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“Nice is Just a Place in France” — Betches Love This Book Review

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Columbia Barnard chapter.

You know the feeling. Your econ professor is droning on, you’re still hungover (you knew that Friday class was a bad idea), and desperately need something to keep your eyes open. There’s only one solution: you click over to Betches Love This, and immediately start drowning out your professor’s voice with your own giggles (while making vague attempts to cover your mouth with your Starbucks cup) as you rapidly share articles on your friends’ Facebook walls.

Betches Love This (Betcheslovethis.com) has become the ultimate go-to site for many a college girl looking for endless entertainment and parody. The “Head Betches,” as the site’s anonymous creators call themselves, provide that specific type of OMG-that’s-too-true, laugh-out-loud humor that teen and twenty-something girls, including myself, just can’t get enough of. The Betches are somehow able to satirize and praise themselves simultaneously, and hilariously. Reading the site as a Collegiette is like being in an alternate, and much more fun, reality. It’s a place where your lifestyle of procrastinating, partying, and lying to yourself about your diet is fully understood, idolized, and at the same time compassionately mocked. Anything you’ve ever loved or hated (or loved and hated – Taylor Swift, I’m looking at you), every aspect of your 90’s childhood, and all the bro questions you’ve ever wondered about, are outlined in meticulous (and ironic) detail.
As if to answer the prayers of all the bored betches, the Betches are giving their readers even more of their humor in their upcoming book Nice is Just a Place in France: How to Win at Basically Everything. Don’t let the title fool you; this is definitely not a self-help book. As the Betches themselves explain in their introduction, this is a guide to life – a handbook for how to handle your problems when you have no problems.
 
With tongue-in-cheek ‘expert’ advice on everything from diets (hint: don’t eat) to partying (hint: get drunker), this tome covers everything in a college girl’s life. The chapters on ‘Sex’ and ‘The Game’ (dating) offer such insight as “the theorem” of  “not having sex with bros (sometimes),” and give us role models to look up to – like Anne Boleyn, who “got the guy to denounce the entire Catholic religion and risk eternal damnation” because he couldn’t get it in.
 
If you need direction in your post-grad life, don’t despair! The Betches have got you covered here too, with their almost painfully accurate and mirthful list of professions the average betch will take up depending on how much money she wants and how lazy she is.  
 
Whether you’re a die-hard betch or just found out about the site three minutes ago, this book is likely to become a fast favorite as long as you’re a living, breathing girl. The volume offers a perfect respite from studying- it’s beyond easy to read with its large font (they know betches don’t like doing work, or squinting), funny diagrams, and artfully timed quotes from historical betch figures. The best part? The workout you’ll get from laughing so hard. Treat yourself to a fro-yo when you finish — you earned it.    
 

 

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Alexandra Shapiro

Columbia Barnard

Alexandra is a Senior at Barnard majoring in American Studies. While she isn't planning the week's pitches for Her Campus Barnard, she can be found checking her horoscope, listening to college acapella videos, decorating her room with Paris-themed accessories, or trying to imitate Charlotte from Sex and the City. She also loves self-improvement, Indian food, the Kennedys, traveling, and laughing at her brother and sister's jokes. She is spending this semester interning in MTV's Marketing department.