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A Book for Her
Bridget Christie is a stand-up comedian, idiot, and feminist. On the 30th of April, 2012, a man farted in the Women’s Studies Section of a bookshop and it changed her life forever. A Book For Her details Christie’s 12 years of anonymous toil in the bowels of stand-up comedy and the sudden epiphany that made her, unbelievably, one of the most critically acclaimed British stand-up comedians this decade, drawing together the threads that link a smelly smell in the women’s studies section to the global feminist struggle. Find out how nice Peter Stringfellow’s fish tastes, how yogurt advertising perpetuates rape myths, and how Emily Bronte used a special ladies’ pen to write Wuthering Heights. If you’re interested in comedy and feminism, then this is definitely the book for you. If you hate both then I’d probably give it a miss.
311 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2015
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1861 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 159 reviews
March 26, 2017
"Todos ponemos nuestro granito de arena. Y si todos ponemos nuestro granito de arena, juntos pondremos un buen montón".
Gracias a Bridget Christie y a esas mujeres que reciben el acoso sexista de las redes, los medios, etc. por el simple hecho de llamarse feministas. Y aún con todo, siguen ahí, luchando por nosotras. Gracias, de verdad, porque no sé qué haría sin todas esas mujeres.
Gracias a Bridget Christie y a esas mujeres que reciben el acoso sexista de las redes, los medios, etc. por el simple hecho de llamarse feministas. Y aún con todo, siguen ahí, luchando por nosotras. Gracias, de verdad, porque no sé qué haría sin todas esas mujeres.
August 25, 2015
It's hard to avoid reading a British comic memoir about feminism without comparing it to Caitlin Moran's How to Be a Woman – a tough comparison to sustain, since Moran is one of the finest comic writers alive. Bridget Christie realises this, which is why she does this bit:
OK! point taken. Let's try and assess it on its own merits….
Christie hit the medium time a couple of years ago with a show based on feminism, which won her the top prize at Edinburgh after something like fifteen years gigging in small venues and pub backrooms. So it's understandable that she and her publishers want to capitalise on the subject – although, as she is at pains to point out, she is no expert on academic feminism and freely admits that she never really understood buzzwords like ‘intersectionality’. Her material is pitched more at people who ‘thought Simone de Beauvoir was a villain in Poirot’.
Instead, her idea of feminism is defined negatively, through laboured irony:
This goes on at somewhat exhaustive length, although a lot of it is pretty good.
The book is roughly structured around Christie's thought process in writing her last couple of tours. She's very good on the theory and practice of stand-up comedy, defending for instance the right – indeed the duty – of comedians to make jokes about any subject whatsoever. (You can see why this is important to her, given that female genital mutilation was a key topic in her last tour.) I really liked this simple explanation, which is very true but rarely made explicit:
I was trying to articulate something like this recently as I tried to explain to some US friends why I find Bill Burr's comedy problematic. Bill Burr has one of the most technically flawless deliveries in the business, I think, and some of his routines are just awesome taken individually. The problem is that collectively, there's a creepy pattern. He has that bit about how it's not never OK to hit a woman; he has that other bit about how the epidemic of cheating male celebrities is better seen as an ‘epidemic of gold-digging whores’; there's the rant about how John Lennon should have smacked Yoko in the mouth and told her to shut the fuck up; there's the thing about calling Carrie Underwood a dumb cunt. Most of these are beautifully constructed routines but after you've listened to a few of them it gets harder to laugh, especially when you hear him ranting in similar ways offstage in podcasts and interviews. Not that I believe for a moment that Bill Burr is misogynistic – that's not the point at all. The point is that the character is funny in small clubs when he seems powerless and overwhelmed by modern society, but the material becomes unsustainable when it's delivered by a millionaire doing Netflix specials and Jimmy Fallon.
This is something that comedians have to deal with all the time when they get big. Bill Burr's contemporary Louis CK had similar success at around the same time, and he adapted his material I thought very skilfully, producing much more nuanced routines which depended less on his status as a bitter outsider. Culminating in that famous bit last year: ‘How do women still go out with guys, when you consider that there is no greater threat to women than men? We’re the number one threat to women! Globally and historically, we’re the number one cause of injury and mayhem to women. You know what our number one threat is? Heart disease.’ This has absolutely nothing to do with political correctness – it's about assessing how the changing context of your own status and celebrity makes some subjects more funny, and others less funny. If you don't do that, you end up with a lot of fans who think your cartoonishly bitter persona is just an unironic, straight-talking hero (which is the problem Bill Burr now has, by the way).
Anyway, I'm miles away on my own tangent now. This is definitely a decent addition to the collection of books from the UK stand-up scene – it has a shaky start but finishes strongly, and it includes a lot of useful discussions on the links between farting in bookshops and women's rights, plus a cherished throwaway description of Peter Stringfellow as looking like ‘the result of a one-night stand between Nosferatu and Carol Thatcher’.
