Bad Feminist: Essays (37 page)

I am fully aware that most women are not focused on changing social norms for the next generation but simply trying to get through each day. Forty percent of employed mothers lack sick days and vacation leave, and about 50 percent of employed mothers are unable to take time off to care for a sick child. Only about half of women receive any pay during maternity leave. These policies can have severe consequences; families with no access to paid family leave often go into debt and can fall into poverty. Part-time jobs with fluctuating schedules offer little chance to plan and often stop short of the forty-hour week that provides basic benefits.

It would have been useful if Sandberg offered realistic advice about career management for women who are dealing with such circumstances. It would also be useful if we had flying cars. Assuming Sandberg’s advice is completely useless for working-class women is just as shortsighted as claiming her advice needs to be completely applicable to all women. And let’s be frank: if Sandberg chose to offer career advice for working-class women, a group she clearly knows little about, she would have been just as harshly criticized for overstepping her bounds.

The critical response to
Lean In
is not entirely misplaced, but it is emblematic of the dangers of public womanhood. Public women, and feminists in particular, have to be everything to everyone; when they aren’t, they are excoriated for their failure. In some ways, this is understandable. We have come far, but we have so much further to go. We need so very much, and we hope women with a significant platform might be everything we need—a desperately untenable position. As Elizabeth Spiers notes in
The Verge
,

When’s the last time someone picked up a Jack Welch (or Warren Buffett, or even Donald Trump) bestseller and complained that it was unsympathetic to working class men who had to work multiple jobs to support their families? . . . And who reads a book by Jack Welch and defensively feels that they’re being told that they have to adopt Jack Welch’s lifestyle and professional choices or they are lesser human beings?

Lean In
cannot and should not be read as a definitive text, or a book offering universally applicable advice to all women, everywhere. Sandberg is confident and aggressive in her advice, but the reader is under no obligation to do everything she says. Perhaps we can consider
Lean In
for what it is—just one more reminder that the rules are always different for girls, no matter who they are and no matter what they do.

I am failing as a woman. I am failing as a feminist. To freely accept the feminist label would not be fair to good feminists. If I am, indeed, a feminist, I am a rather bad one. I am a mess of contradictions. There are many ways in which I am doing feminism wrong, at least according to the way my perceptions of feminism have been warped by being a woman.

I want to be independent, but I want to be taken care of and have someone to come home to. I have a job I’m pretty good at. I am in charge of things. I am on committees. People respect me and take my counsel. I want to be strong and professional, but I resent how hard I have to work to be taken seriously, to receive a fraction of the consideration I might otherwise receive. Sometimes I feel an overwhelming need to cry at work, so I close my office door and lose it.

I want to be in charge and respected and in control, but I want to surrender, completely, in certain aspects of my life. Who wants to grow up?

When I drive to work, I listen to thuggish rap at a very loud volume even though the lyrics are degrading to women and offend me to my core. The classic Ying Yang Twins song “Salt Shaker”? It’s amazing. “Bitch you gotta shake it till your camel starts to hurt.”

Poetry.

(I am mortified by my music choices.)

I care what people think.

Pink is my favorite color. I used to say my favorite color was black to be
cool
, but it is pink—all shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink. I read
Vogue
, and I’m not doing it ironically, though it might seem that way. I once live-tweeted the September issue. I demonstrate little outward evidence of this, but I have a very indulgent fantasy where I have a closet full of pretty shoes and purses and matching outfits. I love dresses. For years I pretended I hated them, but I don’t. Maxi dresses are one of the finest clothing items to become popular in recent memory. I have opinions on maxi dresses! I shave my legs! Again, this mortifies me. If I take issue with the unrealistic standards of beauty women are held to, I shouldn’t have a secret fondness for fashion and smooth calves, right?

I know nothing about cars. When I take my car to the mechanic, they are speaking a foreign language. A mechanic asks what’s wrong with my car, and I stutter things like, “Well, there’s a sound I try to drown out with my radio.” The windshield wiper fluid for the rear window of my car no longer sprays the window. It just sprays the air. I don’t know how to deal with this. It feels like an expensive problem. I still call my father with questions about cars and am not terribly interested in changing any of my car-related ignorance. I don’t want to be good at cars. Good feminists, I assume, are independent enough to address vehicular crises on their own; they are independent enough to care.

Despite what people think based on my opinion writing, I very much like men. They’re interesting to me, and I mostly wish they would be better about how they treat women so I wouldn’t have to call them out so often. And still, I put up with nonsense from unsuitable men even though I
know better
and can do better. I love diamonds and the excess of weddings. I consider certain domestic tasks as gendered, mostly all in my favor as I don’t care for chores—lawn care, bug killing, and trash removal, for example, are men’s work.

Sometimes, a lot of the time honestly, I totally fake “it” because it’s easier. I am a fan of orgasms, but they take time, and in many instances I don’t want to spend that time. All too often I don’t really like the guy enough to explain the calculus of my desire. Then I feel guilty because the sisterhood would not approve. I’m not even sure what the sisterhood is, but the idea of a sisterhood menaces me, quietly, reminding me of how bad a feminist I am. Good feminists don’t fear the sisterhood because they know they are comporting themselves in sisterhood-approved ways.

I love babies, and I want to have one. I am willing to make certain compromises (not sacrifices) in order to do so—namely maternity leave and slowing down at work to spend more time with my child, writing less so I can be more present in my life. I worry about dying alone, unmarried and childless, because I spent so much time pursuing my career and accumulating degrees. This kind of thinking keeps me up at night, but I pretend it doesn’t because I am supposed to be evolved. My success, such as it is, is supposed to be enough if I’m a good feminist. It is not enough. It is not even close.

