Swerve Book Review

In Aisha Tyler’s first book, “Swerve”, she shares her personal stories using humor and very sharp wit to touch on a variety of topics such as women’s self-esteem and body image, relationships, her love of beer and most importantly motivating women to be a badass. Her self-deprecating style and non-traditional writing is hilarious. She uses words like “fergawdsakes” (Tyler, p. 5) in place of “for God’s sake” and seems to be directing her book right at the everyday girl in a fun and easy-going conversational writing style. She provides comedic relief and she makes it a point to touch on some serious subjects, all while lightening the mood with her humor. Almost immediately, Tyler begins to mention the differences between men and women in society. She speaks about how she is not an advocator for casual sex for anyone, man or woman, however she is a firm believer in women being able to get what they want. She jokes about how men can look like crap, yet still be seen in media having relations with highly attractive women. Yet women, have to do so much

All of the makeup, hair products, perfumes, etc., are completely hurting women’s overall body image and self-esteem. Trying to live up to such nearly impossible standards is so taxing on women. Tyler is a six-foot tall, beauty, who has posed for Maxim magazine in just her undergarments, yet she found it important to tell young women not to look up to super models and to embrace their curves. I found this so interesting since she has actually been considered to have supermodel stature and looks, yet often jokes about her ‘freakishly tall stature’ or being an ‘amazon’ or ‘giant’. Her tone is definitely one of a sarcastic feminist. Through self-deprecation she wants to encourage other women to love their bodies, and to not try to live up to societies absurd standards of westernized