Moxie

by Jennifer Mathieu

I love eating in bed. It feels so lazy and wrong and also so luxurious and awesome at the same time.

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

My fingernails are naked—painting them always feels like a hassle.

the word feminist is a really scary, weird word to people. It makes people think you hate men. I’d rather just say I’m for, you know, equality.”

Making girls monitor their behavior and their appearance because boys are supposedly unable to control themselves? That is one of the oldest fucking tricks in the book.”

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.

Meemaw and Grandpa see the world one way. You go to church on Sunday, you don’t wear white after Labor Day, and you always say “Merry Christmas,” not “Happy Holidays.”

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.