With the gleeful, viperish wit of Dorothy Parker (Slate), Kipnis offers a fresh and provocative assessment of the female condition in the post-post-feminist world of the twenty-first century. For every advance towards sexual equality on the part of women in recent years, she argues, some new impediment just seems to appear. Ironically, feminism has run up against an unanticipated opponent: the inner woman.

The Female Thing brims with bracing, funny social observations informed by psychological acuity. For all the upbeat 'You go, girl' slogans, women remain caught between feminism and femininity, between self-affirmation and an endless quest for self-improvement, between playing the injured party and claiming independence.

As audacious as it is historically and socially grounded, The Female Thing explores age-old quandaries: the war between the sexes, what women really want, and to what extent anatomy is destiny after all.