Megan Amram’s first book offers both a critique of women’s magazines and the way women in STEM fields are portrayed.

by Paige Pritchard

Have you been in need of a science textbook that combines the fun and flirty layout of a ladies’ mag with the narration of a meth-addled stalker? Allow me to recommend Megan Amram’s Science…For Her!

The comedian’s debut book, published November 4th, provides a smart spoof of popular women’s interest magazines. Presented as a science textbook, Science…For Her! is simultaneously a silly romp through pseudoscience and a feminist rant against an increasingly tone deaf publishing industry.

Up to now, Amram has been known for her uproarious tweets and her job as a writer for Parks and Recreation. Her book marks an expansion of her unique humor – a brash mixture of dark comedy, surrealism, and social critique – into print. This new platform works on numerous levels for Amram’s textbook-meets-magazine concept. Not only does she write the chapters in girl talk mimicking the tones of Cosmo or Glamour, she then extends this parody into the design of the book itself. The cover is stuffed with sell lines and the content is separated into handy sidebars and infographics. Actual infographics in the book include “Best Gravitational Fields for Losing Weight”, “Organisms vs. Orgasms”, and “Fashion Staples for Each Step of Global Warming”. 

This concept would be funny enough without the subplot of Amram’s fictional narrator. The character, writing with the same name, is basically a psycho, paranoid version of Amram, if she happened to live in the sequel to Fatal Attraction and also did ecstasy. When we meet her, Amram (the character) is recovering from a breakup with Xander, a hunky ex whom she’s determined to win back. What caused the split? Xander discovered Amram somehow ascended the ranks of NASA and in her scientific ineptitude, caused a number of fatal space shuttle crashes. Typical woman!

Amram’s combination of gleeful misinformation and an increasingly disastrous relationship plot is great when it borders the absurd, and best when the author uses this absurdity as scathing satire of an arguably even more illogical reality. In addition to her appraisal of media industry misogyny, she also touches on Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” comment, Paula Deen’s continuing fame, and the general messed-upedness of American culture. In a particularly biting segment that reviews American history as if it were a sitcom, she spouts, “What the characters lack in consistency, they make up for in body weight, lingering racism, and inconsistency.” Ouch.

After finishing her book, and subsequently rereading particularly hilarious side bars (an advice column penned by “Ayn Rand” was a personal favorite) I had the opportunity to interview Amram over the phone. As a long time fan of her Twitter and fervent Parks and Rec fan, I didn’t know what to expect. What I got was an enlightened discussion on feminism, dark humor, and the human condition, proving that Amram’s insight and wit succeeds on any level – be it on Twitter, television, print or in person.

Paige Pritchard: Thank you so much for taking some time to speak to me!

Megan Amram: Of course.

PP: How are you doing today?

MA: I’m good, I’ve been doing a lot of press for this stupid book coming out. I did a photo shoot this morning which was very fun – I’m really just trying to become a model full time.

PP: Well I watched the behind-the-scenes video of you doing the cover shoot for Science…For Her! And you looked pretty adept at it.

MA: Thank you. You know, it’s that age old story of woman becomes a comedy writer to transition into just full-time modeling.

PP: It’s a great way to get a foot in the door, I’ve heard of so many models doing that.

MA: Yeah, I mean, it’s pretty tried and true.

PP: So, what else are you doing in the week coming up for Science…for Her!? How are you feeling?

MA: It’s crazy that it’s coming out. I’ve been working on it for so long that it’s snuck up that now it comes out in two days. But I’m planning on just buying a lot of my own book in person, at bookstores, and just telling people it’s me.

PP: Just holding up the cover and seeing if they notice?

MA: Yes! Be like…this is me! It has been funny, I have carried my own book places to give to friend…and I don’t think you’d ever notice me because in day-to-day life I do not look like I do on the cover.

PP: You mean you don’t wear a busty science coat? A lab coat?

MA: That’s what I have underneath everything

PP: Okay.

MA: But I usually have a full-on floor-length cape over the whole thing

PP: But you do carry around a graduated cylinder, right?

MA: Yeah! Because you never know what you might have to measure!

PP: Yeah!

MA: So you don’t want to be left out in the cold. But, um, no I’m doing a lot of…my book tour starts this week, so I’m going away too, and I’m also working full-time at Parks and Rec where I write, so a very busy week.

PP: Yeah, that’s a busy schedule. I noticed your book tour – where all will you be going and are you looking forward to going and speaking at these places?

MA: I’m super excited. It’s a little short because I’m working my job still, but I’m doing some stuff in LA, then Toronto and New York and Boston and Portland, where I’m from. It’s pretty much the places I go anyway, but I’m super excited that I have some of my friends in those cities because then I can just pad the audience.

