Gigi Engle - All the F*cking Mistakes: A Guide to Sex, Love, and Life

Mommy? A little girl looked up at her mother, eyes burning with deep, six-year-old contemplation. Am I a nasty woman? Mommy, am I nasty? What does nasty mean? She was probably five or six, had a head full of dark hair, and was wearing a purple dress with mismatched socks.

It was mid-election season. You know, before the world went to shit and a literal self-proclaimed sexual predator slithered into the White House like a slug.

The bb must have seen it on CNN, NBC, or (please, God, no) Fox News or something. Kids are chill as fuck these days. They watch the news. They know whats what. (A twelve-year-old I babysat once used the word lit and had his own Instagram.) The word nasty had, by mid-2016, unintentionally (or perhaps intentionally) infiltrated the mainstream. The kids wanted to know what the fuck was up. (Sidenote: Me, too, kiddo. Me, too.)

The little girls mother knelt down to face her, brushing a stray piece of hair from her forehead. They both wore mismatched socks. The definition of #GOALS. I stopped scrolling through my own meme-tastic Instagram feed, suddenly anxious to hear the mothers response. Lady, what are you going to tell this girl-child about Nasty? I gots to know. The f train is comin.

Her mother squeezed her hand and said, It means were doing things better than the men. It means were getting stuff done.

The train arrived, and the two were whisked away in a sea of bodies. Id later see this exact scene immortalized in an internet meme. Well, not the same mother and daughterthat would be fucking wildbut a very similar cartoon mother and daughter on one of those 50s-looking meme-ads. All good things become memes. I guess a lot of nasty women were explaining their nastiness to their young and impressionable children during the late summer of 2016. This all happened when there was still a lot of hope in the world. HRC was slaying, and women everywhere were starting to feel like the glass ceiling was inches away from being obliterated and the Patriarchy wasnt the ginormous clusterfuck we all know it to be.

As I stepped onto the train, service to social media lost (thanks, tunnel system), I had to ask myself, What is a nasty woman? What is it really? Like, what are we even trying to convey here, yall? We cant fully identify what it means to be a nasty woman in the modern world without knowing what it means.

The definition of nasty is highly unpleasant or nauseating. It means gross, disgusting, or vile. You definitely dont want to put something nasty in your mouth (unless you do, which in that case, do your thing, fucker). Nasty means bad. It means straight-up shitty.

Isnt it delightful that the word would be used to describe a powerful woman running for the highest office in the land? How quaint, right? How charming.

Nasty has taken on a new meaning in our cultural lexicon. It is entirely feminized. Its a word used by men to describe women who arent quietly abiding by the status quo. Its used to label any woman who dares to open her fucking mouth and have an opinion. It describes those women who are owning their power, their fierceness, and their sexuality. Its for women who give zero fucks about what you think and all the fucks about their own fucking. Its a negative word that is utilized by the Patriarchy to bring down women who are making shit happen. And it wont work. Why? Because we own that word. We may have lost the election, but I hate to break it to you, White Twitter, we are still fucking here.

Im sure as hell a nasty bitch. You tend to get grouped with the nasty women when you write about blow jobs, vaginas/vulvas, and orgasms for a living. When youre a woman with an eggplant emoji as part of her Instagram bio, when youre a woman who speaks up about sex, shit gets real.

What I do is considered tacky, gross, and tasteless. Society does not like that I write about the taboo. Society is not a fan of sexual openness. Society is fucking scared of a sexually open woman. And society is not just out and about in the churches, steeples, and streets. Society is online and in HD.

You know what Im talking about here, Mama. Being a woman on the internet puts you on the shitlist of every troll out in the ether. You know the drill: You tweet your opinion about, I dont know, doing laundry or the weather or your moms new cat, Carls Jr., and then some random dude with no avatar photo calls you a dirty feminazi whore. Were constantly subjected to harassment, threats, and emotional distress. The way the internet writes about women in general is abhorrent. 4chan, Twitter, and Reddit subthreads have transformed the World Wide Web into a garbage fire. Not that this hasnt been happening forever. People have been spewing endless streams of verbal diarrhea since the dawn of the internet. Shout-out to AOL chat rooms (but also not, because that shit was hell). The internet is a constant deluge of insults and vitriol; a hot, steaming shitpile of every self-indulgent piece of buttcrust who believes they were wrongly deprived of a chance to speak their minds. Its not a fun place. No one will help you. No one gives a fuck. You have to develop a thick skin to hack it. You have got to be nasty.

If youre nasty, this book is for you. If youre not nasty but are thinking, Hey, maybe I could be, I dont know, this book is also for you. You are a sexual woman, but youre even more than that. Youre a complete, incredible, and whole human being. Your sexual empowerment does not define you; it just adds to your forceful spirit. You like to fuck, but you also like to work. You like to get some and get paid. You like to run your mouth and run fuckboys out of town. Only you can define yourself. You just need the tools to learn how to make that shit happen.

This book is a guide to taking your power back. Its for women who love sex and want that sex to be a source of strength. Its your antidote to the misogyny youve experienced for your entire life (some of which you probably arent even aware of). Its the manual to understanding your worth and accepting that your sexual history has no bearing on your quality as a human. You are a shining beacon of strength. If you are comfortable with who you are and arent afraid of that awesomeness, you can be whoever the fuck you want to be. No one can stop you, and no one can scare you into submission. Youll be able to advocate and fight for yourself in every facet of your lifewhether it be your job, relationships, friendships, hookups, or a random interaction at the local corner store with some shitbag who tells you to smile.

This book is for horny, badass sluts who want a raise, a raise right to the fucking top. Maybe with a dildo in hand. No judgment, Ma.

The lessons within these pages will teach you how to give yourself an orgasm and recover from an alcohol-induced shame spiral; how to tell a creepy douchebag to fuck off