Customer Reviews

Backwards in High Heels: The Impossible Art of Being Female

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

What a FUN book! The title immediately piqued my interest - it's a reference to one of my favorite quotes of all time, attributed to (or about) Ginger Rogers, it's about how Ginger had to do everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in high heels (meaning, obviously, that she had to be every bit as talented as he with an added degree or two of difficulty!) I love the design, as well. It's girly but not cutesy; feminine but not weak. It's pink, but a BOLD pink!

This book has so much going for it, I don't even know where to start. It offers candid observations, witticisms, and smart and applicable advice on every aspect of being female. The topics that are covered in this thorough tome are Love, Food, Career, Men, Health, Politics, Philosophy of Life and Self-Esteem, Dressing and Shopping, Motherhood and Family, Money, Grief, Age, Beauty, Sex, and possibly the most amusing chapter of them all, The Practical Chapter. This offers actual recipes and some random (but very helpful, astute) nuggets of advice they couldn't fit in elsewhere.

This book is NOT "The Rules" nor is it Sex & the City. It may, perhaps, have a bit of "He's Just Not That Into You" thrown in, among other things. (However, if it gets made into a Drew Barrymore movie, I'm going to cry.) It does give great advice on dating, men in general, and every single subject you can think of that relates to a woman's life - and not just one kind of woman but all of them: stay at home moms, career-driven women, singles, marrieds, and everyone in between.

I highly recommend this book to ANY woman of ANY age. Everyone should have this on their bookshelf or nightstand. Give it to your mom for Mother's Day, a neighbor for Christmas, your aunt for her birthday, a college-bound daughter or niece. It's fun, educational, inspiring, hilarious, eye-opening, and quite entertaining. This is the book you never knew (or maybe you did know) you needed.

There are a lot of reviews that mention this book being like having a discussion over cocktails with a good friend. I couldn't think of a better description than that. Just as you may disagree with a friend, you will probably find yourself disagreeing with the authors. Just as you may find insight and humor in a discussion, you will find that here. And like any good friend, you will love this book despite its flaws, shortcomings or assumptions. You will love it for its witty, humorous style and relatability.

Sitting down with this book makes you feel like you are not alone in being a woman that doesn't fit into the categories that fashion magazines and bad television would have us believe we must fit in. It is a book I would recommend to any woman and one that I will keep on my shelf for those days when it feels like I have been walking against the wind.

Backwards in High Heels is an insightful and charming collection of essays on what it means to be a woman. The 15 chapters cover topics from relationships, gender roles, work, and so much more. (A particular favorite of mine is "The Danger of Romantic Love.") In today's celebrity and image obsessed culture it's refreshing to read essays about women that focus on quality issues. Similarly the encouraging tone that promotes sisterhood instead of jealously is a welcome change. I also really enjoyed the style of the book itself. With a beautiful cover and colorful designs throughout the book, this is a book that looks good on your shelf.

What I liked best is the conversational tone. The essays are like a conversation you would have with a smart and funny girlfriend. The style of the book makes it very approachable. You can read a section here and there when you have a minute.

This would make a great gift for the fellow women in your life: mothers, daughters, aunts, friends, etc.

Just plunk this plump (because it's printed on heavy stock), colorful and marvelously well written, designed and illustrated book on your lap and let it open itself to any old page and start there.

Maybe you'll land somewhere in the "men" section and come upon the chapter titled "Why you love them even though you don't like it very much when they get ill or don't return your phone calls." Or the career section chapter on "The art of reconciling the fantasy world of work painted for your younger self with the mundane and often alarming adult reality." Or, the beauty section chapter titled "Pots of money; or why perfectly rational women will part with quite astonishing amounts of cash for something they know can't really make that much of a difference." And don't miss: "The absolutely lovely ability that age brings to say no," "The madness of self help," "How to read a fashion magazine without wanting to cut your head off with a penknife" "The confusions of healthy eating," "Why you should marry a hedge fund manager only if you really really can't live without him," "How to stop being a perfectionist" and "Why there is no excuse for bad sex."

