Freelancette

I love the way Marjane Satrapi (who I interviewed for the upcoming Dec/Jan issue of BUST magazine) cannot stop herself from saying exactly what she thinks. In last week's New York Times Magazine, the Iranian illustrator-turned-director and creator of the Persepolis books denounced the term "graphic novel" as bourgeois nonsense, referred to cartoonists as "bisexuals" (because they like to write and draw), and said that the main reason that she lives in France is because "I can smoke everywhere." When the infamously antagonistic Deborah Solomon tried to get her to say that the Muslim veil is oppressive to women, Satrapi steamrolled right over her. "We have to look at ourselves here also. Why do all the women get plastic surgery? Why? Why? Why should we look like some freaks with big lips that look like an anus? What is so sexy about that? What is sexy about having something that looks like a goose anus?" Satrapi says she became familiar with goose anatomy on a farm in Paris -- wonder where she developed her gloriously low tolerance for bullshit?

(Photo credit: Christopher Lane for the New York Times.)