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Bad Feminist: Essays
Bad Feminist: Essays
Bad Feminist: Essays
Audiobook11 hours

Bad Feminist: Essays

Written by Roxane Gay

Narrated by Bahni Turpin

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

()

About this audiobook

“Roxane Gay is so great at weaving the intimate and personal with what is most bewildering and upsetting at this moment in culture. She is always looking, always thinking, always passionate, always careful, always right there.”  — Sheila Heti, author of How Should a Person Be?

A New York Times Bestseller

Best Book of the Year: NPR • Boston GlobeNewsweekTime Out New York • Oprah.com • Miami Herald • Book Riot • Buzz FeedGlobe and Mail (Toronto) • The Root • Shelf Awareness

A collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched cultural observers of her generation

In these funny and insightful essays, 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.

Editor's Note

Funny & insightful...

Narrated by the award-winning Bahni Turpin and covering topics from Scrabble to Lena Dunham, Gay’s essays prove she’s both a funny & insightful cultural critic & a compassionate observer of human nature.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperAudio
Release dateAug 5, 2014
ISBN9780062379764
Author

Roxane Gay

Roxane Gay is the author of several bestselling books, including Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, the essay collection Bad Feminist, the novel An Untamed State, the short story collections Difficult Women and Ayiti, and the graphic novel The Sacrifice of Darkness. She is also the author of World of Wakanda, for Marvel, and the editor of Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture and The Selected Works of Audre Lorde. She is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and has just launched the Audacious Book Club and a newsletter, The Audacity.

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Reviews for Bad Feminist

Rating: 3.91264736698821 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    superb

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A wonderful collection of essays, by turns hilarious, tragic and insightful. Gay is a brilliant cultural critic, balancing thoughtful analyses of books, movies and tv with personal stories. Highly recommended.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I'd been looking forward to reading this book because I've heard about it all over the place. Turns out I'd been hearing about it via the very same outlets that I get my regular feminist ideas from; hence, nothing much in this book felt particularly new. On the contrary, due to the time it takes to get a book out, it actually feels ever so slightly last year.Still, I have a newfound appreciation of why I feel I shouldn't like The Help and Orange Is The New Black nearly so much as I do. See, I am a Bad Feminist myself. We all are. And I suppose that was the point of the book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The premise of the books is you can be a feminist and make mistakes, be a hypocrite, and be a flawed human. Roxane Gay takes on race, pop culture, politics, feminism in her essays. Her writing is insightful and thought provoking. I found myself going yassss and wtf no in the same essay. I'm glad she included personal essays about her life and experiences. I would of liked there to be a more defined theme and flow. Some of the essays repeated things she said in a previous essay a few pages earlier. Really enjoyed the book and plan to read more by Roxane Gay!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Gay is funny and smart. I envy the hell out of the students who get to be in her classes. Her essays on feminism are excellent. They are in no way innovative, there is nothing that has not shown up in many many essays which came before. But Gay makes this school of thought approachable and interesting for a large audience. That is an admirable feat. I was not as crazy about the book and movie reviews. There is much that is really good. I was thrilled that someone else had the same response I had to The Help! My complaint is that Gay often criticizes books and films for not being the books she wanted them to be. She complains about what ifs. But the writer told the story she wanted to tell. You can lament that the book did not tell the story it told the best way, but you can't fairly lament that the story was not a different one. I found this particularly problematic in the review of Junot Diaz. You tell your story Roxanne, and he gets.to tell his. His does not need to be told from a feminist perspective to be valid or great *and she does acknowledge that the writing was great*. All in all though there is a lot of good here. a solid 3.5.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This as a collection of essays examining current events, recent publications, popular movies, music and cultural trends in general through a modern feminist lens. It was refreshing to have a feminist voice address the burden the ideology can place on some women. I'm a feminist. Does that mean I can't listen to certain music, can't enjoy certain movies, and can't read certain books? Ms. Gay gives all women permission to be human. We don't have to have to mire ourselves in guilt. Feminism is about giving women choices, not more rules.That said, she also turns her critical eye upon books, movies and public figures who have transgressed feminist thought. Though I didn't always agree, or share the same level of outrage, I found her views thought provoking. I found myself reexamining assumptions and deciding to be more thoughtful with my language and my entertainment choices. At least to the extent of an awareness about the implicit message behind such things.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Like with many anthologies, I started putting stars next to the stories on the list in the front of the book that were particularly noteworthy. I put a star next to at 3/4s of these essays, whether for the depths of thought they contain or the soul-crushing, simplistic sentences they're written in.

