Toxic femininity

A courageous book about how notions of femininity harm women.

It's not possible to just be a woman, without any qualifiers. To be a woman means to be a certain kind of woman, mostly according to culturally and socially drawn standards: first a good girl, then a strong, independent superwoman, then a caring mum, and sometimes a real bitch. All these roles are restrictive for women—but like any social role, they are also automatic and unconscious, often comfortable, and sometimes even advantageous. In her brilliant book, Toxic Feminity, Sophia Fritz names these individual roles and stereotypical forms of womanhood with uncompromising and bold honesty, breaks them down into their constituent parts, and shows how they are hurtful and harmful to women, but also to men and to society as a whole.

Spiegel Bestseller

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Thanks to her naturalness and humour, Sophia Fritz's feminist reflections and commentaries are worth reading for just about everyone—or absolutely everyone.
— Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Toxic femininity primarily harms women. It causes manipulability, disloyalty, dishonesty, self-exploitation, and powerlessness. Capitalism profits from busy little bees with low self-esteem, from nice girls who always jump in to help others, from independent superwomen, nurturing mothers, and unpaid caregivers. They all drive productivity, competition, consumption, and, moreover, enable men to maintain their position of power, because women who are weakened by self-destructive behaviour have less energy.
— an excerpt from the book