Buckle up, babes, cause this might be a tad long!

I want to start by saying that overall, I think this is a pretty book with pretty details and an overall good/helpful message that I especially would have benefited from as a teen. Being in my mid-20s and a ~seasoned feminist,~ I didn’t find the topics covered in this book revolutionary and besides really liking the framing of certain concepts and the art, I didn’t quite gain anything new from it. There are some things I really liked, some things I didn’t love, and a couple things I *really* didn’t love… Let’s dive into it!

I’ll start with the positives. In the chapter titled “your rest is your responsibility,” I thoroughly enjoyed the concept of the public bench as a place of pause and using a public bench as an act of resistance in our “go go go” capitalistic world. I genuinely love the idea of the bench as resistance—something we come across so commonly in our day to day that we can turn into a little place of rest and joy if we allow it to is a beautiful thing. I also enjoyed the reference to Jenny Odell’s book, which brings up beautiful rose gardens being turned into bland, mass-produced condos and how sometimes things don’t need to be useful in a quantitative way (monetarily especially) in order to bring value to us. I also like to think of this as needing to be mindful of not replacing the beautiful parts of ourselves with boring, copy-pasted ideals/ways of being that we feel we need to adopt in order to fit in or be accepted or be happy. Later in the book, I think in the chapter about loving yourself, FG wrote something about not spending money when you can’t afford to go out *as an act of self-love.* This framing really clicked for me as an ADHDer with pretty impulsive spending habits. Of course, I *know* that I don’t need that thing I can’t stop thinking about, but *knowing that* doesn’t really help me not spend the money on the thing anyways… But framing NOT spending the money as an act of self-love is incredibly helpful and much more motivating than “well, I don’t NEED it...” which can easily become “well, fuck it, I want it and I deserve it!” I’m definitely going to turn this into some sort of affirmation for myself. I can also say that in the week I spent flipping through the pages of Women Living Deliciously, my awareness of the beautiful things around me has increased a bunch. Centering joy in my life is something I’ve been doing for a few years now but being reminded to do it even more never hurts, and the book itself truly is so stunning. FG’s art is what originally drew me to her on Instagram and I love that she integrates it into her books.

Now, for the things I didn’t like. Honestly, the book was *incredibly repetitive.* I think it could have been half as long and contained just as much information. There were paragraphs with multiple sentences that said the exact same thing, just in different words, or even paragraphs that said the same things as the last paragraph in different words (especially in the excavating section but this was an issue throughout the whole book). I felt like a lot of the topics were approached from a surface level perspective and not delved into very deeply, which is exactly how I felt about Women Don’t Owe You Pretty. While never explicitly stated, I didn’t love the lack of mentioning that while some people thrive by waking up early, it isn’t for everyone! It took me a long time to accept that I simply am not a morning person no matter how hard I’d try to be, and I would have liked to see it pointed out that some people do better with carving out me-time at night. The heavy emphasis on waking up early being (a part of) the solution to one’s problems feels very entrenched in capitalistic ideas of productivity *when it isn’t also acknowledged that there are other options that are just as great for different people.*

Now, I don’t know if this was only an issue in the North American version of the book, but there were many copy editing errors that were annoying to repeatedly encounter. Em dashes were replaced by underscores in almost half the instances in which they appeared. There were two occurrences of a reference to “page xx” and “page xxx” that looked exactly like that, where the page numbers weren’t added in but left as “xx/xxx.” The word “onto” was instead written as “on to” every time it was used. Yes, you might find it rich of me to point this out when there was a literal chapter in the book where FG discussed being accepting of the book being imperfect, but I’m pointing this out not to say “the book should be perfect and isn’t, you’re a terrible person” and more to say that it’s disappointing to spend $35 on a book that has a bunch of easily preventable copy editing errors. This is a publishing issue, not a FG issue. Also, I’m not sure if this was a problem with the North American prints as a whole, a batch of copies, or just my copy of the book, but 16 pages/two chapters were entirely missing! (If you have the US version, make sure you’re not missing pages 114-129, and if you are, contact the publisher for a new copy.)

Moving onto what I REALLY didn’t like… The chapter “the perfect feminist myth” (namely the second half of the chapter) really rubbed me the wrong way. If you follow FG on instagram and ascribe to a version of feminism that extends beyond the self and is built upon an intersectional framework, you’ve likely noticed that despite FG’s entire profitable brand being built on feminism, she never discusses ongoing feminist issues. Many people have expressed upset to her over this and honestly, this chapter felt like a direct response to that, and it felt like an absolute cop-out and a crappy excuse not to use her platform to discuss topics that *aren’t pretty.* Later in the book, in the chapter “I fucking love people,” she goes on a (IMO) passive aggressive rant about people expecting her to speak up on current issues and how they’re just projecting their own guilt onto her… What I actually think is happening here is that FG is trying to assuage her own guilt and failing to recognize that people aren’t projecting their guilt onto her, but expressing their disappointment that she’s profiting off of a version of feminism that doesn’t actually do anything for the people who need feminism the most. “Fucking loving people” and caring about them should extend beyond people privileged enough to buy this book. “Sharing the latest infographic about a crisis,” as she states on page 253 as being a performative act surely *can* be performative, but that just comes down to one’s intentions… She can think it’s being performative if it feels that way to her, but I think many other people, myself included, see it as showing one cares about humans going through terrible shit and has a desire to raise awareness about a given issue. And hey, don’t wanna share an infographic? Okay, then don’t… But maybe share fundraisers and mutual aid funds instead, which have a direct positive impact on people experiencing devastation that an infographic does not if your concern is performativism, instead of throwing your hands up in the air and insisting that anyone who asks you to use your platform to spread awareness is trying to take away your agency. To be clear, I’m not saying that feminism that discusses women focusing on joy and gratitude isn’t also essential, but that this type of feminism isn’t actually feminist if that’s all it consists of.

I think this book is great for people who don’t know how to put themselves first, who are constantly feeling like they’re not good enough, who don’t know how to identify the beauty around them, who rarely feel joy, and I’d say it’d be especially transformative for younger people/teenagers. If you’re someone who feels in control of your life and centres joy and gratitude in it already, I don’t think you’ll get very much beyond an unarguably gorgeous addition to your bookshelf.