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f0d7c04
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You are the best of our people, but you are not yet good enough.
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elegant
fearless
girl-power
servitude
strong
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Roxane Gay |
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5795ad4
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There are books written by women. There are books written by men. Somehow, though, it is only books by women, or books about certain topics, that require this special "women's fiction" designation, particularly when those books have the audacity to explore, in some manner, the female experience, which, apparently, includes the topics of marriage, suburban existence, and parenthood, as if women act alone in these endeavors, wedding themselve..
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Roxane Gay |
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46f4233
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We must look to how we can best support the least among us, not spend all our time blindly revering and trying to mimic the greatest without demanding systemic change.
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Roxane Gay |
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174ddf7
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Often, when I read the news, I have to make sure I am not, in fact, reading The Onion.
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Roxane Gay |
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b4c7571
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Rather than solve the real problems the United States is facing, some politicians, mostly conservative, have decided to try to solve the "female problem" by creating a smoke screen, reintroducing abortion and, more inexplicably, birth control into a national debate."
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Roxane Gay |
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194ca94
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There is no freedom in any circumstance where the body is legislated, none at all.
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Roxane Gay |
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1842ff6
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We want to see more complex, nuanced depictions of what it really means to be whoever we are or were or hope to be. We just want so much. We just need so much.
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Roxane Gay |
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29b21a0
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I have a membership to Planet Fitness, though I have never visited the local facility. Basically, I donate $19.99 a month to their corporate existence and the idea that I can walk into a Planet Fitness, anywhere in the country, should I feel like working out.
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Roxane Gay |
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21bab84
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While our conceptions of gender have evolved since the publication of Gender Trouble, there is a lot to be said for Butler's theory, particularly when it comes to the ways in which women, knowingly or unknowingly, perform femininity and the ways in which women are sometimes trapped by how they are expected to perform their gender.
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Roxane Gay |
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dff767a
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I often write stories about women who are perceived as cold and resent that perception. I write these women because I know what it's like to have so much warmth roiling beneath the skin's surface, ready to be found.
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Roxane Gay |
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dc5f455
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It took a long time, but I prefer 'victim' to 'survivor' now. I don't want to diminish the gravity of what happened. I don't want to pretend I'm on some triumphant, uplifting journey. I don't want to pretend that everything is okay. I'm living with what happened, moving forward without forgetting, moving forward without pretending I am unscarred.
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Roxane Gay |
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05dfe7a
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I am tracing the story of my body from when I was a carefree young girl who could trust her body and who felt safe in her body, to the moment when that safety was destroyed, to the aftermath that continues even as I try to undo so much of what was done to me.
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Roxane Gay |
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3f92f79
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If white writers can't do better than to compare a cockroach to black skin, perhaps they should leave the writing of difference in more capable hands.
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Roxane Gay |
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6e5c1b0
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all too often, critical acclaim for black films is built upon the altar of black suffering or subjugation.
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Roxane Gay |
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72c42ea
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weight loss, thinness really, was social currency.
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Roxane Gay |
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15840f9
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I wanted that kind of steady, true love for myself, and I wanted a relationship where I could be independent but loved and looked after at the same time.
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Roxane Gay |
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d449ee4
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But I also like myself, my personality, my weirdness, my sense of humor, my wild and deep romantic streak, how I love, how I write, my kindness and my mean streak. It is only now, in my forties, that I am able to admit that I like myself, even though I am nagged by this suspicion that I shouldn't. For so long, I gave in to my self.loathing. I refused to allow myself the simple pleasure of accepting who I am and how I live and love and think..
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Roxane Gay |
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47e1e71
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I knew where danger really lurked--in the woods behind well-manicured exclusive suburban neighborhoods, at the hands of good boys from good families.
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Roxane Gay |
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50f08fa
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I am angry that the fashion industry is completely unwilling to design for a more diverse range of human bodies.
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Roxane Gay |
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0036ff0
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These terms themselves are somewhat horrifying. "Obese" is an unpleasant word from the Latin obesus, meaning "having eaten until fat," which is, in a literal sense, fair enough. But when people use the word "obese," they aren't merely being literal. They are offering forth an accusation. It is strange, and perhaps sad, that medical doctors came up with this terminology when they are charged with first doing no harm. The modifier "morbidly" ..
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Roxane Gay |
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e9c1481
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The article was entitled "Vicious Assault Shakes Texas Town," as if the victim in question were the town itself. James McKinley Jr., the article's author, focused on how the men's lives would be changed forever, how the town was being ripped apart, how those poor boys might never be able to return to school. There was discussion of how the eleven-year-old girl, the child, dressed like a twenty-year-old, implying that there is a realm of pos..
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Roxane Gay |
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21db6fc
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I also have to live with being the type of woman who might--or probably always will--feel guilty that she never told this man she's trans.
