It annoyed me that it was trying to sell faminism as "sexy." Sure it has some really good points and can be a good primer, but it framed it all in how "sexy" feminism is. ( )

It is amazing to me that a person writing book about feminism for young women would opt to talk down to her readers. I am hurtling toward old age, and I have been a feminist for many years, in fact I have already raised a feminist. I was a Women's Studies minor when the voices we were hearing from were people like Dworkin and MacKinnon and though they pissed me off plenty, and I disagreed with them mightily on many issues they never wrote down to me. They expected me to do the work I needed to support, ignore, or oppose what they were selling. Valenti writes as if to someone who has lived in a sealed room exposed to nothing but The Bachelor and Mel Gibson movies for entertainment and Quiverfull theology and who needs to be eased into reality. Its as though she is trying to make feminism simple, and who wants to do that? The second star is a gift. ( )

I thought this book was fantastic! It functions really well as a primer of sorts for people who are interested in feminism, but don't really know where to start. I especially loved Jessica Valenti's tone through the book. It was very relaxed (and also contained a lot of profanity, but that was fine with me) :) and it made me feel like this could be one of my friends telling me about feminism. I would highly recommend it to any high school and up young women who are at all interested in feminism, or just want a really thought-provoking read. ( )

I got halfway through this book and realized that I couldn't continue reading it. I may come back to this, but, I just can't find the motivation to finish it now.
I want to see the author's viewpoints now, after Bush has been out of office for 4 years, and see if she thinks anything's changed. Maybe she still updates her blog! As it is, many things in the book rang true (sadly), but some seemed a little out of date.
I also felt like the audience for this boom was a few years younger than 24 (my age), and just figuring out feminism. Having been a feminist since I can remember, it felt like this book was reiterating what I already believe and have believed from a very young age. For very young women leading about feminism, maybe this book is a good read. It does introduce excellent ideas all people (not just women!) should at the very least know about, and that's a good thing.
One last warning I will give (if it isn't obvious from the title and subject matter) is the author is very, very, VERY liberal, and does swear a lot in her writing. I didn't mind it too much, being fairly liberal myself, and can swear with the best of them, but I can see where it would be distracting to someone not that. It shouldn't be enough to detract someone from reading, as the message is important, but it's still a good thing to know before one starts reading.

I love the information this book provides but I hate how its presented. It would be a great book for younger readers interested in feminism because it gives a wide overview of feminism but does not delve very deep. I don't like it however, because she swears too much and I would be uncomfortable giving this to a young teenage girl. Also, I think the swearing tries to cover up what I think is poor writing and insufficient research. I might finish this book sometime but I can't seem to pick it up when there is so many good books out there! ( )