January 23, 2013

Do you know how to be a woman now?

‘”No–I’m talking about the common attitudinal habit in women that we’re kind of…failing if we’re not a bit neurotic. That we’re somehow boorish, complacent, and unfeminine if we’re content.

The way women feel that they are not so much well-meaning human beings doing the best they can but, instead, an endless list of problems (fat, hairy, unfashionable, spotty, smelly, tired, unsexy, and with a dodgy pelvic floor, to boot) to be solved. And that, with the application of a great deal of time and money–I mean a great deal of itme and money. Have you seen how much laser hair removal is?–we might, one day, 20 years into the future, finally be able to put our feet up and say, “For nine minutes today, I almost nailed it.”

Before, of course, starting up the whole grim, remorseless, thankless schedule the next day, all over again.

So if I was asked, “Do you know how to be a woman now?” my answer would be, “Kind of yes, really, to be honest.” ‘

–Caitlin Moran, How To Be A Woman