A Little F'd Up

Some people will give you a skeptical look and say something along the lines of, "But you don't look like a feminist." These are the folks you can maybe talk some sense to, if they're open to hearing why anti-feminist stereotypes are so old school and ridiculous. Then there are the people (mostly men) who will feign fear and say, "Oooh, are you going to hit me?" or some other such nonsense that suggests you're too angry for your own good. These are people to avoid at all costs. Then there are the keepers—the folks who say, "Tell me more," or, "What's that like?" Those are the people that make my day. My year!

But stereotypes are damaging all around—and making judgments about people's reaction to the word or idea of feminism can be a mistake, too. Sometimes people will surprise you.

A young Australian man I met while I was traveling responded to my telling him I was a feminist by actually lifting my arm and looking underneath for armpit hair. Not a good sign; I thought for sure he was an irredeemable asshole. But, after some time getting to know each other outside of bizarre first impressions, we ended up becoming great friends and still keep in touch almost ten years later. The truth is, for a lot of people—even good, smart, well-intentioned people—feminism is a dirty word. Or a funny word. Or a scary one.

This isn't just the case for younger people, either (despite the stereotypes that it's young women who don't call themselves feminists). People who are wary of "feminism" come in all ages. Often these folks don't really know what feminism is about. They've maybe heard the bra-burning myth or seen mainstream media portrayals of feminists and have been put off. Or they're nervous about seeming uninformed about gender issues so they become defensive. Sometimes people have really good reasons for reacting negatively to the label feminism. The movement's focus on white, cis, middle-class issues has left a lot of people, rightfully, skeptical or hurt. It's a reality we can't ignore.

The newest form of feminist-bashing is a bit more insidious than just straight up calling us frigid manhaters. In the last couple of years, instead of completely dismissing feminism, antifeminist groups have started calling themselves the "real" feminists. Groups like the Independent Women's Forum—who try to ban "The Vagina Monologues" on college campuses and argue that pay inequity doesn't exist—have figured out that the feminist label has power, and they're trying to co-opt it.

This is why I'm so glad that Julie has written this book. In a time when the very definition of feminism is up for grabs, when people who are feminists won't identify as such and people who are most definitely not feminists are trying to steal the language of the movement, we need a voice that gets past the bullshit. A clear, strong, young voice that lets people know what feminism is actually about. We have a lot of those voices online, so it's great to start to see some in print as well!

At the end of the day, whatever someone's reason for giving feminism the side-eye, what gives me hope is the knowledge that there's space for conversation, for listening, and for making connections with other people that can lead to a better, more just world. No matter what someone's initial reaction is to "feminism," there's room for growth and action—what more could we want?

What kind of obviously pretentious and generally ridiculous teen does that?

Well, I'm actually pretty typical. I grew up in Pepper Pike, Ohio, (seriously) and went to a small school that worshiped football, but if we had actually won a game, I think I would've immediately begun to collect canned goods and survival gear in preparation for the clearly imminent rapture. I have a hilarious older brother, two loving and supportive parents, and a dog who thinks he's a cat. I also started the FBomb: a loud, proud, snarky blog for young feminists that is read by hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world.

So how could a (relatively) normal young girl from Ohio (who, as we all know, should really be obsessed with boys, clothes, and ABC Family original programming) be both a regular teen and a prominent teenage feminist?

It all started in the eighth grade. For decades, my middle school has upheld the tradition of requiring all eighth graders to write a speech on a topic of their choice and deliver it to the entire school.

Now, to a bunch of fourteen-year-olds who just want to look cute in their skin-tight Abercrombie jeans, and who are constantly worried there's food stuck in their blue-and-magenta braces, standing in front of every single one of their peers and speaking publicly for ten minutes is terrifying, to say the least.

In sixth and seventh grade, kids are already starting to worry about the chapel talk. They mention it in hushed tones, quickly spat out, before changing the subject so as to not linger on its imminent reality. The school's obviously satanic teachers refer to it as a "public-speaking opportunity." But to 99.9 percent of eighth graders, it's really more like an opportunity to confirm our worst suspicions: that everybody is judging us, and only us. Anyway, at that point in our young lives, we are all planning on becoming things like Rihanna's backup dancers or professional dirt bikers, so obviously public speaking is a completely superfluous skill.

I tried to think positively about my speech. Despite the feeling of imminent doom, I realized that as a fourteen-year-old, it is incredibly difficult to get anyone to listen to you talk about anything serious for more than thirty seconds. And here I was, being handed a full ten minutes. I may have been terrified, but dammit, I was going to use those precious minutes. I was going to enlighten my audience of tweens and move them to greater social action. Local news organizations were going to be called to the scene after my talk, which was going to incite my prepubescent peers to riot against the newly revealed injustices of the world. I was going to give the best speech ever—that is, if I did not spontaneously throw up midspeech, which was also a real possibility.

Around the same time, my mom handed me an article she found in a copy of Glamour magazine while in the dentist's waiting room. (Yeah, she stole it. So sue her. You made her wait forty minutes to get her teeth cleaned. Call it even.) It was titled "A Generation of Women Wiped Out?"¹ The article was about women in South Asia, particularly in India, who were killing their own baby girls just because of their disappointing gender.

Needless to say, I was deeply disturbed—not only by the horrific facts I'd been presented with, but also by the fact that neither I, nor anybody I knew, had even been aware that thousands of baby girls die every year because of this. And so I decided to write my speech about female feticide and infanticide, and I started pouring over the research. As it often happens, my research led me to all kinds of related issues, and I soon realized there were many more atrocities being committed against women all over the world—and even in my own country. And I kept thinking, This can't be happening. If this were happening, everybody would be talking about it. I would have heard of it before. Everybody would be horrified. It would be on the news. But when I checked the news, I saw only that Paris Hilton had bought her forty-seventh Chihuahua and that another married politician was wrapped up in a sex scandal.

