Noteworthy: Caitlin Moran and the middle-aged ladies. By Eleanor Black
I feel a deep kinship with Caitlin Moran. We are the same age and have shouldered many of the same burdens – mostly because white, middle-class Gen X women have more in common than we don't. She is funny and kind and incredibly clever and I like her as a person. I interviewed her once and she called me "darling". It was lovely.
That said, when I picked up my review copy of her latest book, More Than a Woman (Ebury Press, $35), I had reservations. It arrived with a list of talking points on the back cover, including the rather banal, "Can feminists have Botox?" I couldn't care any less than I do whether Caitlin Moran has had Botox or spent two years pursuing posh facials at celebrity haunts in London (which she tells us she did, before she eventually got Botox).
If she has taught us anything with her previous books and thrice-weekly opinion columns, it is that women should feel free to present themselves as they wish: puckered as prunes, smooth as blank sheets of paper, covered in tattoos like Ray Bradbury's Illustrated Man. We get to decide. So while I wish Moran and her smooth forehead all the best, I don't feel like she owes me or anyone else an explanation.
Banality #2: home decor. Moran riffs at length about the differences between men and women, as evidenced by their attitude towards armchairs and china sets. Apparently, a woman will "not make sudden, snap decisions about things. We have been taught to believe there is a best practice for everything that needs to be done …" Men, however, "just see a thing – on sale, or possibly in a skip – [and] think, 'I like that. It will do.'"