Lady Sidekick: 20 Tired Tropes for Women

by Anneka Harry

With special guest appearances from comedian Rosie Jones, actor and poet Jade Anouka and journalist and author Alya Mooro, comedy performer and writer Anneka Harry has gathered up all the tired tropes for women so you don't have to! From the English Rose to the Creepy Little Girl, the Tomboy to the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, Anneka calls them out and, most importantly, reclaims them.

For too long women have been pigeonholed into a handful of tired and basic characters, their personality and behaviour criticised if they don’t fit the role society thinks they should be playing. Anneka Harry analyses 20 of the most antiquated, cookie-cutter clichés and tokens that 21st-century women are SO over.

Through hilarious tongue-in-cheek-fuelled study, Anneka examines each trope, sprinkling them with sarcasm, seasoning them with feminism, infusing them with activism, before serving them up ready for the modern masses to enjoy. It’s time to shove a stick of dynamite up the arse of the out-of-date – and Lady Sidekick is ready to light the wick.

Genres: Nonfiction, Audiobook

Audiobook

Published February 11, 2021

Reviews

[Lyra (Cardan's tail's version) · Rating 3 out of 5]

—3.5 stars—
-mini review!-

This is one of the books that make me angry.
Angry at the world, for being so unjust.
Angry at the people, for being so unfair.

But while the author made a LOT of good points, sometimes it felt like she was trying too hard to be funny. I get that she’s trying to break up the information, but some of her joke fell flat for me.

[Nicola Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Lady Sidekick’ - Yes! Just a big yes for this whole audiobook. It was brilliant, funny and wonderful. Uplifting, inspiring and I loved the whole subject content and it was done so well.

This audiobook goes through a series of different tropes - like ‘being a tomboy’, the femme fatale, the ‘English Rose’ and damsel in distress to name a few. It was so on point and I didn’t even associate some of the tropes mentioned as even being tropes, but upon listening - yup, so true!

There’s so many stereotypes floating around our society, entrenched in our lives going way way back. The book drew on a few notable examples through history and more recently, it was interesting to see its progress throughout time. And it was nice to read also how some of these tropes are changing, but also highlighting in a lot of ways, the room for improvements with a long way to go!

The book goes through 20 different tired tropes, how they originated, examples in media, fiction and the real world with plenty of tongue in cheek humour - I loved it!

I love how this is written too. It’s funny, light hearted and so personable, relatable and just fab. It’s greatly narrated and I love the addition of the few guest narrators who lended their experiences and voices to a few of the chapters.

I found myself nodding in sympathy and in solidarity with many of the archetypal tropes and representation of women in media and popular culture. I would definitely recommend everyone and all to pick this up for a listen. I could have listened to more and it was an overall, entertaining and interesting awesome audio.

I was lucky enough to review a copy of this, with thanks to the author and publishers in return for my honest thoughts and review :)

[Nidhi Srivastava · Rating 5 out of 5]

You know what? I enjoyed this audiobook, sceptical as I was. I definitely got at least 3 laughs out of it. An extra star for not being too full of itself.

Okay, look, it can be confusing. The audiobook has 20 tired tropes for women in TV and cinema. The book version, by which I mean the print version, has 50. I haven't read the book version and this kind of discrepancy mildly annoys me. However. However. This audiobook has a few extra punches in the form of guest narrators which I'm merely ASSUMING does not exist in the print version, making it into some sort of a glorified podcast series. Plus, the author-narrator herself breaks into a song at one point and dramatic-reads (is that a verb?) some of the content. She's a voiceover artist AND comedian, so generally, the audiobook is very, very well performed. I actually rewinded and listened to some of it again after I reached the end, because I wasn't ready to say bye yet.

You know, I got through 19 of the tropes and I was quite satisfied, when the 20th one came on. A Bollywood trope. As an actual Indian, I was very surprised and assumed it would be the trope of the Indian immigrant in Western pop culture, but this one was an actual somewhat-deep dive into Bollywood heroines. If this isn't peak 2021 feminism, I don't know what else is (I probably don't). She obviously butchered the pronunciations, but probably butchered some other pronunciations as well and I wouldn't know any better. But it was all very pleasant. Also, might I add, the book very much refers to Donald Trump in the past and Kamala Harris as the present vice-president so it's very nicely up to date. I'm imagining the author had to add a few lines on the day of recording itself, and props for that.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher and author!

[Emma Dargue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting feminist book on some of the common tropes found within society. Anneka Harry narrates alongside jade anouka, rosie Jones and others with humour and directness that I loved in her other book gender rebels. Really good.

[Marianne · Rating 1 out of 5]

the Down's syndrome part of the audiobook was way too long and annoying.

[Rax · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book for an honest review off Netgalley.

Covers several tropes covering racism, classism, ableism, queerphobia and of course sexism, which obviously goes hand in hand with all these.

This is quite a short books, so doesn't go into details with each trope (probably 10 to 20 minutes to each), it's more a glance at what these tropes are and how they are harmful.

Full Review.