'Animal' By Sara Pascoe

Animal is the predecessor to Sex Power Money which I also loved. They both demonstrate Pascoe’s unique voice of comedy, candidness, and intelligence and utilise perfectly her signature refreshing frankness around sex and sexuality.

Animal weaves autobiographical accounts of coming-of-age tales into more expansive narratives around everything womxn. From sexual experiences, growing up, growing old, to childbirth, body image, menopause, and being a daughter, Animal is as much about as it is to the female body.

Pascoe draws on anthropology, biology, history, and sociology to tell the story of the female body and how it feels to be one or to own one. The wars waged both within, without, and over it regarding societal ideals, religion, sexism, misogyny, and encounters with the opposite sex are covered with fresh perspectives. Pascoe dissects with personal honesty and passionate research on the issues facing women today and apparently always.

Drawing from tales of the animal kingdom, the sex lives of our ancestors, and experiences of her own body, boys, and conversations with her mother, this feminist account of the female body offers fresh and funny perspectives on struggles that unite generations and new challenges the 21st-century woman faces.

The female body is the most commented-on object in the world, it is under scrutiny from both the body itself, other women, men, and the policing gaze of law, culture, religion, and society. Pascoe arms a reader with the tools to be proud of the female body, and if not, at least at peace.