‘Untamed’ Made Me Cry and Cringe
By: Mad Dyke
Tags: Comedy, Pop Culture, Books, Entertainment, LGBTQ

I had never heard of Glennon Doyle or Abby Wambach until one day my ex-girlfriend told me a gay soccer player (Wambach) announced she was dating a Christian mom blogger (Doyle) who’d left her husband. Suddenly I cared very much who these people were. I might not have been Doyle’s demo before, but now that she was eating pussy and marrying butch soccer players, that all changed. I read every interview with them I could get my hands on. In one of those interviews, Doyle recounted how she met and locked eyes with Wambach, and how they both knew, in that moment, that they’d found their soulmate. It was all so fucking romantic!

So when I found out she’d written an entire book about their love story, Untamed, I was very excited to read it. At first, I loved the book. I thought Doyle was insightful and wise. I was l i v i n g for the love story element — although there could’ve been much more of it imo. But then I read a section of the book out loud to my girlfriend, it was about the moment Doyle knew she wanted to leave her husband for Abby. When I got done reading, my girlfriend shrugged.

“Sounds like a narcissist,” she said, and walked out of the room. Suddenly, I saw the book in a whole new light.

While I was initially hypnotized by Doyle’s charms, the rose colored glasses had been ripped from my face and I recognized Untamed for what it was, a series of inspirational wall hangings from HomeGoods (Live, Laugh, Love) sewn together into a memoir. It was more of a disjointed guide to How to Be Woke Over 40 than it was an emotional memoir or love story.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some truly inspirational and tear-jerking moments in the book, like when she talks about coming out to her family and setting emotional boundaries with her parents (something I know a lot of queer women suck at). She offers advice on burning your life to the ground simply because you know, deep down, you want something more.

Doyle also has some valuable information for white women who need to better understand things like unconscious bias and internalized racism. And she lays out sexuality and gender in a way that even your most bigoted aunt could wrap her head around. (Although there was a part where she writes “maybe I DID choose my sexuality,” and I think she’s trying to make a point, but I don’t think she should be muddying the waters on the whole nature vs. nurture thing — it’s nature! I promise.)

Then there were parts that were so rife with metaphors — about buckets and sea water and cheetahs — it was difficult to understand what was actually happening in the story. These were the chapters where Doyle got a little carried away with her preachiness, glossing over the most fleshy, and imo, interesting parts of her personal story. And while there were some great nuggets of wisdom in the book for young people, that didn’t appear to be Doyle’s demo.

Her views on millennials and Gen Z (who she says “suck”) are offensive and coming from a place of privilege that she never acknowledges. She complains about “college prep and PTA meetings” and “agonizing” over snacks, and it’s like stfu lady most of our parents didn’t do any of that. She paints young people like coddled, lazy idiots doing the bare minimum for participation trophies, vs. what we actually are, literally the hardest working generation yet (not to mention living in the shittiest economy of all time).

A lot of her book is very “ok, boomer.” Like when she talks about how her son “lost the light from his eyes” when he got a cell phone. She goes on and on about how phones keep us from “itchy boredom” that often leads to inspiration and self discovery. Yes, because nobody has ever found inspiration or discovered themselves on the internet. She wonders whether we’re raising a generation of “writers who won’t write,” “painters who won’t paint” blah blah blah. It’s a real 2007 hot take.

It’s also wild to me because, what world does she live in?? Millennials and Gen Z are not only the most ambitious and driven generation, but we’re constantly using the internet and social media and the communities we create through them to help push ourselves and exercise our creativity. Being on our phones actually helps us connect and discover and reinvent ourselves. This is especially true for people who might be limited in how much they can explore themselves in their local community — i.e. queer people, people of color, disabled people, etc.

A huge theme of Untamed is the importance of blazing your own path and being your own person, and the internet has afforded so many people the ability to do that. Doyle claims phones prevent us from becoming who we’re meant to be, but I know so many people who are living examples of the exact opposite. It was odd to see Doyle paint such a one-dimensional view of phones and social media. It seemed extremely “get off my porch you heathens” in a book that is trying to promote self acceptance and exploration and going against the grain. (IMO, the grain is people over 40 constantly telling me my phone is “stealing the light from my eyes.”)

There are other cringey moments, like when she talks about bragging to people about being homecoming queen in high school. As a grown woman, she finds this impressive and makes her “golden,” and she believes other grown people are genuinely impressed by this fact, too. (Who?!) She can also, as my girlfriend pointed out, come across as out-of-touch and narcissistic. She believes in the “men behave this obnoxiously so women deserve to be obnoxious too” brand of feminism. The same group of people who if ever critiqued will say “would you say this to me if I were a man?” and the answer is almost always a confident “yes.”

There are definitely some genuine moments in Untamed, but instead of fleshed out stories that feel real, we get a lot of quick vignettes that all seem tied a little too neatly in a bow — each one ending with a perfect metaphor to demonstrate what Doyle’s going through, one that she’s determined to ring every last drop out of. Too often she seems like she’s trying to give you advice on how to Solve Life, while at the same time telling you it’s this unsolvable mystery that has no blueprint so make your own blah blah blah. But just make sure your blueprint doesn’t involve being on your phone too much or out of shape!

This is something Doyle addresses in a particularly uncomfortable moment of the book. She observes that her ten year old daughter — ten — is “turning to food for comfort” after her parents, Doyle and her ex-husband, get divorced. She wants to encourage her to “move more.” Like, fuck off I’m ten and my parents just got divorced! Then she talks about her daughter joining a traveling soccer team and how she’s “strong and solid now” — mentioning her “chiseled” legs and face — as opposed to the squishy slob she was before??? She was ten!! Doyle adds her daughter is fit now “not because she wants to be a model but she wants to be the best athlete and teammate.” Like, okay. So, strong and solid is what’s attractive, even in this “untamed” world of Doyle’s imagination.

While Doyle writes about being bulimic and how important it is for people to recognize their role in contributing to eating disorder culture, she doesn’t acknowledge she might have some influence on her daughter’s self image, and she comes across slightly fat-phobic. It’s this uneasy juxtaposition that carries through the entire memoir. Doyle claims to be comfortable being imperfect, or rather argues there’s no such thing as perfect to begin with, but it sure seems like she wants to be perfect, and wants her children to be as close to perfect as possible, too. She’s like the attractive, successful career woman in a rom com who thinks occasionally tripping over her Jimmy Choos makes her relatable.

Anyway, I basically oscillated between crying and cringing the entire time I was reading. Doyle would distill a life experience into words so succinctly, beautifully, and effectively sometimes I’d find myself speechless. And then a few paragraphs later, she’d use a made-up word like “brutiful” (brutal and beautiful combined) and I’d remember that maybe I really am not her demo — no matter how many butches she marries.