Wellness is oppressive, self-love is a trap, hustling is a health risk and it's all the patriarchy's fault.
'Incredible insight with a transgressive, witty, spirit.' COURTNEY LOVE
'The most sensational read of 2022!' GEMMA COLLINS
'A breath of fresh air... I want so many people to read this!' TRAVIS ALABANZA
'Visionary' VIV ALBERTINE
A STYLIST MUST-READ FOR 2022
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, she came to grips with spending twenty hours a day in bed.
Watching identity politics become social media fodder, from the confines of her sickbed Ione 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— an unacceptable woman in our current era of empowerment.
Press includes: Rolling Stone, The Guardian, Vice, Refinery29, The i Newspaper, Stylist, Dazed, AnOther, and more.
A clear-sighted, critically needed skewering of hustle culture, wellness and modern feminism's blind spots, Ione pulls no punches in Poor Little Sick Girls. Everyone - and I mean everyone - should read this book. — Yomi Adegoke
A thrilling exploration of the relationships between bodies, abstract forces like language and stereotypes, and the material conditions that shape young adults' lives. Ione Gamble's incisive analysis of the last 15 years of social media, pop culture, and online feminism both illuminate the sources of present-day challenges and model a more liberatory way forward. By tracing the pieces of her self to facets of her environment, she demonstrates how much of a responsibility we have to one another - and that, for all the cynical powers that make our world, we also have the power to remake ourselves. — Tavi Gevinson
Where so much online is generic and conformist, Ione Gamble's aesthetic and vision is anything but. A style icon and writer who seamlessly blends the esoteric and the obscure with popular culture as well as a commitment to many forms of social justice, her forthcoming book Poor Little Sick Girls is bound to be a treat! —Emma Dabiri
One of the sharpest, wittiest and most incisive thinkers of her generation. I always want to hear Ione's perspective on feminism, culture, and art - or just about anything — Sirin Kale
