I’m a bit half and half about this book – it’s another Third Wave primer and Valenti is one of my feminist heroes – this the woman who founded Feministing.com, I mean come on! However- I had issues with it right the way through. Not massive ones, but enough to seriously dent my enjoyment of the book and to put it a distinct fourth in my ‘feminist books everybody should read’ list. The frequent swearing REALLY put me off- whilst I do think swearing has its place in verbal conversation and personal blogging (and I am very guilty of swearing almost to excess in both those areas!), swearing in ‘professional’ writing- public blogs, books, work related stuff etc, really, really irritates me. Also Valenti’s absolute refusal to accept that any woman may have perfectly valid and well thought out reasons for changing her name upon marriage drove me up the wall- an issue I’ve blogged on before and will again, I expect. I was annoyed b y the phrase ‘the mommy route’- again Motherhood is something I’ve both blogged on, and written about academically and this seemingly constant separation of Motherhood from almost every aspect of women’s lives is driving me up the wall – Valenti calling it ‘the mommy route’ just added to it.
On the positive side the sections on equal pay, sex, education and history were really good, and Valenti does provide an awesome and very comprehensive appendix with lots of evidence for her points (always good for the doubters!) and an awesome collection of other resources and organisations fighting the good fight for equality. I was particularly in love with the section on intersection and her very frank admission that mainstream feminism has always been dominated by white, heterosexual, middle/upper class women.
All in all Full Frontal is a very good book, and I would definitely recommend it, especially to anyone struggling with the more formal tone of some books. It just isn’t for me.