The Man Diet: One Woman's Quest to End Bad Romance

by Zoe Strimpel

The single woman has never had it so good - or so you'd think. As Zoe Strimpel discovered, the reality can often be one of Junk Food Love. In other words: game playing, boozy late night hook-ups, Facebook stalking and general man-obsessing thoughts.

Determined to stop bingeing on bad romance, Zoe put herself on The Man Diet, creating ten no-nonsense rules to help her fellow single woman sort the wheat from the chaff - emotionally, sexually and romantically.

If you're single or someone who slides from one bad relationship to another, The Man Diet will show you how to develop a healthier approach and put you on the right track to happiness.

Genres: Nonfiction, Self Help

326 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Zoe Strimpel is a journalist, author of two indispensable dating books and a dating scholar. Having recently completed a MPhil at Cambridge in gender studies she is currently the Asa Briggs PhD scholar at Sussex, working on a thesis about the late 20th century history of dating.

Reviews

[Jo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Zoe is clearly an educated young woman (currently 29 years old I believe) who seems to have had many regrettable one night stands / NSA sex and dates that have not turned into long-lasting wholesome relationships as she would have hoped, and this has left her feeling empty as a result, feeling the need to put some "rules" into place to ensure she holds on to her dignity and makes healthier, choice decisions on who, when and where she sleeps with men. Ultimately Zoe has found an 18-25 year old market in which to capitalise from sharing her experiences.

However promiscuous in the past, she does appear to be cautious in having and promoting safe sex and while I do applaud her for her courage, openness and insight into her life and the subsequent lives of her "case study" friends, she comes across patronising when she admits that her previous actions and attitudes were largely used for gossip chat and stories to share amongst her girl friends on nights out, which in parallel were to aid her pursuit of a career in blogging and analysing men and the dating scene as a whole.

She also admits she was influenced by the character Samantha from Sex and the City in her early twenties - I think i've watched one maybe one and a half episodes of that American tosh programme and I recall thinking that Kim Catrall's character was indeed of a desperate middle aged hypersexually active loose cannon (to put it pleasantly), that cared little about dating men with a purpose for a relationship. This book is almost written in hindsight of Zoe's previous actions of following this crude, media-glamourised mentality, to face up to and control her own issues with social drinking and being caught up with "hook-up culture dating".
It seems to me the book comes across condescending, appropriate for women that lack in their own self conscioussness and an assumption that my own experiences would mirror her own, they do not.

I did cringe a few times and thought perhaps Zoe may come to regret writing the book because it could have a bearing on her future development in a relationship seeing as it is out there for the world to see, but when you realise it is written for young women who may be in the same boat that she once was, then perhaps she could make a difference to a small group of readers.

I am 31 years old and my experiences have lead me to believe that there is no definitive "rule book" way to act with all men, but I agree that as women we should be cautious in the realms of dating and what Zoe seems to say is if you put yourself in a situation then you must deal with the consequences (ie: the morning after the night before) and it is obvious that alcohol plays a part in many of her past regrettable sexual experiences.

My personal view is that this is definitely more of a personal therapy quest for the author because I expected more of a mature philosophical outlook, than a feminist rant to be honest. In the middle of the book I felt like I'd joined in one of her gossipy girl friend night outs, or that I was a 20 year old sleeping around college and needed guidance, than feeling like I had gained anything substantially useful for my own life, but as a fellow single woman, at times I could relate to some of what she was saying, but most of it was just plain old common sense written in an articulate way. I did not finish the book.

[Zoe_reading_queen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thought this would be funny and entertaining! How wrong. Rubbish don't waste your time. I couldn't bear to finish it.

[Ailsa · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pretty terrible I thought but it was really not my sort of book but I understand why some people find it useful!

[Bec · Rating 2 out of 5]

Probably would have been more relevant 10 years ago. It was good to confirm that reading was a good method of self care

[Julia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Miss Zoe has a biography that says, “Gender, relationships, dating, feminism and sexuality - past and present – are my main wheeze.” and I guess that’s true if you know she’s a hateful person. She doesn’t mean she supports it. She thinks if you’re fat you’ll never get the prince and you can’t be hot. She is who men wish feminism was since she shames women for being literally human.

Also, based off reviews from before this article, she couldn’t write then and she still can’t.

The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s apathy. I’ll never read your books, Zoe. And I hope I never read a word out of your mouth again. Your views are gross.

[User358(37 · Rating 1 out of 5]

This lady masquerades as an academic “pro-feminist” but in fact is quite opposite. She is a self loathing, out of touch bitter bag who wishes to spread her toxicity to others (read other reviews on here to confirm). Don’t waste your time reading.

[Amazingalligator2. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugly low quality woman, who had to resort to a tinder hook up to spread her ugly genes, larps a relationship expert. Basket case. Supports a genocidal fake state in the Middle East too.

[HallowedMarten · Rating 1 out of 5]

Broken basketcase of a woman.

[Lerato · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 rounded up

[Redfox5 · Rating 4 out of 5]

My sister mistakenly brought me this book as she thought it was chick-lit. Turns out it's a self help book for single ladies to stay off the man hunt. I've been in a happy relationship for 8 years but I hate letting books pass me by without being read so I thought I would give it ago.

Even though the advice is not really relevant to me, Zoe goes into depth about how society views women and how we view ourselves. And it's pretty depressing, we have this mind set that we must be married and have kids. Not that there is anything wrong with this, I want this! But it's the only way we are really seen as successful as women.

Even when women do really amazing things, they are still looked on as a failure if they haven't managed to 'bag' a man. They used Jennifer Aniston as an example in this book as someone who is analysed all the time by the media which was pretty good timing as she wrote this article the other day:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/f...

You tell em Jen!

I'm not really the kind of person this book is describing, I don't drink, I don't bother with makeup, I would never date someone I didn't already know, me and my friends do talk about other things. Though, I do enjoy a good story about a hookup gone wrong or right.

One thing in this book I should probably stop doing is 'Facebook Stalking'. And I don't mean stalking men, just people! I love a good Facebook stalk, there are people I have on my 'friends list' purely for the entertainment value, ie the drama on their Facebook page. Which is pretty terrible really. It's a waste of my time, even more of a waste is when I've clicked so much I'm looking at some randoms wedding pictures and I have to stop and think about what I am doing in my life!

However if you are this kind of person and regularly get involved in some of these destructive behaviors, this book should be pretty helpful.

Overall this book made me feel pretty glad I'm not single as it sounds like a confusing minefield that has changed beyond anything I knew as a teen, secondly it gave me great insight into society that I hadn't noticed before. And lastly it has a great feminist reading list in the back that I am going to check out.

[Kate Fitz-gibbon]

Definitely more appropriate for British ladies.. SA girls arent that easy I feel and I think we actually doing very well, go SA girls

[Claire Page · Rating 3 out of 5]

funny read ..... tongue in cheek

[Lushbug · Rating 3 out of 5]

A funny down to earth self help book for anyone on the dating scene in their their thirties. We have all Facebook stalked and it's never good for the soul!