Bates - Girl up: kick ass, claim your woman card and crush everyday sexism

First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2016
A CBS COMPANY

Copyright 2016 by Laura Bates

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.

The right of Laura Bates to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
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Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney
Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi

The author and publishers have made all reasonable efforts to contact copyright-holders for permission, and apologise for any omissions or errors in the form of credits given. Corrections may be made to future printings.

Illustrations copyright 2016 by Jo Harrison

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-4711-4950-4
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-4711-4951-1

Typeset in Meta by M Rules
Printed in Italy by L.E.G.O SpA

For Abi

I will preface this by saying anything that makes navigating being a teenage girl even slightly easier is a godsend. This book is not for the faint-hearted (think lots of swearing, pictures of vaginas and patriarchy busting), but frankly I think that might be what we need a book that unapologetically addresses what teenage girls are really dealing with. Dont understand what your teenage daughter is going through or, even if you do, how to help her tackle it? This is the book for you and for her. So necessary. So timely. Thorough. Straightforward. Well researched. Intelligent. 0% patronizing. Hopefully we can save a few more women some years of self-loathing and whats wrong with me questions.

Y ouve been getting messages since you were a baby. Messages about who you are and what youre good at, about how the world sees you and what you should do if you want to succeed.

Theyre the kind of messages you dont really think about because they are all around you, all the time.

They said you need to be thin and beautiful.

They told you to wear longer skirts, avoid going out late at night and move in groups. Never accept drinks from a stranger, and wear shoes you can run in more easily than heels.

They instructed you to wear just enough make-up to look presentable but not enough to be a slag; to dress to flatter your apple, pear, hourglass figure, but not to be too slutty.

They warned you if youre strong, opinionated, or take control, youll be shrill, bossy, a ballbreaker.

They asked you why you cant take a joke.

They informed you that you should know your place.

They told you thats not for girls; take it as a compliment; dont rock the boat; thatll go straight to your hips; smile darling. They told you that beauty is on the inside but you knew they didnt really mean it.

Well, fuck that. Im here to tell you something else.

* * *

I want to give you a heads-up at the beginning that this book is quite rude. It contains dancing vaginas, discussions about sex and colour-by-numbers genitalia. things this book is not:

Things this book is not:

Abstinent

Self-hating

Pink

Polite

Things for which this book has zero fucks to give:

Societal expectations

Societal judgement

Gender stereotypes

Any form of prejudice

Sexist jokes

Cronuts (why would you take a perfectly good doughnut and make it all dry and flaky? Just why?)

In this book, I will sometimes talk about people with vaginas, or people who are attracted to men, or self-defining women. This might seem weird and unnecessary. You may think all these could be covered by using the word woman.

Its understandable that you might think that, because we live in a world that likes things to be black and white. We live in a world that likes us to stay inside the lines, in nice, simple boxes. But people dont always fit into boxes. Some people are attracted to others of the same sex. Some people are attracted to people of various different sexes. Some people arent attracted to anyone at all. Some people know (often from a very young age) that they dont match the gender that was assigned to them at birth. Some people feel like they fall on a spectrum of gender outside the societal categories of male or female. All this means that we cant just assume everybody with a vagina is a woman, say, or that all women have vaginas. It means we cant assume that all women are only attracted to men and vice versa. It means women and men arent the only two types of people.

Its pretty simple, and its not a big deal to include everybody in our picture of the world, even if it means the picture isnt quite as boxy and orderly as before. Sometimes Ill use the acronym LGBT* to refer to people with different sexual orientations and gender identities. This includes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, but the asterisk is there to indicate that there are lots of other categories included too, like agender, asexual, queer, intersex, gender fluid etc.

Some people think this stuff is tedious and annoying, especially if it requires an explanation like this at the beginning of a book. But just think, if everybody got the hell on board with this message, it would quickly become so normal that we wouldnt have to spell it out any more. Lets say maybe all the books written between 2016 and 2018 mentioned it, and then itd be so widely known that wed be done with the explanations. It would have a big positive impact for folk who are currently often left out of the picture altogether, without hurting others in the slightest.

And lets face it, if youve already decided to read the other 71,235 words of this book, how far are an extra hundred here or there really putting you out?

Wait, dont be put off by the whole 71,235-word thing... There are pictures... COME BACK!

Just to warn you about what youre getting yourself into before you go any further, here is a list of alternative titles that were considered for this book:

Spunk for Girls

Whose Vagina Is It Anyway?

Tinker Tailor Soldier Slut

Bend Clit like Beckham

Men Are from Earth, Women Are from Earth

Revulva

The Dangerous Book for Girls

The Fanny Pack

You have been warned.

Im writing this book because Ive spent a lot of time travelling up and down the country and around the world meeting girls and young women and talking to them about their experiences. I run a website called the Everyday Sexism Project , where people of all ages can share their experiences of any kind of sexism, harassment, discrimination or assault. One of the things that completely knocked me off my feet was the number of young people who were writing in, sharing what they were putting up with. And wow, were young women dealing with a lot of crap.

Mostly they were twisting themselves into pretzel-shaped knots trying to cope with the world giving them approximately 452 gazillion instructions on how to be the perfect girl, to turn into the perfect woman, to have the perfect skin and the perfect grades and the perfect relationship and the