Jessica C.

“As long as you are forced to be a woman first instead of a person, by default, you need to be a feminist. That’s it. Men are people, women are women? Screw that. Screw that. I am sick of having words aimed to shut me up. I am sick of having to be anything other than a person first. Zounds! I enjoy being a girl, whatever that means. For me, that meant Star Wars figurines, mounds of books, skirts and flats. It meant Civil War reenacting and best girlfriends I’d give a kidney to and best guy friends I’d ruin a liver with and making messes and cleaning up some of them and still not knowing how to apply eye shadow. That’s being a girl. That’s being a person. It’s the same damn thing. I wish Rush had just called me an idiot. I’m happy to be called an idiot! On the day when someone on the Internet calls me an idiot first and ugly second, I will set down my feminist battle flag and heave a great sigh. Then I will pick it back up and keep climbing. There are many more mountains to overcome.”
― Alexandra Petri, A Field Guide to Awkward Silences

“Ancient Egypt was okay. Drinks menu was limited. Not the best place to meet people. Reminded me a lot of the Internet in the sense that it was full of pictures of cats and people seemed pretty excited about them. Also lots of fun emoji. Still not sure what “Feather Squiggly Line Bird” means.”
― Alexandra Petri, A Field Guide to Awkward Silences

“Crazy ex stories are hard because they started out as love stories. And the key moment in a love story is the moment when you realize that—of all the improbable things!—there’s a person inside someone else! He or she is not just a character in the plotline of your life. You thought you were the only real one. You thought you were alone in the universe, twisting the dials on a radio in a postapocalyptic hut somewhere. Then one day you get a signal back. That’s a love story for you. I’m real. You’re real. Now what? But this isn’t a love story. This is a story about unreliable narrators, about the stories you tell yourself about the people you can’t have. In stories like that only one person is ever real. So you don’t get to tell this story. I’m the real one; you’re a character in my story. I’m the one who gets to tell this. Turning people into characters does a kind of violence to them. You lose a dimension or two pinning them down to the page. No, you say. Stop. Don’t move. This won’t work if you move. You are the story I tell about you. The instant you tell a story it stops being quite true.”
― Alexandra Petri, A Field Guide to Awkward Silences

“I attended my first Star Wars convention right after freshman year of college, when the wounds of the prequels were fresh. It was a big milestone for me. “Finally,” I told my roommate, Svetlana, “I’ll get to be myself and go among my people.” “I don’t understand,” Svetlana said. “Who were you before? Literally the first thing you did on arriving at college was unpack your lightsabers. Do you think you’ve been hiding? If this is you concealing your love of Star Wars, what would it look like if you let it hang out? Would you just dress up as Jabba the Hutt all the time?” That wasn’t a bad idea, I thought. Maybe I should.”
― Alexandra Petri, A Field Guide to Awkward Silences