The authors also endorse your view that your mother doesn't understand you, but have a pretty convincing explanation of why it's not her fault. A section on grief includes a chapter on rejection. There's a good 30 pages on "politics and the new orthodoxy" and 20 on "philosophy of life, self-esteem, and the whole damn thing," along with about a dozen or so recipes and assorted practical tips on such things as how to make your bed, judge character, not panic in social situations, deal with being in the wrong and not take yourself too seriously.

This is the American edition of a book written by two forty-something Brits--one married with kids and one not. For more about them and their book you may want to check out Tania Kindersley's blogspot via your search engine. I did and was a little taken aback to learn they feared American women might not 'get' them. To which I say: how could we NOT?

And for those of you too young to know to what the book's title refers to it's from a famous quote asking why Fred Astaire got all the credit when Ginger Rogers did everything he did, except backwards and in high heels.

This is a good 'browsy' book--one to pick up, put down, riffle through till something catches your eye.

And there's plenty to catch your eye. From the illuminated pages to the catchy subject headings, colored inset boxes that do everything from quote Socrates to list things you never thought you'd do until you had children, there's plenty of fun stuff.

The co-authors are witty, pithy and full of insight. They do not preach, but almost seem to spill over, the way the best conversations do.

My one critique of the book is that it is quite a bit heterosexist: it presumes every woman will want to marry and/or have children. They have lip service to other, 'alternative' families, but that's about it. It's a small critique, since their target demographic is, doubtless, heterosexual and female and marriageable/family expectant.

My favorite section is the last--the practical section--everything from recipes and how to get wax out of the carpet to how to talk yourself out of a bad mood.

Not a 'beach read', but a lovely bedside companion book that is bursting with estrogen and smarts!

Honestly, when I first read the description of the book I figured it was going to be one of those Lifetime-Television type releases, geared toward what advertisers and PR agents think women want to read about. As in, full of tired cliches and oversimplified, one-size-fits-all advice on predictable, shopworn topics. Joyously, in actuality it reads more like a series of essays, written by two smart women with plenty of life experience. That the authors are British and infuse the writing with any number of devilishly humorous expressions is icing on the cake.

According to the dust jacket biography, they've both been published in the Times of London, a major daily in the UK's capital city. One might easily assume they've had opportunities to hone their respective crafts; it shows. The prose is really delightful. "Sometimes we think that by the time you get to forty your career can feel like that great Talking Heads song: 'This is not my beautiful house, this is not my beautiful wife, how did I get here?' You may, through a quirk of luck or fate or sheer brilliance, find yourself in the job which entirely suits your personality, stretches your imagination, and illuminates all your thoughts. Or, you may not.'

The beauty of the book, though, is that all those pretty paragraphs contain some pretty insightful commentary. The authors actually hit an issue with which I've personally struggled - day to day work that's not suited to my temperament - squarely on the nose.

This is one of those books that's written by that most artful of writers, the sadder but wiser gal. I'm reminded of another set of authors, the similarly hilarious Trinny and Susannah (of the original "What Not to Wear" series on BBC) and of Cynthia Heimel, an essayist whose opinions are comparably laced with plenty of anecdotes and bons mots that make for entertaining reading.

The topics included are, admittedly, somewhat Lifetime-Televisionish in that they cover some well-trodden ground: Advice on relationships, work, children, etc. What's refreshing here though is that the approaches to said topics are fresh and lighthearted: "Reading fashion magazines is like shopping in Woolworths [a UK department store]; you have to rummage through an awful lot of rubbish to find the good stuff...The secret is to regard a magazine not as some didactic bible, handing down sartorial dictats on tablets of stone, but as a Cecil Beaton confection of frippery and absurdity."

The only reason I didn't give this five stars is, oddly, the binding, which is strangely stiff and which required a fairly firm hand in actually keeping the book open and managing it. One would hope the eventual paperback version of 'Backwards' will rectify this problem. The presentation, however, is sharp and crisp-looking, and there are some clever color illustrations on selected of the pages that give the book a polished appearance.

I'd recommend this book, and likely will buy it as a gift for a good friend of mine. It would make great vacation reading.

