Spanning the street, the bedroom, the voting booth, and the workplace, these simple words have huge stories behind them - stories it's time to examine, re-imagine, and change. From Laura Lipmann and Meg Wolizer to Jennifer Weiner and Rebecca Traister, each writer uses her word as a vehicle for memoir, cultural commentary, critique, or all three. And in Pretty Bitches, Skurnick has rounded up a group of powerhouse women writers to take on the hidden meanings of these words, and how they can limit our worlds - or liberate them.

No one knows this better than Lizzie Skurnick, writer of the New York Times' column That Should be A Word and a veritable queen of cultural coinage. Effortless, Sassy, Ambitious, Aggressive: What subtle digs and sneaky implications are conveyed when women are described with words like these? Words are made into weapons, warnings, praise, and blame, bearing an outsized influence on women's lives - to say nothing of our moods. They wound, they inflate, they define, they demean. Spanning the street, the bedroom, the voting booth, and the workplace, these simple words have huge stories behind them - stories it's time to examine, re-imagine, and change.These empowering essays from leading women writers examine the power of the gendered language that is used to diminish women - and imagine a more liberated world. From Laura Lipmann and Meg Wolizer to Jennifer Weiner and Rebecca Traister, each writer uses her word as a vehicle for memoir, cultural commentary, critique, or all three. Pretty Bitches : On Being Called Crazy, Angry, Bossy, Frumpy, Feisty, and All the Other Words That Are Used to Undermine Women book by Lizzie Skurnick.

'Effortless,' 'Sassy,' 'Ambitious,' 'Aggressive': What subtle digs and sneaky implications are conveyed when women are described with words like these? Words are made into weapons, warnings, praise, and blame, bearing an outsized influence on women's lives - to say nothing of our moods.No one knows this better than Lizzie Skurnick, writer of the New York Times' column 'That Should be A Word' and a veritable queen of cultural coinage.

These empowering essays from leading female writers Laura Lipmann, Meg Wolizer. They wound, they inflate, they define, they demean. Pretty Bitches edited by Lizzie Skurnick Introduced by Rebecca Traister. These empowering essays from leading women writers examine the power of the gendered language that is used to diminish women - and imagine a more liberated world.Words matter.

Pretty Bitches by Lizzie Skurnick