A Brief, Unmoving Response to the Problems of Contemporary Feminism

Title: One Dimensional Woman
Author: Nina Power
Length: 69 pages
Year Written: 2009
Why I chose this book: It was short, on my shelf, and seemed subversive and intriguing.

In college, my minor was Women's Studies. During that time, I passively absorbed many perspectives regarding gender equality and the trajectory of women's social status. This small book was essentially a regurgitation of the ideas we'd swap in class. Some of the topics addressed include "the working woman," pornography as liberation, and the intersection of feminism with consumerism. All in all, it was slightly boring and triggered very little emotional or political reaction from me.

Since the book is only 69 pages, ideas are introduced and just barely expounded upon before the next thought is spit out. This book primarily presents critical flaws in the popular ideals and patterns of feminism today, but does little to facilitate plausible alternatives. For example, author Nina Power offers a small tirade against the prototypical nuclear family, but hardly offers the other side of the argument, or a sensible suggestion of how we might eventually shift that paradigm.

Of course, this might be like an eighth grader reading a Clifford book—One Dimensional Woman may be a helpful primer for those with very little familiarity with the basic concepts of contemporary feminism. At 69 pages, it's certainly worth a read, regardless of its low-impact "wow" factor.

Note:  Yes, this is only the third book I've finished in 2015. Yes, it was only 69 pages, and yes, it is the first book I've finished since March 10. Yes, it is now July. Do as I say, and not as I do: make time to read, read, read. Keep your brain active lest it melt into mediocrity. Thank you.

Rating: 5/10

Book 27: Not That Kind of Girl by Lena Dunham

Title: Not That Kind of Girl
Author: Lena Dunham
Length: 262 pages
Year Written: 2014
Why I chose this book: I am a huge fan of Dunham's HBO television series GIRLS. I've always been curious to read the memoirs Hannah is working on in the show, and I imagine that this book is essentially it.

Not That Kind of Girl is only the second non-fiction book I have read this year. However, after reading Lena Dunham blather about her self-centered, vaguely unstable, privileged, prosciutto-eating childhood, and her colorful adult life (that runs virtually parallel to that of the character she plays on GIRLS), you wonder just how reliable of a narrator she really is. At one point in the book, Dunham actually says "I am an unreliable narrator," before proceeding to explain how she retells details about other people's lives as if they were her own—before she even realizes she is lying.

Remember when Hannah's literary agent read her work and asked, "Where's the pudgy face slick with semen and sadness?" It's here, in NTKOG. There's a lot more, though. Behind the pudgy face is what is and always has been a brilliant mind (something Dunham both knows about herself and proves simultaneously). It's clear that Dunham has no qualms about looking or sounding like a jackass, and frequently redeems herself with her special brand of intelligence and wit.

One particularly high point in NTKOG. 

This book reads less like a how-to manual and more like a how-never-to. Never let someone continuously fuck you and fuck with you. Never forget that we are all destined to die. Never underestimate the audacity and spite of a pre-pubescent daughter of crunchy granola types in Brooklyn. Dunham is a piece of work. And she's transformed her life into a pretty entertaining and cleverly written piece of work.

She is morbid, the physical embodiment of the acronym TMI, and her self-deprecating style is as much charming as it is pathetic. I think the moral of the Dunham story is that she doesn't give a fuck. But she really, really does. She wants to make it, to be heard, to have her experiences documented and digested by the new generation. She reminds me that everyone is crazy and unstable. But if you can write about it intelligently and make others laugh while doing so, you've hit the sweet spot. We can't take ourselves so seriously, and it's good to know that Lena is true to her attention-seeking brat of an inner child.

Rating: 8.5/10