How to Be a Woman

Caitlin Moran — How to Be a Woman

Discussions of feminism are often divisive, but so, it seems, is Moran herself — in addition to the heaps of attention she’s received in the broadsheets recently, I had a short Twitter exchange with CarolineNo about Moran, which summed up pretty well the two opinions people seem to have about her and her book.  Caroline questioned Moran’s suitability to comment on feminist issues and what Caroline seemed to view as Moran’s self-appointment to the role of “spokeswoman for women generally” in writing such a book (and a book, moreover, with such a title).  I also believe Caroline was wary of Moran from previous experience of her journalism.  I had no such preconceptions, apart from what I gleaned from the buzz in the broadsheets which got me to read the book in the first place, and I take the wishy-washy view that any discussion of feminism in public is a good thing — though the discussion that this book prompted on Newsnight, with a clearly perturbed Paxo, was scraping the barrel somewhat with its inquiry into — God help us all — vajazzling.

The format in which she frames the polemic is an unusual one: each chapter is introduced with an episode from Moran’s own life, which acts as some sort of lead-in to the wider point she discusses later on.  To be honest, I was lukewarm about this as a selling point (I’m not scared of all polemic all the time) but I can understand how it might draw in a wider readership — which is very clearly one of her ambitions.  It makes for a light and enjoyable read.  But leaving perhaps half of each chapter to a (very slightly) more serious engagement with an abstract idea, after the autobiographical comedy opener, means that most of her arguments come across as even more glib than I think they would dealt with in a similar tone but at greater length, minus the memoir.  The biggest exception to this would be, for me, her chapter on the issue of fatness and obesity, in which her personal experience packs quite an emotional punch and gives what she has to say on the issue greater validity (at least, rightly or wrongly, to my own mind).  Otherwise it seems a fairly flimsy through-line which isn’t required: we know what the purport of the book is, and that’s unifying theme enough.

It’s a difficult book to get the measure of.  I like Moran’s style of writing, and if you get over the liberal use of CAPS LOCK for emphasis and her general digressionary style (both things I know something about), it’s an engaging, witty book while you are in the process of reading it.  Having read it, though, it felt insubstantial and meringue-like, the relatively small amount of content puffed by the humour and the in-your-face stylistic choices — a very long magazine piece, really.  That kind of tone is fine for her chapters on the ins and outs of modern underwear or celebrity role models, but it does her own acuity a grave disservice when dealing with heavier hitters such as lap-dancing culture, the pros and cons of motherhood (and the societal implications of how we treat mothers), and abortion.  Such things call for the weight of a proper book, and I don’t feel Moran brought that weight to this work, or certainly not consistently so.  She is ultimately the loser here, because the things she does say in these chapters is worth engaging with, but it’s lost in the morass of gags and raised brows to the reader.

Furthermore, I found it surprising that the book should have been the recipient of such attention when it’s really only stating the bleeding obvious and is not nearly radical enough: she doesn’t really want to construct a different system, just rearrange the deckchairs (if you will) with the current one.  I don’t want deckchairs; give me bloody revolution any day.