This only added fuel to my internal fire. People had to learn what was happening. And I was going to tell them. So I proudly gave my impassioned speech to my entire school . . . to glazed eyes. For months, I was remembered as "the girl who gave the speech about dead babies."

Not quite the reaction I'd been hoping for.

But it was worth it, because it was around this time that I realized I was a feminist.

It wasn't that becoming a feminist was a predestined mission embedded deep in my genetic coding. There wasn't a moment when a light bulb flashed over my head and a hallelujah chorus of angels descended from feminist heaven to gently wrap me in a wreath woven from PLANNED PARENTHOOD bumper stickers. I didn't transition from nonfeminist to überfeminist overnight. Rather, the term speech spurred my awareness of feminism as a movement, and helped me realize that feminism accurately described my beliefs.

I don't remember the first time I told somebody I was a feminist. I don't remember when I first internally referred to myself as a feminist. I just know that after my speech, I was one. And it seemed like I was the only one.

Thankfully, when I got to high school, my advisor (a recent Harvard grad whose office wall boasted FEMINISTS FOR CHOICE and REPUBLICANS FOR VOLDEMORT bumper stickers) introduced me to the writing of third-wave feminists like Jessica Valenti and Courtney Martin. She also sent me the link to Feministing, one of the most-visited feminist blogs out there in the big, wide interwebs. I was hooked from day one. Here were intelligent women writing about things that actually mattered. It was entertaining, and I was actually learning. What a concept!

The only problem with Feministing and the other feminist blogs I began to read regularly was that, despite the overwhelming awesomeness of intelligent and relatively young female voices, teens and teen issues were virtually absent from the discussions. Yes, conversations about, say, work–life balance and whether or not to take your husband's last name are interesting, but they weren't exactly the foremost topics on my mind. I craved a place specifically for young feminists.

The problem was, I had no idea where to find that place. I resorted to Google searches. Like diving into the middle of the Pacific Ocean in search of a single, specific shell, or like scouring the plateaus of Iceland for elves (look it up), searching Google for something you're not sure even exists can be arduous and endlessly frustrating. Every once in a while, I'd find an online news site or a mainstream blog that covered the topic of sexting or teen pregnancy (always something alarmist—pregnancy pacts!—and usually focused on the threat to our one and only virtue: purity, of course). In these instances, teens would show up in the comments sections, rearing to add their two cents. But where did we have a chance to write our own posts? Did we have an opportunity to offer our own perspectives, not just respond to someone else's? Did our insights ever get a chance to temper the statistics that adults love to point to, and which are, more often than not, faulty and biased? (Aside: I think Fox News straight up pulls them out of their asses.) Did a forum exist for teenagers to share their general observations and to be interviewed?

No, in fact, it didn't. So I decided to create that place.

I'll admit it: When I first started blogging, I had no idea what the hell I was doing. But I definitely had a vision. I had a goal. I wanted to create a place where teens who identified as feminist—or who at least cared about feminist issues—could not only gather and find each other, but could also tell the world our own stories. I wanted to give every teen—feminist or not—the opportunity to speak out and have her (or his) voice heard.

Thus, the FBomb was born, and a few months later, tens of thousands of people were reading the very words I had written on caffeine-fueled late-night word-vomit binges and after fury-inducing high school/life experiences. And soon readers started to submit rants of their very own.

But more than any post about birth control, more than any feminist's personal "coming out" story, the most feminist aspect of the FBomb is its function as a platform for teen voices to be heard. In response to a culture that encourages us to be shallow drones, the FBomb is about empowering teens to use their voices, letting them know that their voices matter, and showing them that they're not alone in their feminist ideals. It's about elevating the voices of a generation—and hopefully, the continuation of a movement. It's about showing the world that feminism doesn't have to be discovered when we first face discrimination or violence or what have you. It's about showing the world that feminism is for life—from the womb to the grave. (Yes, I said "womb." I have always advocated for pregnant mothers to read feminist texts to their children while they are in utero. It's far superior to playing classical music, no matter what your ob-gyn says. Trust me: I'm a teen feminist, I know this stuff.)

It can be hard to really explain feminism to our peers. The FBomb is a way to show them. On the FBomb, teen girls wittily write about their lives. They offer each other advice in the comments. They therapeutically rant, they write short stories and contemplate current events. They're brilliant and wonderful. Feminism, for the FBomb generation, is not scary or intimidating. It's personal. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's depressing, sometimes it's enraging. But it's always interesting.

The FBomb is ultimately about showing young women and girls that they too can choose feminism—and that if they do, they will never be alone. It's about showing teens how being a feminist can help them, in plentiful and unexpected ways. After all, it helped me.

In addition to everything the FBomb does for its readers and contributors, it does something else. It serves as evidence (to adults, to the media, to the world at large) that teen girls want equality. That we don't want to be limited to stereotypes. That we want a real, productive way to talk about our life experiences—everything from our bodies, to hooking up, to the injustices happening in the world around us that make us feel powerless. We want all of these things, whether or not we even recognize that this is feminism or not.

For all that, the FBomb has been great.

But we need something more. Something like a book. A book written by a young feminist for other young feminists, and for young men and women who don't yet know that they are feminists. A book that is brutally honest and that captures our feelings, frustrations, and opinions about the real world we are living in, right now—a world that is more than a little f'd up. We need something like this book.

My hope is that A Little F'd Up contributes to the start of a new movement. Our movement. Feminism that is relevant to us, the youth of today. My hope is that it brings us a step closer to truly addressing, combating, and changing all of the crap in our lives and in the lives of others that we're really freaking sick of.

This is our feminism, and there's nothing f'd up about it.