Roxane Gay

From the author of Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, the New York Times Bestseller and Best Book of the Year at NPR, the Boston Globe, Newsweek, and many more 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, coming from one of our most interesting and important cultural critics.

Essays

Bad Feminist

rhea ⸆⸉

Yes, I was a demanding bitch, and at times I was probably unreasonable. I insisted on excellence. I get that from my mother.

I enjoy difference, but once in a while, I do want to catch a glimpse of myself in others.

Sometimes, I hope that by telling these stories again and again, I will have a better understanding of how the world works

I’m raising my voice to show all the ways we have room to want more, to do better.

I am just one woman trying to make sense of this world we live in.

When you can’t find someone to follow, you have to find a way to lead by example.

We should disavow the failures of feminism without disavowing its many successes and how far we have come.

Feminism’s failings do not mean we should eschew feminism entirely. People do terrible things all the time, but we don’t regularly disown our humanity.

“For years, I decided feminism wasn’t for me as a black woman, as a woman who has been queer identified at varying points in her life, because feminism has, historically, been far more invested in improving the lives of heterosexual white women to the detriment of all others.”

Women of color, queer women, and transgender women need to be better included in the feminist project.

I am in no position to tell women of other cultures what that equality and freedom should look like

Feminism is a choice, and if a woman does not want to be a feminist, that is her right, but it is still my responsibility to fight for her rights. 

I get angry but I understand and hope someday we will live in a culture where we don’t need to distance ourselves from the feminist label, where the label doesn’t make us afraid of being alone, of being too different, of wanting 

This caricature is how feminists have been warped by the people who fear feminism most, the same people who have the most to lose when feminism succeeds.

 I was called a feminist, and what I heard was, “You are an angry, sex-hating, man-hating victim lady person.“

People who are placed on pedestals are expected to pose, perfectly. Then they get knocked off when they fuck it up. I regularly fuck it up.

I openly embrace the label of bad feminist. I do so because I am flawed and human. 

In truth, feminism is flawed because it is a movement powered by people and people are inherently flawed.

Natalie Gorczyk

I am a bad feminist. I enjoy wearing makeup and high heels. I ask my boyfriend to open bottles for me. I love superhero stories, even though, in the comics, women are usually overly sexualised or not present in them at all. And on an occasion or two, I was hesitant about openly showing the cover of this book, reluctant about how people would react to it.

That being said, I really enjoyed this book. What a heavy responsibility the word “feminism” carries, fighting to be everything everyone needs, an unachievable burden.Throughout the essays, I was entertained, angry, thoughtful, indignant, horrified and immensely intrigued. But more importantly, this book was more than an affirmation of my opinions on feminism: this book educated me on what I didn’t know I ignored - intersectionality. What should be obvious sometimes can be lost when you are not directly effected by it.

So, yes. I am, like Roxane Gay, a bad feminist. But I am working on it.

Ann Gabrielle

started out kind of rough and too blog-y but ended up really liking it. Would rec to people who don’t believe the world still needs feminism. But also wouldn’t rly recommend as a sociological text but more of a critical series of essays on American pop culture tho.

Leider liebt sie Rapmusik, das Frauenbild: grauenvoll. Leider liest sie sehr gerne Fashion-Magazine, das Frauenbild: ebenfalls erschreckend. Und ihre Lieblingsfarbe ist leider: pink. In einer Zeit, in der Barack Obama sich als Feminist bezeichnet und sogar Modeimperien den Schriftzug in großer Zahl auf T-Shirts drucken, wahrscheinlich keine gute Idee. Feminismus ist chic geworden und angekommen in der Popkultur. Aber was kann guter Feminismus heute wirklich sein? In ihrem hochgelobten Essayband sprengt Roxane Gay das ideologische Korsett eines guten und starren Feminismus und erklärt sich selbst ironisch zum Bad Feminist – stimmgewaltig, bestechend klug und fern jeder Ideologie unterzieht sie unsere Gegenwart einer kritischen Analyse und zeigt, wie man alles auf einmal sein kann: eine der bedeutendsten Feministinnen der Gegenwart und dabei definitiv nicht perfekt.

Lamia Hajani

4 stars

A great collection of essays that dive into feminism. It's easy to feel like a "bad feminist," as Gay describes it - someone who enjoys the music of artists that are terrible people or watches television shows even though it's been decreed as anti-feminist. But this book dives into the deeper feminism that exists and how you can still be a feminist even if you don't think you align with the hardcore feminists that you think of when you think of the F-word.

As a women and gender studies major, I appreciate Roxane Gay's collection here. It's a good start to feminism and a good reader's digest version of what anyone new to the movement needs to know.

Bilge Ince

I’m a Feminist but a “Bad” one. After a certain amount of time I spent to be perfect, it’s a relief to be utterly human and flawed and, most importantly, embrace myself as I am. Even though I’m a bad feminist, I’m still a feminist who cares and works to solve (at least heard) the problems women face.

