I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a woman a lot recently. When do you know you are one? I don’t think it’s the clichéd moments like getting your first period or having sex for the first time that make you a woman. That would be underwhelming, honestly. Rather than that, it’s when you insert your first tampon right and teach your friend (who had been trying to put it in the wrong hole at least once) how to do it. It’s the first time you tell the person you’re having sex with that you don’t want their finger in there, thank you very much. It’s the first time you realise that at least one of your parents is full of shit. It’s the moment you stand up for yourself when someone tells you that the fact that you’re calling yourself a feminist means that you like to eat men’s penises for lunch. It’s when you explain to that men what it actually means and he’s looking at you like you’re made out of starlight and fairy dust. It’s you demanding a dude to fill up the entire shot glass in front of you, because there is no such thing as a man or a girl shot. A shot is a shot, god damn it. I bet someday I’ll look back on these little moments and be proud.
That doesn’t mean I don’t I fuck up my feminism all the time. I don’t say anything when my dad comments on how hot/fat/skinny/ugly/fit the female news anchor is. I sometimes put plastic in the wrong recycle bin. I cooked dinner for my boyfriend and I pretended I wasn’t mad that he came home two hours late. I said it was fine that he didn’t call, because “I knew where he was”. I still pretend I like every Tom Hanks film. No one likes the Da Vinci Code that much, do they?!
And as sorry as I am about fucking up, I’m still a work in progress. Because none of us are always a 100% woke and ready to fight the patriarchy. Maybe I’m not yet a fully formed woman, but I sure am on my way. And every time I fuck up or lose touch with who I am or what I aspire to be, I look to the phenomenal women who came before me. This is why I wanted to put this anthology together. The women in this book build me up when I’m down, they check in with me when I’m feeling lost and when all I want to do is cry, they make me laugh so hard I almost shit my pants. Don’t we all need little reminders of the strong, beautiful and intelligent women we are?
This is what this first aid kit is for. It has a story, essay or poem for every little cut or bruise the world throws at you. I suggest that if you’re looking to reinforce your feminist mantra, let it be Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s beautiful essay ‘We Should All Be Feminists’. You can both read the slightly modified written version or listen to the Tedtalk she delivered at TEDxEuston in December 2012, an annual conference focused on Africa. Rooted in inclusion and awareness, her personal and powerful essay gives the reader a modern definition of feminism, while giving us an insight into often masked realities of gender politics. Her deep understanding and her drawing on personal experiences make this one of the most accessible and inspiring rallying cries for why everyone should be a feminist.
Also, please find ‘How to Be Friends with Another Woman’ by Roxane Gay included in this anthology. You can find this special check-list in her essay collection ‘Bad Feminist’, which is full of intelligent observations that guarantee a-ha moments. Read it if you feel ‘bitchy, toxic, or competitive toward the women who are supposed to be your closest friends, look at why and figure out how to fix it and/or find someone who can fix it’. Also, read it if you feel none of those things. Moreover, read all of her stuff, full-stop.
And if you’re feeling more like indulging in the joys of a short story, look no further. We all need a little escapism sometimes, and for those moments, there is Miranda July. If you’re feeling down, because your grandma told you to get in touch with her water-fitness instructor, because tic-toc, Miranda will grab you by the neck and pull you out of that depressing ditch, in a gentle, loving way. In The Metal Bowl, we meet a woman who starred in a porn video seventeen years before the story happens. She is somehow frozen in that exact moment in time, and since then, she can only feel sexual pleasure when watching the video or imagining other people watching it. Now, this woman isn’t traumatised. She’s married, has a child and a career, and resist the cliché of a pure, undamaged human. Rather than being a story of shame, it is about intimacy, sexuality and a wonderfully weird woman.
Speaking of wonderfully weird women, have you met Val? She is one of several wonderfully angry women from Dina Del Bucchia’s collection of short fiction ‘Don’t tell me what to do’. And no one tells Val what to do when she decides to cover her once green, now barren yard in a blanket of cement. ‘Keeping things alive is too much work’, she says in the story of the same name, which also explores her relationship with her children and grandkids, as well as her own loneliness. This piece is a big middle finger for everyone who thinks they know better or that women aren’t allowed rage, only sadness. The title of her collection is suitably defiant, and Val’s story shows that there certainly is humour in anger. So anytime you feel the kind of bubbling anger at the back of your palate, come and find Val.
