Roxane Gay Explas What It Means To Be A 'Bad Femist' | HuffPost Women

Contents:

• “NOT HERE TO MAKE FRIENDS” BY ROXANE GAY
• DEAR ROXANE GAY: Y TO UNLIKABLE, BUT NO TO UNREEMABLE
• WHAT TO READ IF YOU HAVEN'T YET READ ROXANE GAY
• ROXANE GAY - IN ROXANE GAY'S NOT HERE TO MAKE...
• BAD FEMIST: ESSAYS BY ROXANE GAY
• ENGL 109 ASSIGNMENT - ROXANNE GAY
• HOW TO CE “BAD FEMIST” BY ROXANE GAY
• ROXANE GAY EXPLAS WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A 'BAD FEMIST'

“NOT HERE TO MAKE FRIENDS” BY ROXANE GAY

“Not Here to Make Friends” by Roxane Gay.

In her say, “Not Here to Make Friends, ” Roxane Gay lls to qutn the genr double-standard that female protagonists n’t be unlikable, while lerature, TV and film are full of male leads who are spible—and we love them. In this say, Gay prais several recent novels wh unlikable women as the lead character.

DEAR ROXANE GAY: Y TO UNLIKABLE, BUT NO TO UNREEMABLE

I tst Gay’s asssment that the wrg is superb, but why do a wrer earn higher marks for ristg the temptatn for a protagonist learn or change? Gay dismiss such epiphani as panrg. The mirrors that Gay prais her say are necsary, if only to give new sight and make thk, to qutn our own motivatns and actns.

I wele an expert’s opn on the craft of great lerature, pecially one as hont and telligent and fun to read as Roxane Gay. This summer has been the summer of Roxane Gay, and the world is the better for .

WHAT TO READ IF YOU HAVEN'T YET READ ROXANE GAY

As Gay told The Great Disntent, she started to publish her work "very refully" lerary journals the late '90s. And if all the chatter mak you want to dive to Gay's work, here are some fantastic says and stori by the wrer you n read now, for ee, to nvce you why you should be a Roxane Gay fangirl, Magaze: "Motherfuckers"A brief and quietly vastatg story about a kid named Gérard who mov to Ameri om Hai.

Gay, who has Haian parents and grew up Nebraska “raised as a Haian-Amerin, ” imbu the short scen wh a potent mix of sendhand and firsthand sentence: “'Je te tte, ' he says. ”BuzzFeed: "Not Here to Make Friends"The tle is a monly tmpeted battle cry for female realy petors, whether they’re fightg for a bachelor or a molg ntract, but Gay to ame her wish for more unlikeable female characters lerature. "xoJane: "My Body is Wildly Undiscipled and I Deny Myself Nearly Everythg I Dire"In the aftermath of this year’s Biggt Loser fale, which a nttant lost what many nsired to be an unhealthy amount of weight, Gay nsired her own relatnship to her body.

” She ticks off a list of ways she tri to make her “wildly undiscipled” body more acceptable — by wearg dark cloth, by not eatg junk food public, and by nyg herself over and over problem of body image Ameri is real, and Gay is not aaid to reveal the parts of herself that don’t f to the typil female weight loss narrative of privatn → thns → happs. ”New York Magaze: "The 10 Bt Books About Morn Virgs"Ask a normal person for a list of book remendatns, and you’ll (probably) get one, but ask Gay for a list of book remendatns and she’ll give you a genre-hoppg digt of lerature that registers pretty much across the board on the high-low culture matrix. ” A ton of those piec me out after he scribed g Twter as “like wrg a novel whout the letter P, ” and all of them said he was out of touch, a lame du who jt didn’t get , yadda yadda Here To BuyWhat set Gay’s piece apart was that she criqued Franzen for ignorg somethg important — wrers who aren’t as succsful as Franzen need Twter to promote their books, munite wh their fellow thors, and build a lerary work.

ROXANE GAY - IN ROXANE GAY'S NOT HERE TO MAKE...

Gay’s bt advice about social media is to chill the F out. “Do somethg where you are willg to show that you give a damn, however you terpret givg a damn, ” Gay wr.

