Let’s get this straight: I am one of the Girl Power Generation. I was twelve years old when Spice Girl Fever hit the nation and quite clearly remember donning a pair of platform trainers and leaning out of car windows making the peace sign at passing cars. My wonderful mother actually was part of the Feminist movement of the 60s and marched around Naples waving banners. She must have wondered what the hell a Union Jack boob tube had to do with anything. But what does it mean to be a woman in a post-feminist world? Certainly not moustaches and bra burning: well, not unless you have a severe hormonal imbalance and not since Bravissimo began encasing women’s busts in the textile equivalent of Alcatraz. This is the question that Tania and Sarah try to answer in their manual, Backwards in Heels, which seeks to address all the conundrums that women face nowadays, from balancing a career with motherhood to learning how to cope with grief and the ups and downs of love. Do not be mistaken: this is not a self help book, but merely the collective wisdom of two women who are sharing their views on life.

I wonder at what age it is that a girl starts to become conscious of the maelstrom of opportunities and decisions that she faces. I was five year old when it happened to me. I came home from school and told my Dad I wanted to be a nurse.

‘Why do you want to be a nurse?’ he asked me.

‘Because girls are nurses and boys are doctors.’

My Dad found this profoundly upsetting and immediately asserted that I was capable of becoming whatever I wanted and especially, (he crossed his fingers here), a doctor.  As Tania and Sarah point out, the greatest achievement of feminism is that it has given women the right to choose how to live their lives. That means that, if we so desire, we can spend our lives hunting down lesser-known insect species in the Amazon with only a pet chaffinch for company. Equally, it also means that we can get married, become a house mum and bake cupcakes. Thankfully for the general populace medicine did not turn out to be the route I was to go down. To be honest, I am still trying to work out what route exactly I am meant to be going down. And I’m not alone on that one.

The book in itself is a thing of beauty and designed to be leafed through as and when you need someone else’s point of view. Hand bound, with illustrations interspersed throughout and a strip of silk to mark the page – it harks back to the How To manuals of the 1950s. The point of the High Heel of the title is that women’s achievements are always mitigated by a society that requires them to hold fast to their femininity. The high heel is the very epitome of the woman and, undoubtedly, the readers of Running in Heels are well versed in running the gauntlet of life encumbered by the added burden of having to live up to everything that being female means. But, occasionally, it is good to have someone remind you just how marvellous you are and give you a little encouraging prod if you are feeling down in the mouth. For those moments I suggest you go to page 150 of Backwards in High Heels and read about Hedy Lamarr, an American actress of the ‘40s who invented a system for guiding torpedoes that eventually led to the technology responsible for mobile phones and the internet. She herself had done a scene in a film called Ecstasy in 1933 where she ran through some woods in the all-together. The US Navy ignored her ideas and condescendingly suggested she contribute to the war effort by selling kisses to the WW2 troops for war bonds. So it just goes to show that you can be both a hussy and a genius and generally run your own show without being boxed in by stereotypes. Two words: Perspective and Pride.

Buy the book online here.