The reason I give 3 star of this book is that I don’t like about the book Roxane Gay is over explaining her points and repeating herself a lot.

momo-reads

It seemed like a good idea at the time.  And then it became a series of uninteresting essays that sound like college papers. No thanks.

Katherine Yang

This is generally a positive review! The low rating is simply for the fact that I didn't enjoy reading it much, and didn't feel that I got anything particularly new and insightful from it.

Bad Feminist is at times thoughtful and amusing, but by the end, more tiring and overwhelming than anything else. To Gay's credit, this is partly the sheer, seemingly irresolvable turmoil of the black/female experience that she illuminates through the lens of pop culture, politics, and personal anecdotes. On the other hand, it's also the aimless meandering of each essay and the collection as a whole, and the relative lack of new insight into these issues. I also found bewildering delight in some of the concluding lines that seemed to stare expectantly at me from the page, as if brimming with untold meaning for me to unpack.

For example! On Django Unchained:

Instead of offering me some new thoughts on this troubling reality, Django Unchained simply served as a reminder that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

(Please, help; I still have no idea what that's supposed to mean.)

Or, on Tyler Perry:

It is bittersweet that something is better than nothing, even if the something we have is hardly anything at all.

(I usually think of myself as a generous and patient reader, but I almost rolled my eyes.)

One thing I appreciated about these essays, however, was Gay's simultaneous commitment to her fight and her recognition of her human flaws and limits. On the first point, she criticises the ways in which society, culture, and politics have failed black people and women, and she strives to persist in dismantling these incessant obstacles. I really enjoyed her reflection of being an advisor for a black student association:

There was a negligible black faculty presence on campus (you could count them on one hand), and those folks were either too busy or burnt out or completely uninterested in the job. […] Advising a black student association is exhausting and thankless and heartbreaking. It kind of destroys your faith after a while. A new black faculty member came to campus a couple years in, and I asked why she didn't work with the black students. She said, "That's not my job." That person said, "They're unreachable." I hate when people say something is not their job or that something isn't possible. We all say these things, sure, but some people actually believe they don't have to work beyond what is written in their job description or that they don't have to try to reach those who seemingly cannot be reached.

At the same time, she acknowledges the wildly contradictory nature of her feminism (and, broadly, civil rights movements). Most notably, she criticises the model of the "essential feminist" and the homogenisation of all women, who, I suppose, "don't want to be treated like shit", regardless of their socioeconomic status, their career goals, their racial and cultural upbringing, and a whole myriad of other intersectional factors. "Bad Feminist", then, might be interpreted as an ironic comment on the standards we hold for women, women in power, and women who take a stand on issues that are contentious, yes, but more importantly, so crucial to people's hopes and unhappinesses—issues that people want desperately to change and, with each incomplete attempt at change, that people despair will never change. Ultimately, Gay reminds us that all these different categories of women are women who do and can only speak from their position, whether we perceive that position to be privileged and ignorant or angry and aggressive or anywhere in between.

Two excerpts that stood out for me on this point:

On black pop culture:

Most black movies, for better or worse, carry a burden of expectation, having to be everything to everyone because we have so little to choose from.

On influential feminists:

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.

Overall, Gay's individualistic voice and viewpoint comes through in this collection of essays, but personal charm ultimately wasn't enough to strongly convince me.

Zoe Stricker

a bit too contradictory, but certain essays on their own were very excellent

Lola

Caitlin Bohannon

Roxanne Gay is a fantastic writer, and a lot of her essays are incredibly insightful and poignant, but often she tries to tackle too much within her essays, leaving the reader with feeling of whiplash when an essay that begins by praising a stronge female character in young adult literature turns into a recount of the author's own rape, where both topics lose some of their power by being juxtaposed. Despite this, I would give many of her essays 4 or 5 stars - however, Bad Feminist is a poorly curated anthology. 

Perhaps the trouble was my expectations going into a work entitled "Bad Feminist" assuming that it would contain mostly reflections about feminism, womanhood, and maybe dip into intersectionality (which naturally follows). But I was a little surprised to get hit early on with an essay about competitive scrabble (well-written, but not exactly what I was looking for) amidst works on being an imperfect feminist or trying to empower her students, or a review of the newest Sweet Valley High novel in the section entitled "Gender and Sexuality". The section on Race and Entertainment is thankfully more coherent and well-selected, though the author often addresses both race and sexuality (and entertainment) within essays throughout the book. If this was merely a compilation of this author's work, perhaps properly ordered or even just uncategorized and left to savor, I would have been less disappointed in this work as a whole. I would suggest reading the essays of interest rather than trying to tackle this whole book in the order presented because many of the individual essays are definitely worth a read - I especially recommend The Careless Language of Sexual Violence and The Politics of Respectability.

Maddie

Really enjoy Roxane’s writing style and how she weaves her personal narrative into her essays.

Becky A

Smart and thoughtful. The personal essays were brilliantly presented, and I'm always in for good media critique.

