Scan barcode
A review by feelingpeachygreen
Feminists Don't Wear Pink (And Other Lies): Amazing Women on What the F-Word Means to Them by Scarlett Curtis
fast-paced
1.5
This is aimed at teenagers first discovering feminism and for them, it's probably a 5* read and rightly so.
If this isn't you, I wouldn't bother.
It's for people attracted to the big names that feature, to convince them to find out more about feminism.
Some of the essays are genuinely really insightful - I particularly enjoyed Lolly Adefope's essay on being black and a woman on a gameshow, and the essay on personal experience of FGM (flicking through, I can't find which one it was!)
Some of it is appallingly written though. Amy Trigg's essay was so unbelievably awful.
I feel like I need a rating system to highlight the 5 essays that were insightful and provocative and the rest which were just...flat with 0 weight to the words.
2018 wasn't that long ago so WHY is the online slang throughout this book by some of the essayists so CRINGE ðŸ˜
Lots of these women aren't writers (and they don't need to be - they do fantastic work in industries where they're movers and shakers)
BUT some of the writing is so incredibly weak that it's painful to read.
It's also trying quite hard to be intersectional, but the history of feminism in the last section is solely anglophone.
Sure, a world history would make the book far too large but there's only ever a brief mention of other areas of the world, before returning back to the history of women in the UK and US.
This probably goes back to the target audience though - teenagers in those countries and for them, this is a great, feel good, starter book.
If this isn't you, I wouldn't bother.
It's for people attracted to the big names that feature, to convince them to find out more about feminism.
Some of the essays are genuinely really insightful - I particularly enjoyed Lolly Adefope's essay on being black and a woman on a gameshow, and the essay on personal experience of FGM (flicking through, I can't find which one it was!)
Some of it is appallingly written though. Amy Trigg's essay was so unbelievably awful.
I feel like I need a rating system to highlight the 5 essays that were insightful and provocative and the rest which were just...flat with 0 weight to the words.
2018 wasn't that long ago so WHY is the online slang throughout this book by some of the essayists so CRINGE ðŸ˜
Lots of these women aren't writers (and they don't need to be - they do fantastic work in industries where they're movers and shakers)
BUT some of the writing is so incredibly weak that it's painful to read.
It's also trying quite hard to be intersectional, but the history of feminism in the last section is solely anglophone.
Sure, a world history would make the book far too large but there's only ever a brief mention of other areas of the world, before returning back to the history of women in the UK and US.
This probably goes back to the target audience though - teenagers in those countries and for them, this is a great, feel good, starter book.