Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

Content Warning: This section references childhood sexual abuse.

The columns dating from Strayed’s Rumpus years (2010-2012) had anonymity built in at both correspondent and columnist level. In addition to the use of pseudonyms, identity markers—such as the correspondents’ ethnicity, social background, political affiliation, and sometimes even sexuality and gender identity—are not revealed unless relevant to the issue at hand. Notably, most correspondents reveal their age, which is relevant for contextualizing their problem and allows Sugar to contemplate where she was at a similar life stage. As for Sugar, reading across the columns, the audience could gauge that she is a cisgender heterosexual woman with working-class roots and liberal politics. The reader might also assume that she is white and does not have a disability, as she does not mention any appearance-based discrimination. However, Sugar herself identifies more by the experiences that have shaped her, including the early loss of her mother, her commitment to living her truth regardless of social expectation, and becoming a writer. She prefers to connect with correspondents through experiences like the latter rather than through identity markers.

With identity markers subordinated in favor of shared experience, Sugar addresses her correspondents as individuals rather than as members of a social group.