Women Don't Owe You Pretty by Florence Given - Review

Women Don’t Owe You Pretty is the debut novel by 21 year old influencer and activist Florence Given. It is an auto-biography/self help style book about female empowerment, and touches on various topics, such as privileges, relationships, accountability, and more serious subjects like sexual assault and consent. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, whilst being aesthetically pleasing to look at, with illustrations by Florence scattered throughout, it was also an interesting and straightforward read, and gave some different insights on how we look at and interpret feminism.

Over 21 easily digestible chapters, Florence goes into detail about what feminism means to her, especially in the opening chapter ‘Feminism is going to ruin your life (in the best way possible)’. The book is very much her own opinions and viewpoints, however she has taken inspiration from other writers like Chidera Eggerue and Reni Eddo-Lodge in order to perfect the chapters on recognising your privilege and accountability, as she makes it clear throughout that she is privileged as a “skinny, white woman”. 

A chapter I found particularly interesting was Chapter 7: ‘Stop scrolling in the mornings’, which talks about the positives and negatives around social media and why picking up your phone as soon as you wake up is bad for your mental well-being. Even though the book is over 220 pages long, it is a fairly quick read, as many pages have full page quotes and illustrations by Florence, which also makes it a more casual read as it means you can stop and take a breather at any point.

The pink, orange, yellow and red colour scheme throughout the book is aesthetically pleasing and contrasts with the popular ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ phrase, as many would pick up the book because of its cover design, and admittedly, this was one of the reasons I decided to purchase it too. 

Overall, Women Don’t Owe You Pretty was a really enjoyable and insightful read. Even though a lot of the information Florence wrote about I already knew, it also gave me some different insights and opinions on popular feminist discourse, which I will carry with me for future writing and reading.