Oh God, I can hear you thinking, not another funny feminist book! (And that's just the feminists.) We've already had one funny book about feminism in the entire history of feminism – Caitlin Moran's How to Be a Woman – we don't need another one, surely? At least not for another fifty or a hundred years, anyway. […] Jesus, you're thinking. These feminists will need their own bloody bookshops soon – to fit all these two books in.
OK! point taken. Let's try and assess it on its own merits….
Christie hit the medium time a couple of years ago with a show based on feminism, which won her the top prize at Edinburgh after something like fifteen years gigging in small venues and pub backrooms. So it's understandable that she and her publishers want to capitalise on the subject – although, as she is at pains to point out, she is no expert on academic feminism and freely admits that she never really understood buzzwords like ‘intersectionality’. Her material is pitched more at people who ‘thought Simone de Beauvoir was a villain in Poirot’.
Instead, her idea of feminism is defined negatively, through laboured irony:
I am a feminist. This means I think that all men are rapists, without exception. Even paralysed men, who can only move one eyeball. All rapists. Even my seven-year-old son is a rapist, and that is how I introduce him to people. ‘Have you met my son? He's seven. Rapist.’ That's what I think, because I am a feminist. Even dead men are rapists. A bit of soil and science doesn't stop them. Mud and physics is just more bureaucratic nonsense for them to negotiate their way around, like CCTV cameras and sentencing.
This goes on at somewhat exhaustive length, although a lot of it is pretty good.
Christmas is banned in the ‘feminist community’, along with birthdays, wallpaper, nuance, giving people the benefit of the doubt and all music. Feminists only ever listen to one song, on a loop: k.d. lang's ‘Constant Craving’.
The book is roughly structured around Christie's thought process in writing her last couple of tours. She's very good on the theory and practice of stand-up comedy, defending for instance the right – indeed the duty – of comedians to make jokes about any subject whatsoever. (You can see why this is important to her, given that female genital mutilation was a key topic in her last tour.) I really liked this simple explanation, which is very true but rarely made explicit:
Comedy is all about context. It's about who is saying what, and why. What is their position in the world? Who is the person onstage? Are they high or low status? Are they a victim or a perpetrator? What is their ‘clown’, i.e. the unique thing about them that makes them funny? Are they even aware of what their clown is? What are they wearing? Are they a support act or a headline act? Where are you seeing them? In a basement, with five other people, or in a sold-out stadium? What do we know about the stand-up's personal life? Do they have a high profile or are they completely unknown?
I was trying to articulate something like this recently as I tried to explain to some US friends why I find Bill Burr's comedy problematic. Bill Burr has one of the most technically flawless deliveries in the business, I think, and some of his routines are just awesome taken individually. The problem is that collectively, there's a creepy pattern. He has that bit about how it's not never OK to hit a woman; he has that other bit about how the epidemic of cheating male celebrities is better seen as an ‘epidemic of gold-digging whores’; there's the rant about how John Lennon should have smacked Yoko in the mouth and told her to shut the fuck up; there's the thing about calling Carrie Underwood a dumb cunt. Most of these are beautifully constructed routines but after you've listened to a few of them it gets harder to laugh, especially when you hear him ranting in similar ways offstage in podcasts and interviews. Not that I believe for a moment that Bill Burr is misogynistic – that's not the point at all. The point is that the character is funny in small clubs when he seems powerless and overwhelmed by modern society, but the material becomes unsustainable when it's delivered by a millionaire doing Netflix specials and Jimmy Fallon.
This is something that comedians have to deal with all the time when they get big. Bill Burr's contemporary Louis CK had similar success at around the same time, and he adapted his material I thought very skilfully, producing much more nuanced routines which depended less on his status as a bitter outsider. Culminating in that famous bit last year: ‘How do women still go out with guys, when you consider that there is no greater threat to women than men? We’re the number one threat to women! Globally and historically, we’re the number one cause of injury and mayhem to women. You know what our number one threat is? Heart disease.’ This has absolutely nothing to do with political correctness – it's about assessing how the changing context of your own status and celebrity makes some subjects more funny, and others less funny. If you don't do that, you end up with a lot of fans who think your cartoonishly bitter persona is just an unironic, straight-talking hero (which is the problem Bill Burr now has, by the way).
Anyway, I'm miles away on my own tangent now. This is definitely a decent addition to the collection of books from the UK stand-up scene – it has a shaky start but finishes strongly, and it includes a lot of useful discussions on the links between farting in bookshops and women's rights, plus a cherished throwaway description of Peter Stringfellow as looking like ‘the result of a one-night stand between Nosferatu and Carol Thatcher’.
March 30, 2016
I really wanted to like this book. It's got feminism and comedy, two things of which I am definitely a fan. It was accessible, for which I give Bridget Christie full credit, but it wasn't particularly engaging. There were too many fart jokes, too many points when my attention would drift. Again, credit to Christie for highlighting that she's writing from the position of a white working-class woman and trying to address intersectionality in a way that would be universally understandable, but she really fell down when it came to writing about race. For example, dismissing Beyoncé as nothing more than Bootylicious when she uses her platform to uplift Blackness and remove the stigma from feminism smacked of misogynoir. It wasn't consistent with the way she referred to other women, jokes about whom were made with obvious irony. The laziness of using the Black woman as a bad example really put me off, and it wasn't at all consistent with the principles of sisterhood Christie advocated.
February 9, 2016
One Of Those Books By Women About Women Stuff That Should Be Read By A Man
Bridget Christie is a woman. Bridget Christie is very,very funny. She's not supposed to be, obviously, because of the bit where she's a woman. This book is about how she got into feminism as a means of launching a lucrative career because sleeping with everyone to get where she is was getting a bit exhausting.
It is not a book to be read on the bus. Not because the nosy person behind you reading over your shoulder might see the word vagina and be offended, or because them catching a glimpse of you reading about FGM might put them off the breakfast they're eating on the bus. None of that. It's because it's a genuinely laugh out loud funny book. Like guffawingly laugh out loud. Which, I suppose, is just laughing out loud. But people say LOL all the time in texts and they didn't actually laugh out loud. But you will with this book.
Actual Lols.
For reals.
Bridget Christie is a woman. Bridget Christie is very,very funny. She's not supposed to be, obviously, because of the bit where she's a woman. This book is about how she got into feminism as a means of launching a lucrative career because sleeping with everyone to get where she is was getting a bit exhausting.
It is not a book to be read on the bus. Not because the nosy person behind you reading over your shoulder might see the word vagina and be offended, or because them catching a glimpse of you reading about FGM might put them off the breakfast they're eating on the bus. None of that. It's because it's a genuinely laugh out loud funny book. Like guffawingly laugh out loud. Which, I suppose, is just laughing out loud. But people say LOL all the time in texts and they didn't actually laugh out loud. But you will with this book.
Actual Lols.
For reals.
February 20, 2017
I found this book very frustrating. On one hand Christie is evidently very passionate about feminism and spoke eloquently and with fervour about the key issues facing women today. She is also master of the irony and sarcasm. On the other hand, I felt like she veered wildly between humour and sincerity, which I felt detracted from the points she was trying to make. It was also very disorganised and repetitive at times. This book is confused- is it a humorous memoir or feminist polemic? In this case, I feel like it can't be both.
July 31, 2018
DNF página 112
Lo siento pero no lo puedo soportar. Esperaba leer comedia, algo mínimamente divertido y con toques feministas; y lo único que me he encontrado es a una cómica contando sus batallitas.
Se me hace totalmente insoportable.
Lo siento pero no lo puedo soportar. Esperaba leer comedia, algo mínimamente divertido y con toques feministas; y lo único que me he encontrado es a una cómica contando sus batallitas.
Se me hace totalmente insoportable.
February 5, 2017
'A Book for Her' is very well-structured, and kinda meta. Christie starts off making jokes about the trivial-seeming sexism of everyday, so far this is pretty standard for the genre of funny-feminist biography and Christie is following in the footsteps of Caitlin Moran, Tina Fey, and all the Amys. But as the book progresses she starts drawing the links between the silly sexism that you can laugh at and larger structures of oppression. There's actually not much biography in the book, because the book isn't really structured by the chronology of her life, instead it's progressing from smaller to larger problems, and the whole way Christie is carrying on a meta conversation about how on earth one manages to make the depressing reality of sexism funny. Starting with a seemingly trivial incident in the women's studies section of a bookstore, the book travels through the silly indignities of sexism, the difficulty of finding your voice as a woman, the more serious problems of objectification, up to really big problems like FGM. Ultimately, this is why Christie is a cut above the average for the genre – she is actually tackling really serious issues of feminism, not just the ones that effect her.
Some parts of 'A Book for Her' had me laughing out loud: Christie tells an anecdote of a hostile critic asking, 'Who did Bridget Christie sleep with to get this gig?' The book loops back again and again to this joke as Christie constructs ever longer and more improbable lists of the people she has slept with to achieve even the most trivial accomplishments, and the more ridiculous it becomes the more you can feel her anger that the question could ever have been asked.
There's also plenty of awkward comedy. Christie got into the genre late and this leads to a lot of jokes about how the whole thing is just a marketing gimmick for her and a savvy career move – all of which made me desperately uncomfortable because I have an extremely low irony tolerance. She jokes constantly that she doesn't know anything at all about feminism and it completely unqualified to comment on it. The anecdotes about her life are confusing (she refers to her husband as fictional) and she doesn't even bother trying to explain how she reconciles feminism with Catholicism. At first all of this is frustrating, but as the book progresses it becomes clear that this is the point. Feminism is not about Bridget Christie. Whether or not Christie can illustrate her point with an example from her own life doesn't matter at all. Ultimately, something like FGM is an evil that needs to be eradicated whatever our life stories, and it's a testament to Christie's skill as a writer than she can lead us to these serious issues through a series of possibly fictional anecdotes about farting misogynists.
Some parts of 'A Book for Her' had me laughing out loud: Christie tells an anecdote of a hostile critic asking, 'Who did Bridget Christie sleep with to get this gig?' The book loops back again and again to this joke as Christie constructs ever longer and more improbable lists of the people she has slept with to achieve even the most trivial accomplishments, and the more ridiculous it becomes the more you can feel her anger that the question could ever have been asked.
There's also plenty of awkward comedy. Christie got into the genre late and this leads to a lot of jokes about how the whole thing is just a marketing gimmick for her and a savvy career move – all of which made me desperately uncomfortable because I have an extremely low irony tolerance. She jokes constantly that she doesn't know anything at all about feminism and it completely unqualified to comment on it. The anecdotes about her life are confusing (she refers to her husband as fictional) and she doesn't even bother trying to explain how she reconciles feminism with Catholicism. At first all of this is frustrating, but as the book progresses it becomes clear that this is the point. Feminism is not about Bridget Christie. Whether or not Christie can illustrate her point with an example from her own life doesn't matter at all. Ultimately, something like FGM is an evil that needs to be eradicated whatever our life stories, and it's a testament to Christie's skill as a writer than she can lead us to these serious issues through a series of possibly fictional anecdotes about farting misogynists.
February 25, 2018
Mary Shelley tampoco podía centrarse demasiado en el arrepentimiento, porque entra en la categoría de emoción, y las emociones son cosa de mujeres, junto con la depresión, la desesperación, la confusión, el vacío, la aprensión y la culpa. ¿He mencionado el sentimiento de culpa de las mujeres? Siempre la culpa. ¿Cuándo se acabará?
August 14, 2017
One of the most repetitive and directionless books I have ever read. Statements and opinions are repeated in each chapter and often within the same page as if they have never been mentioned before, and the chapters were redundant as there was no structure to the subject matter. It needed a much better edit to even stand a chance for me.
This was also meant to be comedic but honestly didn't laugh once- maybe it just doesn't click with my sense of humour.
To me, 'A Book For Her' was rather self indulgent; Christie prints scripts of entire stand up routines and regularly mentions the awards she has won as well as responding to particular examples of criticism towards her.
The topics covered were this book's only redeeming feature; FGM, sex work and everyday sexism are all things worth discussing and Christie does bring some good points forward.
This was also meant to be comedic but honestly didn't laugh once- maybe it just doesn't click with my sense of humour.
To me, 'A Book For Her' was rather self indulgent; Christie prints scripts of entire stand up routines and regularly mentions the awards she has won as well as responding to particular examples of criticism towards her.
The topics covered were this book's only redeeming feature; FGM, sex work and everyday sexism are all things worth discussing and Christie does bring some good points forward.
June 12, 2017
Me gustó mucho más la manera de contar de Caitlin Moran, pero lo cierto es que Bridget Chistie hace hincapié en temas tan importantes como la mutilación genital femenina sin perder la sonrisa. Lo que pasa es que se pierde tanto en sus monólogos, la preparación de sus guiones y el relato de cómo se presentaba en los escenarios que se hace cansino, raro.
Pero la realidad es que cualquier libro que nos llame la atención sobre la desigualdad de géneros viene bien para abrir los ojos y darnos cuenta de lo mucho que nos queda por conseguir.
Pero la realidad es que cualquier libro que nos llame la atención sobre la desigualdad de géneros viene bien para abrir los ojos y darnos cuenta de lo mucho que nos queda por conseguir.
August 26, 2015
I love it when audiobooks give you a little bit extra. Admittedly, the little bit extra you get here is a chiding for buying the audiobook instead of the real book, but the point stands. Other than that, I really enjoyed the combination of humour and serious campaigning, and Christie gets an extra star for not padding her book by moaning about how hard it is to write a book.
April 3, 2021
Antes de comenzar este libro no sabía muy bien lo que iba a encontrar ya que la sinopsis decía que iba a hablar sobre temas feministas, pero la autora es una humorista británica. Por ello, no podía imaginarme como iba a abordar todos estos temas tan serios r importantes a través del humor. Y es que, algunos de los temas que trata la autora son lo suficientemente serios como para pensar en un primer momento que no pueden hacerse bromas al respecto. No obstante, Bridget Christie nos demuestra que se puede hacer humor con cualquier tema siempre y cuando se entienda la ironía por parte del público y sea una manera de reivindicar nuestros derechos como mujeres, en el caso de este libro.
Así, aborda temas algo más superficiales para el feminismo, como por ejemplo los productos sexistas, es decir, productos que se comercializan para hombres o mujeres y que realmente los podría usar cualquiera, comentarios sexistas de la opinión pública y de políticos importantes, pero también otros temas serios como la mutilación genital femenina.
Al hablar de feminismo, la autora siempre muestra sus dudas sobre si será capaz de tratar bien estos temas, y más a través del humor. Ella se considera feminista, pero es consciente de que por supuesto no lo sabe todo acerca de todos los temas que preocupan al movimiento feminista. Por ello, se ha visto animada en diversas ocasiones por otras feministas para que trate este tipo de temas en sus monólogos de humor, ya que según ellas lo importante es que salgan a la luz de diferentes maneras, no solo a través de ensayos o de conferencias, sino también, en este caso a través de espectáculos cómicos.
