Zibby interviews award-winning TV writer Laura Belgray about her hilarious and wise collection of stories, Tough Titties: On Living Your Best Life When You’re the F-ing Worst. Laura shares parts of her life story, from eating disorders, all-girls school, and hookups with bartenders to finally finding her passion (and her husband!). She also describes her career in writing (from TV promos to marketing emails) and shares her best advice for aspiring writers.

Transcript:

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Laura. Thank you so much for coming on “Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books” to discuss Tough Titties: On Living Your Best Life When You’re the F-ing Worst.

Laura Belgray: Zibby, thank you. I’m so excited to be here.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh, I think we have to start with the beavers.

Laura: Beavers come first. Let’s do it, beaver talk.

Zibby: We both grew up in New York and went to a similar school and had a similar mascot and all of that, very similar. You’re so funny in the book when you talk about it, as you are with literally everything you talk about in the book. You’re like, okay guys, literally, my mascot was a beaver. We had a hundredth centennial of beaver days and all of this.

Laura: All-girls school. They chose the beaver and celebrated with “100 Years of Eager Beavers” pins.

Zibby: Tell me about why you decided to take that memory, all your memories of school and growing up and nineth grade and going to Studio and just all the retrospective stuff and packaging it up in this way, which is both humorous and sort of a spinoff of self-help in a way. Talk to me about starting the book and where this all came from.

Laura: Thank you. I would say nostalgia is kind of my style. The book does go up to present day, but I love those memories of the seventies, eighties, nineties in New York. It was just such a different time. I have very specific memories of it. Whenever I share them with people, they’re like, oh, my gosh, that has to go in your book. I talk about all-girls school with the mascot of the beaver. That’s in the book. Going to Studio 54 and having a disastrous night there because I was fourteen and with two people, one of whom didn’t have permission to be there, that was always a story I loved to tell. There are a lot of stories that I kind of dined out on for a long time. I was like, these have to go in the book. That’s where those came from.

Zibby: You also have a whole section on — you called it something about the potato chips. You talked about Weight Watchers and how that went. Tell me all about that section of life and all of that. Working in the Steve’s Ice Cream, oh, my god.

Laura: I scooped at Steve’s Ice Cream. We had an elective senior year of high school where we could take a job instead of taking classes. I chose to scoop ice cream at Steve’s. That was my dream job. Because I was in the throes of, I would say, a moderate modified eating disorder, I didn’t have one lick of real ice cream all spring or summer while I was working there. I would stop at , a place on the Upper West Side, or Zabar’s on my way to work and pick up frozen yogurt and bring it and save it in the ice cream freezer for my ice cream break. Everybody else would have their cookie monster or their scoop or whatever it was, vanilla with Reese’s Pieces mixed in. I would smugly pull out my little cup of frozen yogurt and nibble at it. The chapter called Watch the Potato Chips is all about my very early indoctrination into diet culture, being self-conscious of and ashamed of my weight from age five.

Looking back, I’m like, I wasn’t even a fat kid. I just had a little chub around me, as kids should. I felt like everybody else had a flat stomach. Even at five, I was getting out of the pool and covering my stomach. My mom — I know you relate to this. My mom was always watching her weight. She really tried not to push that on me. She didn’t want me to feel bad about myself the way she did. She always had Tab in the fridge and a Weight Watchers scale on the counter. She would measure out calories of everything. Obviously, I picked up on that imperative to be skinny. It informed so much of my life and still does, really. Even though I’ve become normal-ish about food, though I’m still weird and controlling about it, I count my steps every day. I am always kind of assessing in the mirror, even though I don’t weigh myself anymore. Did I put on weight? Did I lose weight? Am I at my thinnest? Am I not at my thinnest? It’s dictated a lot of my life. Couldn’t handle a job that started in the morning that was nine to five or ten to six because that would mean I had to get up way too early to work out. I couldn’t handle that life. I was like, if I can’t work out, then I can’t take the job.

Zibby: I feel like these entrenched parent-led or culture-led weight things do not go away ever. It’s really sad. I feel like I do the same thing a lot with pictures. It doesn’t matter what I was doing. I could be doing something really, from a career perspective, great, but I’m not looking at that, ever, in the picture. I’m like, look at that. See my chin there? Look at my cheeks. That’s bad. I’m going to look back on this and regret this whole thing. It’s so stupid. I know it’s stupid. It’s also like, but I could’ve looked better.

