Review: Women Don't Owe You Pretty by Florence Given

The author and the publisher had me at the title with this one. We've all found ourselves battling outdated and unhelpful beauty standards at one time or another, subjected to the male gaze and had our worth as human beings determined by our level of sex appeal. And like everyone else, I'm fed up with it too. Consequently, I snapped a copy of this one up when I found it at Dymocks.

Women Don't Owe You Pretty is a guide about being your best self. Written and illustrated by Florence Given, it encourages readers to be true to themselves. The author has a lot of valuable advice about self-esteem, and about being kinder to oneself and to others. It also challenges a lot of what many woman have come to accept as normal. 

It is also a book about social activism. I have no doubt that Given's views on feminism and how women from marginalised backgrounds suffer more than upper and middle class white women come from the most sincere of places, however there is not a lot of research included in this manifesto to back up the author's claims, which I would have found useful. That said, the author is young, and she's doing what any person her age who wants to change the world for the better does best--telling her truth and not holding anything back. She also becomes a little too woke and a little too virtuous at times, which I found annoying. Ultimately, though, its a book written and intended to empower young woman, and it has a lot of valid things to say about self-acceptance and self love. 

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