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Everything Is Wrong with You: The Modern Woman's Guide to Finding Self Confidence Through Self-Loathing
Pretend advice about beauty, fashion and relationships for women who are pretending to care about that stuff.
While other self-help books might tell you that something is wrong with you, this book is here to tell you that everything is wrong with you. In your quest for perfection, are there things you've forgotten to worry about? Like:
Are your toes weird? I'm not saying they are, but are they?
What if you think you are thin, but you actually have a vision disorder that just makes you see yourself as thin when, in fact, you are totally not thin? Think about it!
What if whenever you go out of town your boyfriend has crazy orgies at your house? And what if all your best friends come to those orgies? Of course I can't prove it, but can you disprove it?
Remember, if you were OK, there wouldn't be so many books and magazines out there devoted to helping you get prettier and be more stylish. I mean, if you think that publishers are just in it for the money, then you definitely have trust issues! How can you solve them? Please purchase this book to find out.
On the other hand, you could just walk out of here without this book, thinking that you are great just the way you are... and arrive home to find that your husband has left you because of your weird toes.
Good luck.
While other self-help books might tell you that something is wrong with you, this book is here to tell you that everything is wrong with you. In your quest for perfection, are there things you've forgotten to worry about? Like:
Are your toes weird? I'm not saying they are, but are they?
What if you think you are thin, but you actually have a vision disorder that just makes you see yourself as thin when, in fact, you are totally not thin? Think about it!
What if whenever you go out of town your boyfriend has crazy orgies at your house? And what if all your best friends come to those orgies? Of course I can't prove it, but can you disprove it?
Remember, if you were OK, there wouldn't be so many books and magazines out there devoted to helping you get prettier and be more stylish. I mean, if you think that publishers are just in it for the money, then you definitely have trust issues! How can you solve them? Please purchase this book to find out.
On the other hand, you could just walk out of here without this book, thinking that you are great just the way you are... and arrive home to find that your husband has left you because of your weird toes.
Good luck.
- GenresHumorNonfiction
180 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
June 17, 2008
Everything is Wrong with You: The Modern Woman's Guide to Finding Self-Confidence through Self-Loathing is a "how to find a man and keep him" book for every gal who's thought that "how to find a man and keep him" books are foolish, absurd, offensive to her feminist sensibilities, and possibly...maybe...just a little bit...compelling enough to have read one or two, and then felt that much worse for having been swept up in such a book. Wow. That sounds a little crazy! Which is exactly what satirist Wendy Molyneux points out by mocking the genre with her acerbic wit and irreverent humor.
The book is organized like any self-help book/magazine geared towards adult, single women. But Molyneux's special take on self-help books is best summed up in her own introduction:
"And so, while other self-help books will try to tell you there's nothing wrong with you, I'm here to tell you that everything is wrong with you. That's right. The problem isn't that you lack self-confidence; it's that you have too much! You are sailing along, thinking that being a size-eight woman with a six-figure career is good enough. Meanwhile, a size-four woman with a seven-figure career is boning your husband and abducting your baby! Should you panic? Yes, absolutely!"
With humor and wit, Molyneux confronts an industry that holds women up to the most unrealistic expectations and breeds fear and uncertainty in order to sell more books and magazines and clothes and skin-care products. Here you'll find the usual chapters on dating, beauty, sex, careers, and marriage, but look for them under the titles "You're Always Choosing the Wrong Guy: How to score a hot guy so later he can dump you!" and "You're Not Very Smart: How to get a little smarter, but not smart enough to make you ugly." Also, look for other standard-issue dating book tools like quizzes, astrology charts, and advice from the man's perspective. My favorite feature is the "Something to Worry About!" text boxes: random paranoid thoughts so absurd they're hilarious.
The book isn't for everyone, but any woman who's ever read a magazine and felt a little less empowered after perusing articles about how to look younger, dress better, please her man, bake a four-tiered cake, and prepare her first grader for Harvard Medical School, will get it. And, of course, the message for a woman who can enjoy the book's humor is that there's nothing wrong with her... until she lets a "how to find a man and keep him" book make her think there is.
The book is organized like any self-help book/magazine geared towards adult, single women. But Molyneux's special take on self-help books is best summed up in her own introduction:
"And so, while other self-help books will try to tell you there's nothing wrong with you, I'm here to tell you that everything is wrong with you. That's right. The problem isn't that you lack self-confidence; it's that you have too much! You are sailing along, thinking that being a size-eight woman with a six-figure career is good enough. Meanwhile, a size-four woman with a seven-figure career is boning your husband and abducting your baby! Should you panic? Yes, absolutely!"
With humor and wit, Molyneux confronts an industry that holds women up to the most unrealistic expectations and breeds fear and uncertainty in order to sell more books and magazines and clothes and skin-care products. Here you'll find the usual chapters on dating, beauty, sex, careers, and marriage, but look for them under the titles "You're Always Choosing the Wrong Guy: How to score a hot guy so later he can dump you!" and "You're Not Very Smart: How to get a little smarter, but not smart enough to make you ugly." Also, look for other standard-issue dating book tools like quizzes, astrology charts, and advice from the man's perspective. My favorite feature is the "Something to Worry About!" text boxes: random paranoid thoughts so absurd they're hilarious.