Al final, este movimiento se alimenta no solo por grandes iniciativas, sino también por granitos de arena que todas podemos aportar.
Ha sido una lectura divertidísima en la que ciertas ocasiones me ha hecho reír y hasta saltárseme alguna lágrima de la risa. Conviene a veces tomarse la vida con humor y ver las cosas desde otra perspectiva, y este ensayo cumple con creces este objetivo. Una lectura que no dejaré de recomendar, para cualquier feminista que le apetezca leer un libro irónico, atrevido pero desde luego muy interesante.
Así, aborda temas algo más superficiales para el feminismo, como por ejemplo los productos sexistas, es decir, productos que se comercializan para hombres o mujeres y que realmente los podría usar cualquiera, comentarios sexistas de la opinión pública y de políticos importantes, pero también otros temas serios como la mutilación genital femenina.
Al hablar de feminismo, la autora siempre muestra sus dudas sobre si será capaz de tratar bien estos temas, y más a través del humor. Ella se considera feminista, pero es consciente de que por supuesto no lo sabe todo acerca de todos los temas que preocupan al movimiento feminista. Por ello, se ha visto animada en diversas ocasiones por otras feministas para que trate este tipo de temas en sus monólogos de humor, ya que según ellas lo importante es que salgan a la luz de diferentes maneras, no solo a través de ensayos o de conferencias, sino también, en este caso a través de espectáculos cómicos.
Al final, este movimiento se alimenta no solo por grandes iniciativas, sino también por granitos de arena que todas podemos aportar.
Ha sido una lectura divertidísima en la que ciertas ocasiones me ha hecho reír y hasta saltárseme alguna lágrima de la risa. Conviene a veces tomarse la vida con humor y ver las cosas desde otra perspectiva, y este ensayo cumple con creces este objetivo. Una lectura que no dejaré de recomendar, para cualquier feminista que le apetezca leer un libro irónico, atrevido pero desde luego muy interesante.
May 22, 2023
I found the first half of this more 'laugh-out-loud', enjoyable and entertaining than the second half, but overall this was an interesting and admirable tome. Christie aims to write something discussing her success as a comedian, how she came to the material she writes, and in doing so make some very important points about feminism. Alas for me, possibly not the target audience, I'm not sure it was a complete success. It's very difficult to strike the right balance between humour and seriousness, and I'm not sure it's possible to mock the ridiculousness of gendered pens and casual sexism in the same way as mocking female genital mutilation and rape, and derive the same type of comedy from both ends of the oppression of women spectrum. That's not to say there's a lack of value in highlighting serious issues, just that it's a harder sell 'as comedy'.
I do enjoy Christie's style however, rambling and tangential (as I am prone to be at times) - though this did make for a slightly hard route at times, there were some extremely clever and funny moments, turns of phrase and analogies.
I do enjoy Christie's style however, rambling and tangential (as I am prone to be at times) - though this did make for a slightly hard route at times, there were some extremely clever and funny moments, turns of phrase and analogies.
February 2, 2018
3,5 para un libro que da un toque de humor a un tema que creo que últimamente lo necesita.
Lo que más me ha costado han sido sus párrafos sobre los monólogos y muchas repeticiones de temas (ajenos al central) que tiene el texto.
Me gusta su frescura, su ironía, es manera de ver las cosas, de poner el dedo en eso realmente importante mientras acabas de soltar una carcajada con otra cosa. De hacerte sonrojar por esas chorradas que te planteas a veces.
Me ha gustado dentro de que creo que creo que le sobran cosas.
Lo que más me ha costado han sido sus párrafos sobre los monólogos y muchas repeticiones de temas (ajenos al central) que tiene el texto.
Me gusta su frescura, su ironía, es manera de ver las cosas, de poner el dedo en eso realmente importante mientras acabas de soltar una carcajada con otra cosa. De hacerte sonrojar por esas chorradas que te planteas a veces.
Me ha gustado dentro de que creo que creo que le sobran cosas.
June 1, 2017
Empieza fuerte, recae un poco a la mitad y vuelve a remontar en el final. Pese a ser en clave de humor, es un libro duro de leer por las verdades que cuenta. Mi parte favorita, sin duda, el capítulo sobre la mutilación genital femenina... ni con humor puede hacerse más llevadero un tema como ese. Horrible.
April 20, 2023
Tiene fragmentos interesantes, pero me aburrió mucho. Le falta aquello de "escribir es cortar". Supongo que este libro mejoraría mucho si le recortaran el 80% de las páginas.
July 12, 2023
I came across this only because I've just watched Bridget's series The Change (which is marvellous and you should absolutely watch it); having somewhat moved away from feminism in recent years I'm glad to have found this book to reignite my interest. I identified with Bridget a great deal and found her writing style incredibly amusing, moving between the super serious and not at all serious with ease.
