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1-Page Summary of How to Be a Woman
Overall Summary
Caitlin Moran discusses her life in a memoir, How to Be a Woman. She talks about how she grew up and went through puberty without any guidance from her family or teachers. Her mother refused to discuss menstruation with her, leading to health problems when Caitlin’s first period lasted for three months straight.
Puberty brings a sex drive, which Caitlin indulges by checking out salacious novels from the library. She prefers this method to modern teenagers who find everything they need on the Internet. Caitlin argues that modern pornography is almost exclusively focused on male pleasure and she’d like to see more porn made by and for women.
Caitlin’s teenage years are full of learning experiences. Her mother doesn’t offer much guidance, so Caitlin learns how to dress like an adult and interact with the opposite sex mostly on her own. She bonds with her older sister, Caz, over their changing bodies and the difficulty of finding good terms for female body parts. When she is sixteen, Caitlin gets a job with Melody Maker magazine. All the other employees in the office are men who are considerably older than she is. Though they like her and support her career, Caitlin is aware of sexism directed at her for the first time as well as ageism because of how young she looks compared to them all despite being almost twenty-one years old herself now. While living in London, she is determined to explore her sexuality until word gets back to some people at work that she’s flirting around there too which leads them to treat her differently from then on out even though it was never sexual harassment or anything like that happening between any two parties involved at all but still…
Caitlin also struggles with weight. She talks about how food is a topic that carries shame and discourages women from talking openly about their problems.
Caitlin has entered the working world, and she finds that sexism is everywhere. She realizes that men often don’t mean to be sexist, but they do it anyway. Her friends and Twitter followers agree with her. Melody Maker wants to showcase more female artists, but Caitlin realizes there isn’t enough quality work by women. Women are not equal in many ways because they aren’t afforded as many opportunities as men are. Catlin’s gay friend Charlie agrees with her about this issue too because he feels the same way about gay figures in media who are written by straight people rather than being portrayed by gay writers themselves.
Caitlin starts dating Courtney, a musician. She loves him even though he’s mean to her and not interested in their relationship. Courtney’s band is not going anywhere because he doesn’t work hard and acts like it should be easy for him. Caitlin finds out that Courtney only dated her to make connections with people who could help his career, so she breaks up with him. Even then, Courtney refuses to leave since he’s living at Caitlin’s house rent-free. Caz visits and tells Caitlin what an idiot she was for staying with someone who treated her poorly. In the end, Caitlin asks Courtney to move out because she can’t stand how rude he is anymore.
After dating Courtney, Caitlin eventually marries a coworker Pete. The wedding opens her eyes to the inefficiencies of weddings and she thinks that women do themselves a disservice by setting such high expectations for their weddings. Women should stop spending thousands of dollars on single events and instead focus on long-term goals like career development.
Soon after, Caitlin has her first child. She is nervous and makes an elaborate birth plan to avoid problems like those experienced by her mother. However, when the time comes for delivery, she suffers through a long labor that lasts three days. Her experience taught her not to worry about small things and to be flexible with life’s challenges.
