Feminasty

October 8, 2018
In her edgy, fierce, and funny debut essay collection, comedian and Throwing Shade podcast cohost Gibson serves up scathing wit and graphic observations on the “insane ways people try to control” women. Part memoir, part consciousness-raising handbook, the 18 essays repackage “lady sadness into digestible comedy.” In an essay about common types of gender traitors (everyone from Phyllis Schlafly to “Your Mom’s Worst Friend, Deborah”), she opines, “Women make life (more) terrible for other women because they haven’t gotten the memo about it being retrograde as fuck.” In another, she urges women to divest from male-owned makeup companies and stores and dispenses tips about women-owned makeup products to switch to. Elsewhere, she addresses a profane and funny open letter to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, schooling her on statistics around campus rape and asking her to reinstate protections against it. Several entries reprise commentaries from her podcast, but Gibson adds context with tales of her Christian upbringing in Texas and misspent early adulthood. The result is a bubbly acid bath of clever invective encouraging her fellow women to make the world a better place. Agent: Hannah Brown Gordon, Foundry Literary + Media.