    Conclusion: It's great. It's almost the Hunger Games. (It has an amazing essay about The Hunger Games.)
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This book started out fine but soon started to sound like a whole bunch of whining. It also turned into a story about race which I was not expected nor thrilled about. I stopped listening at about chapter 28/40.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A collection of essays covering a wide spectrum of women’s issues, including rape, sexism, and racism. Thoughtful….. Worth the read!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Not a lot of so called "new ground" broken, but I loved reading these essays.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I thought that the title essay was completely brilliant. I have been on and off about considering myself a feminist -- I was born in 1953, so I go way back. As Gay points out, the problem is that the loud, pushy, and obnoxious tend to be heard the most. I owe feminism a great deal, and when the peak enthusiasm died down a bit, feminists were constantly asking each other publicly and speculating about why more women didn't call them feminists. I don't know if it occurred to them to ask the ambivalent, like me, but my main reason was that more committed feminists kept telling me that I wasn't one. In some cases, it was a literal ultimatum -- I was haughtily informed that no-one who thought like I did could call herself a feminist. My interlocutor was stunned when I told her that in that case, I wasn't a feminist, because I certainly know what I think. The silly part, is that this was about reproductive choice. Practically speaking, we were in complete agreement about how things should work, we just had slight philosophical differences. Unfortunately, this isn't just a feminist problem.Gay puts all that into perspective. I wish that more Liberals and Progressives would get her point -- we'd get a lot further without circular firing squads, as Obama called them.I'm not bragging or passing judgement, but I have very little contact with either popular culture or high culture. I don't watch television, I see very few movies, I don't keep up with popular or experimental music, and I don't read serious contemporary fiction. The latter generally has nothing to say to me, probably because I am so uninvolved. One time the librarian running a book club asked how I like the books. I told him that I disliked most of them, but since my point in joining the book club was to read books I wouldn't normally consider, that was fine. (After a moment, he decided that was a success.) I don't hold this up as a preferred way of life, and as long as they're not bothering others, I don't judge other people, unless they insist on repeatedly giving me their unsolicited opinions. It does mean that in a lot of cases I don't really know what Gay (or people in some other books) are talking about since I don't get many allusions, particularly if they are specific. Talking at length about the Sweet Valley High series tells me some things about Gay, but less than it would if I had ever read the books. I certainly relate to the dilemmas of being be both independent and unpopular and isolated, but actually wanting approval.Indeed, so far, the only book Gay and I both seem to have read is Lolita, and I think we had very different reactions. In talking about whether likeability, Gay asked if we would want Humbert Humbert to be likable. I'd like him to be in prison. I think that in her discussion about likeability, Gay is surprising unnuanced. There's a certain amount of ground between not being likable, and not being being a menace to those around you. Gay seems to equate being likable to being selfless, which I agree can be taken too far. which is one of the things that I don't like about religion. It's a hard trick to learn, but it is possible to stand up for oneself without trampling other people. If the other person can't accept that, I write them off, which I am often told is a wicked thing to do. I just ride off on my broomstick. Of course, some people in novels are unlikable and are supposed to be. That's fine, but if there's too much dissonance between how the writer and I view the character, the book simply doesn't work. When I read a book that absorbs me, if the book is set in winter, I will be startled to realize that the reason it isn't snowing outside because it's July in the real world. I react to characters as if I were on the receiving end of their behavior; I have trouble becoming a disinterested bystander. I also think that docents, Gay is an English professor, often regards the arts in which they specialize differently than most people. They have more interest in technique, and I view the product more holistically. The science fiction critic Spider Robinson once said that if the author can't keep the hypothetical reader turning the pages, they're just masturbating. If I don't like the book as a whole, then excellent writing, clever plotting, important themes won't redeem it. If it is basically good, then those things make it great, and I may savor them for weeks.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Bahni Turpin as the reader for the audio version? SIGN. ME. UP.


