In 2012, Laura Bates founded the Everyday Sexism Project, a website where women could upload their experiences of gender-based discrimination. Tired of being told that she needed to learn how to take a joke, her thesis was simple: there is a connection between women’s daily experiences of objectification and the fact that only seven FTSE 100 companies have female bosses; that women write one-fifth of front-page newspaper articles; that every six minutes in Britain a woman is raped. Within two years, 100,000 stories had poured into the site from all over the world.
Girl Up is something between a self-help book and a bracing love letter to today’s teenage girls. “They said you need to be thin and beautiful. They told you to wear longer skirts,” Bates begins. “Well, f*** that. I’m here to tell you something else.”
The result is a book that avoids, say, naive directions to put down Heat or delete Instagram, and instead provides readers with handy responses to unsolicited “dick pics”: “Oh sooo cute! I love baby mice!”
On sex, Bates can be brilliantly frank, and throughout she writes like a lovable, if slightly overexcited older sister. If you are not 14, or maybe even if you are, this might become a little grating. But her directness, and the sensitivity with which she shows her readers that they don’t have to tolerate the “banter”, makes reading this book feel liberating.
I wish I’d had Girl Up when I was growing up. I could have used such a no-nonsense survival guide.
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Simon & Schuster £12.99 pp326
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