I dove into Stay Sexy and Don’t Get Murdered: The Definitive How-To Guide with very little expectation and, honestly, not too much knowledge about the book, the authors, or their podcast, My Favourite Murder. I wanted to enter blind without any previous insights or opinion, I think on the brave idea that maybe I would pull a lot of good impactful advice from this humour-based self-help book. 

Self-help or advice books are a genre I tend to stay away from. I find it especially difficult to get behind books in this genre that specifically aim or cater towards women, knowing that most of the advice our society gives to women is usually a harmful perpetuation of expectations. Stay Sexy and Don’t Get Murdered felt different though, namely because its authors, Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark,  promised to “recount their biggest mistakes and deepest fears” and “discuss meaningful cultural and societal issues with fierce empathy and unapologetic frankness.” Sounds promising, right? 

The stories and advice recounted in Stay Sexy and Don’t Get Murdered fall flat of this outlined promise. 

The memoir opens with a chapter on what it means to “fuck politeness.” Kilgariff and Hardstark address the way that women and girls are taught to be polite in the face of unwelcome advances and attitude. They warn against the typical response to being cat called — smiling, saying thank-you, or just putting your head down and walking away. Instead, Kilgariff and Hardstark’s solution to situations like this is to throw politeness out the window and call this behaviour out, be honest with how you feel. 

There is very little acknowledgement of how privileged it is to be able to let go of politeness like that, to be able to throw your anger in the face of the person you’ve been taught to be polite to. How does that affect your safety? What are the consequences? Who is really able to say “fuck politeness” and who has to deal with the shame of continuing to be polite because their safety relies on it? There was an opportunity here for the authors to take this further, to talk about how lucky they have been to put this into practice and still be safe. To talk about how this expectation of politeness is heavier on some more than others. This wasn’t the case. 

In another chapter, the two speak about friendship. Friendships centred around female love can be some of the purest, most rewarding relationships. It is a constant opportunity to find solace, grow, and love yourself and others more. Kilgariff and Hardstark are best friends, and so I know that they know this – at least I hope they do. But what they may know  is incongruent with the advice they share about solidifying and keeping these friendships healthy. 

Their advice is a long-winded, beat-around-the-bush way to basically say shut up, don’t talk about yourself, and have adult conversations. They write: “If you spend ten minutes complaining about your child’s new preschool teacher to your single, childless friend, their interest will wane after thirty-five seconds. Resentment starts at two minutes, and it only gets uglier from there.” 

The idea that you shouldn’t share the difficult aspects of your life with your friends, even if they can’t relate, is a really sad piece of advice. Kilgraff and Hardstark urge readers to take these negative parts of their life to therapists, and while I do agree that friends aren’t therapists, therapy is a really expensive resource to use when your co-worker is frustrating you. 

Writing a book mainly for women and telling them to treat their female friendships like an academic Socratic seminar is only causing harm to relationships. 

Kilgariff and Hardstark’s advice is deeply rooted in blaming women for the way society impacts them. Telling women to stop being polite rather than addressing the socialized causes of this ignores the consequences at play if they stop being polite. Telling women they’re only being a good friend if they have intellectual, stimulating conversation the fact that “gossip” behaviours are only ever negatively tied to female friendships. They are shaming women for doing what they can – and it completely erases any good messages their memoir might have. 

Because not all of their advice is bad. Some of it is  advice that I truly believe people need to hear, especially women – believe your life can be more, don’t fear intimacy, embrace independence – but it is so outweighed by the condescension throughout the book. Why should women listen to this advice when they’ve been ridiculed and made to feel badly about themselves? 

It’s important to note that I am not in the business of trying to tear down the success of Kilgariff and Hardstark. They’ve made an incredibly popular name for themselves with their podcast and worked off the success of that for this memoir. They must have done something right to develop a loyal fanbase and to dig themselves out of the struggles with disordered eating and mental illness that they recount in this book. 

Except, in the end, we have to go back to the promises made in the synopsis, namely their commitment to “fierce empathy and unapologetic frankness.” The frankness is definitely there, though I’d argue it’s more harsh than honest, but the memoir is deeply lacking empathy. Kilgariff and Hardstarkhave quite a bit of empathy for their younger selves, but this doesn’t seem to translate to readers. And so, truly, all they are doing in this book is providing women and girls with advice that fails to meet the mark of support. If you are telling us how to change, why aren’t you guiding us through that with kindness? 

Kilgariff and Hardstark end the memoir by saying they love when their podcast readers educate them and help them grow. What this means, and what their dedication to advice says, is that they understand growth is a continual process. Despite everything, I do think this book shows that. What Kilgariff and Hardstark fail to understand is that improving yourself in a healthy way never begins with shame. It begins with real empathy – for yourself, for others, and for your future self.