Caitlin Moran on How to Be a Woman: ‘It was a thrill to rifle through the box marked TABOOS’

Handbags, lap dancing, Botox, comfort food ... the columnist recalls how she only had five months to write the feminist bestseller about everything

It was 2010, the end of a decade that was astonishingly poisonous for women. All the visuals were brutal: Amy Winehouse, bleeding, being chased by paps; Britney Spears's loss of virginity and her breakdown, being chatshow jokes; the Charlotte Church Countdown Clock" to her 16th birthday, when she would become legally fuckable.

I rang my editor at the Times, and said I wanted to do a thinkpiece on how, in this current awful climate, one could try to be a modern feminist. Was there a way feminism could become popular again? I'm not feminist, but ..." was a common catchphrase, back then, when women tried to talk about inequality, but didn't want to get dirty feminism all over their shoes.