#rachel hills

Flying back to New York from Sydney in March, I watched the entire fourth season of Girls. (Behind the eight ball on that one, I know, but I don’t have HBO.)

Five months later, the scene that still sticks out to me is the one where Hannah is holed up in her old bedroom, google searching her new romantic rival Mimi-Rose Howard and watching a video of her giving a speech on YouTube. Not just because, well, we’ve all been there, but because of the way that Mimi-Rose Howard carries herself in that 10-second snippet of speech.

Calm. Warm. And seated.

“I want to be like her,” I thought. And I couldn’t help but suspect a lot of it had to do with the sitting.

So somewhere towards the end of my spring campus tour, I decided to try it out for myself: to sit rather than stand when I delivered my talk. And whether it was a placebo or not, it worked. I felt calmer. More connected to the people I was talking to. Less like I was talking at you, and more like I was speaking to you.

Which when you’re leading a conversation about the kind of intimate, consciousness raising subject matter involved in The Sex Myth, is exactly the kind of vibe you want.

I’m doing a couple of big, multi-hundred person events in the Fall, so not sure how the whole seated, intimate thing will play out there (I’ll probably just decide to stand). But all of this is to say that I’ll be requesting a stool for my event in London next week.

I’ll be speaking on Thursday night at Cafe 1001 in Shoreditch, working with online events org Funzing and the bookstore Pages of Hackney. Tickets need to be purchased in advance, and you can buy yours here.

If you’re in the London area, do come along. It would be great to meet you.