Why Embracing Frivolity Might Be the Most Serious Act of All: A Provocative Take by Jehanne Dubrow
In fact, Frivolity makes an elegant case for its subject, if also a highly associative one. Organized in numbered sections of varying lengths, Dubrow negotiates with her reader the drive to be frivolous and the need for our frivolities. Frivolity never feels frivolous itself, however. In her prose, Dubrow tethers the frivolous to the serious, first acknowledging frivolity’s core weakness, our society’s central premise that “Frivolity is always intended as an insult.” She unpacks the nature of the insult, identifying the gendered nature of frivolity—how, culturally, we paint it as female—noting, too, that the frivolous is often also tied to queerness and skin color. The frivolous, Dubrow postulates, is othered.
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