This book in an incoherent rant at best, hateful and problematic at worst. I kept finding myself checking what year this book was written, so as to excuse the author for these horrifically outdated views on how other women live their lives - I’m sorry to say that I find 2010 far too recent to be spouting this first wave/terf-adjacent nonsense. 

I started off being annoyed by the writing style. Haddad loves a good list, and frequently throughout this book she’ll list a bunch of things that have pissed her off, and avoids going into detail on literally any of them. They are often very obvious and surface level issues that she has with Beirut, with ways in which women feel like they have to change their behaviour, etc - but there is one in particular I need to point out, where she is upset that her ten year old son is listening to 50 Cent rather than Chopin and like…. show me a 10 year old who isn’t? 

As the book continued, it slowly dawned on me that this writer is a victim of internalised misogyny and has not quite figured it out yet. She equates being a woman with femininity, and has a very slim idea of what that looks like, shaming women for having hairy armpits, “messy” clothes, getting plastic surgery, etc - and suggests that we should all aim to be beautiful, well dressed and elegant at the same time as being well read and intelligent. 

There is also a whole passage where she describes a pregnant women commanding troupes as beautiful, and the ultimate example of womanhood. A wild read for sure (for the wrong reasons obvs). 

I feel pretty sorry for her over all, and I wonder if she has revised any of her opinions but I’m questioning why this was allowed to be published as it is and what kind of person she is to have written it.