How to be a Woman

I just finished reading How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran and it was AMAZING. This is book about being a 21st century feminist and how it fits into our daily lives here in our 1st world countries. She says early on "Traditional feminism would tell you that ... we should concentrate on the big stuff like pay inequality, female circumcision in the Third World, and domestic abuse. ...But all those little, stupider, more obvious day-to-day problems with being a woman are, in a way, just as deleterious to women's piece of mind" She is referring to wearing the right clothes, grooming properly, being a mother, drinking, talking (both to men and women), and who our role models should be and what to do with them.

And she touches on all of these. Using the story of her life, mixed with true feministic literature references thrown in (most of which I actually have read since I took three women's literature classes during my undergrad days), she gives her view on why you need to find the proper word for your breasts (I am partial to boobies), discusses why we all have a heel collection that we can't get rid of yet never wear (I have about 5 pairs that I love...yet always leave the house in Converse), and when to know when enough is enough in the kid department.

This was the section that intrigued me the most. Not to give too many spoilers away, she and her husband get pregnant with their third child and both decide together to have an abortion because they know it's not right for them. And this was an amazing thing for me to encounter. Before this point in the book, I'd been feeling pretty confident in my 27 year-old feminism powers, but this one was new to me. The only people I've known so far in life who have had an abortion made the decision because they were "young and not ready." She made the decision from a completely different point of view. She talks about how it wasn't even a hard decision and she felt no guilt - that was an amazing thought to me. Having children, loving them, and then deciding to be done. Deciding to focus on loving the ones you have and having time to love yourself as well. That sounds amazing to me. I love the empowerment from a different perspective. From a place of love for the child you are giving up.

This book was amazing and I'm now going to give it to every woman I know.