Saucy Self-Help Book Serves '10 Women'

If judging others makes us feel better about ourselves, writing about others while judging them must feel glorious.

Alison James provides us with a great opportunity to point and laugh at the stereotypes she presents in her self-help book The 10 Women You’ll Be Before You’re 35. Assuming a tone most reminiscent of your older sister’s best friend if she was really into neon, James does not share the secrets for achieving happiness or a slimmer waist line, two cornerstones of the self-help book industry. Instead the book expounds on the various stages of female post-collegiate life with all its foibles.

Do not let the loud, flashy cover deter you from reading this one in public. Beneath the closet scene cover complete with wedding veil and feather boa, James tells you that the flaming sambuca is “a trademark drink of Euro hotties!” But get to know the girl drinking margaritas, and “soon you’ll be dancing on the bar and bonding.”

Sadly this “Party Girl” section quickly ends and jumps to the “Body-Conscious Babe.” Mere coincidence or subtle insinuation? Who knows, but every college girl worth her tequila salt has been in the position of the real-life “party girl” who says “I drank too much fruit punch and vodka, forgetting there is a lag between when you drink it and when it hits you. I spent the night hurling in my bathroom and my friends have photos of me leaning over the toilet.”

With incidents this familiar and prose so simplistic, it’s hard to mock this book—I have plenty of friends who would be happy and satisfied with its lessons—so, if this is helpful, God be with ’em.

James’ wit and personality permeates the book, to the extent that her stages seem to all be based on personal experience. One wonders what former roommate is the naïve “New Graduate” and what hated and despised former boss is now called “The Worker Bee.” James occasionally injects a shot of realism, reminding readers that “You don’t just wake up one day, stretch, look at the sun and say, ‘Oh baby, I’ve found the real me.’”

A self-help book for the Shopaholic-reading, Cosmo-subscribing generation, James taps into the psyche of a demographic that has largely been ignored by the “you will never be good enough” genre. As if every advertisement wasn’t reinforcing this ominous mantra already.

For those still unsure about the book’s quality, ponder the advice that closes the “Ms. Independence” chapter: you are “crossing the line [if] you represent yourself when you’re on trial for running your boyfriend over with a lawnmower.”