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5aa5322
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It had never crossed my mind before that it was possible for a child to be educated in this country and make it to college unable to read at a college level.
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Roxane Gay |
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ec3e0a2
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Marcy leaned forward to study the landscaping, tall cypresses encircled by Peruvian lilies looming over the guardhouse. She sighed, said, "This is a bit much." Her husband said, "Baby, people love the illusion of safety and the spectacle of enclosure." They were given bar-coded stickers for their cars."
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Roxane Gay |
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2ee318c
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And most women know this, that we are supposed to disappear, but it's something that needs to be said, loudly, over and over again, so that we can resist surrendering to what is expected of us.
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Roxane Gay |
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2f822ce
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When I wrote, it was so easy to be happy.
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Roxane Gay |
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6e3c7f0
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I lost my voice but I had words.
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Roxane Gay |
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864794f
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He's a professor of mechanical and biomedical engineering at the local university. He is somewhat renowned in his field. This is what I'm told by his adoring colleagues and students at boring cocktail parties where I play the part of devoted wife. They always marvel at what it must be like to be married to the great Dr. David Foster III. They imagine, I think, that our nights are filled with romantic whisperings about fluid dynamics and hea..
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Roxane Gay |
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be995e3
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I recently enjoyed Always Happy Hour by Mary Miller and Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh--both dark, strange, a bit uncomfortable, sexy.
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Roxane Gay |
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a4200e1
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When I read, I could forget.
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Roxane Gay |
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4cb05de
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I realized that weight loss, thinness really, was social currency.
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Roxane Gay |
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f391109
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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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a979f7b
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muitos de nos estamos nos aproximando, a espera de que alguem distante agarre nossas maos e nos lembre de que nao vivemos tao solitarios quanto tememos.
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Roxane Gay |
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964f7d7
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I was absolutely terrified going into surgery. I realized I have so much life yet to live. I did not want to die. I thought, I don't want to die, and it was such a strange thought because I've never actively wanted to live as much as I did when I had to face my mortality in such a specific way. I began to think of all the things I still wanted to do, the words I had yet to write. I thought about my friends, my family, my person.
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Roxane Gay |
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2ab5e55
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I finally recognized that I matter to the people in my life and that I have a responsibility to matter to myself and take care of myself so they don't have to lose me before my time, so I can have more time.
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Roxane Gay |
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248f125
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I've decided that I will not allow my body to dictate my existence, at least, not entirely. I will not hide from the world.
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Roxane Gay |
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d585ed5
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This body is resilient. It can endure all kinds of things. My body offers me the power of presence. My body is powerful.
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Roxane Gay |
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785f3c0
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Her skin flushed darkly and she licked her lips over and over. Imagining me being used turned her on. She's overeducated and has taken too many women's studies classes. She uses words like empowerment sincerely. When my accounting was complete, she moved so close our knees were touching and placed her hand in the small of my back.
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Roxane Gay |
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02d7c3a
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Marcy never knew what to say during these moments, but she smiled politely because she understood these people and how they existed only in relation to those around them.
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Roxane Gay |
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5d2103d
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Mr. Peter was sorry for every terrible thing he did to us. Mr. Peter couldn't resist two beautiful little girls. Mr. Peter wanted us so bad he couldn't help himself. Mr. Peter was an old man now, could never hurt another little girl. Mr. Peter begged for our forgiveness. We were young once.
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Roxane Gay |
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557a18d
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Carolina pulled the letter out of her pocket and held the corner to the open flame of a lighter before tossing the burning letter into the air. We lay down on the runway, holding hands. The flame burned white, then extinguished. The ashes slowly fell to the ground, drifting onto our clothes, our faces, our deaf ears, our silent tongues.
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Roxane Gay |
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bdeb679
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She got on the treadmill, started running. Bianca's muscles stretched away from her bones and she fell into a comfortable gait.
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Roxane Gay |
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5e3ae9c
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When she grew tired, she crawled into her empty bed, lay on her side, traced the slight indentation where her ex-husband used to sleep. "This is my life," she said to the empty room. "I am grateful." Then she tried to master faith."
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Roxane Gay |
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2c06e11
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Even though he had no strength left, he was not gentle. She fell off the bed onto the damp floor. The next morning, Dean was gone. He took nothing with him but the mold spores growing in his lungs. If she were prone to the maudlin, Bianca would admit that he also took her heart.
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Roxane Gay |
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7ac89a3
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I think about how fucked up it is to promote this idea that our truest selves are thin women hiding in our fat bodies like imposters, usurpers, illegitimates.
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Roxane Gay |
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0ed5cc5
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My husband is not a kind man and with him, I am not a good person. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and he, Caleb, is kneeling over me, his fingers tracing my neck. I place my hands over his, the rough skin, the swollen knuckles. I squeeze.
