This book is from a kickass school: it’s not preoccupied with men, it’s not loose and theoretical. It’s about coming to terms: with your own body, with language, with the culture at large. It’s about subverting the tampon industry, hanging out with your mom, taking control of some of the more suspicious parts of your life, and riding skateboards down the street while wearing bunny-ear hats. I never did feel like part of the club before when reading feminist literature, but this book made me feel invited to the party.

Sick of academic feminism, I really thought this book was going to be a slipshod piece of etymological scholarship. I picked it up to laugh at it. Imagine my shock when it turned out to be a smart, feisty, personable, positive, constructive, angry, liberating book – oh yeah, and fun. The sheer pleasure Musico finds in life and words is exhilarating. Reading her book is like talking to your best friend – she’s stubborn, kind of crazy, and I still don’t agree with all her politics, but it’s damned hard not to like her or to respect where she’s coming from. Also, she has some sound, specific, and clearly stated advice on how to keep from being raped/mugged – that alone is probably enough to make the book worth reading.

I do think the majority of college-educated, pro-choice American women will get a kick out of this, if they can get past the embarassing cover (buying this book felt very much like buying a box of tampons – this is fallout from the author’s relentlessly sex-positive attitudes). However, extreme feminists will probably find it overly personal, insufficiently rigorous, and too focused on the lives of women of the demographic I mentioned above.