The book ends with the words not of Bridget but a survivor of FGM. This will stay with me for a long, long time, which undoubtedly is Bridget's intention. It's awful. It's evil, but you must read it.
The book ends with the words not of Bridget but a survivor of FGM. This will stay with me for a long, long time, which undoubtedly is Bridget's intention. It's awful. It's evil, but you must read it.
February 8, 2017
There have been a very small handful of books over the years which I have been deeply disappointed in, but A Book For Her takes the top prize. I flicked through in the Book shop and it appealed, actual reading was more revealing. From the start the book just felt undeveloped, like a first draft. The constant switching from irony, sarcasm and comedy to serious comment was confusing, especially as the comedy in my opinion is pretty pedestrian and easily mistaken as genuine observation up to the point of the telegraphed punch-line.
Another reason it feels like an unfinished manuscript is the fact it is littered with awkward sentences which take a couple of reads to make sense of.
"I used to work with a posh girl once, called Emily, who would to come in to work with her arm in a sling because blow-drying her hair the night before made her arm ache" it does not exactly scan does it?
Or "Thatcher and Beyoncé are icons of politics, of pop, of individualism. They're women who reached the top in predominantly male professions. Margaret Thatcher becoming Prime Minister, at that time, is an extraordinary achievement. So we must respect and celebrate him for that. Which we do."
A book written by a feminist, referring to the first female British Prime Minister as HIM. Irony, sarcasm or serious comment?
Nothing against the author. Someone should have taken a red pen to the book and sent her away to develop her ideas and then when it came back read the blooming thing before printing it.
Another reason it feels like an unfinished manuscript is the fact it is littered with awkward sentences which take a couple of reads to make sense of.
"I used to work with a posh girl once, called Emily, who would to come in to work with her arm in a sling because blow-drying her hair the night before made her arm ache" it does not exactly scan does it?
Or "Thatcher and Beyoncé are icons of politics, of pop, of individualism. They're women who reached the top in predominantly male professions. Margaret Thatcher becoming Prime Minister, at that time, is an extraordinary achievement. So we must respect and celebrate him for that. Which we do."
A book written by a feminist, referring to the first female British Prime Minister as HIM. Irony, sarcasm or serious comment?
Nothing against the author. Someone should have taken a red pen to the book and sent her away to develop her ideas and then when it came back read the blooming thing before printing it.
November 7, 2020
Tenía ganas de leer este libro pero no me ha gustado nada.
No se si es por los chistes sobre referencias super concretas de la política y la sociedad británica que hacen que el humor se pierda en la traducción, pero no me ha parecido nada gracioso. Entiendo que el principal tema del libro es el feminismo pero sin embargo he tenido la sensación de estar leyendo 100 páginas sobre el curriculum vitae de la autora mezclado con chistes malisimos (¿un capitulo entero hablando de un pedo?) y con un 3% de temas feministas.
No se si es por los chistes sobre referencias super concretas de la política y la sociedad británica que hacen que el humor se pierda en la traducción, pero no me ha parecido nada gracioso. Entiendo que el principal tema del libro es el feminismo pero sin embargo he tenido la sensación de estar leyendo 100 páginas sobre el curriculum vitae de la autora mezclado con chistes malisimos (¿un capitulo entero hablando de un pedo?) y con un 3% de temas feministas.
September 10, 2015
Consistently hilarious yet unflinching from some very difficult feminist and social issues. In a similar vein to Catlin Moran's How To Be A Woman, but less focussed on Christie's own life. An especially good read if you're a fan of stand up comedy as it provides an interesting insights into the industry and experiences of women who perform or are in the public eye.
July 3, 2018
I love a funny feminism book, and on the whole I enjoyed both the politics and humour of this. I don't agree 100% with everything Christie says – but then, why would I? As Christie points out, all feminists don't have to agree with one another, as long as we're all working for the same broad causes.
The one thing that grated with me is that it wasn't clear to me whether the narrative voice was Christie herself, or Christie doing a character. Some of the statements were so over-the-top that it seemed she was speaking as a character – but then at other points she references the character she's speaking as, so she can't be currently speaking in it. Anyway. Maybe I'm overthinking this. It was funny and made good points and I enjoyed it.
The one thing that grated with me is that it wasn't clear to me whether the narrative voice was Christie herself, or Christie doing a character. Some of the statements were so over-the-top that it seemed she was speaking as a character – but then at other points she references the character she's speaking as, so she can't be currently speaking in it. Anyway. Maybe I'm overthinking this. It was funny and made good points and I enjoyed it.
January 17, 2018
My god. When is the last time I read such a feminist, frank, hilarious book? I can’t even remember. Get the audiobook.
Note: if you don’t like her stand up, don’t bother. This book is just like her stand up - a mix of comedy and sincerity, a mix of the ludicrous and most serious issues facing women of the world.
Note: if you don’t like her stand up, don’t bother. This book is just like her stand up - a mix of comedy and sincerity, a mix of the ludicrous and most serious issues facing women of the world.
