Yes Girl, You Survived! – A Review of Survival of the Thickest by Michelle Buteau

​I can’t even tell you how I found out about Michelle Buteau. I don’t remember the first role I ever saw her in or anything. All I know is that there was a show, Survival of the Thickest on Netflix, and I was like “oh yes—bring on the ‘brown titty’ drama!”
Watching the show, I couldn’t figure out for the life of me what Buteau’s ethnicity was. I said this girl is hella-racially ambiguous, and I kinda just decided she was Afro-Latina. On the show, she is hilariously relatable, and I loved everything about it and her. Then, earlier this year, a BIBC member told me she has a memoir by the same name as the show. I had to jump on that, and I did—we did.

​Comics are probably my favorite memoir narrators, and Buteau eased herself right into my top ten. If I am captivated by your opening chapter, you’re a winner. She wasn’t even telling her story yet. She was just describing herself as a Jersey girl, and I was cracking up loudly in my car. It’s also in this first chapter that I learn of her Caribbean heritage, and I pat myself on the back for not being too far off because Haiti and the Dominican Republic do share an island, and sometimes there is no way to tell the difference between the people until they speak.
At first, I expected her memoir to be all fun and games. I was also clueless about her age. Since I hadn’t seen or heard of her before Survival of the Thickest on Netflix, I thought she was younger than me or at least, my age. Well, shocker—she’s a whole five years older than me. Her style in college didn’t sound far off from my high school style, and I finally had to piece together that we were not, in fact, the same age.

​The deeper Buteau gets into her story, the more I fall into my fandom. Every human being has insecurities, some bigger or more obvious to the world than others. She talked about one that lasted years that I never would’ve guessed. A BIBC member asked, “Did you get to the part about the tooth?” and I fell out. Naturally, Buteau used her comedic skills to talk about her unruly tooth replacement, and of course, I laughed my head off on my commute. I also felt really bad for her. (I feel like I’m talking like that cartoonish man people voted into office. My vocabulary range is wider than this, I swear.) We all have embarrassing moments. Episodes we wish we could erase from our pasts because they are oh-so-cringeworthy. These are the things that make us human, and hearing someone else’s very human experience, especially a celebrity’s, can be warming and refreshing.
Buteau also talks about her fertility struggles, and that was possibly the only time that I was completely silent while listening to her narration. Every woman’s fertility experience is as different as our fingerprints. There may be similarities, but no two are exactly the same. I’ve been up close and personal with a few situations where women were unable to conceive or sustain a pregnancy, and it’s heartbreaking from the inside out. If I, as the sister, best friend, or niece, am devastated to the point of intrusive grief, I can’t fathom how my sister, best friend, or aunt felt looking at negative pregnancy tests, or no longer hearing a baby’s heartbeat. Then there are the comments people make. Buteau and her husband opted for surrogacy, and as she told this part of her story, I was nervous, excited, and concerned for her emotional well-being the entire time. I was also annoyed with her when people commented alluding that surrogacy was some kind of celebrity privilege. When raised in any type of Christian household, in which Buteau was raised Catholic, the womb is sacred, and sex purely exists for reproduction. So what if you can’t reproduce? What if your womb doesn’t work like everyone else’s? I don’t have celeb-money, and managed to conceive one child with minimal issues in my lifetime, but I would never make such a shallow assumption, let alone speak it out loud. Surrogacy is expensive, but not just financially. To become a mother, we sacrifice pieces of ourselves, physically and emotionally. To trust someone else to carry your child until they can breathe on their own is a sacrifice too, and I’m sure it doesn’t always feel like a privilege. Thankfully, Buteau is the happy mama of twins, a boy and girl, and when she said her babies were born, I was able to exit the Cross Bronx Expressway with an exhale.

I am addicted to using Buteau’s expression “brown titty.” It’s all about the brown titties these days. If I get a lil tipsy and say it too many times in conversation, blame Michelle Buteau. After finishing her memoir, I had to go on and watch The First Wives Club, the series. She was hilarious and I wish there were more than three seasons of all that brown titty camaraderie. Should you listen to her memoir? Hell yes! It was surely a 5-glass-read! I’d give it more if there wasn’t a such thing as alcohol poisoning! Cheers!
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