Because I have so many deeply held opinions about gender equality, I feel a lot of pressure to live up to certain ideals. I am supposed to be a good feminist who is having it all, doing it all. Really, though, I’m a woman in her thirties struggling to accept herself and her credit score. For so long I told myself I was not this woman—utterly human and flawed. I worked overtime to be anything but this woman, and it was exhausting and unsustainable and even harder than simply embracing who I am.

Maybe I’m a bad feminist, but I am deeply committed to the issues important to the feminist movement. I have strong opinions about misogyny, institutional sexism that consistently places women at a disadvantage, the inequity in pay, the cult of beauty and thinness, the repeated attacks on reproductive freedom, violence against women, and on and on. I am as committed to fighting fiercely for equality as I am committed to disrupting the notion that there is an essential feminism.

I’m the kind of feminist who is appalled by the phrase “legitimate rape” and by political candidates such as Missouri’s Todd Akin, who in an interview reaffirmed his commitment to opposing abortion, almost unilaterally. He said, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something: I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child,” drawing from pseudoscience and a lax cultural attitude toward rape.

Being a feminist, however, even a bad one, has also taught me that the need for feminism and advocacy also applies to seemingly less serious issues like a Top 40 song or a comedian’s puerile humor. The existence of these lesser artifacts of our popular culture is made possible by the far graver issues we are facing. The ground has long been softened.

At some point, I got it into my head that a feminist was a certain kind of woman. I bought into grossly inaccurate myths about who feminists are—militant, perfect in their politics and person, man-hating, humorless. I bought into these myths even though, intellectually, I
know
better. I’m not proud of this. I don’t want to buy into these myths anymore. I don’t want to cavalierly disavow feminism like far too many other women have done.

Bad feminism seems like the only way I can both embrace myself as a feminist and be myself, and so I write. I chatter away on Twitter about everything that makes me angry and all the small things that bring me joy. I write blog posts about the meals I cook as I try to take better care of myself, and with each new entry, I realize that I’m undestroying myself after years of allowing myself to stay damaged. The more I write, the more I put myself out into the world as a bad feminist but, I hope, a good woman—I am being open about who I am and who I was and where I have faltered and who I would like to become.

No matter what issues I have with feminism, I am a feminist. I cannot and will not deny the importance and absolute necessity of feminism. Like most people, I’m full of contradictions, but I also don’t want to be treated like shit for being a woman.

I am a bad feminist. I would rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all.

Versions of these essays have appeared in
The Rumpus
, the
American Prospect
,
Virginia Quarterly Review
,
Ninth Letter
,
Frequencies
,
Bookslut
,
Jezebel
,
Iron Horse Literary Review
, the
Los Angeles Review
,
BuzzFeed
, and
Salon
. I am grateful to the editors of these publications for giving my work a home.

My agent, Maria Massie, is the greatest champion a writer can have. Cal Morgan and Maya Ziv are wonderful editors, and Cal, in particular, was so persistent in making a space for me at Harper. You know you’ve found the right people when your editor understands your love of
Beverly Hills 90210
. Maya and I are BFFs now. I also want to thank Mary Beth Constant for her witty, instructional care with my words. A great deal of this book was written to the sound track of
Law & Order: SVU
. I’m not sure what that says about me but I must give credit where credit is due. At
Salon
, Dave Daley and Anna North have been so welcoming of my work and made a lot of exciting opportunities possible. Isaac Fitzgerald and Julie Greicius edited my writing at
The Rumpus
, and I will always trust my writing in their intelligent, compassionate hands. Stephen Elliott was the first person to open the door to my nonfiction at
The Rumpus
, and it has been a pleasure working with him. Thanks also to Michelle Dean, Jami Attenberg, Cathy Chung, and Tracy Gonzalez. One of my brothers wants me to include a line from Bane in
Dark Knight Rises
in my acknowledgments, so, “You think darkness is your ally. You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it. Molded by it.” I’m hoping my parents don’t read this book, but they are beloved and have made all things possible. I am lucky.

ROXANE GAY
is the author of the novel
An Untamed State
and the story collection
Ayiti
. Her work has also appeared in
Glamour
,
Best American Short Stories,
and the
New York Times Book Review
.

Visit
www.AuthorTracker.com
for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

“A strikingly fresh cultural critic.”

—Ron Charles,
Washington Post

“There are writers who show you the excellence of their brains and writers who show you the depths of their souls: I don’t know any writer who does both at the same time as brilliantly as Roxane Gay.
Bad Feminist
shows this extraordinary writer’s range—in essays about Scrabble, violence, fairy tales, race, longing, and
The Hunger Games
, Roxane Gay is alternately hilarious, full of righteous anger, confiding, moving.
Bad Feminist
is like staying up agreeing and arguing with the smartest person you’ve ever met. Stop reading this blurb. Start reading this book.”

—Elizabeth McCracken, author of
Thunderstruck & Other Stories

“Alternately friendly and provocative, wry and serious, her takes on everything from
Girls
to
Fifty Shades of Grey
help to recontextualize what feminism is—and what it can be.”

—
Time Out
(New York)

“She had me at
Sweet Valley High
. Gay playfully crosses the borders between pop-culture consumer and critic, between serious academic and lighthearted sister-girl, between despair and optimism, between good and bad. Gay gives us permission to take up the sword of feminism while laying down the shield of policed authenticity. As a result, we complete this book both more powerful and more vulnerable, just like Gay herself. How can you help but love her?”

—Melissa Harris-Perry, Wake Forest University professor and MSNBC host

“As
Bad Feminist
proves, Gay is a necessary and brave voice when it comes to figuring out all the crazy mixed messages in our mixed-up world.”