Bad Feminist

A series of short (2-3 page) essays, mostly concerning low- and middle-brow culture and the patriarchy. I didn't connect with it, really, which was a bummer - I always try to have a fem book in circulation, mostly to inspire the pure femrage in me, so that I may Fight the Good Fight another day.

Gay opens and closes the book with a kinda defensive meta critique of how she feels like a “bad feminist” because she doesn't do xyz stereotypical feminist stuff (shaving legs, man hating, etc) - even while, at the same time, acknowledging that that trope is a lie and just damaging to women - and then defending her tastes in low- and middlebrow culture. First, mixing culture up and down the class spectrum is awesome and great and everyone should do it, and why should anyone waste time explaining it? Evidence: PBS Idea Channel is great! Evidence: my movie blog (which featured lengthy think-pieces of trash) is great! ( I kid, Nayak is not trash, it's great.)

Also, ugh, I honestly do not care about lengthy meta discussions of feminist apologism: “I'm not a feminist, BUT...” or “Some women don't call themselves ‘feminists' but...”. If some fancy celebrity women find the word “feminist” too edgy for them, yes, it speaks poorly to our brainwashed patriarchal world, but I also couldn't care less. I'm a feminist (duh) and I expect everyone I meet, men and women, to be feminists too, and if I meet people who are weird about calling themselves feminists, I just conclude that they have recently landed here from some retrograde planet and I'm happy to wait for them to catch up. Maybe that's cuz I live in a blue bubble. But I just get super impatient with Fraught Meta-Feminism.

Anyway, most of the essays were just too short to be really enlightening. They were mostly discussions about intersectional oppression (tangential: “What have you done today for the LGBTQ community and Black Lives Matter? Nothing, Grandma, you've done nothing.”) through the prism of early 2010s pop culture and politics. Like many things written before Trump was elected president, it felt immediately outdated - like I was looking at a world through the looking glass. Goodbye, Obama years! So long!

Some of the essays were a bit enlightening (the Tyler Perry critique was v. interesting, but mostly cuz I haven't seen any Tyler Perry movies so it was all news to me), but some felt - I dunno, superficial and bloggy fluff. For example, Gay discusses the whole “coming out of the closet” celebrity stuff, and how meaningful it was when Frank Ocean came out (back in 2012?). She wonders whether his career will suffer - a nice feeling, then, given his last album was super-lauded. But then she - like many folks, I guess? - notes the seeming contradictory-ness of Frank Ocean and his association with Tyler the Creator and the Odd Future gang, since the latter's lyrics are - GODDAMN - so homophobic sometimes. She basically concludes by being like, “Tyler's an asshole, etc etc”. End of essay.

BUT! I think there's so much more to explore and so much more to ask the Odd Future kids about, and I think it speaks to a generational divide that's interesting: because they're just a bunch of like super young Millennials (and hooo boy do I feel old these days), and I think the lines are changing, and I don't think I totally understand it but maybe the f-word (homophobic slur) is being reclaimed?! Because, yes, Tyler the Creator and Earl Sweatshirt's lyrics are aarghhh so gratingly offensive sometimes, yet Frank Ocean and Syd tha Kid are also openly and totally “normalized”-y black queer hip hop/R&B artists. I just think Roxane Gay and I are both 30something women who don't understand what these kids are up to, and might be reacting with the 21st century version of respectability politics (“gasp, you must never say that awful word!”)? I dunno. But the essay definitely ends too soon! Yeah, so I dunno. Here's some music.