Theculturecafe

Caitlin Moran’s book How to be a Woman had me bursting with laughter, I haven’t  read such a funny book for ages, it’s  the perfect summer read. Lying on a beach you will finish it in no time (however I can’t guarantee that, with kids to look after). I managed not to respond to the buzz made around this book at first, as I hardly knew who Caitlin was. The cover had me intrigued for 2 minutes, on my Amazon recommended reading list. When reading the back cover in Waterstones', I succumbed and felt compelled to buy it. I did not really know what to expect, this book is a mix of fiction and biography and starts when Caitlin enters puberty without a great deal knowing about it. It doesn’t take long for the hormones rush to take over and transform her into a lusty teenager. She throttle through, managing to get a job in a publication, I never heard of before, is convinced to have landed the perfect boyfriends, fell deeply in love, with complete smug, the easy trap teenage girls (and bigger ones) fall into. She speaks openly about her drugs consumption, grew up in family so poor she had to wear her mum’s knickers,  “It’s one of the many reasons why being very very poor sucks, you have to live in pants that give you nightmares”. She ends up being a very successful woman and describes the process of how to be a woman and a feminist.  I get her point and often agree with her, I would not recommend the drug abuse as a mean to find your way to become a women though. Basically, she is saying that no one should dictate us how to dress, wax etc... We’d better run away from the plastic surgeon, as it makes women “look like Astronauts experiencing g-force in a wind tunnel”, the type of sentence that made me laugh throughout the book. I find her brave enough,  to tell us to stop being afraid of getting old, as it “makes us looking like losers. It makes us look like cowards”. I am not sure everyone confronted to ageism in the work place, will be brave enough to pass the surgeon, anyway she’s got a strong point there. It took thousands of year to get through emancipation, it is about time that we make the most of it. This doesn’t mean against men, but working with them towards equality.