‘The Upper Hand’ by Becky Moran is a sharply written story about kleptomaniac girls in their early twenties who go on a night out that entails more than one close encounter with sweaty drunks. With her witty prose, she demonstrates that girls are not just cute and sweet- quite the contrary, badass. This story paints a vivid portrait of the life of these girls, the particulars of this night echoing 21st century pop culture.
If you ever look at what life throws at you and feel like nah, not today, Lena Dunham has some hot tips for you. In her memoir, Not That Kind of Girl, she includes a Guide to Running Away, both for six year olds and their twenty-something sisters. So, if you every, for example get an UTI, ‘go back to your parents’ apartment where your mum has set out some antibiotics and cranberry juice, but has gone back to bed’. Other things you could try, and I must admit I have done more than one thing on her list, are: ‘Saying you’re sick. Saying your work ran late. Writing your head off. Saying you’re sick again. Saying you’re a person who gets sick a lot. Listening to a Taylor Swift song about dancing in the rain. Not jogging. Never jogging’. I agree.
Now, if the aforementioned texts are plasters and bandages, Amy Schumer is an instant anti-depressant that will make you want to punch a bee. Her energetic, raw and honest writing style will not only make you relate to her, but you will feel genuinely enlightened. I promise. In her essay ‘Strong and Beautiful’ she tackles the issues with coming of age, covering everything from regrettable sexual encounters to crises of body-image and confidence. I don’t know about you, but something about the mixture of hilarious writing and heart wrenching honesty makes me want to scream her name from… well, a very tall building. Just take this passage: ‘I know my worth. I embrace my power. I say if I'm beautiful. I say if I'm strong. You will not determine my story. I will. I'll speak and share and fuck and love, and I will never apologize for it. I am amazing for you, not because of you. I am not who I sleep with. I am not my weight. I am not my mother. I am myself. And I am all of you’. Yes, she is. Repeat. Internalise. Live.
Going from one legend to the next, this anthology includes the commencement speech Nora Ephron gave to the Wellesley graduates of 1996. Now, why not choose any other text by this grade A writer? Because this speech is like a compressed snowball of all the things she stood and fought for. Talking to these girls, who have their future in their own hands, she gives the most precise and inspiring advice to the girls in the audience: ‘Be the heroine of your life, not the victim’. Now I know that not everyone who will read this is a student or a girl in their twenties, but what she says is time- and priceless. By the way, there is one thing Schumer and Ephron are very clear about: Don’t be a lady, go and make some trouble.
One that often hits the quieter tones is Indian-Canadian poet Rupi Kaur. She is known for her collections of poetry, Milk and Honey and The Sun and Her Flowers, which she also illustrated. The mood in her poems ranges from angry over devastatingly sad to uplifting, but it is always on point. She uses her words sparingly, and the shortness of her poems make them almost read like mantras. In ‘There is Nothing Purer Than That’, she reminds us that: ‘The world gives you so much pain, and here you are, making gold out of it’. Powerful stuff.
Speaking of powerful stuff, the last woman writer in this collection is a true force of nature. An icon. A feminist, civil rights activist, mother, daughter, dancer, singer, actress, lover, poet. Maya Angelou is the fairy godmother that appears in my head when I know I could do better. Because ‘if you know better, you do better’. She knew that true empowerment and beauty comes from being comfortable in and owning the skin you live in. To own your womanhood, every aspect of it-intelligence, sexuality, sensuality- is what makes you beautiful. When you feel overwhelmed by the storm of both media, culture and maybe people around you who tell you that you aren’t enough -that your body is flawed or wrong, that you are too bossy or sassy or loud- I want you to read this poem, more than once if necessary, and remind yourself of the badass woman that you are.
And that sums it up perfectly, because this is what this anthology aims to do. I hope these wonderful, brilliant writers will be the catalysts of you remembering who came before you and who is next to you right now. I hope you realise the power you hold in your hands. I hope this first aid kit will be useful when times are rough. I hope it will remind you to celebrate you, your womanhood and other women. Because we’re in this together. Go on and own who you are.
That is the magic of being a woman, phenomenally.