Laura: It is. I always do that. I’m like, oh, I was thinner there. What was I doing then? Sometimes it’s like, oh, gosh, I was so thin in that picture. I’m so thin, but I know that was one of the most stressful, miserable times of my life. Still, I like the way I looked.

Zibby: I can’t believe I fit in those pants. Someone was like, “Yeah, you looked a lot thinner then, but you didn’t look better. You look better now, but you look thinner then.” I’m like, are they so different?

Laura: Exactly. It’s very hard for us to separate that having grown up with what we did. Things are changing now. Although, not entirely. There is body positivity. Then also, on Instagram, there’s still thigh gap, and probably TikTok, how to have a thigh gap. I have a good friend whose daughter is eleven. She’s a little pudgy and adorable. She heard her daughter saying, “You know what? I’m fat, but it’s okay because I look really good. I like my body.” I was like, gosh, can you imagine that, having that attitude, just neutral about thinking you’re fat? It’s not a diss. It’s not a criticism. It’s not something you have to change.

Zibby: What do you even mean by this?

Laura: I know. It’s so foreign. It’s like saying, “I have brown hair,” to her. I’m fat. It’s not a bad thing. It’s neutral.

Zibby: I do not mean in this conversation — I don’t in any way mean to put any sort of negative judgement on it. This is my own neuroses from my mom. Not to blame my mom because that was the life she was living, scooping out the same amount of cottage cheese every single morning. She would put two saccharin in her coffee. Cottage cheese and fruit every day. Going to Gilda’s for a workout. Everything was the same. Tab, all the same stuff, constant focus. Although, whatever. Now she’s almost seventy-five and super thin and fit. I don’t know. Who’s laughing now?

Laura: Yes, exactly. I would love to be so neutral about my body and not be imprisoned by any of that. On the other hand, I have stayed fit for my life and have habits that other people struggle to develop because they never had to worry about it. Then they hit their forties, and they’re like, I have to work out. I’m like, I feel gross unless I have worked out. It’s so engrained in me. It’s both a negative and a positive. Now I have that habit, so I’ll probably stay healthy and live longer, last longer.

Zibby: That’s the other thing too. I feel like it’s so much about health. Anyway, whatever. I don’t mean to get off track. There is no on or off track when you spill your guts in this book. We could go in a million directions. You also have this whole section on what you did with boys. I can’t even say it.

Laura: Chapter nine.

Zibby: Yes, even the boy calling you on Yom Kippur and all of that. Tell me more about that and writing about your experiences with guys early on and as you were getting older and all of that.

Laura: I have a few chapters that deal with that, with getting into ill-advised entanglements or one-nighters with guys, which start with the chapter Boys Don’t Like Me. I was convinced that boys didn’t like me. They didn’t. As I say in the book, I have receipts, like the spin the bottle party where the guy whose bottle landed on me was like, “Do-over.” The one who had to go in the closet with me was like, “Okay, we’re not doing this, right?” I was like, “Yeah, totally not.” Between that and then switching to an all-girls school, the aforementioned beaver school, between those two things, really, boys became such a prize, this object to seek out. Any attention from a boy was like a blue ribbon to me, permission to live, to take up space in the world. I’m worthy. I’m worthy of love because a boy likes me. Starting in high school, I would do things like, if I had the opportunity, I would steal somebody’s boyfriend. Someone’s boyfriend liked me, then I had to go for it and steal him. Then when I graduated from college and was living back in the city in my childhood bedroom in my parents’ house, I went out like it was my job because I felt like I had never had that phase of being slutty. I never sowed my wild oats. I never had the chance to experiment and have all these guys like me because they hadn’t. I felt like, oh, I’m hot now, but not hot enough. I started going out, really, like it was my job. My goal every night was to make out with somebody by four AM, by the time the bar closed. If I hadn’t made out with anyone or if nobody had expressed interest in me, then it was a lost evening. In that chapter that we won’t mention the name of on the — you can buy the book, and you’ll see which one it is. Most people count to chapter nine because in the dedication I say, “Mom, please don’t read chapter nine.”

Zibby: Yes, that was so funny.

