SHORTLISTED FOR THE NERO PRIZE 2023'A book that could not be more necessary' Observer'Eloquent
clever and devastating' The Times'Deftly illustrates how ageist misogyny remains an acceptable
prejudice' GuardianWhat is about women in middle-age and beyond that seems to enrage - almost
everyone?In the last few years as identity politics has taken hold middle-aged women have
found themselves talked and written about as morally inferior beings the face of bigotry
entitlement and selfishness to be ignored pitied or abused.Hags asks the question why these
women are treated with such active disdain. Each chapter takes a different theme - care work
beauty violence political organization sex - and explores it in relation to middle-aged
women's beliefs bodies and choices. Victoria Smith traces the attitudes she describes back to
the same anxieties about older women that drove Early Modern witch hunts and explores the very
specific reasons why this type of misogyny is so powerful today. The demonisation of hags has
never felt more now.Victoria Smith has decided in this book that she will be the Karen so
nobody else has to be and she ends on a positive note exploring potential solutions which can
benefit all women hags and hags-in-waiting.
