Bad Feminist is composed of
many essays where Roxane Gay touches on the topic of feminism. Whether her essays are positive or negative
Gay is especially effective in paralleling her life to things she sees in
society, such as media, school, etc. Paralleling
her life to other aspects in society not only allow readers to see Gay in a
more personal way, but they also reveal truths in an honest yet straightforward
manner.
Gay connects her life to TV shows she’s seen to make perfection less
needed. Talking about her life in her
twenties, Gay emphasizes how difficult and messy it was. She “lived a generally crappy life” and
generally being “lost and awkward, having terrible sex with terrible people,
being perpetually broke.” The overall
unhappiness Gay feels, as do many other 20-year-old women, is reflected in the
TV show she highlights. Girlfriends, a show Gay watches that
debuted in the 2000s effectively captures the despair and troubling times Gay
and many women faced in their twenties.
However, despite it’s scary accuracy, Gay is sure to mention that the
show is not perfect. What is more
important is the fact that, “the women were human and they were portrayed
humanely.” In this imperfect show Gay connects
the mess her young life was to the show.
Not everything that people desire to be perfect is in reality, perfect. In fact, that’s what makes it better. Not everything is perfect, just like Gay’s
experiences when she was twenty, it was full of twists and turns, but she was
trying live the only way she knew how. The
show Girlfriends captured real life
struggles and even though it didn’t touch on everything, it was human, and it
was significant. Girlfriends captured the human struggle in a way many modern shows
do not, and revealed that not all media can be as inclusive and desirable and
one wishes.
The faults Gay parallels between her life and the show Girlfriends emphasizes the lack of
perfection occurring in life. But the
imperfection does not necessarily mean it’s bad, because imperfection is
human. Her short essay allows readers to
see that making mistakes is just a part of life. Bad
Feminist includes highs and lows such as the ones in the essay Girls, Girls, Girls because not everyone
is perfect. The mistakes made contribute
to the greater idea that someone is trying, rather than not attempting
something at all.
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