Lady Secrets: Real, Raw, and Ridiculous Confessions of Womanhood by Keltie Knight

 

Here's the thing: I am super nosy. I don't know if any of you young people still read fashion magazines, but when I was in my TigerBeat, CosmoGirl, Seventeen, Elle phase, I lived for the sections in these magazines where Real Teen Girls Would Tell Their Real Teen Stories™. Sometimes it would be written out like a Medium article, and sometimes you'd get a section in the back with girls (or maybe guys/nonbinary people, idk, it was anonymous), confessing their totally most cringiest moments, Dear Abby style. I still remember some of my favorites, like this one about a girl who popped out of her tube top like a champagne cork out of a fizzy bottle. Or the girl who decided to let it go in the pool, only for the pool chemicals to turn her urine purple.

This book is basically that, in book form. I don't actually know who the LadyGang is, but I guess they're podcast hosts, and in this collection they have confessed some of their own sins, in addition to crowdsourcing more from their listening audience. I got hooked into this book through the introductory essay, Poopnique, about how Jac apparently sits on her toilet like a gargoyle with her feet on the seat to poop. That set the stage rather nicely for what was to come.

I do agree with the arguments that the podcast hosts were the least interesting in terms of stories. Jac's were usually great and Becca had some good ones, but a lot of Keltie's were just Hollywood humblebrags masked as "oh my god, so embarrassing." Which I wasn't mad about, but it wasn't exactly cringe as, say, the lady who took a laxative pill to unblock herself and ended up on a multi-day poopscapade that ruined $4000 of underwear and linens. Or the crime writer who sent a business card of herself with a photo to a serial killer she wanted to write about in prison, only to find out that he'd, I guess, traded her photos for candy with other inmates who were only too happy to write to her.

There's something very voyeuristic about this collection in a way that kind of reminds me of the PostSecret era of found content. I do agree that women should be able to talk about a lot of the "taboo" subjects in this book and that it isn't fair that so many things are acceptable for men to talk about (pooping, farting) that everyone will shame women for. So I think in that sense, this exercise is rather progressive, and also contains stories that will make people think either "wow, there really are no unique experiences" or "now I don't feel so alone." It was a brisk and interesting read but I didn't get much out of it beyond that. 

3 out of 5 stars