With the rise of smart-girl blogs like Jezebel has come a whole new examination of the word feminist. In Girldrive, Nona Willis Aronowitz and Emma Bee Bernstein embark on a cross-country road trip, stopping at points on the map where they've arranged to interview an assortment of women. The goal: Ask these women how they view womanhood and modern feminism.
It's an interesting premise, and the authors come with all the right credentials. Degrees from prestigious liberal-arts schools? Check. Parents who are established feminist artists or academics? Check. Youthful energy, ambition and idealism? Check. Skilled in writing and photography? Check and check. Unfortunately, the resulting book leaves the reader aching for something better.
Despite logging thousands of miles, Aronowitz and Bernstein don't venture very far outside their personal comfort zones when it comes to the women they talk to. For the most part, they're connecting the dots from one middle-class, gender-conscious, college-educated 20-something woman to the next. Some of the more culturally established subjects are bound to be interesting -- like Carla DeSantis, founder and editor of ROCKRGRL Magazine, or the women of the Big Star Burlesque troupe in Austin, Texas. Rarer are the spur-of-the-moment interviews with working-class women who haven't spent years crafting sound bites.
There are a few, though. In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the authors visit the Top Hat Lounge and sip $2.50 well drinks poured by their bartender, a 27-year-old single mother. When they ask, "What's the number one thing on your mind lately?" she says that her problems are economic. She's raising a 7-year-old on welfare, even though she's a few credits shy of a master's degree in anthropology. Is anthropology paying these days? "Fuck no," she says. "I'd rather be a bartender making cash," even if that sometimes means being, as she puts it, "a vagina behind the bar ... not a real person to most people." Aronowitz and Bernstein seem to have seen her as a vagina behind the bar, too, for the purposes of their project. If they asked her name, they don't say so here.
In Kansas City, Aronowitz and Bernstein meet with Monica, Angela and Joey, and Maria Elena Buszek.
Monica's interview feels like a bust -- the 25-year-old tells the authors about the time she spent in the Air Force, but they don't include many details. Instead, they write that she gave them "the excruciating blow-by-blow of boot camp, technical school, and being in a correctional facility [after being busted for smoking pot and drinking]." Monica doesn't consider herself a feminist because, she says, "I'm raunchy. I'm insulting. I'm sexually harassing. I exploit women. I want to grow up and make my house all pretty and plant flowers, just sit and drink and not have to bust my ass."
Angela, 26, and Joey, 23, aren't very enlightening subjects, either. Angela wants to open a gallery with her boyfriend, and Joey aspires to be a costume designer. Both "tentatively" consider themselves feminists and make only obvious points about gender roles.
Thankfully, Buszek redeems the chapter on Kansas City and gives one of the best quotes in the book. Asked whether the movement of female sexual empowerment (Girls Gone Wild, Suicide Girls) has gone too far, the Kansas City Art Institute professor and author of Pin-Up Grrrls responds, "Some women do see this as liberating, but it seems to be an uninformed feeling of power. What we have to find out is what leads these women to believe in the power of showing their boobs at Mardi Gras if they can't even ask for a raise at work."
The project shines most when things go the way the authors least expect, as in San Francisco, where they meet with four graduates of "a small, liberal-arts college in Massachusetts" (a description that really narrows it down). Aronowitz and Bernstein expect their project to be embraced by these women, their peers in academia. Instead, they hear their basic queries about feminism deflected with disclaimers and responses such as "I feel like that question is problematic" and "That question is too generalizing." Aronowitz writes, "We find out, right here, that asking about 'feminism' can only get us so far in our journey. Some women simply won't be familiar enough with the concepts to connect the word to their experience, and some will be, well, too familiar."
Most damning is that the road trip itself just doesn't sound like very much fun.
Aronowitz and Bernstein smoke pot and drink wine with the hosts of their couch-surfing pit stops, drop acid in New Mexico, and giggle about Thelma and Louise at the edge of the Grand Canyon. But their summaries at the book's end sound forced (just as their descriptions of themselves, at the outset, as cash-strapped college refugees suffering quarter-life crises ring hollow).
Then again, one can hardly expect Girldrive to linger in the memory as a good time given that, as the book was being edited in late 2008, Bernstein committed suicide. Aronowitz describes her friend's motive as "an inexplicable force," yet the reader can't help scanning each of Bernstein's photos and essays for clues, a glimpse into her inner turmoil. Bernstein's death overshadows the entire project. Unfortunately, it's also the only reason Girldrive sticks in the memory.
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