Bad Feminist by
Roxane Gay
My rating:
4 of 5 stars
A great book of essays that focus on not just feminist issues, but also those of race and privilege. As Gay writes, the term "feminist" seems to carry a lot of pressure, and it can be uncomfortable to assume. Accept the idea that no one is perfect, we are human and messy, and you can't expect your feminism to be perfect, either. You just need to try and do whatever you can to effect the change you want to see in the world. I'm trying to be better and do better, and part of that is educating myself by reading books written by smart, intelligent women of color.
I enjoyed hearing the details of Gay's life and experiences - both what it's like to be a black, female college professor in the middle of nowhere, and how one ends up a desperate, loneliness-induced competitive scrabble player. (Who knew there were so many fragile egos in the Scrabble community?) Her reaction to the angry Scrabble-playing man (hold as still as possible and hope the situation diffuses) is so real and true. How many times in your life have you held your breath and hoped nothing happened, because you didn't know how a volatile person was going to react? By the way, if you are doing that regularly, that is not a healthy relationship.
Perhaps my favorite essay was the one entitled "How to Be Friends With Another Woman." These are the BEST guidelines. "Abandon the cultural myth that all female friendships must be bitchy, toxic, or competitive." They might be sometimes, but these are not defining characteristics of female friendships. "If you feel like it's hard to be friends with women, consider that maybe women aren't the problem. Maybe it's just you." If you are writing off female friendships because you don't want drama in your life, then you are missing out! Not all friendships have drama, and your life is not the plot of a TV show or book. I loved this particular advice, and I'm happy and lucky to say, I have friends like this: "Surround yourself with women you can get sloppy drunk with who won't draw stupid things on your face if you pass out, and who will help you puke if you over celebrate, and who will also tell you if you get sloppy drunk too much, or behave badly when you are sloppy drunk." <3 my BFFs.
A good chunk of these essays are about specific pieces of media and their place in our culture as a whole: how they shape the way we see things like gender, sexuality, and race; what they say about their creators; and what things they got "right" or "wrong." What sort of unfair standards are TV shows like "Girls" being subjected to, simply because they are created by and starring women? Yes, it's a show that (supposedly: I've never seen it) expresses just one point of view on girlhood, and ignores issues like race, but SO many shows and moves are the same. Communities are insular, and we all have a tendency to write what we know and watch what we know. Maybe "Girls" is held to higher standard because it was labeled as "groundbreaking," but you can't discount the fact that women are being judged more harshly. The same is true for recent books written by female CEOs: critics say that their advice isn't applicable to the working class woman, struggling to make ends meet. But on the flip side, you don't see people complaining that business and like books written by male CEOs are applicable to the working class man.
I loved the essay on Sweet Valley High. Like Gay, I was a kid with my head in books, and those characters were my friends, regardless of our commonalities (or lack there of). I did read Sweet Valley High, and Sweet Valley Twins, and Sweet Valley University, and the more recent Sweet Valley Confidential, but my true jam when I was a kid was the Babysitters Club. My habits were similar to Gay's - I lived for new books in the series, and would run into Waldenbooks at the mall, hoping for a new one, especially if it was a Super Special. My life was a constant internal debate - am I a Kristy? A Mary Ann? I knew I wasn't cool enough to be a Stacey, or chill enough to be a Dawn, or quirky enough to be a Claudia, so those were my main options, and I had to fit somewhere, right? "Books are often far more than just books." Some stories are universal - a girl is a girl, wherever she grew up. By the way, Gay's analysis of Sweet Valley Confidential was SPOT ON. It is terrible - "the exquisite badness," Gay calls it - but it will at least entertain you if you loved that series.
I've created quite a list of books I want to read based on Gay's essays (and some I absolutely don't). At the top of my list is the duo of "Green Girl" by Kate Zambreno and "Play It As It Lays" by Joan Didion, to analyze the journey a woman in of the cult of beauty and the idea of gender as a performance. I also have on my list "Heroines" also by Kate Zambreno.
