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Overview of Book

Caitlin Moran wrote How To Be a Woman with the goal of making feminism more approachable for every woman by telling stories of her own life's struggles. She wants women to stop seeing feminists as radical man-haters and to start seeing them as advocates for true equality. In her book Moran calls out any woman who doesn't identify as a feminist saying that all women are inherently feminists unless they reject any notion of personal freedom. Being labeled as a feminist could be positive or negative. Moran tells her own feminist stories using "forceful and self-deprecating humor" that any woman can relate to. In an interview done by NPR, Moran says that she uses humor in her writing because "it's kind of hard to argue with someone who's making you laugh".

Other Contributions to Feminism

Her Career

Caitlin Moran is majorly known for her work at The Times. There, she is a columnist who writes three popular columns a week, including the Saturday Magazine, a TV review column, and "Celebrity Watch." Caitlin became a published author at the young age of sixteen, and has been writing for The Times since 1992 with a focus on pop culture. Moran has written and published a number of books other than How To Be a Woman (2011); The Chronicles of Narmo (1992), Moranthology (2012), How to Build a Girl (2014), and Collection 2 (2016). Dating from 1992 all the way to 2016, Moran has had quite the writing career. In How to be a Woman, Moran's goal is to create a space in which everyone can have a comfortable conversation about the societal expectations of women that feminism revolves around.

Personal Life

Caitlin Moran was homeschooled as a child and was one of eight children. Her father, Spike Milligan, from a large Irish Catholic family, was a drummer and psychedelic rock pioneer who had toured all over Europe. Moran's mother grew up in a middle-class family and dropped out of college when she married Milligan. When she was fifteen, Caitlin Moran published her first novel, The Chronicles of Narmo, and won the Observer's Young Reporter of the Year Award. By the time she was sixteen, she was a writer for Melody Maker. At age seventeen, she was employed by The Observer and The Guardian. Currently, she is working for The Times magazine, where she is a popular columnist.

Social Media

Moran has her own personal Twitter account on which she discusses pressing issues relating to the feminist agenda. In late 2013, she contributed her opposition to the perpetual verbal abuse of women on the site, and even compared impeding the perpetrators of such harassment to "a thankless, full-time job."

Chapter Summaries

Chapter 3: I Don't Know What To Call My Breasts!

In this chapter Caitlin Moran explores the concept of naming body parts in a comfortable, yet correct way once adolescence is reached. She starts by calling adolescence "an incredible unfolding" in which she is referring to teenagers becoming overwhelmed by all of the extra sex hormones. Caitlin says that the unfolding comes from girls being taught at an early age that words like 'vagina' and 'breasts' are vulgar or bad words and that their parts should be nick-named in a more appropriate way, up until the point that these girls realize that their "bot-bot" is meant for much more mature things. When speaking of vaginas, Caitlin says "No one wants one of those" because of the connotation that comes with it; periods, examinations, etc. Due to this negative connotation people began using "slang names, pet names, made-up names" as long as they're not using the word 'vagina'. Caitlin talks of how she even went through this struggle, first with her sister during adolescence then again when her daughter was born. They would use any word other than 'vagina'. The name change that comes about around the teenage years is because, according to Caitlin, "there's no way you can refer to the place that will be the epicentre of most of your decisions and thought processes for the next 40 years as your 'bot-bot'". This same connotation comes with 'breasts', as well. Moran talks about how 'breasts' isn't anyone's first choice and also how 'boobs' largely refers to "white and working class" and "exist only to jiggle up and down on the chests of women between the ages of 14 and 32". Caitlin continues contemplating other breasts nick names and how they are or are not appropriate. Ultimately she settles on this; "The English language has yet to get its head convincingly around the problem of the average woman's [breasts]" and vagina, but the use of appropriate language is an individual's personal choice.

Chapter 12: Why You Should Have Children

Deciding to have children or not tends to be a very important topic in many marriages. A woman can often hemorrhage, loosing a ton of blood or could even not make it through the birth of their baby.Many parents go through the child rearing phase. Child rearing is the process of promoting and supporting the physical, emotional, social, financial, and intellectual development of a child from infancy to adulthood. Moran believes not everything about having children has a bad side, there is also good that comes out of it. Many people tend to believe the worst part of child birth is having to push out the baby, but most of the time your contractions can be your worst part of labor. By Caitlin Moran's second birth she felt a big difference about the concept of birth and was relieved about how much easier the process was. Children shape our souls like few other things in life, conditioning us to be more other-centered and to take a longer view of life. Having children gives parents the sense of accomplishment and a whole new outlook on life.

Chapter 15: Abortion

Moran recounts the pivotal time in which she discovers she is eleven weeks pregnant. In thinking that she has all the symptoms of polycystic ovaries, she consults with her general practitioner, who has an inkling that Moran is pregnant and sends her to get an ultrasound. Up until the ultrasound, Moran has been in a state of denial, convincing herself that there is no chance she is pregnant despite having had unprotected sex months prior. When she finds herself with child, Moran knows right away that she simply does not want to have to raise a third child.

In a society that demonizes abortion, reasons for terminating a child exist on a "spectrum of wrongness" (How To Be A Woman 174), in that some reasons are deemed "good" (ie. a teenaged rape victim aborting a child) and others "bad" (ie. a mother who does not want to deal with supporting another child on top of the ones she already has aborting a child). Often times, even when the woman can expect to lose her own life, she is encouraged to carry through with her pregnancy. Moran is "vexed with...the idea that, by having an abortion, a woman is somehow being unfemale and, indeed, unmotherly" (175). In her experience in having and raising two girls, she knows firsthand the amount of work put into raising a child and feels she should not be obligated to have another--which will only add to the workload--when she has a choice in the matter. She brings up a fair point in regards to the Pro-Choice agenda: "...ending a pregnancy 12 weeks into gestation is incalculably more moral than bringing an unwanted child into this world" (176).

Moran, while at the abortion clinic, has an inkling that even the staff have a stigma against terminating a child. While in many cases, a woman may feel regret over going through with the procedure, Moran is quick to say that she knows she made the rational decision in her situation.

Feedback

“An hour could seem like nothing when you spend it doing nothing, but when you have children you aren't doing things nonstop.” Do you mean are?

Cite the book in the paragraph about abortion.

There is only two academic sources.

“Every parent has their moment where they realize that, since they’d had a child, nothing really fazed them any more.” Maybe you should change this to “Every parent has their moment where they realize that, since they have had a child, nothing really fazes them any more.”

The article is very well written and elongated! Ilewis3 (talk) 13:19, 17 March 2016 (UTC)