Bad feminist Essays

Roxane Gay

Book - 2014

A collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched young cultural observers of her generation, Roxane Gay. "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." In these funny and insightful essays, Roxane Gay takes us through the journey of her evolution as a woman (Sweet Valley High) of color (The Help) while also taking readers on a ride through culture of the last few years (Girls, Django in Chains) and commenting on the state of feminism today (abortion..., Chris Brown). The portrait that emerges is not only one of an incredibly insightful woman continually growing to understand herself and our society, but also one of our culture. Bad Feminist is a sharp, funny, and spot-on look at the ways in which the culture we consume becomes who we are, and an inspiring call-to-arms of all the ways we still need to do better.

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Subjects
Published
New York, NY : Harper Perennial [2014]
©2014
Language
English
Main Author
Roxane Gay (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
xiv, 320 pages ; 21 cm
ISBN
9780062282712
  • Introduction. Feminism (n.): Plural
  • Me. Feel me, see me, hear me, reach me ; Peculiar benefits ; Typical first year professor ; To scratch, claw or grope clumsily or frantically
  • Gender & sexuality/ How to be friends with another woman ; Girls, girls, girls ; I once was Miss America ; Garish, glorious spectacles ; Not here to make friends ; How we all lose ; Reaching for catharsis : getting fat right (or wrong) and Diana Spechler's "Skinny" ; The smooth surfaces of idyll ; The careless language of sexual violence ; What we hunger for ; The illusion of safety/the safety of illusion ; The spectacle of broken men ; A tale of three coming out stories ; Beyond the measure of men ; Some jokes are funnier than others ; Dear young ladies who love Chris Brown ; So much they would let him beat them ; Blurred lines, indeed ; The trouble with Prince Charming, or, He who trespassed against us
  • Race & entertainment. The solace of preparing fried foods and other quaint remembrances from 1960s Mississippi : thoughts on "The help" ; Surviving "Django" ; Beyond the struggle narrative ; The morality of Tyler Perry ; The last day of a young black man ; When less is more
  • Politics, gender & race. The politics of respectability ; When Twitter does what journalism cannot ; The alienable rights of women ; Holding out for a hero ; A tale of two profiles ; The racism we all carry ; Tragedy, call, compassion, response
  • Back to me. Bad feminist : take one ; Bad feminist : take two.
Review by New York Times Review

IF THERE IS a cipher to "The Fame Lunches," Daphne Merkin's first essay collection in over 15 years, it is embedded in her profile of the poet Anne Carson, who writes: A wound gives off its own light surgeons say. If all the lamps in the house were turned out you could dress this wound by what shines from it. Merkin's 46 essays share a similar curiosity about the glittering byproducts of personal pain. The conspicuous suffering that runs through the book belongs to actresses, to novelists, to musicians and to the author herself. Like Joan Didion, whose most famous essays are impossible to imagine appearing in any contemporary publication, Merkin often deals in inscrutable genres. She has a particularly keen ability to abridge other people's lives, and some of her best writing appears in what are ostensibly book reviews of biographies. Merkin writes from that chic state of mind she calls "cultural egalitarianism." Her celebrity subjects range from the "wholesome and aboveboard" Marilyn Monroe to the novelist Jean Rhys, whom she describes as forever "doomed to be overwhelmed by first impressions." Though Merkin is susceptible to "the florid jargon of shrinks" and has an oddly archaic desire to spin coherent narratives from psychoanalytic conjecture, her investigations into the inner lives of icons are conducted with genuine and earnest attention. It can sometimes seem as if the global supply of candor has run dry, all the world's dirty laundry already aired. But in a book brimming with insight ("Children are inherently conservative") and impeccably precise description (Susan Sontag's writing has a "crisp and haughty 'are you with me, you morons' manner"), Merkin's most striking trait is her fearlessness with regard to her own denial and rationalization, especially on the subjects of weight and finances. If there is anything truly shameful left in this world it is self-deception, and Merkin deserves laurels for the willingness she shows in interrogating her own. "Bad Feminist," Roxane Gay's second book this year, makes the claim that we should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good when it comes to identity politics. "When feminism falls short of our expectations," she writes, "we decide the problem is with feminism rather than with the flawed people who act in the name of the movement." Gay's thesis - which is reasonable, if overly reliant on an unreasonable straw man - is that women shouldn't reject feminism just because their natural inclinations, like reading Vogue or listening to sexist rap music, make it hard to live in perfect accord with contemporary feminist principles. The book that follows ranges in subject from Gay's obsessions with childish fiction ("Sweet Valley High," "The Hunger Games") to the way race is mishandled in contemporary film ("The Help," "Django Unchained," "Twelve Years a Slave") to the patriarchal prejudices involved in deeming a novel "women's fiction." Throughout these personable essays, many of which first appeared online, we learn of Gay's Haitian-American upbringing, the harrowing sexual assault she suffered in adolescence and her conflicted feelings about the civic responsibilities of being a black academic. But Gay squanders much of this intimacy on points more vague than topic sentences in SAT sample essays. She is "fascinated by strength in women," and notes that "girls have been written and represented in popular culture in many different ways." She informs us, in the book's first sentence, that "the world changes faster than we can fathom in ways that are complicated." Gay very much likes the word "interesting" and deploys it to describe everything from niche dating sites to Patrick Bateman to Hanna Rosin's "The End of Men." This casual imprecision would be more forgivable if the book weren't built around a fundamentally unconvincing perspective: that of the "bad feminist" that Gay wants readers to believe she is. Yes, she shaves her legs and enjoys the melodies of misogynist pop songs. But her opinions and preoccupations, and every bit of hand-wringing she engages in, suggest a woman very much in tune with modern feminism. The eager pride she takes in being different - "I am an acquired taste" - can read more like personal branding than political conviction. "In many ways, likability is a very elaborate lie," Gay writes, as though "being bad," which she is so invested in, were not just as much of a performance as being good. ALICE GREGORY is a contributing editor at T: The New York Times Style Magazine and has written for publications including Harper's, New York, GQ, The New Yorker and n+1.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 5, 2014]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