Next up is a series of books featuring unlikeable women. Characters need to have flaws to be more human and more interesting, but for some reason, unlikeability isn't tolerated in female characters as it is in male. Readers tend to think, "I would never be friends with this woman," but is that the point of the book? Unlikeable women "aren't pretending; they can't and won't pretend to be someone they're not. They accept the consequences of their actions, and those consequences become stories worth reading." Of the books Gay mentions in this segment, the only one I've read so far is "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn, and the rest are new to me: "Treasure Island!!!" by Sara Levine; "You Take It From Here" by Pamela Ribon; "Dare Me" by Megan Abbott; "Magnificence" by Lydia Millet; "Battleborn" by Claire Vaye Watkins; "The Woman Upstairs" by Claire Messed. Interestingly enough, these are all by female authors.
The genre "Women's Fiction" itself is sexist - non-genre fiction written by men is simply called "Literary Fiction." The genres are indication of a bigger problem in the literary world and in our culture as a whole: women will read books by and about men, but men won't read books about women. When did men become the measure? When did "women" become a slur? We can't make male readership become the goal. Female writers who try to distance them self from the term "women's fiction" are as bad as women who rejoice when a man declares she's "not like other girls," whatever that means. This needs to be the focus: "How men as readers, critics, and editors can start to bear the responsibility for becoming better, broader readers."
The hardest essay to read was Gay's rape story. It's so horrific, and so sad, and makes me want to punch things. Those f-ing boys. Those f-ing classmates of hers, calling her a slut. There are people out there that say young adult books shouldn't be violent or dark or upsetting, but teens need dark books because they go through dark things in their lives. As Gay mentions, some of them might one day be the girl in the woods, and they will need a book there to let them know that they're not alone and that what happens of them was not OK. Tying in the Hunger Games, yes these kids in those books go through horrific things, but sometimes that is what happens in real life. In a way, things could've been worse: there's very little sex in the Hunger Games books, and can you imagine if some of that sort of injustice was taking place in District 12? Oddly, it's only in the capital that we get wind that there might be abuse and assault going on,from Finnick, former District 4 champion. "It gets better" has become popular cry of encouragement, but you can't say it gets better without demonstrating what it takes to get better.
The other essay that made me angry was the one about rape humor. Not all jokes are created equal - you can go too far, too soon. I don't know much about Daniel Tosh or his show, Tosh.0, but encouraging men to take and post videos of themselves touching women softly on their stomach is so intrusive and offensive, I'm not even sure how it could be considered humor. If it is, it can only be Frattish humor, rape humor, misogynist humor. Rape humor reminds women they are not quite equal. Women are called "sensitive" or "feminist" (in a bad way). Yes, humor is subjective, but is it THAT subjective? Rape jokes are never funny. "We are free to speak as we choose without fear of prosecution or persecution, but we are not free to speak as we choose without consequence." As Gay says about men like Daniel Tosh, "They have conscience. Sometimes saying what others are afraid or unwilling to say is just being an asshole." It's definitely hard to stand up and speak up when you hear something you're not comfortable with, but it's something we absolutely need to learn to do. "We remain silent because silence is easier...When we say nothing, when we do nothing, we are consenting to these trespasses against us." Men want what they want, and our society caters to them. "It's hard to be told to lighten up, because if you lighten up any more, you're going to float the fuck away." It becomes a case of trickle-down misogyny.
Another essay is an analysis of fairy tales, and how women are forced to do all the work to obtain their happily ever after, in which they sometimes still aren't the center of their own stories. See also Twilight and 50 Shades of Gray: "Ana's sexual awakening is a convenient vehicle for the awakening of Christian's humanity."
A set of further essays examines several popular books and movies ostensibly showcasing the black experience, with various degrees of success. There's the best seller and blockbuster "The Help", which I remember liking it, but I also don't know better. I actually just went back and changed my review on Goodreads, and I'm a little embarrassed I connected with it so much in the first place. More evidence that I need to read more books by POC to expand my perspective and get out of my privilege. There's Django Unchained - "not about a Black man reclaiming his freedom, but about a white man working through his own racial demons and white guilt." I'm not a fan of Tarantino myself, and Gay gives me a reason now. The more things change, the more things stay the same. In addition to these, Gay discusses 12 Years a Slave, a slew of Tyler Perry movies, Fruitvale Station, Red Tails, and Orange is the New Black.
Overall, I really enjoyed this series of essays. I know that I am a feminist, but I also feel better about saying that out loud, because I'm trying to be lenient to myself and others and let go of my perfectionist nature. I can like what I like, even if it is expected of me as a woman, or normative or silly, and that's ok. I can be a feminist without being the best feminist. I don't even have to be a good one. But I'm trying, and I hope that counts for something. I'll keep listening and learning.
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