Poor Little Sick Girls: A love letter to unacceptable women

A STYLIST MUST-READ FOR 2022

Wellness is oppressive, self-love is a trap, hustling is a health risk, and it's all the patriarchy's fault. Poor Little Sick Girls is THE book for femmes who are online and want more from activism and life.

Ione Gamble never imagined that entering adulthood would mean hospital trips, medication choices, and throwing up in public. Diagnosed with an incurable illness two weeks after her nineteenth birthday, as the world became obsessed with Girlboss feminism, Ione came to grips with spending 20 hours a day in bed.

Watching identity politics become social media fodder, from the confines of her sickbed she began to pick apart our obsession with self-care, personal branding, productivity, and #LivingYourBestLife.

Using her experience with disability to cast a fresh gaze on the particularly peculiar cultural moment in which young women find themselves, Poor Little Sick Girls explores the pressures faced - as well as the power of existing as - a chronically ill, overweight, and unacceptable woman in our current era of empowerment.

Founder of Polyester zine and a host of The Polyester Podcast, Ione has been named one of fifteen coolest young Londoners by The Evening Standard, and a 2019 New Debutante in Tatler Magazine. If you love Trick Mirror, Feminists Don't Wear Pink and Hood Feminism, you don't want to miss this book.

Everyone loves Ione Gamble:
'Punchy, political and unashamedly feminist, Polyester is the magazine for girls who know their own mind, and it's run by one too.' i-D

'London's feminist zine scene is thriving and in the middle of it all is Gamble.' Evening Standard