My only regret about Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World, edited by Kelly Jensen, is that it’s
coming out just shy of my daughter’s road trip to Washington. She and a pack of
college friends set off this weekend for the Women’s March, and I wish they had
a copy to read aloud to each other on the multi-hour drive. This excellent collection
of essays, interviews, and illustrations by a whole host of creative people, would
no doubt make them laugh, make them cry, but most importantly: get some awesome
conversations started.
It’s not a book my own mother would ever have given to me,
and I think it’s important to explore why, especially at this juncture in our
nation’s story, when a man who jokes about sexual assault, supports defunding
Planned Parenthood, mocks the disabled, and goes after Civil Right’s heroes on
Twitter is about to ascend our highest office. When so many women voted for
such a man. And when so many young women … who don’t think twice about their
myriad opportunities to play sports or their right to vote (even for Donald
Trump) or head companies (like Hewlett Packard) or run for President, thanks to
the outspoken, fearless women who fought for those rights … are reluctant to think of themselves as feminists.
I think I can understand why. I grew up in a home where
feminism, while not quite a dirty word, was a suspect term.
I won’t elaborate on the reasons … it involves a story which
is not mine to tell … but my mother had a whole lot invested in embracing
traditional, 50-s era values. Ironing while watching the soaps, cookie baking,
child-rearing, preparing mouth-watering dinners for her tired man when he came
home from work at the end of the day, scrubbing her house until it gleamed …
these were her priorities. Frankly: she did it all well and took great
satisfaction in that work and her goals. Both my parents were devoted to each
other and to creating a family.
But while she was juggling babies and cloth diapers and all
that cleaning, the 60’s and 70’s raged. I remember watching John F. Kennedy’s
funeral cortege on the black and white television, the coffin draped with an
American flag. (I was very young and reportedly asked, “Why did they bury him
in a watermelon?”) I remember the evening news death counts of U.S. troops in
Vietnam. I remember thinking the “big kids” who went to our local high school and
had long hair and beards drove too fast. Cities were burning, both in protest
and by landlords eager to collect the insurance on dilapidated buildings,
college students were getting shot at Kent State, black kids were linking arms
and getting their heads bashed in by cops bearing batons.
To my (very young) parents, it must have felt like a fraught
time to raise a child, and my mom circled her little family wagon with an
insistent vision more akin to The
Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet than what was happening on the evening news.
It was a vision that required constant vigilance, and did not allow for radically
different ways of being or seeing. Anything that shook things up was threatening,
and the so-called “feminists?” The Gloria Steinems and Betty Friedans of the
world? They were man-hating, loud-mouthed bra burners. They threatened a status
quo to which my parents aspired.
But there’s more to it. I think my mom’s aversion to feminism
had much to do with a sense that their club didn’t need … or want … members
like her. She was a Spanish girl from the city who didn’t go to college. She
never left the house without her makeup. She prided herself on her cooking.
She’s Catholic. And if she had a sneaking suspicion that the leaders of the
feminist movement were white girls who attended elite Seven Sisters colleges
and went on to marry Ivy League lawyers while making cracks about women who
stayed home to bake cookies and “stand by” their men … well. She would have
been right. So to this day, my
assertive, smart mother who never hesitated to speak her mind, who sent her daughters to college, who balanced
the family checkbook and managed the finances, and who, after she raised her
kids, worked in an office and became the assistant to the President of a Fortune
500 Company, would never, ever, call herself a feminist.
If only she’d had this book. The opening pages of Here We Are breaks open the whole notion
of what a feminist is:
Feminists come in
every shape, size, form, and background. What unites feminists is the belief
that every person – regardless of gender, class, education, race, sexuality, or
ability – deserves equality. This is a movement about embracing differences and
encouraging change that benefits all facets of society. This is a movement
about listening as much as it is about speaking up.
Who could argue with that?
What I love about Here
We Are is that is shows that feminism’s tent is HUGE. (Yes: let’s take back
that word.) It has room for mothers and room for women who choose to not raise
children. It has room for couples who marry and couples who don’t and people
who prefer to remain un-coupled. It has room for girls who speak their truth
and don’t aspire to be “sweet” (Courtney Summers, author of All the Rage, has a terrific essay here
about writing so-called unlikeable characters.) It has room for a curriculum
which includes artists and writers and musicians of all genders and ethnicities
(Nova Ren Suma has a heart-breaking essay in this collection about Reading Worthy Women.) Here We Are shows us a feminism which is
expansive and inclusive and as a result, liberating. For everyone.
It also demonstrates how feminism has evolved. The beginning
of Here We Are defines the various “waves”
of feminism, all of which were necessary for their time. And while I’m reluctant
to call the depiction of the movement here a kinder, gentler version of 60s-era
feminism, it does reflect a natural growth which was always about basic values
of fairness and equality. It’s a movement that has made great strides but
doesn’t rest. It’s a movement which is finally mature enough to legitimize all
women’s work and all women’s choices, paid or unpaid, professional or
home-based. And it includes men. As it turns out, the most important feminist
in my life has been my husband, who bought me my first copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves, and who, when I
met him at age 23, was the caregiver for his disabled mother.
Near the end of the book, the editor poses the question: Why
do people dislike feminism? The answer:
For people who have
power in society, being questioned about that power or being forced to examine
their biases or prejudices incites fear. … Feminism begs all people to think
about the social, political, cultural, and economic power we have based on our
sex, education, gender and a whole host of other statuses we may or may not
choose to have.
My daughter graduates from college in two weeks. Right after
that she moves to the city and begins her first job along a career path she is
incredibly excited about. In addition to linens and furniture and all the
“stuff” she’ll need to set up an apartment, she’s bringing the new mixer she
got for Christmas because, like her grandmother, she loves to bake. She’ll also be bringing this book.
Here We Are: Feminism
for the Real World is published by Algonquin Young Readers. It was
originally planned for release on 2/28 but you can preorder it on Amazon and
receive it by late January.
