Anneka Harry

Lady Sidekick has gathered up all the tired tropes for women so you don't have to! From the Femme Fatale to the Crazy Cat Lady, the Bridezilla to the Girl Next Door, it calls them out and, most importantly, RECLAIMS them. For too long women have been pigeonholed into a handful of tired and basic characters, their personality and behaviour criticised if they don’t fit the role society thinks they should be playing. Lady Sidekick analyses fifty of the most moth-eaten, antiquated, cookie-cutter females clichés, archetypes and tokens that twenty-first-century women are SO over. Through hilarious breakdowns, comic illustrations and tongue-firmly-in-cheek-fuelled study, it slow-roasts each trope, sprinkling them with sarcasm, seasoning them with feminism, infusing them with activism, before serving them up ready for the modern masses to enjoy. It’s time to shove a stick of dynamite up the arse of the out-of-date – and Lady Sidekick is ready to light the wick. Happy trope-spotting!

Meet the unsung sheroes of history: the diverse, defiant and daring (wo)men who changed the rules, and their identities, to get sh*t done.You’ll encounter Kit Cavanagh, the swaggering Irish dragoon who was the first woman to be buried in London with full military honours; marauding eighteenth-century pirates Mary Read and Anne Bonny, who collided on the high seas after swapping their petticoats for pantaloons; Ellen Craft, an escaped slave who masqueraded as a white master to spirit her husband-to-be to freedom; and Billy Tipton, the swinging jazz musician, who led a double life as an adult, taking five wives along the way. Then there are the women who still have to dress like men to live their best lives, like the inspirational football-lovers in Iran, who risk everything to take their place in the stands.A call to action for the modern world, this book celebrates the #GenderRebels who paved the way for women everywhere to be soldiers and spies; kings and queens; firefighters, doctors, pilots; and a Swiss Army knife’s-worth more. These superbly spirited (wo)men all had one thing in common: they defied the rules to progress in a man’s world.