Читать книгу Badass Women Give the Best Advice - Becca Anderson - Страница 11

I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life’s a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass.

—Maya Angelou

Let’s face it, women are the Oral Sex. Here we have a sidesplitting spotlight on the all-important subject of amore—and as it turns out, women have a whole lot to say about love. This big book of badassery is like a heart-to-heart talk with two hundred of your best friends! Topics discussed include “love is fabulous,” “how friends are our other significant others,” “size really does matter,” “it’s good to get lost,” and “are men really necessary?” and cover jobs, blind dates, sex, personal ads, break ups, weddings, and the prerequisites for the perfect first kiss. Gossipy, giddy, and extremely good advice, this compendium of radical common sense features loquacious ladies of every stripe from movie stars to moms, literati, glitterati, psychologist, sexperts, and all around bad girls tellin’ it like it is.

Growing up, girls are often taught to find a balance between confidence and modesty. Sure, you can accept a compliment, but don’t go looking for one. Suggesting that someone look at you would be entirely unacceptable—that girl would be seen as having an ego problem. But all this standard does is make girls question themselves and their own actions left and right. It makes us focus on not emphasizing our attributes when that’s really all we should be doing. We don’t question this growing up. When our mothers say not to wear that attention-grabbing outfit, or when they criticize us for making a scene, it seems normal and ordinary.

Yet why, I now wonder, in a world where the wind can so easily be knocked out of a woman’s sails (whether deliberately and cruelly, or just by the sheer impersonal weight of accumulated experience), would we strive to diet down young girls’ egos? Wouldn’t it make more sense to shore them up to the size of Kim K’s celebrated booty, so that they’d still retain a little buoyancy (a modicum of oomph!) despite the inevitable deflationary effects of life?

Happily, the parents of the outspoken badass women in this section seem to have been spectacularly enlightened…or, perhaps, merely spectacularly unsuccessful at inculcating the creed of mouse-like behavior in their daughters. These women never allowed knock-downs to their confidence—they were badass, and they knew it. For amplification of your own sassy attitude—or perhaps just your own amusement—read on.