Thoughts on My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

I’ve been listening to CMAT a ton lately – one of her songs – “take a sexy picture of me” – starts off with the lines “ever since I was a little girl, I only wanted to be sexy.” the song is disturbing and funny – a light-hearted joke about how getting to your late twenties as a woman makes you less youthful, less desired, less beloved by men in the social media age where everything is construed with this air of performance – taking a photo to recall that youthfulness that’s floating away.

My Dark Vanessa is a difficult read – for me it was difficult in that it was written from the perspective of Vanessa as a child and an adult woman, grappling with her “relationship” with Mr. Strane, the adult high school teacher who groomed & assaulted her. Russell writes Vanessa’s perspective like a love story, at first, which adds to the horror of the novel. I think it’s an incredible work of female resilience, showing how these conversations are shrouded in shades of gray, complicated emotions, and trauma. What I loved most was the novel doesn’t have this grandiose purpose – it doesn’t rewrite history, white wash, or romanticize the outcome – the world is built for these men – not the girls they abuse. Strane dies but the systems that enable him remain untouched. The school administration gets to walk away without any accountability for how it failed these girls. The silver lining is that Vanessa gets a second chance to discover herself as more than just a victim, a survivor, or willing participant. She gets to become who she would be on her own terms. Closure has to come from within and there’s no outward solution – these men have deluded themselves into thinking they are the true victims, or they lose their power, when the opposite dynamic is true.

I had sex for the first time at Vanessa’s age. Not with a teacher, but with a boy two years older. I’ve grappled a lot over the years about how that relationship, how being exposed to sex at that age, how looking for love and validation outside of a safe environment, would all inform the trajectory of my life. It wasn’t until I met my husband that sex felt safe – that it was no longer a mind game, something to wield, something to endure, but actually something I liked doing. I still struggle with the word rape. I’ve used it a handful of times in drunken crash outs but it always feels stale on my tongue – like it doesn’t truly belong to me. And I am one of the lucky ones. I have dedicated my life to working at Planned Parenthood now. It’s more than just a job to me. It’s a way for me to save my younger self, help women and girls take back their control, give them access to healthcare and their freedom over their bodies.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my teenage self lately. The conversations about Epstein and his coconspirators are enough to drive anyone crazy. He also got to slip from this mortal coil instead of facing his depraved crimes. It’s hard not become so jaded as we’re ruled by an oligarch class of pedophiles and sympathizers. I have always thought that many republican women see the way the world is in a stark clarity – we just disagree fundamentally on how to exist within patriarchy. I am kicking and screaming while they assimilate into their “safe”, preordained roles of servitude and the domicile. Or they grift until they outgrow their usefulness, clinging onto youth by having their surgeons erase the years from their faces. Vanessa has a similar reckoning when she realizes she’s too old for Strane. She no longer satisfies his cravings, she’s “spent” in his eyes. We internalize this as women – we want to make ourselves smaller, smaller, smaller until we disappear. Now I’m not going to say Olivia Rodrigo’s new babydoll dress pivot is an indication of our desensitization to fascism but I will say that it’s not, NOT happening before our eyes. Our culture fetishizes children. And now we know why – our evil overlords willed it into every fiber of existence and sold it to us as a necessity. We grew up shopping from their clothing stores, working for their companies, seeing their ads for skin care, and going to their schools.

I wish I could end this review with something inspiring that will make you feel good and vindicated for having listened to my depressing rambling, but I can’t. There’s no justice, there’s no cancel culture. I only hope that in my small sliver of life I can make a difference in helping people, believing them (both men and women) and raising my future children with kind hearts to do the same and encourage them to speak out and advocate for themselves.