May 14, 2024
Read how a failing comedian uses feminism as a prop to catapult herself to the big time. Brigit Christie is a fantastic comedian, thought provoking and funny with it. This book links some of her stand up material with her life experiences. It is laugh out loud funny in places and shaming in others.
BTW she means it about the feminism, it is not a prop
BTW she means it about the feminism, it is not a prop
December 29, 2017
Me gustó mucho su estilo aunque el tipo de humor no es para todas las personas es muy divertido
August 8, 2018
Hero. Great to get an insight into her work. Loved her since War Donkey. Added to the list of books I will encourage my daughter to read.
March 14, 2019
An inspiring, entertaining and incredibly witty account of her life as a comedian and a thought provoking feminist!
September 23, 2019
As a man who can read, the cover's asterisk invited me to read this. It wasn't quite what I expected, more a comedy memoir connected to feminism than another feminism book, but I found a lot of it funny, and some of it quite dull.
After a drawn out introduction about the Women's Issues section of a bookshop, Christie hits her stride discussing her own life and career, while tying it into typical feminism themes. Sometimes this is fresh material, at others it is quoted from her shows verbatim, and sometimes it is to make a serious point. Christie is quite clear that this is an accessible book, not one to raid academia for obscure -isms, and that does make for an easy read, lifted by genuinely funny writing. With a healthy degree of self-awareness, this is definitely aimed at women who identify as feminists, even if the usual verbal tricks are used to imply we're all Feminists or misogynists (of the 'do you believe in fairness? Well then you're a Labour supporter' kind).
This is occasionally explicit, such as the reader earning 16% less than their male colleagues for doing the same job (presumably readers are females over 40, as a comprehensive study found under 40s to earn the same across genders in the UK), and mostly through the book's tone. It's hard to disagree with Christie, however, and I do despair that her Ant routine was received more warmly for the terrible puns than for the metaphor of Women in Comedy. Perhaps it was the written form, but some of her material does feel too long, including the natal class and the 'FMG' video in the appendix, which is prefaced by a lot of 'look this survivor is ok with it so it's not insensitive it's fine I promise' and a third of which concerns the acronym mistake.
However it is also hard to disagree because the perspective is uncontroversial. It's easy to laugh at bigots, and hard to justify sexist 'kitchen' comments. Christie's writing means it's funny, but part of this does require a baseline degree of knowledge (I don't know the Jimmy Somerville issue that leads to the joke title 'Head of Women') to understand the context. It's by no means a sermon, but it is for the converted, although some of the anecdotes of her Mail days were eye-opening. Little did I know either that Christie should have her own version of her husband's Plagiarists' Corner, with her Dan Brown routine and FKA Twigs as a modern pop culture reference appearing in his later stand up.
It's difficult to give an overall view of the book, as it made me chuckle in public, and lost my attention at other points. And I had to roll my eyes at the idea that only men dominate space in public, as next to me in the cafe a young woman took up her double booth and the one next to it as she stretched herself out. Unlike those who take photographic evidence on the tube, I let it go to avoid accusations of being a perv, but it does show that there is a degree of subjectivity when the book is a compilation of mostly amusing anecdotes for a captive audience. Feminism is often wrongly castigated as comfortable white women moaning, but that's definitely the target market for this.
After a drawn out introduction about the Women's Issues section of a bookshop, Christie hits her stride discussing her own life and career, while tying it into typical feminism themes. Sometimes this is fresh material, at others it is quoted from her shows verbatim, and sometimes it is to make a serious point. Christie is quite clear that this is an accessible book, not one to raid academia for obscure -isms, and that does make for an easy read, lifted by genuinely funny writing. With a healthy degree of self-awareness, this is definitely aimed at women who identify as feminists, even if the usual verbal tricks are used to imply we're all Feminists or misogynists (of the 'do you believe in fairness? Well then you're a Labour supporter' kind).
This is occasionally explicit, such as the reader earning 16% less than their male colleagues for doing the same job (presumably readers are females over 40, as a comprehensive study found under 40s to earn the same across genders in the UK), and mostly through the book's tone. It's hard to disagree with Christie, however, and I do despair that her Ant routine was received more warmly for the terrible puns than for the metaphor of Women in Comedy. Perhaps it was the written form, but some of her material does feel too long, including the natal class and the 'FMG' video in the appendix, which is prefaced by a lot of 'look this survivor is ok with it so it's not insensitive it's fine I promise' and a third of which concerns the acronym mistake.
However it is also hard to disagree because the perspective is uncontroversial. It's easy to laugh at bigots, and hard to justify sexist 'kitchen' comments. Christie's writing means it's funny, but part of this does require a baseline degree of knowledge (I don't know the Jimmy Somerville issue that leads to the joke title 'Head of Women') to understand the context. It's by no means a sermon, but it is for the converted, although some of the anecdotes of her Mail days were eye-opening. Little did I know either that Christie should have her own version of her husband's Plagiarists' Corner, with her Dan Brown routine and FKA Twigs as a modern pop culture reference appearing in his later stand up.