    *****

    Roxane Gay showed up on my radar this past year with her two book publications. I knew I'd get around to reading her at some point, but she really hooked me when I came across her Twitter feed during the Michael Brown murder here in St. Louis and the (mostly) horrific ways we handled the situation. Then I found out that Bahni Turpin is the reader for the audio of Bad Feminist (she's the best I've heard so far), and my winter break finally arrived.

    I am so glad I read this sooner than later! I can't wait to encourage more people to read it. Gay goes into excellent detail about the perils of over-defining feminism, her own approach to feminism (so much deeper and more profound than that pull-out quote in the synopsis would lead one to believe), and the greater issues concerning civil rights overall. I was already hooked from the beginning, but once I got through the experience she details in "What We Hunger For," I couldn't put it down (metaphorically). The second half of the book, in particular, seems to take on even more gravitas and urgency.

    Though I can't say that I necessarily learned anything new--Gay and I seem to be on the same page ideologically, if not always on all individual tastes--she does contextualize and expand upon many subjects in ways I may never be able to achieve. I especially loved her discussion of the whole concept of trigger warnings, birth control, literature, and movies (thankfully confirming my suspicions--and then some--about The Help), as well as her many insights on race. Throughout so much of the reading I wished it were a SoundCloud file where I could add little shout-outs at various points...listening to audiobooks does present a little more of a hurdle when wanting to make notes in the text. I am in awe of her voracious reading and involvement in social media, her dedication to popular culture and furthering the notion that one can still enjoy a flawed piece of entertainment while still being critical of it, and that she continues to question herself and her beliefs. She is a friend I would want as my bosom-est of buddies, and I am grateful that she is as open and honest as she is to share her experiences and worldview with us.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The whole time I was reading this book of essays, I was thinking about how to review it. I never really came to a decision about that.

    I'll start by saying that, overall, I really, really enjoyed this book. There were parts where I laughed out loud, and parts that I read aloud to my poor sister who was stuck on a plane next to me while I was reading. Having worked in higher ed for years, and worked with quite a few faculty, I found this particularly amusing:

    There is a plague on grandmothers. The elder relations of my students begin passing away at an alarming rate one week. I want to warn the surviving grandmothers, somehow. I want them to live.

    I loved the entirety of the essay "How to be Friends with Another Woman." Yes, yes, yes, to all of it.

    There were some parts in the middle that I found kind of boring, but that was on me, my mindset at the time of reading. The writing was overall excellent.

    I found some things within themes to be repetitive, likely because many of these essays were published elsewhere prior to the compilation of this book. However, despite the repetition, each essay brought something new to the topic.

    After one of my status updates for this book, a friend asked me how I liked it. She was reluctant to read it because she found the title off-putting, as if there's a "right way" to be a feminist. I assured her that the book was worth the read. I think the idea of being a "bad feminist" comes down to the "popular" thought that there's one right way to be a feminist -- hate men, burn bras, eschew family/kids, etc. -- and that doing the opposite of that -- love men, like the color pink, want babies -- is "doing it wrong."

