The voice behind the tweets that unite women
Kelly Oxford, who started the #NotOkay movement, gets personal in her latest book
Kelly Oxford’s honesty and punchy take on the world around her is what made her famous.
The Alberta-raised, Californiabased social-media star has made her career by being both hilarious and relatable online.
Since making her Twitter profile in 2009, Oxford has amassed 768,000 followers and has another159,000 on Instagram. She posts openly about awkward moments, politics and her passionate love for Filet- O-Fish sandwiches.
The 39-year-old writer, who made headlines last fall when she started the #NotOkay hashtag that led to an outpouring of first-person stories about sexual assault, gets personal in her second book, When You Find Out the World is Against You — and Other Funny Memories About Awful Moments.
The stories range from her recollection of the night she started #NotOkay, to recovering from a poorly-executed D.I.Y. perm at summer camp in Alberta, to the moment she made the connection between anxiety and armpit pain.
“I mostly write for me,” said Oxford, who is speaking at the Toronto Reference Library on Tuesday. “The stories were times where I was provoked by anxiety, times where I was stressed out, and the stories that I remembered the best or that I thought taught me the best lessons.”
Dedicated to two of her dearest loves, McDonald’s and Oprah, Oxford’s second book features 11 anxiety-driven personal essays that leapfrog through different phases of her life, from memories of her childhood and teenage years in Canada to her modern-day life as a high-profile mother of three in the U.S. — sometimes linking the two.
Writing about her younger self came easy, Oxford said, adding she’s been told she’s a naturally youthful person. When it comes down to it, she says, people don’t really change that much as they get older. “I think that stories from your childhood are all fair game when you’re dealing with telling stories of a character. I think your psyche is pretty much well-rounded when you are little.”
She gives the example of her fear of earthquakes. In the book, she recounts a quest to figure out what her family’s plan would be if a massive earthquake suddenly rumbled through Los Angeles. The roots of that fear, she says, stem from a terrifying childhood experience when she found herself outside in a field during a tornado.
Oxford says she opens up more in print than she ever would feel comfortable doing online. Still, she has her limits.
“I know what lines can’t be crossed personally for me and for my kids and the people in my life, so I just try to keep it entertaining, I suppose.”
But not everything in the book is lighthearted.
The last essay in the collection, “#NotOkay: The Day My Outrage Went Viral” is relatable like the others, but the memories recalled in this one aren’t laughable with hindsight.
Oxford gives a first-person account behind the hashtag she started in October 2016 following a leaked video of then-candidate, now-U. S. President Donald Trump talking with former Access Hollywood personality Billy Bush, saying that fame allowed him to grope women.
At the time, Oxford reacted quickly by tweeting to her hundreds of thousands of followers about the first time she was assaulted, asking others to do the same.
Then, pretty quickly, millions of women did.
In her book, Oxford takes readers back to several separate instances when she was assaulted and shares what was going through her head the first time she watched the Trump video. She writes longer, more detailed accounts of the assaults she had previously summarized and tweeted in less than 140 characters. She also includes some of the responses from women who took her lead and shared their own stories.
That last chapter was written after the rest of the book was finished. Following the outpouring of response on social media, she asked her editors if she could add it in. “When (the hashtag) happened, I thought, ‘Oh my God, this fits in so well with everything in the book.’ ”
The massive and powerful response from that original tweet, her loyal social-media following and this latest collection of shared moments all show Oxford’s ability to make connections with people by opening up about her life. Oxford will speak and sign copies of her book on Tuesday at the Toronto Reference Library from 7 to 8 p.m. The event is sold out, but a small number of rush seats will open up at 6 p.m. on the day of (those with rush tickets aren’t promised admission).
“I know what lines can’t be crossed personally for me and for my kids and the people in my life, so I just try to keep it entertaining, I suppose.” KELLY OXFORD AUTHOR AND SOCIAL-MEDIA STAR