I feel scared most times when people call me a feminist and it’s not that the movement frightens me. I’m eternally grateful for all the ways it has advanced women’s rights. I’m scared because every day I grow more and more cognizant of how I fall short of being one. Roxane Gay’s book “ Bad Feminist”, which I finally had time to finish last week, thanks to my mother-in-law relieving me of all my household chores so I could relax, made me comfortable for the first time.
Gay’s book is vulnerable, honest and a little heartbreaking. I breathed a sigh of relief to know that I can exist with all these contradictions and still have genuine interest in the movement. I think my favourite part of the book was when she interrogated Tyler Perry’s movies and got to see how casually we overlooked the many tropes and stereotypes that project the myth of the perfect and pious woman. Perry gives women roles where the take-home message is they need to be satisfied with where they are in their lives and that exploration based on personal preferences doesn’t always with end in chaos. This was evident in his movie Temptation: Confession of a Marriage Counselor.