I refuse to believe that any other time flings as many filthy life lessons into your post-teen face as that between turning 20 and hitting the big three zero. Being 20 was fun: there were a lot of parties, a lot of freedom, and a general lack of responsibility. We ruled the world, with all the time in the world to be and have whatever we wanted, so screw today and tomorrow and the day after- we had forever. We were not kind, or careful, or smart.

Up until this point, the way had been heavily signposted by parents, teachers and expectations. Decisions and mistakes were not ours to make. Then we found ourselves hurtling along an unfamiliar stretch of road, and the damn signs had run out. We are confronted with the harsh reality that crop tops are not suitable work attire, that our acne will be alternatively located but still very much a resident, and that apparently all those fun, cool people you once knew now have jobs, spouses or worse, a practical haircut.

Swallowing advice is hard, and telling the good from the bad even harder. We’re firm believers in ‘finding it out for ourselves’ and veteran survivors of ‘I told you so’s’. Making mistakes is our way of feeling our way through this confusing pool we’ve been tipped into, stretching our new, grown up legs. But perhaps if there were a few trailblazers who could shine a light on this darkest and most confusing of times, as ‘being young’ becomes less and less of an excuse, we might consider listening to them.

Enter Dunham, Moran and Knight, riding to the rescue like a who’s who of sweary human hilariousness and lady balls. The three books below have been my literary antidote to every Photoshopped #thinspiration, every tear angrily wiped away in the work loos, every week spent eating only noodles when pay day barely covered the rent, every perfect Facebook engagement photo, every magazine article expounding my generation’s great failings, every Sunday afternoon spent contemplating how much back-to-back Don’t Tell The Bride is too much.

How to be a Woman (Caitlin Moran)

There were many things I didn’t know as a twenty year old, and what being a ‘feminist’ meant was one of them. Sure, I’d been told I had nice legs by builders on my way to school every day since I was 12, asked by a lecturer on the first day of my science degree ‘you’re not going to be another crier, are you?’, and read girl’s magazines whose wise words such as (genuine quote, seared into my fragile, malleable young brain forever) “if you’ve got all dressed up ready to go out and your boyfriend wants to have sex with you but you’re not in the mood, just let him – let’s face it, you’re just not as desirable all tucked up in bed with your cold cream on!” but that was just life, right, and thank the lord those columnists were there to help point me in the right direction on such crucial issues.

Reading Caitlin “I want a Zero Tolerance policy on ‘All The Patriarchal Bullshit'” Moran’s book in 2011 was the first time I thought ‘hang on a minute- this stuff might not be ok’. Moran details her own introduction to feminism, capturing the moment in her diary as “I’ve just seen Germaine Greer on TV – she’s NICE!!!!!!!! FUNNEEEE!!!!!” and presents a simple method for determining your own status as a feminist, cutting through the connotations and doubts with two questions- 1) Do you have a vagina, and 2) Do you want to be in charge of it?

She tackles the perils of first jobs, fighting class snobbery and falling in love, in such a rational, cutting, and hilarious way that her points are impossible to ignore.

Not That Kind of Girl (Lena Dunham)

Ever since I saw Girls for the first time (recommended to me by my dive-y, travel blogging friend EllieAnywhere as “you’ll love this series I’m watching… it’s about these girls whose underwear never matches”) Lena Dunham became my hero. In NTKoG, Dunham neuroses, barfs and jokes her way through her early twenties, in the hope that sharing her plentiful mistakes can teach us just a little something about self-acceptance. There’s nothing preachy- she doesn’t know any more than the rest of us, but she’s been there. She’s done a little sick on the carpet of someone she only just met, had sex so shudderingly awful that your brain twinges and your hands become sweaty when you think about it, and faced the pressing sense that everyone other than you knows exactly what they’re doing.

She’s every one of us who wants to care not a jot, but cares too much. And through her honest, funny and open stories in this book she lets us know that it’s ok. There will always be that moment after the horrible, agonising, doubt-ridden break up, when you’re asking yourself if you’ve made a huge mistake, that a best friend sits with you and tells you it was the right decision, or your mum says just the right thing, and the weight is lifted, just for a moment, and you know that everything is going to work out.

The Life Changing Magic of Not Giving a Fuck (Sarah Knight)
According to Knight, we each have a preciously limited Fuck Budget. That is, we only have so many fucks we can give about things, and if we use up our fucks on say, staying up on a Tuesday night to bake gluten free flapjack, or worrying about whether our month-old leg hair waving in the air con breeze will offend other gym goers, or attending Phie from Marketing’s ironic karaoke birthday bash, we expend all our fucks and no longer have any left to use on the things that actually make us happy. The optimum state then, is not ‘no fucks given’, but fucks appropriately distributed on the people and activities that make us happy.

In The Life Changing Magic, Knight describes how she underwent her own fuck redistribution, leaving a 15 year publishing career in New York and all the sweaty commuting, bullshit meetings and tedious office chat it entailed, and starting out as a freelancer.

It’s something I certainly needed to learn to ask myself. “Do I give a fuck about this? Does it make me happy? No… then I ain’t doing it.” As a result, I carved out some time for myself in a life otherwise rammed to the hilt with alarmworkmeetingsfamilycommutephonefriendwashingupgympubdinnerconferencehooveringnotenoughsleepneverenoughsleep, and well, I finally managed to get this blog up and running. Get your fucks in order, ladies!