The Badass Girl’s Guide

The Badass Girl’s Guide: Uncommon Strategies To Outwit Predators by CJ Scarlet is an excellent book on personal safety and self-defense aimed at young women, but good for women of all ages and men too. Men? Yes. Even though I’m not in the target audience for this book, I enjoyed it and found it useful for several reasons. One, I teach safety and self-defense to both men and women, young and old, so I like to study everything on the topic. Two, I wanted a book to recommend my daughter read and that I can recommend to other women looking for a book more specific to them.

This book contains an introduction and fifteen easily digestible chapters. Its filled with practical strategies and advice on staying safe and what to do if a predator tries to choose you as a target. The lessons are supported by stories of actual assaults.

This is not a book of “self-defense techniques.” In fact, there are no photos and the chapter on fighting back only contains some general guidelines on how to fight back. The author does encourage readers to get further training and practice in this area.

While some of the lessons are things I’ve seen in other books such as awareness, trusting intuition, how to fail the predator interview, and attacking back and never going to the secondary crime scene; the chapters on modern day slavery, being victimized, collecting evidence, navigating the criminal justice process, and life in the aftermath were more unique and areas that are very important.

The author, a rape survivor herself, provides enough information to help readers, without going too in-depth into topics that many people rather avoid. Besides having lived it, Scarlet’s time with the Marine Corps and her education provide additional background and education to write on this subject. It’s definitely a book I want my daughter to read. (Sometimes we can get through to our kids better by giving them something from someone else…)

There are a lot of books on woman’s safety and self-defense. This one deserves a spot on the short list, and I recommend The Badass Girl’s Guide to anyone who wants to know more about staying safe from the predators out there that want to prey on uneducated and untrained women and girls.

Badass Girl’s Guide on Amazon: