by Priya Parmar
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The post itself is a guest post from Priya Parmar, author of The Original. This brand new novel is about screen icon Katharine Hepburn, with a focus on her fluid sexuality, her androgynous roles, and how she redefined what it meant to be a woman in film. Here, Parmar writes specifically about her “unlikability,” and why that drew her to the film legend.
Unlikability is a quality I think about, I admire. It requires a specific kind of courage.
In my writing, I am drawn to women who are sharp-edged, thorny, unwilling to soften themselves for the comfort of others. I don’t want to make them likable. I want to make them true. That’s why I love Katharine Hepburn. She was unafraid to make things awkward for others. She was glorious.
As a young actress in Hollywood, Hepburn showed zero interest in being liked. She wore old dungarees around the set. The studio asked her to stop. They asked again. Young actresses were meant to be glamorous and not to cavort in old denim overalls. Hepburn didn’t stop. Eventually, the studio sent people into her dressing room to take the dungarees. When she returned to find them missing, she walked across the lot in her underwear and took them right back.
Some called her difficult. Unlikable. Eventually, some called her “box office poison.” But now, that sharp refusal to change is exactly why we love her. We love that she insisted on being her whole, complicated self.
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