strayed in the upcoming film, which includes cursing, drug use and promiscuity.
“I’ve sat through millions of development meetings where people are like: ‘We don’t want Reese to say profanity. We don’t want her to have sex. We don’t want her to take drugs,’ ” she told the Times. “I didn’t really feel the constraints of it until about three years ago, where I realized, ‘I’m not this.’ I’m a complex person that has so many different aspects in my personality. But somehow, I have this reductive experience where I’m put into this tiny little box.”
This, she has said, is the driving force behind her decision to produce stories by, about and for strong, complex women, including “Gone Girl,” “Wild” and “Big Little Lies.” And that makes this sweet-as-Grandma-Dorothea’s-sun-tea book feel like a missed opportunity — albeit a very charming one. I was hopeful that here in the 300-ish pages, I’d see her explore these parts of herself. The whiskey inside the teacup. And I’m bummed that instead, it feels like she wrote herself into the box of likability from which I’d love to see her escape.
There’s a great anecdote, hidden about halfway through, about her nerves when she was about to sing during her portrayal of June Carter Cash in “Walk the Line,” for which she won that Oscar.
“I confess I thought I was going to throw up every single time I shot a scene where I sang. (Have you seen the movie? There’s a lot of singing, y’all!) But I just drank a beer and did it anyway. And it all worked out OK. A lot of key moments in life are like that: You can be nervous as all get out. Just drink a beer and do it anyway!”
And I wish she’d taken that advice. It can be hard to open up and show people that you’re more complicated than they’ve assumed you are. But just drink a beer and do it anyway, Reese!
I’ll wait. Believe me, I can kill plenty of time baking your biscuits and watching “Sweet Home Alabama.”