Heart Doctor

Meet Breakup Girl, cult heroine for the lovelorn

by Michelle Chihara

When the in-laws don't like your wedding dress, there's Dear Abby. When you need the scoop on heavy bondage, there's Dan "Savage Love" Savage. But when three pints of Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey and John Hughes's entire oeuvre cannot even begin to ease the pain of his having left you, there is only one agony aunt to turn to: Breakup Girl.

LYNN HARRIS sees herself as saving the world, one couple at a time. "This is, like, what runs us, for both men and women."

A cartoon character originally created for the book He Loved Me, He Loves Me Not: A Guide to Fudge, Fury, Free Time, and Life Beyond the Breakup (Avon Books), Breakup Girl has been dispensing online advice (you could call her an advice character) since the book's publication in 1996. She is the alter ego of comedian Lynn Harris, who now plays the heart-mending superheroine at a regular live stand-up show in New York City. She is a "superhero who fights crimes of the heart, stops dating indignities, and helps you get your stuff back," and her Web site now boasts a million and a half page views a month. And now, as a full-fledged "media brand" at the Oxygen network, she has a new book, Breakup Girl to the Rescue! A Superhero's Guide to Love, and Lack Thereof (Back Bay Books).

Harris is a Lexington native who landed in Somerville after college. She came up with the idea for Breakup Girl after (surprise) a break-up. "None of this is about working out my personal issues," she insists. "I was the dumper, so this is also not a revenge story." Still, "I was bummed. I missed him." And out of that funk, Breakup Girl was born.

"I was sitting on the porch of our house at 10 Wyatt Circle in Somerville -- conveniently located near Rosie's Bakery -- and my best friend and I were making up games about how sad I was," she recalls.

"I said, `I bet you could say any word in the English language, and it would remind me of Jake.' My friend said, `Okay . . . burlap.' And I was like, `Um, we did sack races at his company picnic.' "

Shortly after the "burlap" incident, Harris launched into writing He Loved Me, He Loves Me Not. "As the two of us did our vaudeville act, it dawned on me that there's humor in this," she explains. "There's humor in heartbreak that was not the usual bitter, resentful, pathetic stuff. There's much jauntier, wittier stuff to be written. In fact, maybe there's a whole book full of stuff."

As it turned out, there was more than a book's worth of stuff. The book led to the Web site, on which Harris collaborated with partner and animator Chris Kalb. Somerville gave way to a "studio apartment of justice" in Brooklyn. The rest is break-up history.

Harris's most recent book, Breakup Girl to the Rescue!, is better than the first. Both are funny, but this book has four years of advice-column experience behind it. And, as a result, it has more heart, and more wisdom. It's split into sections, starting with "Relationships: After," continuing through "Relationships: Before," and ending with "Relationships: During." Why does Breakup Girl start at the end? Because every break-up is also a new beginning, of course.

Harris uses letters from her Web site to give vivid color to predicaments ranging from cyber-cheating to inter-office romance. She chooses letters dripping with all the insecurity, desperation, and neurosis that the heartbroken can muster. She calls people on their double standards, cuts them some slack when they're being too hard on themselves, and points out where they are being unfair or unwise. She comforts. She advises against Machiavellian revenge schemes. She makes everyone seem equally ridiculous. But, as she likes to say in her live stand-up show, "We are laughing at the predicaments, not the people, because there but for the grace of God go we."

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Michelle Chihara can be reached at mchihara[a]phx.com. Breakup Girl can be reached at www.breakupgirl.com.