I am honored to receive such a great review for Unleash the Girls from Kirkus!
A memoir offers the origin story of the sports bra.
In this book detailing her history of inventing the sports bra in 1977, Lindahl is quick to point out that back in the ’70s when she was in her late 20s, she was nobody’s idea of an entrepreneur. She was an aspiring artist, selling her work at craft fairs. She took a filing job at the University of Vermont and noticed herself putting on unwanted weight. Fortunately, this was the ’70s, the era of both the women’s liberation movement and the nationwide jogging craze, so the solution to a weight problem was right at hand. “It’s at this unique intersection between feminism and athleticism that my entrepreneurial story began,” she writes. Once she got consumed by her jogging habit, she soon realized that “running was so easy and so difficult at the same time”—in part due to simple issues of discomfort. Her sister, also a running fan, plaintively asked her at one point: “Why isn’t there a jockstrap for women?” Lindahl consulted a friend with sewing expertise, and through a series of hilarious trials and errors (and uncomfortable prototypes) that she relates with polished ease, the “jock bra” was slowly born. What follows in the author’s narrative is as much an inspiring business memoir as it is an absorbing chronicle of a surprisingly significant piece of sports clothing. Lindahl had to learn every aspect of staking out her own brand. Through it all, she had one simple motto: “Persevere.” And thanks to the author’s storytelling skill (and wise decision to render remembered conversations as actual dialogue, a tactic more memoirs should adopt), readers will be rooting for her right from the start.
An engrossing account of the entrepreneur—and the bra—that changed women’s sports.
–Kirkus Reviews