Oh Caitlin Moran… how have I written a feminist blog for this long and not yet mentioned Caitlin Moran??
I love Caitlin (I’m sure she’d let me use her first name if we met). She’s pretty much, kinda, sort of, who I would like to be when I grow up. Ever seen the TV show, “Raised by Wolves”? It was written by Caitlin and her sister as a semi-autobiographical show. It’s hilarious and so is this book.
However, notwithstanding the fact that this book contains some of the best one liners and caustic wit around (although the meaning of caustic wit has forever been ruined by Boris ‘douchebag’ Johnson’s defence of Toby ‘knob jockey’ Young), this book is also one of the fundamental ‘feminist texts’ of our time (in my humble opinion)!
I’ve actually bought this book twice in my life. The first time, I was in my early twenties and grabbed it off the shelf in WH Smith’s coz I liked the cover and thought the title was funny. I thought it was going to be some kind of mildly amusing chick lit novel. It is not.Do not read this book thinking it will be a chick lit novel – you will find yourself thrown into a confusing world of teenage angst, workplace harassment and a scorching diatribe covering menstruation, abortion and the patriarchy. You will not be prepared and you will be left bewildered and vaguely stunned. You *may* feel slightly cheated, give the book away to charity and head out to buy the latest Jane Green novel which you know will be safe.
“How to be a Woman” is dynamite and should be handled with care!
However, in my thirties, with my newly awakened sense of feminist righteousness, I realised what an error I had made and promptly headed out to re-buy and re-read the book. Read with the correct mind frame this book simply is the bomb. As opposed to dynamite. Dare I say it’s explosive…?? You get the point. I love it.
Basically if you have an unsettled feeling that life just seems to treat women slightly wrong – like we’ve headed down the wrong path somewhere along the line – then this book tells you exactly why you feel like that and which path you should be blazing down instead.
I’m not saying that I agree with everything that Caitlin (still on first name terms here ) writes in the book but if you’re looking for a role model to demonstrate just how brilliant, funny, intelligent and fierce a feminist can look like in this day and age, then you need to look no further than her.
Caitlin = Big loves forever.
(You can buy “How to be a Woman” from Amazon by clicking here)
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