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Roxane Gay |
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7c0001d
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I didn't say anything on social media, though relatives tried to tag me in supportive status updates, which I did my best to untag myself from. I didn't want to be a part of their mourning. I didn't want to be involved in someone else's grief when I knew so little about how to deal with my own.
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Roxane Gay |
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0788eb0
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My sad stories will always be there. I am going to keep telling them even though I hate having the stories to tell. These sad stories will always weigh on me, though that burden lessens the more I realize who I am and what I am worth.
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Roxane Gay |
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437d925
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The repetition of gender acts in reality television becomes grossly stylized through artificially tanned skin, elaborate hair extensions, dramatic makeup, surgically enhanced bodies, and chemically injected faces.
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Roxane Gay |
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dfa4877
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The body is not a fortress, no matter what we may do to make it such. This may be one of life's greatest frustrations, or is it humiliations? I spend a lot of time thinking about bodies and boundaries and how people seem hell-bent on ignoring those boundaries at all costs. I am not a hugger. I never have been and I never will be. I hug my friends, and do so happily, but I am sparing with such affections. A hug means something to me; it is a..
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hugging
intimacy
personal-space
respect
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Roxane Gay |
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a3cb285
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I resisted feminism in my late teens and my twenties because i worried that feminism wouldn't allow me to be the mess of a woman i knew myself to be. But then i began to learn more about feminism. i learnt to separate feminism from Feminism or Feminists or the idea of an Essential Feminism - one true feminism to dominate all of womankind.
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feminism
feminist
feminist-authors
feminist-books
feminist-literature
feminist-quotes
roxane-gay
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Roxane Gay |
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ad1118d
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It's a problem, though, that there's a right kind of gay, that there are LGBT people who are warmly encouraged to step out of the closet while others who don't fit certain parameters go largely ignored.
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Roxane Gay |
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de333ce
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There are injustices great and small, and even if we can only fight the small ones, at least we are fighting.
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Roxane Gay |
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d1bb704
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Maybe I'm a bad feminist, but I am committed to the issues important to the feminist movement.
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feminist
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Roxane Gay |
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bfd5982
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The most profound of those realizations was that part of healing is taking care of your body and learning how to have a humane relationship with your body. I was broken and then I broke some more, and I am not yet healed but I have started believing I will be.
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Roxane Gay |
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f99c005
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Bad feminism seems the only way I can both embrace myself as a feminist and be myself, so I write.
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feminist
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Roxane Gay |
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d9cd017
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In my more generous moments, I tried to believe the locals were using anger to mask their fear of living in a dying town in a changing world.
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Roxane Gay |
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ed42e74
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If you are reading this essay, you have some kind of privilege.
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privilege
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Roxane Gay |
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c356297
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It is not possible for girlhood to be represented wholly--girlhood is too vast and too individual an experience.
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feminism
girlhood
representation
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Roxane Gay |
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6f7bbc3
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This is a book about my body, about my hunger, and ultimately, this is a book about disappearing and being lost and wanting so very much, wanting to be seen and understood. This is a book about learning, however slowly, to allow myself to be seen and understood.
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Roxane Gay |
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e1ec905
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Shame is a difficult thing. People certainly try to shame me for being fat. When I am walking down the street, men lean out of their car windows and shout vulgar things at me about my body, how they see it, and how it upsets them that I am not catering to their gaze and their preferences and desires. I try not to take these men seriously because what they are really saying is, 'I am not attracted to you. I do not want to fuck you, and this ..
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Roxane Gay |
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b5c3b0f
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Already that semester, the university had been steeped in controversy after students at a freshman week welcome event had been reported chanting: "We like 'em young! Y is for your sister, O is for oh so tight, U is for underage, N is for no consent, G is for go to jail." --
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Roxane Gay |
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a423cdb
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The longer The Biggest Loser has been on the air, however, the more the show has disturbed me.
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Roxane Gay |
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d7aafd3
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This is a show about unruly bodies that must be disciplined by any means necessary, so that through that discipline, the obese might become more acceptable members of society.
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Roxane Gay |
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6863ba9
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Revenge Body, where participants get revenge on someone who has wronged them by losing weight and getting into shape.
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Roxane Gay |
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01d4164
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Until visiting Haiti, I had no idea what poverty really was or the difference between relative and absolute poverty. To see poverty so plainly and pervasively left a profound mark on me.
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Roxane Gay |
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553baa1
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Specific body parts, "problem areas," also get labels--fupa, gunt, cankles, thunder thighs, Hi Susans, wings, cottage cheese thighs, hail damage, muffin tops, side boob, back fat, love handles, saddlebags, spare tires, double chins, gocks, man boobs, beer bellies."
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Roxane Gay |
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8c7a806
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Privilege is a right or immunity granted as a peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor. There is racial privilege, gender (and identity) privilege, heterosexual privilege, economic privilege, able-bodied privilege, educational privilege, religious privilege, and the list goes on and on. At some point, you have to surrender to the kinds of privilege you hold.
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Roxane Gay |