This trenchant collection assembles previously published essays and new work by cultural critic and novelist Gay (An Untamed State). Even though she loves pink, feels nostalgic about the Sweet Valley High series, and lets degrading rap lyrics blast from her car stereo, Gay is passionately committed to feminist issues, such as equal opportunity and pay and reproductive freedom. Writing about race, politics, gender, feminism, privilege, and popular media, she highlights how deeply misogyny is embedded in our culture, the careless language used to discuss sexual violence (seen in news reports of sexual assault), Hollywood's tokenistic treatment of race, the trivialization of literature written by women, and the many ways American society fails women and African-Americans. Gay bemoans that fact that role models like Bill Cosby and Don Lemon urge African-Americans to act like ideal citizens while glossing over institutional problems in the education, social welfare, and justice system that exacerbate racism and poverty. Although Gay is aware of her privilege as a middle-class Haitian-American, she doesn't refrain from advising inner-city students to have higher expectations. Whatever her topic, Gay's provocative essays stand out for their bravery, wit, and emotional honesty. Agent: Maria Massie, Lippincott Massie McQuilkin. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Popular and prolific essayist and novelist Gay (An Untamed State) reflects on feminism, politics, and popular culture. (LJ 9/1/14) (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Essayist, novelist and pop-culture guru Gay (An Untamed State, 2014, etc.) sounds off on the frustrating complexities of gender and race in pop culture and society as a whole.In this diverse collection of short essays, the author launches her critical salvos at seemingly countless waves of pop-cultural cannon fodder. Although the title can be somewhat misleadingshes more of an inconsistent or conflicted feministthe author does her best to make up for any feminist flaws by addressing, for instance, the disturbing language bandied about carelessly in what she calls rape culture in societyand by Gays measure, this is a culture in which even the statelyNew York Timesis complicit. However, she makes weak attempts at coming to terms with her ambivalence toward the sort of violent female empowerment depicted in such movies asThe Hunger Games. Gay explores the reasons for her uneasiness with the term womens fiction and delivers some not-very-convincing attempts to sort out what drives her to both respect and loathe a femalecentric TV show like Lena DunhamsGirls. Although generally well-written, some of these gender-studies essays come off as preachy and dull as a public service announcementespecially the piece about her endless self-questioning of her love-hate relationship with the tacky female-submission fantasies inFifty Shades of Grey. Yet when it comes to race-related matters (in the section "Race and Entertainment"), Gays writing is much more impassioned and persuasive. Whether critiquing problematic pandering tropes in Tyler Perrys movies or the heavy-handed and often irresponsible way race is dealt with in movies likeThe Help,12 Years a SlaveorDjango Unchained, Gay relentlessly picks apart mainstream depictions of the black experience on-screen and rightfully laments that all too often critical acclaim for black films is built upon the altar of black suffering or subjugation.An occasionally brilliant, hit-or-miss grab bag of pop-culture criticism. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.