Rating: WARTY!
After reading and loving Moran's How to be a Woman which I reviewed recently, I ventured into this volume with a sense of warm expectancy, but I quickly came to discover that there is at least two ways of pronouncing Moran, and the second isn't very complimentary.
I discovered to my dismay that this book is nowhere near as entertaining and engrossing as the previous volume. This one is nothing more than a collection - as its title suggests - of largely unimpressive newspaper puff-pieces, and after feeling like my time's been wasted with nothing more than boring gossip, I'm pretty much done reading anything by this Moran now.
Some of the pieces were interesting, and one or two were mildly amusing, but some were just boring or plainly dumb, and some were directly contradictory of one another. For example, on page 116, she bemoans the sorry state of the sluggish rise to true equality for women, which I also bemoan, but unlike me, Moran doesn't wonder, not even for a minute, if it's high time for women to be taking the reins into their own hands after several decades of "liberation" instead of sitting back and writing newspaper pieces bemoaning the lack of hand-outs as Moran seems to think is appropriate in this article. Equality isn't a one-sided coin.
Yes, I do know that women are excluded far too often by one means or another, from various avenues, but not all avenues are closed. Some of them are simply not interesting to women otherwise they would have - one assumes - taken a stroll down them. Moran seems incapable of grasping that whilst men and women should unarguably be both perceived and treated as equals for all practical purposes, the two genders (and indeed all those in between) are not, in fact, equal at their most fundamental level. If they were, we would all be women - or we'd all be men.
The bottom line is that no matter how equal we're treated, we're neither genetically nor biochemically equal, and therefore we will not have one hundred percent coincidental aims, interests, goals and attractions. Moran's hypocrisy becomes starkly highlighted as we move to the very next article on page 118 where, after just getting done complaining that women aren't yet equal, next bemoans the loss of chivalry in society whereby men for example, stand-up when a woman enters the room, or give up their seat on a crowded bus rather than let a woman stand.
Excuse me? Do you want equality or not? If not, then by all means men can stand for you and give up their seat, but if you want equality, then men don't stand for women demanding extra benefits. It's really that simple, as indeed is Moran if she believes otherwise. You cannot redefine equal just because you're a woman who demands to be "first amongst equals"!
On page 109, Moran complains about burqas and blames everything on men. Seriously? Burqas aren't so much about men per se as about religion, because, in every religion women come off badly. It's always been that way. Now you can waste time arguing that men start religions, but if you want equality, you'd be a lot wiser to quit harping on about dress codes, and focus upon severing the stranglehold which organized religion has upon women. The simple act of conflating these two major, but separate issues isn't going to fix anything.
The rest of the anthology wasn't that impressive at all. A goodly chunk of it was boring. She writes like no one has ever thought of the things she writes about, or has experienced them, or has been thrilled or disgusted by them. The most irritating trait is that she writes like she was, is, and always will be poor yet drops designer fashion names into her writing at every opportunity. It's not adequate for her to simply say, "She was wearing four-inch heels." No, she has to say, "She was wearing four-inch Manolos." If there's one thing I can't stand it's snobbery.
Some of the stuff is retreaded. For example, there's an article about Lady Gaga which is pretty much exactly the same thing as appeared in How to be a Woman. Too much of it is so boring that once I'd read the first couple of sentences I yawned and moved on the the next article.
I still recommend reading How to be a Woman because that was genuinely original, funny, and completely engrossing, but this one? Give it a pass - of the wind variety.
