Not Here to Be Liked

by Michelle Quach

Because everyone loves a girlboss until she tries to tell you what to do.

A girl who seeks a leadership position must be smart, competent, hardworking, attractive, and, above all, nice. She must be all of those things in order to stand a chance against a male opponent, who frequently only has to be some of those things, and sometimes isn’t any of them. A guy who seeks a leadership position just has to try not to mess up too much. Girls get judged for their past; guys get judged for their potential.

You know how there’s often that one thing someone, usually a parent, becomes convinced is the solution to all your problems? And even though the thing is so specific and trivial that no otherwise rational person could possibly believe it’s the driving factor behind anything, they still manage, with prodigious creativity, to find ways to make everything about it? This is Mom’s thing.

“Your parents want what’s good for you, but they don’t always know what’s best for you.”

A few feet away, Len is part of another conversation, but when our eyes meet, he smiles. And that’s when I understand: the reason is Len. I’m just the girl with Len. I could be Natalie, or Olivia, and it wouldn’t really make a difference. It doesn’t matter what kind of ruckus I’ve caused outside this situation, or what kind of stuff I’ve said about Len. The important thing is that I’m here with him, and he seems fine with it, so the respect they have for him carries over to me. It’s disquieting. It makes me feel complicit in something I don’t understand.

Suddenly, I seem to want such complicated things. I still want to be editor in chief of the Bugle and I still want to be a feminist. I want others to be feminists, too. But I also want something from Len that I understand only in fragments.

The book points out that large portions of history, and ways of looking at history, are lost when we don’t pay attention to the lives of women who aren’t necessarily fighting to be heard.

Feminists, after all, are often seen as women who do act out of line. And yet, could it be that a truly feminist version of history might also be about women who aren’t “feminists”?

We’re always making these distinctions, I realize, because we hope they will somehow protect us—just as I once insisted on separating myself from Serena, we’re now desperate to distance ourselves from Vicki. But the harshness we fear, in reality, seeps through to all of us, no matter how many lines we draw.

Because none of you have noticed how everyone’s reaction to this entire situation has still been one hundred percent sexist.”