The book isn't for everyone, but any woman who's ever read a magazine and felt a little less empowered after perusing articles about how to look younger, dress better, please her man, bake a four-tiered cake, and prepare her first grader for Harvard Medical School, will get it. And, of course, the message for a woman who can enjoy the book's humor is that there's nothing wrong with her... until she lets a "how to find a man and keep him" book make her think there is.
April 1, 2008
This book is like having a friend who's friggin hilarious and who always makes you laugh til your face hurts but then afterward you're like, 'wait, my friend was slyly being mean and reinforcing all the dominant, oppressive paradigms the whole time, even though she was pretending like she wasn't,' and then you feel bad for laughing so much.
My girlfriend's going to give me shit for giving this four stars.
My girlfriend's going to give me shit for giving this four stars.
Want to Read
February 13, 2008This author has some very funny stuff on mcsweeneys.net. And I mean it makes me laugh out loud, and reread it out loud just to hear it. Totally my type of humor, which makes me eager to check this book out. Dammit, you know what I'm doing? I'm building it up. Shit, I've done it again.
May 1, 2011
Despite the noticeable handicap that I, by all accounts, am not a modern woman (nor a woman from any era), I still thought this book was riotously funny. Literally. I read it and then started riots because it was so good. Rioting is how I express enjoyment. Whatever you do, don't make me happy.
September 7, 2021
Probably one of the more boring books I've read this year! I get that it's supposedly tongue in cheek humor and a hysterical look at love and marriage, but I thought it was self-deprecating and insult ing to women everywhere.
March 17, 2024
Very weird. Very funny in spots but mostly weird
May 19, 2017
"....while other self-help books will try to tell you there's nothing wrong with you, I'm here to tell you that everything is wrong with you.
That's right. The problem isn't that you lack self-confidence; it's that you have too much!
All I can say about my 2012 review was that, I am such a wuss when it comes to other people's opinions. I mean, I am still wary of other people's opinions but I think I'm better at it now?
Anyway, good thing I reread this book because it made me realize how many things I missed when I first read it. Like, the way Wendy Molyneux wrote the book made it seem like she's all for the views of the patriarchal society but underneath the funnies, she's actually describing ways to counter it.
------- 2012 review: 3 stars
i didn't actually wanted to buy this book in the first place but we were hanging out at this bookstore for a while now and i couldn't think of anything better to do so i bought it. spoiler alert,
THERE IS NOTHING GOOD ABOUT THIS BOOK.
it actually contains a lot of "Adult Only" pages which made my mates think i'm somewhat liberated or something. the only good thing i found about this book is the way it's written, very comical. also, i liked the timeline the author made. it made me laugh.
That's right. The problem isn't that you lack self-confidence; it's that you have too much!
All I can say about my 2012 review was that, I am such a wuss when it comes to other people's opinions. I mean, I am still wary of other people's opinions but I think I'm better at it now?
Anyway, good thing I reread this book because it made me realize how many things I missed when I first read it. Like, the way Wendy Molyneux wrote the book made it seem like she's all for the views of the patriarchal society but underneath the funnies, she's actually describing ways to counter it.
------- 2012 review: 3 stars
i didn't actually wanted to buy this book in the first place but we were hanging out at this bookstore for a while now and i couldn't think of anything better to do so i bought it. spoiler alert,
THERE IS NOTHING GOOD ABOUT THIS BOOK.
it actually contains a lot of "Adult Only" pages which made my mates think i'm somewhat liberated or something. the only good thing i found about this book is the way it's written, very comical. also, i liked the timeline the author made. it made me laugh.
April 26, 2009
For anyone who wants to smack down every skinny, beautiful, perfect, organized, all-knowing self-helpster who got the impression she could write (or ghost-write) a book designed To Help The Masses....especially if you want to smack them down while wearing tater-mitts, and doubly-especially if you understand the concept of sarcasm or irony. Otherwise this book could actually be helpful to the rest of you as a bona fide self-help tool in that for those of you who don't yet know HOW to read, this is as good a place as any to start practicing sounding it out. Made me laugh out loud frequently and given where I am in my life (ummm, color me "depths of despair") that is a feat of miraculous faux self-help humour. Except now I think I might really need to read a bona fide self-help book to compare and contrast. Sh*t.
April 10, 2016
Molyneux recently served as a judge for the Tournament of Books over at the Morning News and is a writer for the incomparable Bob's Burgers. I requested this book via Inter Library Loan thinking it looked funny. And, parts of it *were* funny...just not very. I think Molyneux is great and this book is more than I've ever written but was not for me.
Want to Read
April 2, 2008Hmm, hearing about books like this makes me sad I don't work in a bookstore any more. I mean, it sounds good, but good enough for me to spend money on? No. It would sure have been great to steal, though!
August 24, 2010
A parody of a woman's relationship advice book, in the same vein as the Self-Hurt series of books. Some bits of this were chuckle-worthy, but I didn't find the book as a whole to be terribly funny. But perhaps it's just because I don't date and have never read a real relationship advice book.
January 24, 2008
Hilarious send-up of female self-help books.
August 23, 2008
Fun to read and I laughed out loud several times!
August 5, 2011
HILARIOUS!
March 31, 2017
This surprised me! It was sitting at the bottom of my library pile and I almost didn't bother. Then I read it in three days. It was light-hearted, witty, and gave me a great laugh. If you need to chill out and just ENJOY a book, this is the one.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews