A collection of essays exploring femininity, self-image and performance in the lives of iconic famous women
13th October 2025
Hardcover
PRODUCT INFORMATION
Summary
A collection of essays exploring femininity, self-image and performance in the lives of iconic famous women
Description
'Turns female celebrity inside-out. One of the most enjoyable books of the year' Nicole Flattery, author of Show Them A Good Time
'An instant classic from the sharpest cultural critic working today. I couldn't put it down' Allie Rowbottom, author of Aesthetica---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------How does an icon become an icon? How did Anna Nicole Smith model herself on Marilyn Monroe? What connects Lindsay Lohan with Elizabeth Taylor? How is self-made beauty Pamela Anderson like trans bond girl Caroline 'Tula' Cossey?In a series of interconnected essays about pairs of famous women, award-nominated essayist and art critic Philippa Snow explores the echoes and connections between a constellation of female stars and lays bare the artful and gruelling demands of femininity - from the golden age of Hollywood to the Instagram 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.Critic Reviews
Turns female celebrity inside-out. Insightful and graceful, and one of the most enjoyable books of the year -- Nicole Flattery, author of Show Them A Good Time
An instant classic from the sharpest cultural critic working today. Phillipa Snow is witty, entertaining, and intellectually unmatched, a writer with a singular talent for showing us ourselves in the funhouse mirror of celebrity femininity. It's Terrible the Things I Have to Do to Be Me is a historical corrective, a loving sendup, and a serious exploration of iconic women too often passed off as unserious. I couldn't put it down. -- Allie Rowbottom, author of Aesthetica
Philippa Snow is an incisive composer of criticism whose prose is always both muscular and musical. It's Terrible the Things I Have To Do To Be Me is at once a symphony and a manifesto, a virtuoso performance of feminist criticism. This rigorous, elegiac examination of women destroyed by stardom, desire, and the violent demands of femininity is not to be missed -- Emmeline Clein, author of Dead Weight
It's Terrible the Things I Have to Do to Be Me lives up to its fabulous, improbable name. It's a long-overdue ode to female creative genius, in all its messy, disturbing, ecstatic and wildly entertaining complexity. This book will make you feel things; it's sparkling and dark and utterly addictive. It needed to exist, and Snow has precisely the right blend of narrative elegance and irreverence, coupled with genius-level pop culture knowledge, to bring these stories to life
-- Roisin Kiberd, author of The DisconnectA book of essays that deconstructs received notions of femininity, and obliterates those defunct categories of high and low culture by treating its celebrity subjects first and foremost as artists. Written in prose that glimmers with energy, wisdom and delectable turns-of-phrase, It's Terrible The Things I Have to Do To Be Me confirms Philippa Snow's place as the country's most exciting, talented and forward-thinking cultural critic: a writer who has turned criticism into her own form of art -- Ralf Webb, author of Strange Relations
Philippa Snow's strength lies not only in her ability to diagnose why these women continue to captivate us, but why they move us; it is this ability, not just to examine her subjects but to weave them so deeply into the very fabric of our emotional lives, that makes her our most vital cultural critic -- Hannah Regel, author of The Last Sane Woman
This book takes us into new territories of insight about the punishing price of femininity - that no one can resist and very few can afford - with a wisdom that is as shimmering as it is sharp -- Johanna Hedva, author of How To Tell When We Will Die
Threads together fame's complex relationship with femininity, agency, and beauty. With acoustic brilliance, Snow navigates the often-overlooked spiritual and physical labour the most iconic women of our time have endured, exposing something maniacal about our society's celebrity bloodlust - not just with its demands for perfection, but the gleeful schadenfreude that hits the tabloids when these icons inevitably crack. Like the women in these essays, Snow's work is intoxicating and glossily smooth. Put it up on the biggest billboards immediately -- Elle Nash, author of Deliver Me
A fascinating, wry and entertaining reclamation of famous women's subjectivity -- Amy Key, author of Arrangements in Blue
About the Author
Philippa Snow is a writer based in Norwich. Her reviews and essays have appeared in publications including Artforum, the Los Angeles Review of Books, ArtReview, Frieze, the White Review, Vogue, the New Statesman, the TLS, and the New Republic. She was shortlisted for the 2020 Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize, and Which As You Know Means Violence was published by Repeater Books in 2022.
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13th October 2025
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