Moxie

by Jennifer Mathieu

He would actually be kind of cute if he never spoke or walked around or breathed or anything.

When she raged and roared and rioted.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to live in a town that doesn’t revolve around seventeen-year-old boys who get laid way too often just because they know how to throw a football.

Sometimes I wonder how old you have to be to feel really nostalgic. Sometimes I wonder if it’s possible to feel nostalgic for something you never actually got to experience yourself.

The Riot Grrrls didn’t care what people thought. They wanted to be seen and heard. Because they were audacious.

but Seth is a guy, and he can’t ever know what it feels like to walk down a hallway and know that you’re getting judged for the size of your ass or how big your boobs are. He’ll never understand what it’s like to second guess everything you wear and how you sit and walk and stand in case it doesn’t attract the right kind of attention, or worse, attracts the wrong kind. He’ll never get how scary and crazy-making it is to feel like you belong to some big Boy Monster that decides it can grab you and touch you and rank you whenever and however it wants.

Some girls are dancing in the corners, moving their bodies with the freedom that comes when no boy is watching you.

As I watch Lucy spin and knock her dark curls around, and as I listen to Claudia laugh and sing along (badly), it occurs to me that this is what it means to be a feminist. Not a humanist or an equalist or whatever. But a feminist. It’s not a bad word. After today it might be my favorite word. Because really all it is is girls supporting each other and wanting to be treated like human beings in a world that’s always finding ways to tell them they’re not.

And he’d rather blame some Mexican girl from the city than a nice white girl like you who’s been here all her life.”