Victoria Smith is a regular contributor to the New Statesman and the Independent, focusing on women's issues, parenting and mental health. Her newsletter, The OK Karen, about midlife women's experiences of feminism, was launched last year, and she tweets @glosswitch. She lives in Cheltenham with her family.
Her book traces the hatred and fear of the middle-aged woman back
through history . . . The greatest joy of Hags is its lively
erudition . . . This eloquent, clever and devastating book
describes the last remaining acceptable prejudice, one that is now
even posited as progress: the loathing of older women
*The Times*
My polemic of the year . . . a book that could not be more
necessary (a sword and a shield) in the current climate
*Observer*
Riveting, vital and impossible to read without rage
*Lissa Evans, author of Old Baggage*
Hags is rich and complex and witty and cleverer than I am. (You'd
never get a male reviewer saying that.) I hope it won't be read
only in an echo chamber, by the women who are, as Smith was once
called to her delight, 'a batshit Mumsnet thread made flesh'. I
hope it will also be read by young women who think me and the
author terrible Terfs and bigots for believing in single-sex
spaces; by young anyones; by the middle-aged and the elderly; by
any man born of a mother; and by all those who agree with Smith
when she writes: 'I am not frightened of change. I am frightened of
things staying the same.'
*Spectator*
Devastating and clever
*Daily Mail*
Smith makes an impassioned, powerful case . . . Hags can't come
soon enough'
*Mail on Sunday*
Deftly illustrates how ageist misogyny remains an acceptable
prejudice and, in laying out the ignominies visited upon
middle-aged women, feels justifiably livid
*Guardian*
A brilliantly witty, engaging and insightful book; a righteous
polemic which examines and questions why so much hatred is directed
towards middle-aged women - and, crucially, what this means for
women today . . . a punchy, thought-provoking and thoroughly
enjoyable read
*Scotsman*
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