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2065 Redefining AmericaKEY CONTEXT Feminism has a long history in America, stretching back at least as far as the late nineteenth-century suffragist movement, and it encompasses a wide range of issues related to women%u2019s rights. In this essay, Roxane Gay considers the challenges of living up to the movement%u2019s ideals and recognizing her personal preferences. I am failing as a woman. I am failing as a feminist. To freely accept the feminist label would not be fair to good feminists. If I am, indeed, a feminist, I am a rather bad one. I am a mess of contradictions. There are many ways in which I am doing feminism wrong, at least according to the way my perceptions of feminism have been warped by being a woman. I want to be independent, but I want to be taken care of and have someone to come home to. I have a job I%u2019m pretty good at. I am in charge of things. I am on committees. People respect me and take my counsel, I want to be strong and professional, but I resent how hard I have to work to be taken seriously, to receive a fraction of the consideration I might otherwise receive. Sometimes I feel an overwhelming need to cry at work, so I close my office door and lose it. I want to be in charge and respected and in control, but I want to surrender, completely, in certain aspects of my life. Who wants to grow up? When I drive to work, I listen to thuggish rap at a very loud volume even though the lyrics are degrading to women and offend me to my core. The classic Ying Yang Twins song %u201cSalt Shaker%u201d? It%u2019s amazing. %u201cBitch you gotta shake it till your camel starts to hurt.%u201d Poetry. (I am mortified by music choices.) I care what people think. Pink is my favorite color. I used to say my favorite color was black to be cool , but 5it is pink %u2014 all shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink. I read Vogue , and I%u2019m not doing it ironically, though it might seem that way. I once live-tweeted the September issue. I demonstrate little outward evidence of this, but I have a very indulgent fantasy where I have a closet full of pretty shoes and purses and matching outfits. I love dresses. For years I pretended I hated them, but I don%u2019t. Maxi dresses are one of the finest clothing items to become popular in recent memory. I have opinions on maxi dresses! I shave my legs! Again, this mortifies me. If I take issue with the unrealistic standards of beauty women are held to, I shouldn%u2019t have a secret fondness for fashion and smooth calves, right? I know nothing about cars. When I take my car to the mechanic, they are speaking a foreign language. A mechanic asks what%u2019s wrong with my car, and I stutter things like, %u201cWell, there%u2019s a sound I try to drown out with my radio.%u201d The windshield wiper fluid for the rear window of my car no longer sprays the window. It just sprays the air. I don%u2019t know how to deal with this. It feels like an expensive problem. I still call my father with questions about cars and am not terribly interested in changing any of my car-related ignorance. I don%u2019t want to be good at cars. Good feminists, I assume, are independent enough to address vehicular crises on their own; they are independent enough to care. Why do you think Gay listens to music she claims embarrasses her? What about the music is mortifying? 11The two sentences on maxi dresses and hair removal have the only exclamation points in the whole essay. Why do you think Gay used them here? How do they add to the tone of the essay?22Copyright %u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.