    I think that, through this whole book, Gay shows that there's no one right way to do/be anything. And as far as feminism goes, the final paragraph of the book sums up her views -- and my views -- nicely:

    I am a bad feminist. I would rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This book is the author's opinions on lots of things. It covers racism, sexism and much more. She is very opinionated. A lot of the discussion is about books and movies. If some of the ones mentioned are your faves, some parts might be difficult to read. I don't agree with her on everything, but I appreciate her delivery. She explains and gives supporting info for each opinion. Sometimes she even says she still likes whatever it is even though she dislikes it too for such and such reason. She also tells a lot about her personal life and is able to give perspective on things firsthand. She's female, non-white, daughter to immigrants, rape survivor, college professor, writer, plus-sized, scrabble champion, multiple degree having, etc. I think it's worth reading because it makes you think.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This collection of essays is wide-ranging, but united by the themes of feminism, pop culture, and race. Pieces of the essays were highly relatable to me (particularly the tension between being feminine and feminist) and others offered more critical reflections that I will likely ponder for some time to come. In a nutshell, Gay is right that as consumers of culture we often encounter content that is demeaning to women and can choose to enjoy that content while also being critical of it. She includes detailed examples from movies, TV shows, and current events. This book was published several years ago, so at times the references to pop culture feel dated, but the themes remain incredibly relevant.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An interesting, insightful, and incisive essay collection. There are so many terrific essays about gender, race, and privilege. And then there are moments where you see Gay's blinders about pop culture artifacts she likes (Gone Girl, blech) and dislikes (Orange is the New Black, and Suzanne [Crazy Eyes] in particular-- Season 2 is particularly stunning, or perhaps those are just MY blinders). But it's ok. I recommend this book a lot, and it's given me much to think about.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I'd been hearing all the Roxane Gay hype and I'd read a few of her articles and was following her on twitter, but really it was long past time to get around to reading one of her books. I was charmed by this little Olive edition, so I picked it up at the store.I knew that this was a collection of essays, but I hadn't realized before that it was a collection of essays previously published elsewhere and then gathered here. Which is fine, I still enjoyed reading this and appreciate Gay's voice on a variety of topics, it just makes for more repetition and less cohesion over all. It's a good introduction, but it makes me even more curious about what Gay would do with longer form non-fiction writing. (Which I know she has written, I just haven't read yet.)The Scrabble writing made me almost want to play (even though I hate it), there are some searing personal essays, but most of this book is analysis of pop culture -- books, TV, and movies. From Sweet Valley High to Fifty Shades, The Help to Tyler Perry -- what I'd appreciated most in her writing is the way she gets into just how complicated everything is, even in just a few pages. Nothing is universally bad or good here, but she gets into the intersections, the connections, the consequences.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    In this collection of short essays, Roxane Gay talks about race and gender, books and writing, pop culture and rape culture, and about some of her own experiences, from the amusing to the horrific. And she does so, often, in a way that I've seldom seen before, almost as if she's having a conversation with herself in the act of writing, trying to think her way around fantastically complex subjects without minimizing their complexity, even embracing and acknowledging her own contradictory thoughts and feelings, rather than reducing everything to absolutes and tidy thesis statements the brook no argument. This resonates with me deeply, even makes me feel a little less alone in my own messy thoughts about messy things, and it's immensely refreshing and valuable, given that nuance often appears to have been the first victim in the culture wars. And yet, even while embracing that messiness and nuance, she is still capable of pointing at things that are awful and saying, in a clear and composed voice: This is bullshit, and I am not okay with it. It's strong stuff, honest and vulnerable and angry, and very much worth reading.Although it is, I think, necessary to note that this collection was published in 2014. It's astonishing how much that shows, and not just in the essays towards the end where she talks about then-current news stories, or even in the couple of more-or-less neutral, offhand references to Bill Cosby. There has been so much more to talk about in the last six years, and I find myself thinking I'd like to seek out more of Roxane Gay's writing, to see what she has to say about it all.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I overall enjoyed this collection of essays by Roxane Gay, a young, black, American woman. Her essays are at their best, in my opinion, when she gets personal. I was not as interested in the section that explores media and gender/race. That's just because I haven't seen or listened to a lot of what she comments on. But I loved her essays on friendship between women and about the politics of gender. My favorite essay was the brief list entitled "How to be Friends with Another Woman". It's easily searchable if you want to check it out. I really like the trend in feminism right now of being honest about having a wide possibility of what feminism can look like in practice. I think it has potential to get a wider base of support for the things women desperately need available to make progress.