Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman

by Anne Helen Petersen

When a black woman talks too loud or too honestly, she becomes “troubling” or “angry” or “out of control”; a queer woman who talks about sex suddenly becomes proof that all gay people are intrinsically promiscuous. It’s one thing to be a young, cherub-faced, straight woman doing and saying things that make people uncomfortable. It’s quite another—and far riskier—to do those same things in a body that is not white, not straight, not slender, not young, or not American.

ayyyy

A woman navigating the world with the confidence of a man is a beautiful, magnetic, and periodically unnerving sight to behold.