PP: Well I’m actually writing from a small town in southeast Missouri; is there any chance that we can look forward to your tour coming to this area any time soon? 

MA: I would love to. I, really, like, maybe after this first little wave…I really want to go to smaller towns, or maybe to Europe? So good, I wanna go to London! That sounds cool. London – the smallest town in Missouri.

PP: Yeah. I mean, it’s kind of hard to get into the lit community there, but, um, I think they’re open to science writers, and yeah, that could be a good idea.

MA: I should write a Creationism…For Her! My character should get really into the Bible.

PP: I’m only four hours west of THE Creationism Museum, so they might even open up an exhibit for you.

MA: I really really have wanted to go there for a long time. Outside of LA near Palm Springs there are these big dinosaurs that were in the movie PeeWee’s Big Adventure, which is my favorite comedy.

PP: So that’s where they are? Yeah, I know those dinosaurs.

MA: So at one point they were just dinosaurs I think, but now they are a Creationist, like, roadside tourist attraction.

PP: Of course!

MA: Of course.

PP: So in terms of your book, I wanted to ask you about the process of writing it – what made you sit down and start writing Science…for Her! and choose the topic and kind of develop the voice that you use in it?

MA: Before I knew what I wanted to write about, I knew I wanted to write a comedy book, just because I had written prose for my blog and I really enjoyed it. It was a nice foil to writing TV shows. And I wanted it to be higher concept than just a mix of comedy pieces, so I looked back through what I had written and saw that I already had written a bunch of fake female-interest magazine parodies. Like, I had written a fun, flirty quiz to see if you had cancer, which actually is in the book. But it occurred to me, oh, that’s something that I obviously care about because I’ve been writing pieces about it and it could be a really fun-looking book. And when I thought a little more about what the satire would logically be I thought, oh, well, it would be amazing to write a science textbook where it basically insinuated that women don’t understand anything about their lives, the world they live in.

PP: Well I really enjoyed it, and I think the thing that really hit my funny bone was just the narrator. The Megan Amram that narrates us through Science…For Her!, she’s apparently faked her way into NASA, survived a breakup with ex-lover Xander, and is now spouting off inaccurate…but funny and flirty science information. How would you describe her voice and how did you come up with it?

MA: It was very organic, which I say, it’s funny to talk about this book, which is insane in a way, that it’s like a real piece of literature. I had an outline of what I was going to put in the book in terms of the real pieces and side bars but I really wrote the narrative throughout the whole thing in a chronological, just like, I just made it up as it went. And thought – okay, so, if she’s this crazy in Act One – not even Act One, I’m talking like a television writer – In Chapter One, then how can I make her slightly crazier in Chapter Two, and it just got to the point where she is addicted to drugs and then she’s in a coma and then she gets married to someone she meets while she’s in a coma, then it just built and built.

PP: Yeah, I noticed that she kind of snowballs throughout the entire thing.

MA: Oh yeah, she’s barely hanging on at the beginning, as it is, and then she just loses it completely and basically becomes a psychotic.

PP: And how do you get into the mindset of writing with that character? Do you just kind of sit down and decide to write this crazy, drug-addled, ex-boyfriend-obsessed character?

MA: Yeah, I think that’s what’s so fun, in that it’s not who I am in real life, so it is a very fun departure from my boring old self to just sit down and like truly get in the mindset of an insane person

PP: I mean that’s kind of what, sometimes, comedy is about, just a departure from yourself and into a more insane version of yourself or of reality in general.

MA: Oh, totally. Like the performers I like to watch the most are ones who have these very cohesive characters—and I think right now the most famous person doing that is Stephen Colbert, who has a very cohesive character voice that he rarely departs from, and it’s so wonderful to see someone who you know is like a smart, caring, liberal person, but has committed so heavily to this one opposite character.

PP: You said that you had written in the past in the voice of a women’s interest magazine. What do you think attracts you to this voice?

MA: I think it’s so specific. It’s so specific, but it’s also uniform across the magazines and across issues. So you read – I read a ton of Cosmos and Glamours and Marie Claires to “research” for this book, and I think what blew me away is how similar all the voices are, which are both very casual and are calling the readers their best girlfriends and their besties, but that are also nagging them and are telling them they need to change things about their lives, while then switching back to superficially saying “You don’t need a man, you’re good enough as it is – but also if you do need a man, here’s how to tailor your life to get one.” So it’s very confusing, and it’s a real roller coaster of tones, and I think in my book, I try to write like that, but to the nth degree.

PP: Are you usually a magazine reader, or did you just pick these up for research?

MA: I’m not really, but like a lot of people I’ll buy them in airports because they’re pretty mindless reads, but no, I think I always knew there was something off about them, even when I was 12 years old reading them, and I just never felt like I was the person they were trying to reach, and that’s because I’m not – I just never was going to be a girl who, first of all, understood how to make herself look impeccable. I think it’s gotten to the point where I can make myself look fine, but not someone who is really – I don’t have a signature scent. (laughs)

PP: Or like your shade of lipstick or something?

MA: Yeah, I always felt a little alien, and it sometimes felt bad to look at these women models in the magazine, and not even think I’m not as pretty as them, but just be like, I’ve got different issues from what they are.

PP: Do you think that, just as a reader, would you want a magazine that speaks to you or do you think that these magazines should maybe change their tone of voice? 

MA: I mean, I think that the thing that bothers me the most about them is that they’re sort of insidious and they pose as things that are more harmless than they are. So I think it could be harmful for a young girl reading them if she (thinks), ‘I have to be this person that I’m not,’ but then I also think women should be totally free to love fashion and nail polish and boys – like those are all amazing things that I love, but the attitude about it could be different. And there are some magazines, even the main ones I hope are becoming a little more tongue in cheek and are sort of changing their tone. That, mostly, is what bothers me. And also it bothers me that it’s specifically gendered. Because there are men, or there are people transitioning, who love nail polish, and makeup, and boys, and these magazines are written so specifically to a white, heterosexual, female gender, that I think that also is problematic. Even the fact that in Barnes & Noble they’re sold under the heading of “Women’s Interest” because that’s where you find those magazines, like yeah, that’s how it’s been for a long time, but then that sort of bothers me, because like Wired isn’t under men’s interest, but that’s what the assumption would be.

PP: Well yeah, like I read a lot of magazines, and it kind of sucks to go in to a Barnes and Noble and find no interest in the Women’s section and pick up stuff from the Men’s, like Esquire, so I relate to that.

MA: Yeah, like, sometimes I feel like a bummer, because if you’re a feminist, sometimes you’ve been sort of trained that people don’t like extremists or “angry feminist” which is a pet peeve of mine because I am pretty angry, it just for me comes out in the form of satirical jokes, other than rages rants. But I think you’re trained to feel self-conscious if you say things like “even the category at Barnes and Noble is sort of sexist” but it is, and we have the right to point out little things, even though there are some big things, like Sharia Law.

PP: You mentioned that the way you deal with the anger about this is kind of satire, and I think that shows in the book – you have an entire infographic on “legitimate rape” and other kind of darker subjects, so yeah, how do you use your satire for that?

MA: I think that I really try to be very thoughtful about never hurting someone who has been hurt by abuse or violence, so while I think when in doubt, never make a rape joke, I also think there’s a difference between a rape joke that’s making fun of the person that got raped and rape joke that is making fun of the psycho institution that somehow allows for date rape and for people to get away with it. So I truly try to err on the side of the psychos who believed there were cases of rape that were either excusable or like wouldn’t hurt the woman. So that’s what the infographic was, it was making fun of Todd Akin and people like him who either truly believe or are saying it to rile people up that legitimate rape is something set aside from illegitimate rape.

PP: And your comedy in general is a lot of dark humor. Your Twitter is hilarious and I’ve been following it for a long time, but you definitely don’t shy away from taboo topics. I know that a lot of comedians probably take a lot of self-confidence to know that like what you’re saying is funny but not offensive. How do you toe that line and know that this is going to be a funny joke and it’s hopefully not going to offend anyone.

MA: It’s difficult, because I think you never, it’s hard to really know – I mean, I think it’s easier to know whether something is offensive or not than to know whether it’s funny or not. And I truly never try to tweet offensive jokes, in that there would be a victim. If it’s like something that could offend every single person on earth, if it’s about like, taking death lightly, not an individual’s death, but just the concept of death or religion or whatever, then that’s on you. I think it’s okay to make jokes about the human condition.

PP: Because the human condition is weird!

MA: Right. But I do have like strong beliefs that are, you know, like every other Hollywood Jew, this is everyone’s fear is that every Hollywood Jew is super liberal and has the same agenda but it’s like yes, I believe in a right to choice and a woman’s control over her own reproductive health. I believe in birth control subsidies, like that healthcare should cover birth control, which is used as a medicine in so many cases. And I believe in environmental caution and climate change and like all of these things that sometimes make their way into my tweets. Like I’ve tweeted about abortion before and I know that that is inflammatory but I don’t think that it’s offensive, which are different things.

PP: So how – talking about your Twitter as opposed to your book, how is it different for you as a comedy writer to write for your Twitter platform, to write for your book, or to sit down and write for Parks and Recreation?

MA: They are pretty different, which is good, because you can do them all at once and not get burnt out. It wasn’t hard to sort of – I didn’t think of jokes that could work for all of them. Usually the thoughts I had aligned very clearly with either ‘Oh! That’s a good idea for the show,’ or ‘Oh! That’s just a tweet, or that’s something I can write for the book.’ They’re all very different lengths, short is tweets, medium is book, long is TV show, but yeah, if thinking of one thing sort of revs up your brain creatively and then you think of better ideas for the other medium.

PP: How did you initially get into comedy writing and writing for – I know that you kind of rose to fame a lot on Twitter and you wrote for the Oscars and how did you break into that and would you have any advice for people looking to break into comedy writing?

MA: I was extremely lucky. I did move to LA wanting to be a comedy writer, so sort of one of my pieces of advice is if you can, move to a center where people are making stuff, like LA or New York or Chicago. There’s great scenes of comedy in lots of different cities, but I love to be in LA because I met other young people who were working weird jobs like me and just trying to get their foot in the door. I do think that, it’s like been said before, but you have to sort of prepare yourself to be lucky. So I was very lucky in that people found my Twitter and promoted it and made me a public writer on the Internet, but before that I was just trying to write every day, and I was trying to (write) the best joke I could write, and so by the time people found me I had stuff I wanted to show. So I think like, another piece of advice is make as much as you can while you’re still young and no one is watching, because that’s how you figure out what you’re good at, and how you figure out what you like to do, and by the time you’re in the position to perform in front of people or to write for people, you’ve already sort of cultivated the voice you want.

PP: That’s great advice. I think, like, at The Riveter, we definitely believe in the idea of just going and doing it. Kind of creating what you want to create and then going from there.

MA: Yeah. Like the Internet is a great way to experiment with lots of different types of writing and videos. The bad side of that is that it’s also inundated with so much stuff, you have to get through the bad stuff to get to the good stuff, but the good side is that you can put whatever you want there, and if it’s good, everyone can see it.

PP: Right. How have you seen different Internet platforms, and especially Twitter, change since you’ve been using it for your comedy?

MA: I definitely think that it’s less of a novelty now. I’ve been around for like four years and many people have been doing it for longer so I think there’s less of a desire to seek out new voices on it, so I’m glad I got in when I did. But it still is a great way to reach a ton of people all at once and to get immediate feedback, and that’s such an exciting style of writing that I don’t think is ever going to go away.

PP: How do you feel – going back to our feminism conversation – what is it like being a female writer in comedy, in a field that is kind of male dominated. Or even what do you think of women scientists working in a field that is male dominated. There is really a lot, you kind of touched on both fields with your book.

MA: Yeah, I think the topic of women in comedy has been talked about so much now, I personally have been so happy and lucky with how I’ve been treated and have no personal experiences of sexism. I work for a show now that is so overtly feminist, the creator of the show, my boss, Mike Schur, and Amy Poehler, the star of the show, and everyone who’s making it alongside them have very much aligned themselves with feminism and have dedicated themselves to writing characters that are very open-minded, and I think that’s really exciting. I grew up the daughter of a single mother who is a doctor, and I think that was amazing, like from the day I was born, there never was a question that a woman couldn’t do anything a man traditionally did, because my mom was a doctor, which is something that men were for hundreds of years, thousands of years, before women. And I think growing up I didn’t really grasp the fact that there still is sexism because it seemed so clear that my family, like my mom was a doctor, I was really in to science and math, my brother was also really in to science and math, so it was like, oh just everyone can do whatever they want, right? But now that I’m a little older and realize how much inequality there is on so many different levels, I truly think it’s amazing that older women who were in science, that’s really difficult, and I think that every woman that became an MD or PhD or anything related for science paved the way for younger women, and I always think that it starts when you’re a really little kid and that there are strides being taken to introduce girls to science and math when they’re really young, and I think that’s great.

Even the LEGO sets that came out where women are scientists that people made fun of – I get why it’s like inherently silly, but it also I think it’s great, because when I was little, LEGO sets the girls were in were like bikinis on the beach, I think. That didn’t affect how I thought, but that might affect how another girl thinks, who doesn’t have a doctor mom. And I think that’s great. Anything that can show that there are a lot of different options is really great and healthy.

Paige Pritchard is the managing editor of The Riveter. Follow her on Twitter at @peapodpritchard.