Derrière ce titre ironique, Roxane Gay développe une réflexion révolutionnaire et bienvenue sur l'état actuel du féminisme. Lassée des prises de position parfois trop clivantes de certaines organisations féministes, elle rappelle que la défense de l'égalité des sexes ne dispense pas d'assumer ses contradictions. On peut aimer la télé-réalité, se peindre les ongles en rose et revendiquer le fait d'être féministe. En se fondant sur sa propre histoire de femme noire dans l'Amérique contemporaine, elle parle de culture, de race, de sexe et de genre, d'amitié féminine. L'ouvrage regroupe les chroniques de l'auteure initialement publiées dans The Guardian et sur le site The Rumpus. Le portrait qui émerge en filigrane est celui d'une femme au regard incroyablement juste porté aussi bien sur elle-même que sur notre société.

Le livre culte

Bad Féministe

it is interesting to read 'bad feminist' nearly a decade after its publication. that is a very long time for so little to have changed and a very little time for so much to have gotten worse.

yes, gay talks about the matters that make her (us all?) a "bad feminist" but she also covers a number of other issues that intersect with feminism and form an indelible part of the cultural conversation. they are good at provoking both reactions and thoughts and one can only hope all readers will walk away with something each.

on a lesser note, a passage that really touched me in an unexpected way was on towards the end of the book, one dedicated to amy winehouse's passing. it reminded me of choi sulli's passing - something that still resonates deeply with me to this day - and the precise way gay manages to put the tragedy of it into words will stay with me for long.

it is interesting to read 'bad feminist' nearly a decade after its publication. that is a very long time for so little to have changed and a very little time for so much to have gotten worse.

yes, gay talks about the matters that make her (us all?) a "bad feminist" but she also covers a number of other issues that intersect with feminism and form an indelible part of the cultural conversation. they are good at provoking both reactions and thoughts and one can only hope all readers will walk away with something each.

on a lesser note, a passage that really touched me in an unexpected way was on towards the end of the book, one dedicated to amy winehouse's passing. it reminded me of choi sulli's passing - something that still resonates deeply with me to this day - and the precise way gay manages to put the tragedy of it into words will stay with me for long.

Beatriz Pereira

It started really well and I loved the first essays. In the middle some were a bit superficial but nonetheless still relatable. And ended really good. I can't give less than 5 stars to someone's thoughts and experiences (unless it's something discriminatory). These experiences are always relatable as woman. I really recommend everyone to read this. I loved it overall. Thank you Roxane Gay.

Vivian

A collections of essays on intersectionality, feminism, race, politics and pop culture. Roxane Gay has many interesting insights to offer and I found comfort in her struggles with the feminist label. Will read more of her books. 

"I openly embrace the label of bad feminist. I do so because I am flawed and human. I am not terribly well versed in feminist history. I am not as well read in key feminist texts as I would like to be. I have certain... interests and personality traits and opinions that may not fall in line with mainstream feminism, but I am still a feminist. I cannot tell you how freeing it has been to accept this about myself."

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

Iris Emily

wld be a good starting off point for people who want to delve into feminism/intersectionality.

Angel Martinez

I bought the book a decade later than she probably intended me to read it so a lot of the cultural events she was referencing throughout the book weren't very familiar or significant to me anymore. The writing style also wasn't consistent or particularly distinct, and the whole repetition-for-emphasis thing that she often has going on got annoying in some stories. BUT!!! there are still a lot of important ideas that make it worth the read! Modern-day feminism often demands perfection from those who practice it, like we aren't human beings and by extension, flawed in a number of unforgivable ways. It's something I've always needed to hear, especially as a fellow pop culture fiend and advocate for women's rights :)

Mariane Ferrantino 

I too am a bad feminist, but I also would rather be a bad one than no feminist at all.

Emma Friedheim

Lots of thoughts on this one. Gay is certainly a great writer. Ultimately this is a great collection of essays that provokes important conversations (even if just internally), but I definitely wasn't nodding along the whole time. I didn't love this as much as I expected to, perhaps because many essays came across as whiny to me. But lots to think and talk about, and that is always a sign of a worthwhile read.

Courtney Woolery

I highly recommend this collection of wonderful essays. It's funny and sad and thoughtful and inspiring and well-written.

'Pink is my favourite colour. I used to say my favourite colour 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 colour (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 sincere 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.

Kamerin Villagomez

a STAPLE piece of modern intersectional feminist literature

Josefina

i don't feel comfortable rating non fiction, but i feel like i couldn't enjoy this as much because of the references of the time of its publication

Alexa Jade

“Dear Young Ladies Who Love Chris Brown” was iconic. 
“A Tale of Three Coming Out Stories” killed me. 
& “Bad Feminist Take Two” was a perfect ending to this book. 
I loved the intersectionality of this. 
I love the acknowledging of privilege and it made me take a step back and acknowledge my privilege in life.

Bad Feminist Essays

Reviews

Highlights