Thoughts on Adichie

While reading Adichie’s book, I was surprised by how much I could relate and think about examples, whether in my own life or that I’ve seen, of the things she mentioned. All of her tips were incredibly relatable and helpful, but some stood out to me more than others.

In the second half of the book, I loved her eighth suggestion about “rejecting likeability.” Personally, as girls, I feel like we have always been taught to be nice and give in to the other person's ideas or plans, especially if they are men. We always have to adapt to men, yet I feel like men don’t really have to adapt to us. Even though I feel like we should all try to be nice to one another, I think there is more pressure for girls to be polite and more submissive. I am also guilty of trying to be overly nice when it’s not really “necessary,” so to speak, so I’ll try to follow Adichie’s advice myself and try to value other things more than “likeability.”

Another piece of advice that I really liked was the tenth suggestion which spoke about female appearance. I think Adichie’s quote “don’t think that raising her feminist means forcing her to reject femininity,” is incredibly important nowadays (Adichie 43). We talked a little about this last class, but someone mentioned that “feminine” characteristics are still seen as undesirable (ex. “you run/throw like a girl,” being weak and frail is still associated with femininity), and that “male traits” are still being valued over traditional “female traits.” Likewise, as Adichie also points out, girls are judged no matter what they do, if they dress up too much or dress down, if they wear a lot of makeup or not wear make-up at all, and at the end of the day, I think Adichie is just trying to say that femininity is not naturally bad nor should it be rejected. It should be embraced if one wishes it to be. 

As ending thoughts though, I feel like I could write forever about this book and I think that everyone, regardless of gender should read it.

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