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Roxane Gay |
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a99bc25
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No one shines more luridly on this faux-real stage than a woman. Whether it's a modeling competition, a chance to compete for love, a weight-loss challenge, or a look into the lives of an aging magazine publisher's harem, women are often the brightly polished trophies in the display case of reality television. The genre has developed a very successful formula for reducing women to an awkward series of stereotypes about low self-esteem, mari..
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Roxane Gay |
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2f0760f
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How are we going to make a thirteen-year-old pop singer popular?" I ask, briefly steering the conversation toward work. Tate is silent for a few moments. Finally she says, "Old white ladies who perm their hair." We are very good at our jobs."
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Roxane Gay |
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12eebea
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In our culture, we talk a lot about change and growing up, but man, we don't talk nearly enough about how difficult it is.
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Roxane Gay |
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14babeb
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I've never feared for my life. I've never been in a situation where I couldn't walk away. Does this make me a lucky girl? Given the stories I've heard from other women, yes, it does make me a lucky girl.
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Roxane Gay |
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3f37c6f
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Amy talks about the temptation of being the woman a man wants, but ultimately she doesn't give in to the temptation to be "the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn't ever complain." Unlikable women refuse to give in to that temptation. They are, instead, themselves. They accept the consequences of their choices, and those consequences become stories worth reading."
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Roxane Gay |
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06a2803
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I was still broken and I liked how it felt to simply accept that everything was wrong and couldn't be set right. It felt good to not try and pretend.
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Roxane Gay |
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fe56dae
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Pointing out the many ways in which misogyny persists and harms women is not anger. Conceding the idea that anger is an inappropriate reaction to the injustice women face backs women into an unfair position. Nor does disagreement mean we are blind to the ways in which progress has been made. Feminists are celebrating our victories and acknowledging our privilege when we have it. We're simply refusing to settle. We're refusing to forget how ..
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Roxane Gay |
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327aa8d
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Every Friday afternoon Brad invites me to join him and his frat buddies for a game of basketball at the Y. Every Friday I remind Brad I don't know how to play basketball. This confuses him. Someday I'm going to become Brad's boss. The very first thing I will do is fire him.
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Roxane Gay |
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91e512a
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I was so free. I was free, in a prison of my own making.
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Roxane Gay |
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7c73aaa
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people tend to assume that everyone moves through the world the way they do.
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Roxane Gay |
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7bb83a4
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Adoro estar com alguem infinitamente interessante porque somos tao diferentes. Querer pertencer a pessoas, ou a uma delas, nao significa encontrar no espelho uma imagem de si mesmo.
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Roxane Gay |
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da1dbce
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Quando voce tem sucesso de inicio em uma empreitada, acaba se convencendo de que facilmente repetira esse sucesso.
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Roxane Gay |
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6d2410b
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Nao queira nada que nao seja o melhor para seus amigos, porque, quando eles sao felizes e bem-sucedidos, provavelmente se tornara mais facil para voce ser feliz tambem.
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Roxane Gay |
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14f3eaf
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Despite this inundation of rape imagery, where we are immersed in a rape culture--one that is overly permissive toward all manner of sexual violence--not enough victims of gang rape speak out about the toll the experience exacts. The right stories are not being told, or we're not writing enough about the topic of rape in the right ways. Perhaps we too casually use the term "rape culture" to address the very specific problems that rise from ..
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language-barrier
rape-culture
sexual-violence
toxic-masculinity
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Roxane Gay |
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08606ea
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When we're talking about race or religion or politics, it is often said we need to speak carefully. These are difficult topics where we need to be vigilant not only in what we say but also in how we express ourselves. That same care must extend to how we write about violence and sexual violence in particular.
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rape-culture
sexual-violence
toxic-masculinity
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Roxane Gay |
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113c8c7
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I embrace the label of bad feminist because I am human. I am messy. I'm not trying to be an example. I am not trying to be perfect. I am not trying to say I have all the answers. I am not trying to say I'm right. I am just trying--trying to support what I believe in, trying to do some good in this world, trying to make some noise with my writing while also being myself: a woman who loves pink and likes to get freaky and sometimes dances her..
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Roxane Gay |
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b3f54d1
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I am determined to be more than my body--what my body has endured, what my body has become. Determination, though, has not gotten me very far.
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determination
endurance
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Roxane Gay |
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ef6ecfb
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I was called a feminist, and what I heard was, "You are an angry, sex-hating, man-hating victim lady person." 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."
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Roxane Gay |
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56e23cd
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was interested in the discourse around rape culture because the phrase is used often, but rarely do people engage with what it actually means. What is it like to live in a culture where it often seems like it is a question of when, not if, a woman will encounter some kind of sexual violence? What is it like for men to navigate this culture whether they are indifferent to rape culture or working to end it or contributing to it in ways signif..
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Roxane Gay |
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973de15
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This world and its unwillingness to accept and accommodate me are the problem. But I suspect it is more likely that I can change before this culture and its attitudes toward fat people will change.
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Roxane Gay |