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I don’t want to have another fucking conversation with another fucking woman about what she’s eating or not eating or regrets eating or pretends to not regret eating to mask the regret.

(OMG, Lindy! You are speaking my language. I don’t want to have those conversations either...ever a-fucking-gain! I am so over all of it: filtered pictures on Instagram, Fakebook, Crossfit, competitive weight loss groups, narcissism, before and after photos, pictures of salad, underwear & sports bra selfies. I just can’t! When did we go from spending time hiking/biking/swimming because we like it to “going to the gym, hoping to stream an extra workout at home before I go train for a half marathon.� When did talking about diet and working out become the only conversation?)


This is the most quotable book I’ve ever read or heard. I listened to the audio, then grabbed the hardcover at the library. Rather than say too much here, I will let the quotes sink in and speak for themselves.

Women matter. Women are half of us. When you raise every women to believe that we are insignificant, that we are broken, that we are sick, that the only cure is starvation and restraint and smallness; when you pit women against one another, keep a shackled by shame and hunger, obsessing over our flaws rather than our power and potential; when you leverage all of that to sap our money and our time—that moves the rudder of the world. It steers humanity told conservatism in the walls of the narrow interesting man, and he keeps us adrift in waters where women’s safety and humanity are secondary to men’s pleasure and convenience.

That was on page 19. I already knew this was a 5 star book. To me, the above is a mike drop statement, but Lindy West isn’t a mike drop kind of women. She stays for the conversation, stands up for what she believes, and she does so with wit, respect, and intelligence. This book of essays addresses a whole slew of terrifically important issues. It is the perfect combination of ferocity and vulnerability. This woman has my deepest respect. I was very drawn to the stories about her interaction with her fat shaming boss, her crusade against rape jokes and facing her worst Internet troll, but there was much to appreciate and ponder in almost every essay. I will do my best to get this book into the hands of as many people as I can. Her voice is valuable, sensible, empowering, and sorely needed in today’s world.
Though I was less enamoured with two of the essays, this is still for me 5 stars.

Other quotes I found brilliant:

Don’t trust anyone who promises you a new life. Pick-up artists, lifestyle gurus, pyramid-scheme face cream evangelists, Weight Watchers coaches: These people make a living off of your failures. If their products lived up to their promise, they’d be out of a job.

I reject the notion that thinness is the goal, that thin = better—that I am an unfinished thing and that my life can really start when I lose weight.

You can’t fix a problem by targeting its victims.

Feminists don’t single out rape jokes because rape is “worse� than other crimes—we single them out because we live in a culture that actively strives to shrink the definition of sexual assault; that casts stalking behaviors as romance; blames victims for wearing the wrong clothes, walking through the wrong neighborhood, or flirting with the wrong person; bends over backwards to excuse boys-will-be-boys misogyny; makes emotional and social costs of reporting rape prohibitively high; pretends that false accusations are a more dire problem than actual assaults; elects officials who tell rape victims that their sexual violation was “god’s plan�; and convicts in less than 5 percent of rape cases that go to trial.