What Would Beauvoir Do?

Get life advice and a crash course on women's rights from the great feminists of every generation.

Have you ever wondered if Gloria Steinem would support your decision to get a nose job? Or if Betty Friedan would watch Star Wars with you? Half an introduction to feminism, half a guide to life, this book uses 40 everyday questions and problems to explore the theories and concepts of the greatest feminists and suffragettes of all time.

With quirky illustrations and intriguing and original takes on the biggest questions, What Would Beauvoir Do? helps readers to understand why these feminists were great while entertaining you with historical and biographical detail about their lives. The 40 questions reveal not only Simone de Beauvoir's insights but how other great feminists would approach the problem. Newly armed with this wisdom, readers can make their own decisions.

In addition to de Beauvoir, the feminist leaders span history to include Alice Walker, activist and author of The Color Purple; Mary Wollstonecraft, 18th century writer, philosopher and advocate of women's rights; Luce Irigaray, 20th century French author, feminist and cultural theorist; Elizabeth Cady Stanton, early 19th century suffragist, social activist and abolitionist; Charlotte Perkins Gilman, prominent 19th century feminist; Sarojini Naidu, freedom fighter and poet of modern India; Emmeline Pankhurst and Emily Davison, leaders of the British suffragette movement and Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin Luther King.

There are five thematic chapters as follows with examples of the questions:

Work Should I speak up when my colleague makes a sexist joke? Should I deliberately hire a woman to even out the gender balance? Am I betraying the feminist cause if I quit my job to have a baby?

Your Body Why should anyone else have a say about what I do with my body? To shave or not to shave - that is the question. I like wearing make-up. Is that bad?

Family What's wrong with taking my husband's last name? My daughter wants a tutu and a tiara. Where did I go wrong? How can I raise feminist sons?

Sexuality I caught my partner watching porn. Do I owe it to others to come out of the closet? Why is virginity such a big deal, and how come it's not the same for men? Am I a prude?

Politics How do I square being a feminist and also having a faith? Why does so much of feminism seem to center around white middle-class women? Should I go on a protest march?