If you want to be happy, you need to be thin. These stories therefore feed into the larger social narrative that, if you want to be pretty, you need to be thin. If the author of the memoir was overweight, her story often ends with her finding “self-love” and “happiness” by achieving the thin, sexy body that society already wants her to have. Or, to put it more bluntly, they tell a story that embraces traditional values and conformity. They make us feel good partly because they tell a story that we want to hear.
I almost expected to read at the end of each essay: “But that’s just my opinion – take it or leave it.” That leaves me with the question: why should we listen to Roxane Gay? Right now, I’m not sure what the answer is.īuy from Amazon.We’ve all read them: those gushy, feel-good memoirs that tell a rags-to-riches story. However, there were times when the arguments in Bad Feminist felt stunted. I respect her for that, as lots of people will present their opinions as unbiased fact. She’s flawed, just like all human beings.
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In the introduction, and at other points in the book, Gay makes it clear she doesn’t have all the answers, or that she’s free from bias. There were several times I was unsure what point Gay was trying to make. This disjointedness also extends to the essays themselves. Some essays sit nicely together, while others seem a bit out of place. Gay writes about a variety of topics in this book, not all of them about feminism. There are a few things I find problematic with Bad Feminist. It’s these essays that I warmed to Gay and appreciated her as a real person, rather that just “the author”. However, the next few essays, Gay opens up about her life – her passions, interests and upbringing.
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It felt disjointed, going from dating to American TV programmes (a note to non-American readers – there are a lot of popular culture references in this book that will be unfamiliar to people outside the US). Interspersed are more banal insights into her life, such as her love of scrabble and Sweet Valley High. Gay talks a lot about her personal experiences – growing up as the daughter of Haitian immigrants in the US, a traumatic sexual assault as a teenager, and her struggles with weight and body image. As you can see, feminism isn’t the main subject under discussion. These are broken into five sections: Me Gender and Sexuality Race and Entertainment Politics, Gender and Race and Back to Me. What’s Bad Feminist about?Īs previously mentioned, Bad Feminist is a compilation of essays. However, by the end, I was still unsure about what I was meant to take away from the book. I did manage to read all the essays, and there were definitely some interesting ideas. Personally, I’m somewhere between the two.
Others found it an easier read but thought it didn’t really say anything new about feminism that they hadn’t already read elsewhere. It certainly divided the group, with some readers finding it a real struggle to finish. Bad Feminist, a collection of essays by Roxane Gay, was the chosen book for the May Brighton GozenGirls book club.