It's difficult to give an overall view of the book, as it made me chuckle in public, and lost my attention at other points. And I had to roll my eyes at the idea that only men dominate space in public, as next to me in the cafe a young woman took up her double booth and the one next to it as she stretched herself out. Unlike those who take photographic evidence on the tube, I let it go to avoid accusations of being a perv, but it does show that there is a degree of subjectivity when the book is a compilation of mostly amusing anecdotes for a captive audience. Feminism is often wrongly castigated as comfortable white women moaning, but that's definitely the target market for this.
October 9, 2016
Blimey, this is a confusing one.
It's half strange hotch-potch memoir of Christie's life as a failing stand-up comedian and her subsequent (and lucrative) foray into feminism which brought her into the mainstream and half a very intense and rallying call to arms to end FGM which is the issue she focusses on the most towards the end. And even that's putting it too simply.
The trouble with having a comedian write a book is that you lose one of the most vital components in comedy - the delivery. Without that, we have only the words to go on and though I did genuinely laugh out loud in places, a lot of the book is quite thin on laughs. She uses the "and that's just the ____!" joke about 9 times in here and I was tired of it after the first time. God, I do feel bad dissing her because this is such a WORTHY book which is full of really good points about gender discrimination and has its finger on the cultural button. I also really liked hearing her stories from her early days of stand-up and how she found her voice. But there are too many odd tangents, and lists which would probably be great if you saw her performing them live but here I just skipped over them. Also there are moments when she directly contradicts herself and because you can't hear her inflection, any sarcasm or subtext is lost. On one page she says "I'm not even a feminist" in paragraph 1 and "I'm definitely a feminist" in paragraph 3. When she's also dissing people like Beyonce for not fully aligning themselves with the movement, this strikes me as strange. The problem is that sexists and misogynists aren't very intelligent - you literally have to spell this shit out for them. So I worry that quite a lot of the sarcasm would be lost on a few readers.
I do think there's a difference between being a writer and being a stand-up comedian - they're not one and the same and I feel quite a lot more editting was needed.
However! As I said, she makes some excellent points in a straight-forward and relatable way and for that reason I think it's worth reading. But it could've been done better.
It's half strange hotch-potch memoir of Christie's life as a failing stand-up comedian and her subsequent (and lucrative) foray into feminism which brought her into the mainstream and half a very intense and rallying call to arms to end FGM which is the issue she focusses on the most towards the end. And even that's putting it too simply.
The trouble with having a comedian write a book is that you lose one of the most vital components in comedy - the delivery. Without that, we have only the words to go on and though I did genuinely laugh out loud in places, a lot of the book is quite thin on laughs. She uses the "and that's just the ____!" joke about 9 times in here and I was tired of it after the first time. God, I do feel bad dissing her because this is such a WORTHY book which is full of really good points about gender discrimination and has its finger on the cultural button. I also really liked hearing her stories from her early days of stand-up and how she found her voice. But there are too many odd tangents, and lists which would probably be great if you saw her performing them live but here I just skipped over them. Also there are moments when she directly contradicts herself and because you can't hear her inflection, any sarcasm or subtext is lost. On one page she says "I'm not even a feminist" in paragraph 1 and "I'm definitely a feminist" in paragraph 3. When she's also dissing people like Beyonce for not fully aligning themselves with the movement, this strikes me as strange. The problem is that sexists and misogynists aren't very intelligent - you literally have to spell this shit out for them. So I worry that quite a lot of the sarcasm would be lost on a few readers.
I do think there's a difference between being a writer and being a stand-up comedian - they're not one and the same and I feel quite a lot more editting was needed.
However! As I said, she makes some excellent points in a straight-forward and relatable way and for that reason I think it's worth reading. But it could've been done better.
February 24, 2017
Excellent book. Really funny and an interesting insight into feminism.
October 2, 2015
Brilliant!
I didn't know who Bridget Christie was until I saw her at Edinburgh Fringe 2015. Loved her and immediately bought a signed copy of this book. Loved every word. Never referred to myself as a feminist before but the way she tells the story has really changed the way I view the world. I even find myself quoting her to friends and colleagues. The humour made it light and enjoyable reading and kept me interested to the end. I love how she incorporates real issues into it and the piece on FGM opened my eyes to a horror I knew very little about. I immediately signed up to the campaign to fight against this.
I look forward to reading more of Bridget Christie and hope to see her on your again soon.
I didn't know who Bridget Christie was until I saw her at Edinburgh Fringe 2015. Loved her and immediately bought a signed copy of this book. Loved every word. Never referred to myself as a feminist before but the way she tells the story has really changed the way I view the world. I even find myself quoting her to friends and colleagues. The humour made it light and enjoyable reading and kept me interested to the end. I love how she incorporates real issues into it and the piece on FGM opened my eyes to a horror I knew very little about. I immediately signed up to the campaign to fight against this.
I look forward to reading more of Bridget Christie and hope to see her on your again soon.
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