Jenny Jackson > Quotes

“She just bobbed along through life, making dumb f***ing decisions, keeping so cool all the time, emotionally distant and above the fray, never realizing how much she actually cared until it was way too late.”
― Jenny Jackson, The Shampoo Effect

“Ospreys mate for life,” Van said earnestly. “Well, unless they fail to produce chicks after two seasons.” “Then the male osprey joins a gym, gets on Hinge, and finds a teenager with daddy issues.” Caroline nodded.”
― Jenny Jackson, The Shampoo Effect

“She had been so used to feeling the full force of Van’s care, manifested with oil changes for her car, cups of coffee delivered to her desk, waterproofing spray for her boots—Van’s love language being, obviously, “acts of service”—that she was startled by the shift. When he did come over, they made out and drank wine and watched movies at her cottage, but she noticed he kept looking at his phone, and when she peered over his shoulder, she saw he was just scrolling through pictures of Dylan, looking at a shared photo site Bailey had made for her friend group. It was better than catching her boyfriend on Tinder, but only barely.”
― Jenny Jackson, The Shampoo Effect

“Fran thought about the shampoo effect at moments like this, and the way it applied to so many interpersonal dynamics - the way that in these old relationships nobody was ever really working from a clean slate, new feelings were built on old feelings.”
― Jenny Jackson, The Shampoo Effect

“That’s not interesting, it’s horror! It’s like Demi Moore in The Substance!” “Does a bug bite her in that?” “Worse. She internalizes society’s pressure for women to conform to beauty standards!”
― Jenny Jackson, The Shampoo Effect

“Augusta knew, better than anyone, how hard it was to raise a child when the dad was off fucking someone else.”
― Jenny Jackson, The Shampoo Effect

“And my friends all smell like weed or little babies. —Taylor Swift, “Florida!!!”
― Jenny Jackson, The Shampoo Effect

“RJ would stay out all night celebrating. He would drink and smoke and arrive home in an Uber long after midnight, covered in grease and seawater and probably somebody else’s tutu. And while he did that, Fran would run the laundry, would bathe the boys, would turn on nightlights, and would check under beds for monsters, because that was her job, and she felt it harden like a pit in her stomach—to put up with the bullshit, to clean up the mess, and to take care of everyone but herself.”
― Jenny Jackson, The Shampoo Effect

“There was a line somewhere between the kind of fun that made you feel alive and the kind of fun that inconvenienced everyone around you.”
― Jenny Jackson, The Shampoo Effect

“She discovered that her relationship to caffeine was as emotional as it was physical,”
― Jenny Jackson, The Shampoo Effect

“Augusta’s baby started fussing in her little tent and Bailey went to retrieve her. She held the squirming body awkwardly, paying special attention to her neck. Bailey wished she liked holding newborns, but she didn’t. It wasn’t just that they were fragile, it was that they also reminded her of hairless cats. There was just something too raw about their skin, too naked, and it made her wince slightly.”
― Jenny Jackson, The Shampoo Effect

“She felt like she’d wandered into an advanced yoga class where nothing made sense, and everyone was talking about third eyes and specific nostrils. Bailey just carried on doing what she had been doing, hoping it was right. At some point in the fifteenth hour Vanny left and came back with breath smelling like a peanut butter sandwich, which was disgusting and made Bailey wonder how she had ever found him attractive.”
― Jenny Jackson, The Shampoo Effect

“But whatever the reason, after Augusta’s wedding, Eben had pulled away from her, and Augusta knew she had basically traded her brother for four hours of open bar and two hundred pieces of steak.”
― Jenny Jackson, The Shampoo Effect

“Fran felt a nervous tightness pass through her. What if RJ lost a tooth or broke his wrist? What if they had to pay a thousand dollars for dental work? What if he ended up on crutches? There was a line somewhere between the kind of fun that made you feel alive and the kind of fun that inconvenienced everyone around you. Fran couldn’t decide where the Greasy Pole fell. Sure, Fran had her share of hangover days where her parenting had been less than stellar, but for the most part she kept herself in check, always thinking about her kids, about dinner, about laundry, about her savings account. She felt awash in fury at her father. What was he thinking, betting away money he didn’t even have? It was stupid. It was selfish, inconceivably so.”
― Jenny Jackson, The Shampoo Effect

“They said he was having “big feelings.” That never really went away”
― Jenny Jackson, The Shampoo Effect

“There should be a law against telling anyone bad news when they didn't have on a bra.”
― Jenny Jackson, The Shampoo Effect

