That\u2019s the New York City Carroll believed in when she walked into that dressing room. Instead of a funny story, she got shoved up against the dressing room wall and sexually assaulted by Donald Trump, becoming a sort of canary in the coal mine for the rest of America. \u201cIt suddenly turned completely dark,\u201d she testified, and don\u2019t we know just how it feels, to be laughing at Donald Trump one moment, only to see everything go dark. Carroll\u2019s new book, Not My Type<\/a>, recounts her experiences suing Trump for battery and defamation decades later, the latter in response to Trump\u2019s denials after she published accounts of the assault in a magazine article<\/a> and book in 2019. When Carroll won that first case in 2023, Trump, inevitably, could not restrain himself from badmouthing her, indeed denying that he had ever met her. Carroll sued him again, and in 2024 won a further $83.3 million judgment from the second jury, more than 16 times the compensation the original jury had ordered him to pay her. (Trump is still battling these verdicts. Carroll has said she will use the money to fund a foundation dedicated to women\u2019s and voting rights.)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n \n By E. Jean Carroll. St. Martin\u2019s Press.\n <\/p>\n \n Slate receives a commission when you purchase items using the links on this page. Not My Type makes for an unusual rape-trial memoir. At 81, Carroll emphatically does not belong to the generations that organize their identities around past trauma and recovery. Her brand has always been an almost giddy, indomitable insouciance. She describes her 27 years of advice columns as dedicated to assuring women \u201cthat the only reason they are on this earth is to enjoy themselves.\u201d Nevertheless, Carroll writes, after the assault she never had sex or a romantic relationship again. In preparation for her first lawsuit against Trump, a trauma specialist interviewed Carroll for three days, concluding that the writer showed \u201cevidence of significant and enduring damage emanating from the assault that allegedly occurred at the hands of Mr. Trump,\u201d and that these symptoms are consistent with the literature on the \u201caftermath of rape.\u201d When Trump\u2019s own lawyers attempted to undermine this report, they presented as evidence Carroll\u2019s lifelong habit of responding to the question \u201cHow are you?\u201d with \u201cFabulous!\u201d<\/p>\n Fired from her job at Elle in 2020 (as a result, Carroll\u2019s suit claimed, of Trump\u2019s attacks), Carroll now lives in a cabin in upstate New York\u2014not exactly the stuff of metropolitan glamour\u2014but her determination to maintain fabulousness is evident throughout Not My Type. In the face of the old misogynistic practice of asking rape victims what they were wearing before the attack, Carroll records what everybody involved in her lawsuits was wearing all the time\u2014more precisely, who they were wearing, in the parlance of red-carpet interviewers asking stars about their designer fits. Certain items from Carroll\u2019s own wardrobe\u2014particularly a \u201ctightly fitted, russet-brown military jacket with a wide belt and gold buckle\u201d from Bergdorf\u2014verge on becoming characters in their own right. She has a \u201csensational gold-and-silver Armani blazer\u201d and a cream Oscar de la Renta skirt. If Carroll starts to worry that she is \u201ctoo concerned about how I look, I remember that Trump\u2019s defense is \u2018She\u2019s not my type,\u2019 and how I look is the very center of the case.\u201d What she looks like is typically 20 years younger than her actual age, slim and chic in the quintessential style of the old New York City, the one from just 30 years ago, that Carroll personifies, whatever the rusticity of her current digs. The New York Times even put her on their list of the most stylish people of 2023<\/a>.<\/p>\n Carroll also lavishes praise on Alina Habba, \u201cTrump\u2019s most beautiful attorney\u201d in both of the cases, and her \u201cgreen Chanel jacket, more emerald than Granny Smith, with black piping.\u201d This generous and nonpartisan distribution of compliments could be viewed as part of what Carroll calls \u201cthe constant aim of my life,\u201d which is \u201cto spread sweetness and light.\u201d Not My Type sometimes reads like a typical frothy celebrity memoir, filled with packing lists, morning routines, and gossip. Carroll namedrops everyone from Molly Jong-Fast to George Conway. The book\u2019s first chapter opens with the transcript of a deposition conducted by Habba in advance of the first trial, in which Habba says, \u201cI hate to ask you this, but\u2014approximately\u2014how many people do you think you\u2019ve slept with?\u201d Carroll\u2019s list, though fairly brief, is spectacular, including the Broadway star Ben Vereen (Carroll\u2019s only one-night stand) and the actor Richard Harris.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n Laura Miller <\/a><\/p>\n It\u2019s a peculiar tone to strike, given the grim nature of Trump\u2019s crimes against Carroll and the thousands of vile insults and death threats his minions showered upon her once she went public\u2014threats that themselves became evidence in the second trial. But there\u2019s a delicious edge buried in Carroll\u2019s bubbly patter. During Trump\u2019s second trial for continuing to defame her, Habba\u2019s incompetence became a media story in its own right<\/a>, and Not My Type details her various missteps. Carroll closes the book with this bow: \u201cI did what I could. I beat Trump twice. I could not have done it without Alina Habba, Esq. Thank you, Alina!!\u201d Each of those exclamation points is a dagger.<\/p>\n She Was the Greatest Author of Her Generation. She Should Be Remembered for More Than Just Her Writing. HBO\u2019s Gruesome True-Crime Doc Tried to Have Its Bombshell Moment. There\u2019s Just One Problem. Bruce Springsteen\u2019s Lost Albums Are Here. They Reveal a Side of the Boss He Was Too Afraid to Show. Netflix\u2019s No. 1 Show Used to Be Mocked. Now, With Its New Season, It\u2019s \u2026 Good? And Carroll did beat Trump, twice, despite the legal odds stacked against women raped by prominent men. This alone makes Not My Type an inspirational read. Though it would be unkind to advocate that every victim adopt Carroll\u2019s dauntless cheer in the face of so much mistreatment, it\u2019s impossible to deny the power her resilience and defiance gave her. Instead of quailing at the sight of Trump\u2019s disdain in the courtroom, she writes, \u201cI\u2019m glad my face is sagging and bagging all over the place. I am seven and a half feet from him at the Plaintiff\u2019s Table, and too bad if he has to look at me in all my fabulous desiccated eighty-year-old glory.\u201d Of course, it helped Carroll to have legal representation from the redoubtable Roberta Kaplan. It helped even more, though, that Trump\u2019s attorneys, like all his henchmen, were second-raters, and that he was literally his own worst enemy, identifying a photo of Carroll as his second wife while giving her book its title by declaring her \u201cnot my type.\u201d Trump, like Carroll, is a product of the swashbuckling, glitz-loving, shit-talking New York City of the 1980s and \u201990s. Maybe it required another of that breed to take him down a peg.<\/p>\n Get the best of movies, TV, books, music, and more.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When E. Jean Carroll stepped into a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in 1996, she epitomized a certain flavor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195570,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3938],"tags":[3444,32,77,2584,21903,2725,8501,17966,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-195569","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-fashion","12":"tag-journalism","13":"tag-law","14":"tag-new-york-city","15":"tag-slate-plus","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114706824727208119","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/748b1e45-6364-4604-9ca7-9ff2171a6843.jpeg\")
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