'”The Hairp: "Adventur wh UPS Man"Those who follow Gay on Twter will know that she has an ongog flirtatn wh her UPS Man (whom she has sce moved away om — oh, the humany! ” Gay bemoans the lack of real, reprentative exampl of young adult women we have on televisn and the movi, referencg the new-at-the-time first season of Girls.

Acrdg to Gay, the problem is not that Girls is a show ma by and about privileged whe people — the problem is that there are not enough other shows creatg stori that ls privileged and ls whe women n relate Here To WatchKey sentence: “Every girl or once-was-girl has a show that would be bt for her. ”Kill Author: "Important Thgs to Know About Career Girls"Gay’s femism is clearly legible her nonfictn, but her fictn bears , too, though sometim subtler ways. The now-funct journal Kill Author published Gay’s story s send issue, and reads like eher a cryptic third-person diary, an aspiratnal stctnal manual, or not om a spy, pendg on who you thk is sentence: “She tak dictatn and mak note not of what he says, but rather what she thks.

BAD FEMIST: ESSAYS BY ROXANE GAY

”Frigg Magaze: "Law & Orr: The Complete Seri"Gay sps her love for Law & Orr — ”the exquise dramas of ()jtice” — to a agmented, hntg seri of vigt.

Roxane Gay is the gold standard, and she’s takg along for the ri. We should all be such bad rgay/Twter; Trae Patton/NBC; HBO; NBC. In her say “Bad Femist: Take One” om the llectn Bad Femist, Roxane Gay discs the prsur facg women to be “good, ” sayg:Good women are charmg, pole, and unobtsive.

ENGL 109 ASSIGNMENT - ROXANNE GAY

Women who don’t adhere to the standards are the fallen, the unsirable; they are bad the say, Gay reflects on her own ambivalence about beg a "good" vs. Taken as a whole, Gay’s says Bad Femist — about characters fictn and on televisn, and what means to be a “good” woman, a femist, and a woman habg a body — suggt that the bate surroundg unlikable female characters is really about the people women are allowed to be, and the stori they are allowed to nversatn about female characters' "likabily" heated up April 2013 when Clare Msud rpond wh annoyance to a Publisher’s Weekly terviewer who claimed that she wouldn’t want to be iends wh Nora, the ma character om Msud's novel The Woman Upstairs.

The bate over which character sketch is better is, as expected, still Femist by Roxane Gay, $9, AmazonGay’s examatn of the topic her say “Not Here to Make Friends” mov beyond the qutn of which character is bt to exame why unlikable characters might make rears unfortable. ” Gay’s pot here is about tth, and how much of rears are willg to take our fictn. Gay nclus, as other wrers have, that unlikable women are more "real, " and therefore more worthy of our attentn, but rears might wonr why they have to choose.

Gay argu, this and other says, that the choic rears make — about the stori to read, or the characters to root for — have implitns for women outsi of “Garish, Glor Spectacl, ” Gay wr about realy televisn, and more specifilly shows like The Real Hoewiv anchise or Flavor of Love, which prent women as sperate for love and unable to velop relatnships wh other women. In fact, Gay argu, “The shows exist bee dienc need remrs of the wrong turns our liv might take. Or, as Gay unrsr, viewers are allowed to believe that the women are pretendg:This is what is so rarely said about unlikable women fictn — that they aren’t pretendg, that they won’t or n’t pretend to be someone they are not.

HOW TO CE “BAD FEMIST” BY ROXANE GAY

Viewers accept the unlikabily of the characters on the realy shows bee they are the “right” kd of unlikable, nformg, as Gay explas, to a specific set of stereotyp.

ROXANE GAY EXPLAS WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A 'BAD FEMIST'

” Gay is ultimately explag the ways which the bate over unlikable characters is at s heart about all women: In what ways are we allowed to be unlikable?

In the troductn to Bad Femist, Gay wr about her difficulti wh acceptg the label of femist:I disavowed femism bee I had no ratnal unrstandg of the movement.