Pretty Bitches
On Being Called Crazy, Angry, Bossy, Frumpy, Feisty, and All the Other Words That Are Used to Undermine Women
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3.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
These empowering essays from leading women writers examine the power of the gendered language that is used to diminish women -- and imagine a more liberated world.
Words matter. They wound, they inflate, they define, they demean. They have nuance and power. "Effortless," "Sassy," "Ambitious," "Aggressive": What subtle digs and sneaky implications are conveyed when women are described with words like these? Words are made into weapons, warnings, praise, and blame, bearing an outsized influence on women's lives -- to say nothing of our moods.
No one knows this better than Lizzie Skurnick, writer of the New York Times' column "That Should be A Word"and a veritable queen of cultural coinage. And in Pretty Bitches, Skurnick has rounded up a group of powerhouse women writers to take on the hidden meanings of these words, and how they can limit our worlds -- or liberate them.
From Laura Lipmann and Meg Wolizer to Jennifer Weiner and Rebecca Traister, each writer uses her word as a vehicle for memoir, cultural commentary, critique, or all three. Spanning the street, the bedroom, the voting booth, and the workplace, these simple words have huge stories behind them -- stories it's time to examine, re-imagine, and change.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Skurnick (That Should Be a Word) curates a sharp-witted and intimate essay collection examining how language is used to disempower women. Each piece addresses a single word, as writers including Laura Lippman, Dahlia Lithwick, Rebecca Traister, and Meg Wolitzer take on ostensibly admiring adjectives (nurturing, sweet), outright slurs (shrill; crazy), and veiled insults (ambitious; feisty). Guardian columnist Afua Hirsch's "Professional" explores how women are viewed in the workplace, while essays by South African writer Lihle Z. Mtshali and Asian-American memoirist Beth Bich Minh Nguyen address the cultural stereotypes behind yellow-bone and small, respectively. The collection's confessional nature feminist critic Kate Harding wrestles with identifying as a victim after a sexual assault, and novelist Jennifer Weiner admits that being called fat has the power to "shut me up and shut me down" packs a punch but leaves little room for charting concrete solutions. The diverse contributor list offers new perspectives on mainstream, white-dominant culture, even though the essays largely share a similar and somewhat traditional notion of what femininity connotes. Nevertheless, this eloquent inquiry into how language enshrines gender stereotypes will resonate with feminists, wordsmiths, and fans of the personal essay.
