It's Terrible The Things I Have to Do To Be Me - On Femininity and Fame

Marilyn Monroe and her doomed late-century reincarnation, Anna Nicole Smith Lindsay Lohan and Elizabeth Taylor, fêted baby actresses turned red-hot sex symbols Amy Winehouse and Billie Holiday, inspired perfomers who battled with the intensity of public scrutiny Self-made beauty Pamela Anderson and trans bond girl Caroline 'Tula' Cossey The lives of famous women are made up of reflections and imitation, both conscious and unknowing.
But how does an icon become an icon? How do women make and remake their image in order to sell their work? In a series of interconnected essays about pairs of famous women, award-nominated essayist Philippa Snow explores the echoes and connections between female icons and lays bare the artful and gruelling demands of femininity - from the golden age of Hollywood to the TikTok era. Full of the fascinating, entertaining and lurid details you might expect from the lives of mega-famous celebrities, dissected with icicle-sharp intelligence and rendered in stylish, flamboyant prose, Philippa Snow's first full-length non-fiction work is a radically insightful book about the complex meanings and layers of femininity in a male-dominated world.