I’m reading ‘How To Be a Woman’ by Caitlin Moran. And I’m laughing my arse off at her recounting of her formidable years, like when, for her 13th birthday, her mother ‘made’ her a baguette filled with Philadelphia cream cheese instead of baking a cake—with seven candles, each counting for two years—never mind the math. She also touches on topics like why weddings are no fun for anyone involved, why she’s given up on heels and how, despite her best intentions to keep it at bay, her first period arrives anyway.

But the book isn’t just funny for funny sake. She makes some pretty powerful arguments for feminism, albeit a different kind of feminism than we’ve entertained in the past. If the bra-burning, man-hating, underarm hair braiding movements of the past don’t float your boat, you should give her a read. Here’s one of my favorite passages:

But all those littler, stupider, more obvious day-to-day problems with being a woman are, in many ways, just as deleterious to women’s peace of mind. It is the “Broken Windows” philosophy transferred to female inequality. In the Broken Windows theory, if a single broken window ion an empty building is ignored and not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may break into the building and light fires, or become squatters.

Similarly, if we live in a climate where female pubic hair is considered distasteful, or famous and powerful women are constantly pilloried for being too fat or too thin, or badly dressed then, eventually, people start breaking into women, and lighting fires in them. Women will get squatters. Clearly, this is not a welcome state of affairs. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to wake up one morning and find a load of chancers in my lobby.

Find out more about Caitlin and the book here: http://www.how-tobeawoman.com/