This intro was hard to write. Not in that normal writer's block kind of way, but because I was in an office and I kept losing my shit so hard revisiting Samantha Irby's essays and blog posts that I had to take multiple breaks to go chortle with reckless abandon in the bathroom; she's so goddamn funny.
If you haven't been to her hugely popular blog bitches gotta eat, you're missing out on being rendered an unseemly pile of cackles. Laced with expletives, neon letters and caps lock, bitches gotta eat is a singular and hysterical interwebs experience.
Irby writes, for example, in her post "how to take a sexy selfie" that one should wear "repulsive pajamaclothes" when sending salacious pics because she doesn't believe in false advertising:
"if there is a chance a person is actually going to come to my crib to eat an assortment of spoiled mayonnaise-based dips and cheese dogs warmed up in the oven (ie engage in sweet, sweet foreplay) then i'm not pushing my tits up to my tonsils and putting on eye makeup before awkwardly leaning against the bathroom door and taking a picture of my naughty business. i don't just sit around in fifty dollars' worth of reinforced satin on a tuesday night. i put on this fancy bra special for you and the entire intercloud to enjoy, but now i am uncomfortable and this itchy lace is digging into my soft meats so instead i'ma just keep chilling in my gross nightshirt with the hole in the armpit so you know exactly what to expect once you cross my actual threshold."
She also redesigned her own version of Cosmo for a post that began "Cosmo is finally keeping shit real, hoes," that includes:
"can we get a couple articles for misanthropic assholes who make bad decisions and hate to be outdoors, please? JUST ONCE i want to read, 'how to mix adderall and diet coke so you can stay awake until the end of the party!' or 'watching a CSI marathon on a sunny saturday afternoon with the blinds closed really doesn't make you a loser!'"
And while her writing is empirically hilarious, it's also incredibly real—with no experience or topic being off-limits. Her book of essays, Meaty, encompasses discussions of death, heartbreak, her brushes with homelessness and struggles with Crohn's Disease. And Irby captures it all with inspiring poignancy, offering up some of the most honest writing out there. Her essay "My Mother, My Daughter," describing how she assumed caretaking responsibilities for her mother at age nine, is devastating and raw:
"Fourteen years have passed since the day I sat at the foot of yet another hospital bed, watching the morphine that would end my mother’s life drip slowly into her arm, robbing her first of consciousness, then of breath. My father had been found dead and homeless, frozen in the street, six months before. Fourteen years since the doctor said that the lung infection was going to kill her in a matter of days anyway, that between the MS and the dementia at fifty-five years young this gaunt skeleton whose skin hung from her skull like wet laundry was a shell of her former radiant self, and at that point it was obviously the most humane thing to do."
Meaty also includes the essay “How to get Your Disgusting Meat Carcass Ready for some New, Hot Sex"—and somehow it all coalesces, so skillful is Irby with her voice and the written word.
Her blog's tagline may be "tacos. hot dudes. diarrhea. jams." but even if you're a monster that somehow hates all those things, Irby's writing has something for you—and indeed, for everyone.
In short, Irby is OUR jam. So we're stoked that she filled us in on her blog, her approach to writing, and the worst part of live performances.
bitches gotta eat: awesome blog name and awesome blog. What's its origin? Do you have any specific goals for it, beyond just getting your badass thoughts out there?
Not a single one, other than trying to make people fall desperately in love with me. Initially it began as a way to convince this idiot that I was worthy of his courtship, and I thought handing him 500 out of context pages of the manuscript i was working on at the time seemed silly, so I started a blog. And then I had sex with him. The name was inspired by the movie Boyz in the Hood—the barbecue scene. NETFLIX IT. 
In your own words, you put the "intimate details of [your] butthole on the Internets." And indeed, you're candid as hell on this and a range of issues—from sexy-times to thumb sucking to poop. I guess my question is just . . . how are you so real all of the time—and can you teach me?
I pretend no one is going to read it. Like, as I'm sitting at my computer I think about making myself laugh, and maybe a couple of my friends? But it's easiest to imagine that no one is ever going to read it, that these are just secrets I am sharing with my computer. It only gets real when some stranger asks, YO BUT DO YOU STILL SUCK YOUR THUMB THO in the middle of a reading and I'm like, "Shit, I wrote that?!" So write it for you, or the one person you would let read your diary, then close your eyes and push it out into the world without a second thought.
I read this incredible interview you did with the Rumpus where you were incredibly candid about your parents having passed away when you were young and how that is liberating for you as a writer. Can you discuss this a bit?
Creative freedom is the dead parent silver lining. Like, if I'm not going to have anyone to steal money from who could lend me her car at a moment's notice, I may as well write whatever the fuck I want to write. I literally have no idea what it would be like to have parents or family inhibiting my work. I often hear artists talking about how the judgment of their families gets in the way of the work, and it sounds like such a drag. I mean, how many mommies and daddies are sitting on millions of dollars to hand down to their well-behaved, non-embarrassing children? So what, you expect me to stifle my creative energy just so I can cash in that 2,500 bucks I'm supposed to get when you eventually die? Fuck that, man. I want to talk shit now.
You published your book of hysterical and real-as-[expletive] essays Meaty last year. What inspired the book? And is the publishing scene as daunting as I, at least, imagine it to be?
I wrote the book because I had this amazing opportunity for it to be easy as cake that I knew would never ever happen for me again. The lit community in Chicago is pretty small and incestuous, and the dudes at Curbside (my publisher) had been hounding me for some time to do a book with them. I kept saying no because I'm the laziest bastard ever. Eventually I caved, because they told me I could do whatever I want. FOR REAL. I would be a total asshole to pass that up, so I didn't.
In addition to dropping straight up poignancy and hilarity on your blog and in your book, you're also a live-performer. What's that like? Is it harder to put yourself out there as a performer or in written form?
The only thing that is hard about being onstage for me is people who feel the need to take gross pictures at awkward angles. It is rude to photograph a person's undercarriage, you jerks.
Obligatory ask: Do you identify as a feminist? If so, how does it affect your work?
I understand feminism to mean "equal pay and equal rights," and I am absolutely a feminist. I'm not sure that it affects my work, as I don't often take on broad sociopolitical issues in my comedy. So far all of the shows I've done that "pay" have given an equal number of drink tickets to all of the participants, so I would say that feminism is alive and well in the Chicago live lit community? Or something like that.
Are there any issues or identities you claim that you feel especially compelled to write about?
FATNESS. AND EATING THINGS.
I know I'm repeating myself here but you have such a powerful voice that is just so real. Do you have any advice for others struggling to feel empowered enough to embrace their own unique voices and styles?
NO. Empowered is such a tough thing to help someone else be. I would say that if there's something you truly felt passionate about and called to do that you would just do it, that there's no insurmountable fear once you know you've got your thing. If you let yourself get psyched out, if you're scared of your voice and unwilling to tap into your power and put yourself out there, then maybe you just weren't meant to do it (now use the lightning bolt of anger you just felt while reading that and get the fuck to work). Write like you're trying to impress the hottest, smartest, most unattainable, best-tasting beefcake you've ever met in your entire life—like seriously the best work that makes you look like the goddamned coolest—and keep writing like that all the motherfucking time. Like, "THIS IS THE ONE THAT WILL CONVINCE HER TO LOVE ME." That's my approach, every single time.
Any new projects coming down the pipes? Where can we follow all of your work?
I just submitted the final piece of my second book proposal to my agent, so as soon as someone showers me with dollar bills I'm going to start working on it in earnest. I have some phone meetings set up for later this week. It's going to be a goddamned jam.
And I will keep writing bitchesgottaeat until my eyes inevitably shrivel up and fall out of my skull from staring at a computer and/or phone screen half my walking hours. Worth it, though. There's a lot of good shit on Hulu.
Beyond checking out bitchesgottaeat, you can also follow Samantha along on Twitter @wordscience.
