Victoria Smith

The author takes on a topic that often gets ignored: middle aged women. She looks at the ways in which they are ignored, exploited, and above all, demonized. As a relatively newly-made middle aged woman, she looks back into her own past as a young woman and recounts ways in which she contributed to this phenomenon, and demonstrates that it is in no way a new, twenty-first century thing. She writes well, and includes a lot of sarcasm, which is not a complaint. Some subjects need sarcasm. She lays out a way past middle-aged women being demons, but is realistic enough not to expect there will be a mass movement toward adopting her suggestions. She also discusses the statistics on violence against older women, numbers most of us are probably unfamiliar with, since it rarely gets talked about. I would recommend this book for every young person, especially those who say "whatever Boomer" and think it's a valid argument, but there is no point, really. The author details the reasons why the argument would not be heard by younger people. So the book will mostly be an outing for those of us who already know a lot of this (some of us knew it before she did, back when she was rolling her eyes at anything older people said). Still, it's a fun read. She has a great sense of humor, and is very good with an analogy. I especially liked her Three Billy Goats Gruff analogy.… (mehr)