I'll Have What She's Having

“She’ll have certainty in her own opinion and the power to change others’. She’ll have the courage of her own convictions and the boldness to know she is capable of whatever lies at the heart of her dreams. She will be the baddest. The best kind of bad. A matriarch. This woman I’ll become, she will never be silent.”

Chelsea Handler uses anaphora to affect an insistent, determined tone as she describes the woman she wants to become. She repeats the clause “she will” to capture her resolve to change who she is and claim an authentic sense of self. Her aspirations in this opening chapter introduce her Pursuit of Authenticity and Personal Growth throughout the chapters that follow.

“I have been called stupid many times in my life. I have been called dumb, obnoxious, trashy, raunchy, crass, a fake, and various other things throughout my career. I have been all of those things at certain moments, but not one of those words encapsulates who I am. None of the things other people have called me has ever really mattered. What other people say about you only matters if you believe what they are saying is true.”

Handler uses a confident, resolved voice to stand up for who she is and what she believes about herself. This passage of self-reclamation follows an anecdote about her boss calling her “stupid.” Instead of allowing this incident to define or limit her, she uses it as a lesson to protect her authentic identity. In the latter half of the passage, she shifts from the first to the second person, turning her self-talk outward and directly addressing the reader. She is thus applying her own life lessons to her audience.