Laura: She did. That details this string of guys that I went through — or maybe they went through me — that year after college. The Yom Kippur reference that you make, I think that’s the final guy in that chapter, who was this hot, very sexy general manager of a restaurant that I used to go and out hang out with downtown. He’d introduce me to people and make the joke, “This is Laura. We’ll sleep together. It’ll be fun. Then we’ll be really good friends.” I was like, oh, he must mean that we’re going to be boyfriend and girlfriend, actually. He doesn’t mean that we’re just going to sleep together. He called, and he asked for my number. I was very excited. Then he left me a message on Yom Kippur. I think he said something like, “This is the day you atone, and at the sound of the tone –” I don’t even know what joke I was making. I think he was a comedian. He was inviting me to come down and stay over at his place. He was like, “Bring stuff to stay over.” Yom Kippur, bad Jew, I went down to his place on Rivington Street and had my one night with him, which was exactly as he intended. To my dismay, he never called me again or wanted to hook up again. That was my quest at the time. I call it my journey. I won’t say what kind of journey because we’re being PG, but really just getting as many notches on my proverbial bedpost or belt as I could because I thought that that made me an accomplished person, again, a worthy person.

Zibby: How did you get over that?

Laura: I think I just moved into a new phase. You know what? I got a job. That was part of it. I got a job. For a while, that was my job, was being liked by boys. Then I got an actual job, and I didn’t have time. I had to get up in the morning. Since even when I was twenty-two, I’ve always prized my eight hours and can’t function very well without them. I couldn’t afford to stay out late dude hunting. Once I got a job, I just became more obsessed with career than with guys.

Zibby: Interesting. All these things, the eating, the guys, there was the friendship, there’s all this stuff that you’ve worked through. You do it all in a very funny way, but sometimes humor covers up the pain and some of the stuff. Where do you feel like you are now with all of it?

Laura: I feel like I am an adult and somewhat self-actualized. Writing this book, one reason I took so long to write it — I always wanted to write a book. I had so many different iterations of stops and starts and never felt like I knew how the book would end. Where does it go? I have so many stories of screwing up and measuring my self-worth in strange, stupid ways, arbitrary ways, and making a lot of mistakes and not fulfilling my potential, etc. I was like, where does it end? At age fifty, which is when I started really writing the book and sold it, I finally felt like I had an arc to my life, to these stories. Not that I got over everything and became this brand-new person, but I do feel like I had started to fulfill my potential, found work that really tapped my talent and felt like something I would do. This was something I was searching for the whole time, work that I felt like I would happily keep doing even if I had so much money I didn’t have to work another day. I’m also in a very happy, fulfilling relationship with my husband. I am in love with him. I found the one. Initially, he probably wasn’t the one that I should be going after. He wasn’t ready for a real relationship. Maybe neither was I. The people I was choosing, it was probably, self-consciously, to sabotage the relationship because they wouldn’t live up to what I thought I wanted. I was patient with him. I’m very glad that I was. Being in a happy relationship is part of that arc, for sure, a happily ever after. Workwise also, I think I’ve found my thing. In many ways, I’m still the same person. I still feel like a hot mess. I’m still late half the time. I’m pathologically resistant to paperwork and do a lot of things where somebody is basically saying, Belgray, you’re killing me. I’m still the worst.

Zibby: I highly doubt that. When you say you found your thing, tell me about that. At work.

Laura: I had found my thing for a while before. I found my way into writing TV promos, which was a dream job. For anyone who doesn’t know what TV promos are, they’re the commercial that the network runs for their own shows. During the commercials, you see something for, “Coming up on the new season of Succession.” That’s a promo. When I discovered that was a job, I was like, holy crap, I can’t believe that’s a job. How do I get that job? I got that job. It was a good time to get in. My friend introduced me to the editorial director at VH1. She assigned me my first promo. I did that for years and years. It was truly the dream. I get paid to watch a ton of TV and write these short little things. Then at a certain point, I kind of felt like, I’m complacent. I should be writing something bigger, something more permanent, something memorable, something that’s in my voice, not the voice of the network. I want to write about me. I want to write about my life. My way in for that before writing this book was writing blog posts and then emails. Emails became my main content platform, writing emails to a list of people. They were in my voice. They were whatever I wanted to write them about.

When I figured out how to use them to make money, to make a living rather than — before that, I was starting to make a living from copywriting services, one-on-one services that I offered to people who owned their own businesses. I helped them with their website, etc. I pivoted from that. I discovered the way to make money just from writing my emails is to sell something in my emails besides my services. I created courses on copywriting and email marketing and cocreated a course called The Copy Cure with my friend Marie Forleo. That was huge for me because it allowed me to really feel like, in this roundabout way, I’m making a living writing whatever the F I want to. That felt so great and still feels so great. Whenever I play that thought game of, what would I do if someone handed me two hundred million dollars? — you don’t have to work anymore. You’re done. I would still write emails to my list. That’s one thing that I know I would keep doing, and maybe write another book. Though as you know, when you’re in this phase of launching a book and everyone’s asking, “What’s your next book?” you’re like, are you kidding me? I cannot imagine doing this again. I’ve been told that it’s — I can imagine this even though I haven’t had kids. I can imagine that it is like childbirth in that you forget the pain of it and are ready to go again at a certain point. We’ll see.

Zibby: It’s so funny. When I was first starting the podcast, I had this really emotional interview with somebody. She had just lost her dad. I think that was it. I said, “You should really write about that. You should write a whole book about that. You have so much to say.” She was like, “I don’t think I could deal with having to go around and talk about it all the time.” I was like, what? What does she mean?

Laura: Now you know.

Zibby: You have to repeat the same stuff a thousand times, which is fine if you’re ready to talk about it or you want to talk about it. If you want to just sort of put something out there once, it should probably just be an essay, honestly.

Laura: Although, I know somebody who — I know her because she published a book with my same publisher, with Hachette. It was a memoir. It’s great. She just put it out there, put one post up. “I wrote a book.” That was it. She’s thrilled. She’s like, “I loved writing a book.” She loved having a book. She was just like, did that. Been there. Done that. Got the T-shirt. I’m like, good for you to not be attached at all to the —

Zibby: — To the sales at all.

Laura: To the results, yes.

Zibby: Maybe that’s a much more actualized place. I don’t know.

Laura: Maybe.

Zibby: That person is probably not analyzing every flaw in her pictures either, I’m going to guess.

Laura: Right. I was just going to say that’s also someone who’s like, I’m fat, but I don’t care. It’s as foreign to me as someone saying that.

Zibby: Wow. People who are confident are something. I don’t know what it is.

Laura: What’s with that?

Zibby: What’s with that? What advice do you have for aspiring authors?

Laura: Oh, wow. My advice for you is write. Don’t wait to figure out what you’re writing before you write it. That can stall you for years and years. Don’t think about that. Don’t think about, will this sell? Unless your number-one goal is to sell a book, is to have a written a book that gets published. If your goal is to write something that you love, the thing that you’ve always wanted to write, write it without stopping yourself because, oh, publishers don’t want that. Nobody’s going to buy that. I was told that a lot about the kind of book I was writing. I know you’ve been told that too about writing a memoir or a book of essays. Especially if you have a business or something, you will be told, you should write something that goes with your business that is a how-to, a business book. If that’s not the book you want to write, write the book you want to write. That is my advice. It’s not necessarily the most lucrative, easiest path to publishing advice, but it’s the path to creative fulfilment.

Zibby: If you’re dialing it in because you think this is what somebody else wants, chances are you’re not going to have the same spirit and joy. What you’re saying makes a lot of sense. When you try to just fit, okay, I guess I’ll write this book, that is not how you should go into writing a book. You should not be, probably, writing a book. You should be like, oh, my gosh, wouldn’t it be so fun? Wouldn’t it be so interesting? Wouldn’t I learn so much if…?

Laura: Yes, exactly.

Zibby: I agree. Amazing. I’m certainly not going to ask you what you’re writing next because god forbid.

Laura: I have no clue. I will say that when I finished writing the book, the moment I finished it, I felt in the groove. I was like, I have other ideas for books. I want to keep writing this. I felt like, I’m in a spot, and I want to keep — now I’m past that. I’m like, no clue. No idea. What was I thinking?

Zibby: It’s like working out. You have to just keep going. Otherwise, you fall so off. You’re like, wait, how was I running every day? Now I can’t even walk around the block with my dog. Laura, thank you so much. Your book was so funny and just totally enjoyable and awesome. Thanks for coming on.

Laura: Thank you, Zibby. That means a lot. This was fun.

Zibby: For me too. Bye.

Laura: Bye.

TOUGH TITTIES: On Living Your Best Life When You’re the F-Ing Worst by Laura Belgray

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