Book Description
“A Girl’s Guide to Personal Hygiene is everything I never knew I wanted: a disgusting, hilarious, and honest book that pays tribute to the female body and all of its habits and suppurations. It is delightfully and uncomfortably relatable and I love it with my whole self—heart, sweat, bowels, and all.”—Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties
We sniff our knickers; we bite our own toenails; we laboriously dig out ingrown hairs: Women aren’t as ladylike as people would like to imagine. Using anecdotes collected from hundreds of anonymous sources, this gleefully disgusting illustrated book rewrites our definition of femininity.
One day, the artist Tallulah Pomeroy overhead a conversation between two girls about another friend of theirs they knew in college. Apparently, when this friend had been on tour with the rugby team, she’d drunkenly ‘done a shit in the sink.’ ‘She’s not a girl if she did that,’ said one to the other. ‘She may have a vagina, but she’s not a girl.’
This exchange made Tallulah laugh, but it also made her think. How many things had her friends done that meant they ‘weren’t girls?’ She made a Facebook group and asked people to submit stories about their ‘unladylike’ behaviors. The page was soon flooded with more stories than she could have ever imagined: about ear wax and trapped wind, gray pubes and bloody pajamas. It became a community of honest, funny, and supportive women, who, by admitting to things they’d thought were shameful, no longer had to feel ashamed.
For A Girl’s Guide to Personal Hygiene, Tallulah made original illustrations to accompany a selection of those Facebook posts—plus dozens more from an expanded call for submissions—to create an exuberant and galvanizing handbook for all the nasty women of the world.
Praise For This Book
Praise for A GIRL'S GUIDE TO PERSONAL HYGIENE"Hilarious and disgusting, it proves what we do behind closed doors (or in the bathroom) isn't that unique or different from one another. It redefines what it means to be a lady and how it's stupid that we conform to such standards." —Sophie Matthews, Women.com, One of the Best Books of the Year
"This breezy and hilarious book depicts anecdotes of women and the unmentionable things they love doing with their pubic hair, boogers, bodily fluids, and more—all with the deepest of satisfaction, thanks to illustrator Tallulah Pomeroy's flagrant images of women going unabashedly wild." —W, 1 of 7 Inventive New Picture Books No Adult Would Be Ashamed to Read
"Hilarious, honest, and entertaining, Tallulah Pomeroy is a talented artist who turns funny AND REAL female hygiene stories into comical illustrations. You will pass this book around at dinner parties like it's your personal diary." —Women.com, 1 of 10 Books with Covers So Beautiful You Can Judge Them
"It doesn’t matter who you are, your age, your nationality, your gender, your habits, your religion and your beliefs. All of that is not important. Whoever you are, please, do yourself a favor and read this book . . . A Girl’s Guide to Personal Hygiene: True Stories, Illustrated will broaden your horizons. Even if you’re a neat person, you should read this. This book is about all women, deconstructing silly stereotypes." —Books Turn You On
"An indelicate, necessary treasure—its gross joys deliver humanizing relief."—Alissa Nutting, author of Made for Love and Tampa
A Girl's Guide to Personal Hygiene is everything I never knew I wanted: a disgusting, hilarious, and honest book that pays tribute to the female body and all of its habits and suppurations. It is delightfully and uncomfortably relatable and I love it with my whole self—heart, sweat, bowels, and all."—Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties
"This book should be tucked under punch bowls at every debutante ball and bundled with boxes of Girl Scout cookies from here on out." —Amelia Gray, author of Gutshot and Isadora
