Badass Advice: Love, Life and Being True to Yourself (Badass Affirmations) - Softcover

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Becca Anderson is an author, teacher and writing instructor living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Originally from Ohio, Becca’s background in women's studies has given her a lifelong passion for empowering women through their own herstory. The author of The Book of Awesome Women, Becca Anderson credits her first grade teacher as a great inspiration and runs several popular classes and workshops including “How to Put Your Passion on Paper.”

Brenda Knight began her career at HarperCollins, working with luminaries Paolo Coelho, Marianne Williamson, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Knight was awarded IndieFab’s Publisher of the Year in 2015 at the ALA, American Library Association. Knight is the creator of Badass Affirmations series as well as the author of Random Acts of Kindness, The Grateful Table and Women of the Beat Generation, which won an American Book Award. Knight is publisher at Mango Publishing. She teaches at the San Francisco Writers Conference and Writing for Change and serves as President Emeritus of the Women’s National Book Association, San Francisco Chapter. Brenda Knight resides in the SF Bay Area. She blogs about acts of kindness at: lowerhaightholler.blogspot.com.

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Growing up, girls are often taught to find a balance between confidence and modesty. Sure, you can accept a compliment, but don’t go looking for one. Suggesting that someone look at you would be entirely unacceptable—that girl would be seen as having an ego problem. But all this standard does is make girls question themselves and their own actions left and right. It makes us focus on not emphasizing our attributes when that’s really all we should be doing. We don’t question this growing up. When our mothers say not to wear that attention-grabbing outfit, or when they criticize us for making a scene, it seems normal and ordinary.

Yet why, I now wonder, in a world where the wind can so easily be knocked out of a woman’s sails (whether deliberately and cruelly, or just by the sheer impersonal weight of accumulated experience), would we strive to diet down young girls’ egos? Wouldn’t it make more sense to shore them up to the size of Kim K’s celebrated booty, so that they’d still retain a little buoyancy (a modicum of oomph!) despite the inevitable deflationary effects of life?

Happily, the parents of the outspoken badass women in this section seem to have been spectacularly enlightened…or, perhaps, merely spectacularly unsuccessful at inculcating the creed of mouse-like behavior in their daughters. These women never allowed knock-downs to their confidence—they were badass, and they knew it. For amplification of your own sassy attitude—or perhaps just your own amusement—read on.