Hags: The Demonisation of Middle-Aged Women - Victoria Smith

Category: Misc. Non-fiction, Political
Language: English
Keywords: Feminism Gender Sociology Witches Womens

Written by Victoria Smith
Read by Victoria Smith
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
Release date: 03-02-23

‘Could not be more necessary’ RACHEL COOKE, OBSERVER

What is about women in their forties and beyond that seems to enrage - almost everyone?

In the last few years, as identity politics have taken hold, middle-aged women have found themselves talked and written about as morally inferior beings: the face of bigotry, entitlement and selfishness, to be ignored, pitied or abused.

In Hags, Victoria Smith asks why these women are treated with such active disdain. Each chapter takes a different theme - care work, beauty, violence, political organization, sex - and explores it in relation to middle-aged women’s beliefs, bodies, histories and choices. Smith traces the attitudes she describes through history, and explores the very specific reasons why this type of misogyny is so very now. The result is a book that is absorbing, insightful, witty and bang on time.

Shortlisted for the Nero Book Awards announced 21 November 2023.