“He was no more present in their lives than a tax attorney or a dentist, someone they saw at annual intervals with a sense of mild obligation.”
― Jenny Jackson, The Shampoo Effect

“The fact that he had been with a man felt like an implicit rejection, or a double-layered deceit. He had hidden more than a relationship, but some part of himself. And she had shared everything with him, even the hard and shameful bits.”
― Jenny Jackson, The Shampoo Effect

“Even in a neon hat and parka, Bailey’s beauty was obvious, in every sense of the word. She was genetically blessed with a heart-shaped face, flawless skin, and a big, shiny smile, but also well groomed to a kind of Platonic ideal of babehood. She was a body, while Caroline had always strongly identified as a brain. The fact that Van could like both her and this entirely different kind of girl felt inconceivable, the notion of an overlap on the “Bailey” and “Caroline” Venn diagram nonexistent.”
― Jenny Jackson, The Shampoo Effect

“Thus distracted, they spent the next half hour opening ribbon-wrapped bundles of onesies and pants made of pale-blue organic cotton, cashmere and seersucker stroller blankets, and a knit rattle embroidered with the word “baby,” just in case there was any confusion.”
― Jenny Jackson, The Shampoo Effect

“She felt lonely and pathetic, but she knew that all across the city there were girls just like her who had spent their saturday nights waiting for something to happen, nursing a drink or reading a paperback in a coffee shop or scrolling endlessly on their phones, alone and biding their time until their real l ife would begin.”
― Jenny Jackson, Pineapple Street

“She had read somewhere that redheads metabolized alcohol better, and she felt like it was a good tradeoff for all the extra sunscreen she needed to use.”
― Jenny Jackson, The Shampoo Effect

“Fran thought about the shampoo effect at moments like this”
― Jenny Jackson, The Shampoo Effect

“When Zoey left to go home, Augusta put her children to bed and then sat out on the back porch, listening to the crickets, wishing Colin were next to her. It was weird she’d been attracted to Stavros. But sexual attraction was a wild card. You could love how someone looked on paper but then feel nothing in person. You could think a guy was dumb as rocks, hate his clothes, and still want to jump his bones. This was why sex was the messy magic at the center of life. It didn’t always make sense, but the power was undeniable.”
― Jenny Jackson, The Shampoo Effect

“After the games were over Fran detoured on the way to her parents’ house, picking RJ up for lunch. Sundays were RJ’s day, so Fran knew he would have eaten a weed gummy already and would spend the afternoon with her family pleasantly buzzed and smiling. It was how they survived parenthood and life with small children: They took turns dosing themselves with weed, mushrooms, and booze, whatever made the hard edges softer. Fran had woken up the day before and dropped a tincture of CBD into her coffee, had eaten a square of shroom chocolate with her peanut butter toast, and had spent hours happily building a Lego dragon’s lair with London. They were responsible about it, though, they always made sure one of them was sober enough to play soccer with London, to brush Hale’s teeth, to—God forbid—drive anyone who needed stitches to the emergency room.”
― Jenny Jackson, The Shampoo Effect

“Bailey dutifully followed orders, keeping her hair clean and pulling on fresh leggings, the idea of jeans still abhorrent.”
― Jenny Jackson, The Shampoo Effect

“Having children was possibly the most mortifying experience of her life.”
― Jenny Jackson

“She felt lonely and pathetic, but she knew that all across the city there were girls just like her who had spent their Saturday nights waiting for something to happen, nursing a drink or reading a paperback in a coffee shop or scrolling endlessly on their phones, alone and biding their time until their real life would begin.”
― Jenny Jackson, Pineapple Street

“On the other side of the blanket Augusta held her baby in her lap, sandy and pink-cheeked, glassy from the late hour. Fran sat next to RJ, her arm lazily draped around his shoulders. Eben and Max were together, looking at something on a phone. And then there was Van, his hair tucked behind his ears, his long legs, bare feet. He was so lovely, but he didn’t belong to her—she needed to let him go. “We’re good, babe,” Bailey said quietly. Colin was lighting sparklers and Bailey watched as he handed them out to the children, the boys crowing with delight. Jane lazily twirled her sparkler in a circle while London waved his back and forth in a zigzag. They made figure eights and squiggles, they danced and pretended the sparklers were magic wands and lightsabers, casting swirls of white in the dark. Even after they had sputtered and fizzled to smoke the streaky lines lingered in Bailey’s eyes, a memory of something bright that was gone.”
― Jenny Jackson, The Shampoo Effect

“Fran was making good money, and after everything with her own family, that mattered more than anything.”
― Jenny Jackson, The Shampoo Effect