Book #63

How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran

Though they have the vote and the Pill and haven't been burned as witches since 1727, life isn't exactly a stroll down the catwalk for modern women. They are beset by uncertainties and questions: Why are they supposed to get Brazilians? Why do bras hurt? Why the incessant talk about babies? And do men secretly hate them?

I managed around eighty pages of this drivel and couldn’t convince myself to continue.

Each chapter begins with whimsical anecdotes from Moran’s life, growing up as a woman. These were excruciating in how hard they tried to be amusing and relatable, which lent a disconnected feel to everything she said. I got a real ‘I am so cool’ smugness from her, which actually makes her uncool and a pain in the arse.

Moran’s feminism is incredibly privileged, and a strange shade of white. Some of the terms she used jarred me, made me cringe painfully, forced my eyes to roll into the back of my head, and heated my blood to a dangerous temperature. Moran’s feminism is for Moran, and people like Moran, no one else. Feminists who feminist only for themselves - can we call them feminist? Or are they something else?

I don’t plan to wax on about this as I feel too pissed off about it, but I will say that feminist problems do not include what to name your breasts, the word feminist cannot be compared or ‘owned’ like a racial slur, you cannot call yourself an inclusive feminist if you’re out there using words such as tranny and retard, and none of these things are difficult to comprehend and absorb.

Someone bring gin.