I'm not sure if my reaction to this book is more of a reflection of me or a reflection of the book. Yes, indeed, I am female. But as a woman in my mid-30s who has degrees in computer science and mathematics, who has worked as an EMT and is now a software engineer, I've had to become reasonably comfortable in my own skin if I were to have a chance to survive any of that. This book feels more like a pep talk about being female, and I don't particularly need that. I wouldn't recommend this book to any of my friends, either, since all of my conversations with them don't lead me to believe that they'd have a different reaction to it than I did.

The best that I can say about this book is that I sometimes found it entertaining, and even charming on occasion. But mostly, I found it boring. Well, that's not true: I spent the chapter on motherhood rolling my eyes, especially when the childless author took over and spent pages upon pages sounding overly defensive about her decision. As someone who doesn't have children either, I started reading this section thinking that I would identify with it. But her endless toneless discourse made me wonder if she was really as comfortable in her decision as she was trying to convince others that they should be. There's plenty of ways to be happy if you don't have children, and I don't think that she's encountered any of them.

I wanted to like this book when I started reading it, but I just couldn't get there.

Initially, the title after the colon of "Backwards In High Heels: The Impossible Art of Being Female" made me roll my eyes, and I thought it would be quite difficult for this book to live up to the glowing blurbs from Plum Sykes, Lulu Guiness, and Erica Wagner. Wagner even went so far as to declare it "a best friend that comes between hard covers." Right. "Balm for the female soul?" Ick.

Well, somewhere early along the way, as I was reading this book cover-to-cover, authors Tania Kindersley and Sarah Vine got me. I found myself laughing out loud as I read, soaking up their wisdom and wit. What Erica Wagner said about this book being like a "best friend that comes between hard covers" actually rings very, very true. Just like any "conversation" with a friend, there are mostly brilliant utterances, and some where you just let the advice go in one ear and out the other. Overall, though, "Backwards in High Heels" is packed with the brilliant stuff, and I believe the brilliance versus the stuff you let go depends upon which stage in your own life you are in when you read this book.

Although it is an enjoyable read, front cover to back cover, decorated along the way by some quite gorgeous illustrations, "Backwards in High Heels" is also one of those books where you should really get yourself a pack of little Post-It flags, the kind that are transparent on the sticky end and colorful on the end that sticks out of the book, and tab your favorite sections, for referring to later on. It'd be like having your new friend on speed dial. (I liked the whole book, but my favorite section was the last, where the authors put a potpourri of random things that are good to know.)

This book is a definite keeper. I cringe that it's considered "Self Help/Inspirational," because that could turn off some readers, but in actuality, it is an inspirational book. It is something you'll feel better having read, and having around to refer to, time and time again. So I came to this book a cynic, but ended up agreeing with all the glowing things the blurb-writers had to say about this book. I guess if they want to call it "balm for the female soul," they can, but if you tend to be put off by such language as that, don't let it put you off this book.

Who hasn't sighed at insipid women's magazine articles and say that life isn't about looking thin and catching the right man? Well, this book on the art of being female surprised me with its refreshing candor and outrageous humor as only two British women can shell out. It starts out with the chapter on "LOVE", my favorite line being "Plato said that love is a mental disease." I have nothing against love, and the authors do say that researchers and scientists have agreed that it is similar to the manic phase of bipolar disease or obsessive-compulsiveness and by Jove, it is! Think about it!

How about the statement in the chapter "FOOD": It is absolutely not right that extreme thinness has become the Holy Grail for women. As for the being single, they have this to say: "...there is absolutely nothing apart from lazy cultural assumptions, which proves that marriage is the ideal state for a modern female. A really great man to live with and love is one of the highest pleasures of life, but it is not the only route to happiness and fulfillment." I'm married and I think this is one of the most sound things I've ever read. A lot of women break their hearts and necks over some man because they think they are aiming for happiness.

Tania Kindersley and Sarah Vine are real women dishing out practical advice on how to live as a woman of today. I intend to lend this book to my daughter so she can start her adult life on the right foot. And all woven with the British wit we love!

I found this book to be hilarious, insightful, and comforting. The way the book is broken into sections, it's great to just take one section a day and spend some time mulling over the information that's presented. The authors shed so much light on how wonderful and special it is to be a woman...something I never really put too much thought into. It will keep you laughing and thinking!