Reading time: 3.50

909 words

Hey Reader,

Do you ever look around at the world and just think

What. The. Hell.

I don’t mean all of the global fuckery right now, that’s pretty much a given for a “what the hell” moment. I mean the ways we be.

I’m a 90s girl, so I’m a product of a time when TV show hosts weighed women who’d just given birth to see if they’d lost all the baby weight yet. (I still want to hug Victoria Beckham for that travesty.)

We’re simultaneously too much, and not enough. And men are no better off: shamed for being stay-at-home dads, or for showing their feminine sides (i.e. emotions that are not anger or football).

I don’t know about you, but I’ve spent a lot of my life dimming my shine. Some of that has been a protective mechanism that I now realise was autism. But a lot of it has simply been because we were told over and over again that “nobody likes a show off” and that we should “know our place” and on and on and on.

Girls are bossy and boys are leaders.

Women are harlots or mothers, never a full human at all.

Did you ever wonder why it is this way? What lies have women all been told to keep us small and in constant competition with each other?

I did. And I discovered it’s verrrrry interesting. And it’s one hundred percent fixable.

How?

Through hard work (sorry) and changing the way we look at ourselves, each other, and the world.

We can decide that we’re done shrinking, and that palatable is not for us, as guided by Sophie Jane Lee in her beautiful book Beyond Palatable: A Manifesto for Unapologetic Women.

1. The Unravelling. Why does this matter, and how did we get here? What’s the history behind the constructed gender roles forced upon us and why do we act them out?
2. The Remembering. Who are we? What pieces of ourselves make up the whole, and how do we recognise ourselves and our behaviours?
3. The Reclamation. The art of boundaries, navigating other people, and the cycles of life. Building a framework for unapologetic living and stepping into the person we are meant to be.

This quote from the book stopped me in my tracks, because it made me realise just how much of the world we live in — how much capitalism — relies on us hating ourselves and wanting to change ourselves. We have power. So much power.

Wouldn’t it be incredible if we could harness it?

If this makes you sit up and want to change the damn world, read Beyond Palatable by Sophie Jane Lee. It’s out now from all good bookshops.

Sophie is one of the most driven, kind, and passionate people I know and she turned her message — that when we stop dimming ourselves to please others, we are unstoppable — into a mission. She lives that every day.

As soon as I met her, I jumped on board her train and it’s a wild ride! I knew her book would be something truly special, and it is.

We do not have to live down to the expectations placed on us. We are not in competition with each other. We can accomplish so much if we’re free to be who we really are.

Get Beyond Palatable from bookshop.org and Amazon and Waterstones, and request it from your local library.

I had the absolute honour and delight of being Sophie’s book coach and this project is something I’m incredibly proud of being involved with. Her work is important. This book is important.

Massive congratulations to Sophie and her publishing team at Luath Press.

This book is a delight to read: part memoir, part roar to action, part poetry, storytelling, and a sprinkling of journalling prompts. It will change the way you look at yourself and at the world, and it will push a whole generation of young women to break the cycle of shrinking we’ve been stuck in.

That’s really, really important because I don’t believe the state of the world is hopeless. I believe we can change its course. But only if we understand how we got here and what to do next.

Read the book, scribble notes in the margins, and apply it to yourself. I promise you will not regret it.

TTFN,

Vicky 🫡

p.s. Sophie and I worked together in my Book Breakthrough Lab, my 3-month 1-1 coaching programme. She wrote her first draft late in Autumn 2025 and it was with her publisher for editing by Winter. If you’d like to work with a pro to write your book just like Sophie did, I have one spot for my Book Breakthrough Lab starting this month. Reply if you’d like to talk about it.

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