Women Don’t Owe You Pretty by Florence Given: rallying, radical and pitched perfectly for her generation

Feminism is going to ruin your life, writes the eloquent Gen Z agitator Florence Given, “in the best way possible”.

And certainly, once you’ve read her illustrated manifesto/zine, which covers (literally) everything from gender to internalised misogyny, queerness to body hair, slut shaming, emotional labour and masturbation, you’ll be animated to push for change. A chapter about allyship and checking your privilege is timely and important in a week where systemic racism and police brutality have yet again reared their ugly heads.

The best activists are the ones who can make you feel uncomfortable enough to force you to change and do better. Given has the chops for the job. A 20-year-old illustrator and activist with a huge online following, she is persuasive, passionate and (very) clued-up about modern intersectional feminism. In one chapter, she explores the pernicious impact of seeking male validation through a conversation with her younger self; many other chapters start or end with checklists, questions you should ask yourself or others about issues including privilege, consent and micro-aggressions. She is careful to check her own privilege at regular turns (“I had to acknowledge the objective fact that I sit high on society’s scale of desirability, by being slim, non-disabled and white,” she writes).

Given credits a number of resources including Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth, Chidera Eggerue’s What a Time to Be Alone, and trans activist Janet Mock, all of whose works examine the concept of “pretty as currency”. She also cites the Erin McKean passage (which includes the quote “prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked female”) for inspiring the title of the book.

And Given is unforgiving when she takes aim at the limited and limiting beauty ideals of Western capitalism (white, cisgender, thin, not-disabled). She also outlines the politics of body hair (for example, why it’s easier for white, thin and cisgender women to grow out their armpit hair), and writes well about the ambiguity of queer dating.

Moreover, the stylish, stylised illustrations for which she has made her name glorify women (body hair and all!), and prove she is fluent in the visual language of modern protest, so much of which is shared online. Still, these can all be intimidating issues — and Given is vehement without being unremitting. She emphasises the importance of holding people to account while permitting space for people to change. It’s nuanced — far more so than following any argument on social media.

Women Don’t Owe You Pretty is rallying and radical and pitched perfectly for her generation — but every woman should feel something when they read lines like this: “When people shut you down for ‘speaking up’, it’s because they want the status quo to be maintained. It’s a tactic as old as time. Stay headstrong. Keep going.”

Women Don’t Owe You Pretty by Florence Given (Cassell, £12.99), buy it here.

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