The Lies I Tell

Female con artists sprang from historical representations of women as “Eve,” duping men into deviant behavior in the way Lady Macbeth does to her devoted husband. In this way, a female confidence artist is nothing new, yet the Victorian era gave birth to more modern portrayals of femininity as above such guises. The original “confidence man” was, in fact, a man in the 1840s who asked strangers to entrust him with their watches, with which he then absconded. It is this Victorian image of virtuous women playing damsels in distress that gave way to more contemporaneous portrayals, beginning in the 1940s noir genre with the “femme fatale” who, rather than luring men into coordinated mischief, entrap men to gain the upper hand, only to discard them later. Julie Clark’s The Lies I Tell seeks to dismantle this gender paradigm of women as either angelic and virtuous or sinister black widows.

Female con artists have been the focus of many recent popular portrayals, such as the popular Netflix original, Inventing Anna, inspired by the true events of Anna Sorokin’s life as she conned her way to the top of influential and wealthy social circles in New York City by lying that she was an heiress. Another woman who emerged in the public eye is Elizabeth Holmes, creator of a blood-testing company based on false claims that swindled money from many large investors. Anna and Elizabeth’s work as con artists could not be more different from Meg’s in The Lies I Tell because Anna operated within the parameters of a more traditional view of a con artist: scamming other people and lying for personal gain, regardless of who it hurt. Meg, on the other hand, only cons as much as she needs to bring wealthy, powerful men who have done evil things to justice. In this way, Meg is more akin to a vigilante hero than Anna. Still, they share a connecting factor of using lies as currency for success.

There are some similarities between well-known female con artists and Meg Williams, however, namely in how they operate. Unlike male con artists who have the privilege of assuming power with ease, female con artists are “more likely to use sob stories to paint themselves as sad, vulnerable, and helpless,” according to Tori Telfer, author of Confident Women: Swindlers, Grifters and Shapeshifters of the Feminine Persuasion (Altman, Mara. “Glitzy, Tragic and Selfish: Female Con Artists Waltz by Society’s Rules.” The New York Times. 25 Feb. 2021). This historical background and public perception reflect misogynistic attitudes toward women as using allure or appeal to lure their victims rather than power. Public culture is all too happy to regard women as “conniving and two-faced” (Altman, Mara. “Glitzy, Tragic and Selfish: Female Con Artists Waltz by Society’s Rules.” The New York Times. 2021 Feb 25). Effective female con artists often use these misconceptions about being a woman (whether that’s proclivity to hysteria, naivete, or even mysticism) to their advantage by playing into their target’s expectations to manipulate them into doing what they want, thus subverting the dupe’s expectation of them as a woman and translating vulnerability into prowess. In this way, Sorokin and Meg aren’t so different in their means; they are only different in their ends. Female con artists excite the imagination of popular culture and media because of how they reflect modern conceptions of femininity and power, making this the perfect landscape for a book like Julie Clark’s The Lies I Tell.