This Song is a monthly feature of So Much Stuff, offering a snippet of association to who and where I was when it was a popular release or otherwise entered my radar.
I’m fine now, and have been for the past 20 years, but in the early spring of 2005 I was finishing up radiation treatment for stage one breast cancer and working as a stylist’s assistant at the GAP photo studio in the Dog Patch neighborhood of San Francisco. A job that mainly consisted of ironing and steaming out kids clothes eight hours a day, but also required a certain amount of organization and attention to detail, and I’d only gotten my foot in the door when someone I knew was filling in for a manager who was on vacation.
That studio was a pretty cliquey place, and my how-can-we-do-things-better work ethic was not especially welcomed or appreciated. Or maybe it was my sickly pallor and still bald head. Or my refusal to have even a small piece of the frequent birthday cakes because I was afraid to eat dairy or sugar or anything that had ever been associated with cancer.
Kind of an apt atmosphere for this song. (This sh-t is bananas.) But I did make a few friends there over time, and it was one of them—a woman whose son was on a hip-hop dance team—who I’d felt comfortable with enough to finally ask, What exactly is a hollaback girl?
Funny! (Not that I knew, or know myself. Just now looked it up.)