Karolina Waclawiak’s new novel, The Invaders, focuses in on an aging trophy wife in a Connecticut beachside community who begins spiraling out of control alongside her drug-addled stepson, Teddy. While Waclawiak’s Cheryl escaped her working class life only to end up in a stifling community of wealth, Teddy, born into this life of wealth cannot find a way to cultivate that life on his own. Using the town of Little Neck Cove as a backdrop, Waclawiak writes about the power of sexual currency and what happens to a woman’s identity when she begins to feel sexually invisible. Karolina Waclawiak sat down with the writer Sara Gran to talk about female aging, our culture of sexual currency, and how we talk about beauty.
Karolina Waclawiak: So our homework for this interview was to watch the Courtney Stodden sex tape. Did you? I watched the 5-minute teaser video that Vivid posted online. It’s very interesting that she’s straddling the line between little girl standing in line for an ice cream cone and, obviously, sex-wife. What will happen to her?
Sara Gran: I haven’t seen the whole video, but I likewise watched the teaser. What will happen to her is an interesting question, and one that’s very relevant to your new book, The Invaders. You and I have often spoken about how young women in the public eye now cycle through the ritual of fame/descent/public shaming so quickly that they seem to be in Norma Desmond territory by the time they’re twenty-five. The narrator of your novel is only 44 (my age!) yet feels like her life as a sexually desirable person is over. What’s the best possible future for someone like Courtney Stodden—or Lindsey Lohan or Britney Spears? Why is it so hard to even imagine a happy ending for these women (as with the narrator of your book)?
That’s one reason I wanted to write this book. I wanted to look at a person whose identity was wholly wrapped up in their ability to attract suddenly reach the moment I think all women hit, which is… the moment men stop looking at them. Amy Schumer recently did a sketch called Last Fuckable Day which I thought was absolutely brilliant. Let’s talk about aging — I think it’s as taboo a thing to talk about as death and dying are in our culture. I don’t know what’s going to happen to Lindsay, Britney and Courtney when they lose their sexual appeal. Maybe we can’t imagine a positive future for them because there’s no space for them as older women in our collective imagination. It points to us getting older and that’s what we can’t handle. I’m interested in the lengths a person will go to feel wanted and needed, and so I wanted to write about that. It didn’t end well, because I don’t think it ever does.
But is it possible to use that kind of beauty as a doorway into a more interesting life? Like Brigette Bardot and Audrey Hepburn, maybe? Is it possible to use your beauty, rather than letting it eat you alive? Could you imagine an alternate ending for Cheryl?
Ah, yes, see that’s where things get interesting. I do think you can use beauty as a doorway into a more interesting life. I think beauty is something that can allow you to jump class. For instance, I love Anna Nicole Smith and think she was beautiful. She was someone who used her beauty to escape class and I think it happens often. My character does it, too. Anna Nicole is endlessly fascinating because she was reviled for being “white trash” and a “gold digger.” I thought the Lifetime TV Movie directed by Mary Harron about her was great. Unfortunately, her beauty, and chasing that beauty, did eat her alive. Maybe I am just more drawn to the tragic tales of beauty rather than then the feel-good ones. Are there feel good ones? I don’t know. For Cheryl, the happy ending would be growing old with her husband and getting progressively better at golf. That doesn’t make for an interesting novel. I have to say, though, I’m not interested in putting my characters through hell just for the sake of watching them squirm. I did want to put myself in the shoes of a person who was looked at as someone who didn’t “earn” her place in her community. Much like an Anna Nicole or any woman who is unsophisticated and jumps class. I also think it’s interesting to think about trying to pass in upper classes, what behaviors you mimic to fake it until you make it. It all feels exhausting and sometimes people crumble under the weight of it.
You’ve written a book with two narrators: an attractive young man who is in the thick of things, so to speak, in terms of sex and relationships and love, and an older woman who’s becoming invisible as an object of romantic love or sexual desire as she ages, and the loss she feels with this. Why is a woman who isn’t sexually attractive in a very particular way such a reviled object in mainstream American culture?
So, my character Cheryl is a second wife, a trophy wife, who was prized for her youth and femininity and who is now losing it. I can imagine that takes a huge psychic toll on a beautiful woman. Which is why I think there’s a rush to surgery. I am an avid watcher of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and it’s been fascinating (in a distressing way) to see the women’s faces change over the last few years in a very unnatural way. The reunion show was particularly alarming. Our beauty standards are of course, out of whack and I think there’s been an interesting pornification of women happening for a long time. If you look at some of the Real Housewives, they’ve gone in for those “blow job” lips. They’re supposed to just be the “wives,” some with careers and some not, yet, their standard of beauty seems to be gleaned from someone like Jenna Jameson. It’s not a value judgment, it’s just really interesting. The window of what is attractive seems to be narrowing to just be who looks fuckable. Not interesting looking or alluring in an oddball way, just fuckable. Fuckability it power. My narrator’s stepson, Teddy, is young and powerful because he’s virile and wanted, that is, until he’s not. I do think fuckability is gendered, but attractiveness is powerful for either sex.
And by the same token, the window of fuckability is also narrow. Take for instance, former Housewife Adrienne Maloof. After she and her husband split, she started dating Rod Stewart’s son, Sean, who is about 20 years younger than her. That didn’t go over well and their relationship was skewered over and over again. It was humiliating for her to be dating someone so much younger than her, but men do it all the time. Why? I think a woman’s sexuality is a really frightening thing for people to consider, especially when they’re older. You’re made to feel like you have to suppress your sexuality because it makes people uncomfortable. Maybe the surgeries to look hyper sexual is a way of fighting back against that. Their aging bodies are betraying how they feel so they ape youth in an alarming way.
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