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Hags

The Demonisation of Middle-Aged Women

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Hags

By: Victoria Smith
Narrated by: Victoria Smith
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About this listen

 '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.

Shortlisted for the Nero Book Awards announced 21 November 2023. ©2023 Victoria Smith (P)2023 Hachette Audio UK Gender Studies Social Sciences Witty Discrimination
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Well worth a listen as its a profound study of a fascinating subject that relates to almost everyone in some capacity.

Compelling.

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This is a fantastic listen. It’s very well researched, kind of furious but very funny. It has an argument about successive waves of feminism I’d never realised- Duh- but is blindingly obvious. I’ve only ever left one review before mainly because I thought I’d got nothing to say but now you can all SHUT UP AND LISTEN TO ME.
Thanks, book.

BUY THIS.

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Wonder if a review is in order, what with all the JK Olympics controversy? A woman using a global platform to harass a cis woman doesn’t come across as particularly feminist.

JK content has dated poorly.

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