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Learn more'Rich, complex and witty' ROSE GEORGE, SPECTATOR
'Devastating and clever' BEL MOONEY, DAILY MAIL
'Could not be more necessary' RACHEL COOKE, OBSERVER
What is about women in their forties and beyond that seems to enrage - almost everyone?
In the last few years, as identity politics have taken hold, middle-aged women have found themselves talked and written about as morally inferior beings: the face of bigotry, entitlement and selfishness, to be ignored, pitied or abused.
In Hags, Victoria Smith asks why these women are treated with such active disdain. Each chapter takes a different theme - care work, beauty, violence, political organization, sex - and explores it in relation to middle-aged women's beliefs, bodies, histories and choices. Smith traces the attitudes she describes through history, and explores the very specific reasons why this type of misogyny is so very now. The result is a book that is absorbing, insightful, witty and bang on time.
Victoria Smith is a regular contributor to the Critic, writing on women's issues, parenting and mental health. Her work has also appeared in the New Statesman, the Independent and Unherd. Her newsletter, The OK Karen, looks at midlife women's experiences of feminism, and she tweets @glosswitch. She holds a PhD in German literature, with a particular interest in Romanticism and dark fairy tales. She lives in Cheltenham with her family.
Victoria Smith is a regular contributor to the Critic, writing on women's issues, parenting and mental health. Her work has also appeared in the New Statesman, the Independent and Unherd. Her newsletter, The OK Karen, looks at midlife women's experiences of feminism, and she tweets @glosswitch. She holds a PhD in German literature, with a particular interest in Romanticism and dark fairy tales. She lives in Cheltenham with her family.