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Based purely on the content and delivery of Bad Feminist, I might have given this book 4 stars, but I just really liked Roxane Gay. Watching her wade through all her contradictions and embrace the grey areas of herself, her feminism, and life in general was really refreshing. Her words on "essential feminism," among other such thoughts, have changed my own ways of seeing and embodying feminism. It's so unbelievably important for us to collectively reject the idea that there's only one way to be a feminist. Also, that Scrabble essay. Anyways, read this glorious book.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I ejoyed this book. I liked the author's opinions and her writting. I did not want to put the book down. I don't read a lot of nonfiction/essays/opinions and often, even if I find them interesting, I lose intrest and stop reading. Not so with this book. Ms. Gay is relatable,thoughtful, and interesting.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I really like Roxane Gay, and this has been on my to-read list for a long time. I listened the audiobook, and was first a bit disappointed that the reader was not Roxane hereself, because I really love her voice. Bahin Turpin proved to be a very good readed with a pleasant voice, so no harm done. Still current and relevant, and very different from Hunger.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Bad Feminist is a collection of essays that are in some way related to feminism. The Goodreads blurb describes the book as “funny and insightful.” I wasn’t expecting funny going in, because I had heard this book described by other reviewers, and I’m here to tell you that the blurb calling this book funny isn’t only misleading, it’s objectively wrong. I’m almost 100% sure this book isn’t intended to be funny at all. But as Gay mentions in one of the essays within the book, writers who go the traditional publishing route don’t get to choose how their books are marketed.All that being said, I am glad I listened to this book, even if it wasn’t quite what I was expecting and even if I wanted more from it. I listened to it on audio and the narrator does a great job of keeping the audience engaged in Roxane Gay’s essays.Because I listened to this on audio, I don’t have a whole lot to say about the writing itself. It does come off as easy to read, but nothing really stood out to me one way or the other.Some of the essays in this book are directly related to feminism, others are more loosely related to feminism but are about women and more subtle gender issues. There were some insightful moments in this book but unfortunately there was no information I didn’t already know nor was there any conclusions I haven’t ever made on my own, so there’s wasn’t much I gained intellectually while reading this.This book is clearly for women who call themselves feminists. This is not a book for men in any way— it paints men in very broad strokes and doesn’t make any mention at all in the ways men are or can be allies to women and feminism— and it is not a book for women who, for whatever reason, choose not to call themselves feminists. Her arguments for the issues she discusses are very one-sided and lacking in nuance. Because I tend to agree with her conclusions this was fine for me, sometimes it just feels nice to hear other people agreeing with us, but unfortunately even I had criticisms about the way some topics were handled, particularly when she starts talking about reproductive rights.Had I read this during my stint in the skeptic community (a time when I identified as egalitarian rather than feminist, as if somehow those are two conflicting things) I think it would have done more harm than good in my journey back to calling myself a feminist. So it’s not a very good jumping off point for people new to feminism nor for changing the minds of people who are educated about feminist issues who still don’t call themselves feminists. This is essentially written for people who already agree with what Roxane Gay has to say about women’s issues and feminism.So this is a three-star book for me, but I’d be careful about recommending this because it’s not a book that’s going to change minds or hearts.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I can't remember the last book that gave me life the way this one did. Roxane writes about Wendy Davis's filibuster and the gallery erupting in cheers, and this book did for my spirit what she describes, "awoke something in me that I hadn't realized had gone dormant." All parts of me are here in these essays, and many parts of Roxane that are different and a beautiful revelation. If I were to take the crystallization of my life experiences, feminisms, and sociological concerns for justice and cultural critique and make myself a fabulous writer, I would touch upon much of the subject matter but only a fraction of the heart and brilliance in Roxane's voice and insights. I am so envious of those people still living in the hometown I fled, who might have the chance now to exchange greetings in a coffee shop or the bookstore (because there is only one). Thank you, Roxane, for letting me see that I am, indeed, still here.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Nothing new on this book, Gay just rehashes all the same topics and opinion that you can find over tumblr or feminist websites withouth much searching.

    She talks a lot about pop culture but says nothing interesting in the end, doesn't reach particular conclusions or even does serious soulsearch.

    It's a basic book, too simplistic, too old news, and Gay isn't particularly engaging neither, some of her opinions demonstrate a lack of self-awareness, she's also guides herself more on her emotions than logical thinking.

    I didn't learn anything, it didn't make me think, it was a waste of time.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Roxane Gay makes the case for being a feminist whether you can be a good feminist even in to your own standards, by repeatedly demonstrating her very human very feminist views on our culture and her own life. We can be conflicted, we can be attracted to any number of patriarchal figments of our culture without relinquishing our feminist credentials. So we should understand our limitations as feminists but not give up our stance as feminists. I like her voice and look forward to hearing more of it.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I want to be very clear here. Much of the content of these essays was important and worth reading, although none of it was particularly eye-opening or groundbreaking. My problems with this collection rest solely with the prose style, which was so much about the author that it, at times, over-powered and undermined the value of an individual chapter. If the project had been sold as a memoir, then, perhaps, this would have been forgivable, but there were too many critical essays and reviews here that suffered from way too much "me". I am not denigrating in any way the validity of the author's experiences, only her ability to present them in a way that even attempts to universalize them. I am super-aware that any criticism I make may be unreasonably gendered or faintly racist, but given the sheer number of opportunities that the author takes to tell us about her PhD and faculty tenure, I feel fine is saying that this was some of the weakest non-fiction writing I have read.

    On a side note, the edition I have from Corsair in its 14th printing contained some of the most egregious typos I have ever encountered in a professionally published work. Simply shocking.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Thoughtful, entertaining, and bingeable essays. My only beef is that a few of them scatter in lots of different directions and then just sort of...end. Still, highly recommended. There's a great variety and lots of the essays resonated with me deeply or made me consider issues in a new way.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I enjoyed this book, especially the feminist film and movie reviews. The author is an excellent writer who gives a fresh perspective to popular media. But the author would be better off studying feminism before she critiques feminism itself. Feminism is not the study of individuals but rather the study of class based systems that keep women down. There is no such thing as a good or a bad feminist. Feminism is not something that judges women for living their lives wrongly, but rather criticizes the patriarchal culture that makes life difficult for women. Some women do have the privilege of being able to live life with more equality, and we should be happy for them, but not all women can and they should not be judged for that. We are better off spending our energy fighting for a better world rather than striving to be a good feminist.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Roxane Gay, New York Times opinion writer and university professor, writes about feminism, fat acceptance, homophobia, racism, sexual violence, kink, pop culture, and a lot more in this collection of essays. She doesn’t come across as a know it all like some essayists do; she consistently admits to her own failings and prejudices. She’s funny and insightful at times; heartbreaking at others. Her own brutal gang rape at age twelve is fodder for her writing, as is 50 Shades of Grey and Twilight. The book is a mixed bag. I have seen a lot of reviewers criticizing this book. One, for the writing not adhering to regular essay format but rather being more like blog posts. Yes, this is true. But I don’t feel that detracts from the content, and they are easy to read and digest. There is a trend among people today to glance at a more formal looking piece and think ‘tl;dr’. The other complaint I’ve seen is that a lot of them are on pop culture. I don’t see why this is a problem. Pop culture is what people are reading/watching. It’s what’s influencing people. Pop culture needs to be written and thought about. She doesn’t solve the feminist problem- she considers herself a bad feminist because she likes pink and she’s not a man-hating, angry woman. Well, I’m a bad feminist, too, despite being right out of the 1970s feminist wave. I, too, like pink, and I love makeup (I am angry, though, a lot of the time).I loved this book. Is not only funny and thoughtful, she puts herself out there. I came across this book by happenstance, but I’m going to look for her other work now.