some point, every single one of these women has “failed”—or, perhaps more generously, presented inconsistencies—in her resistance. Those moments shouldn’t be read as failures, however, so much as testaments to the sheer tenacity of the ideologies of femininity that shame, alienate, and expel those who refuse them.

Femininity cloaked power and strength, made it more palatable, less threatening.

“To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen by others and not recognized for oneself.”6 The process of representation is from subject to object—and, nearly without exception, through the brush, hands, or eyes of men.

While there are notable differences in the complexity, nuance, allusion, artistic innovation and experimentation found in mass, mid, and high culture, the argument that one is intrinsically more valuable than the others is, of course, fundamentally elitist. It’s no accident that this sort of cultural work—by Macdonald and others—is often the pet pr

It’s one thing to argue that you belong—it’s another thing to actually believe it.

part of the difficult, essential work of unruliness is shaking the status quo so thoroughly, so persistently, so loudly that everyone—even the very women behind that agitation, many of whom have internalized the understandings they fight so tirelessly against—can see their value within it.

A woman navigating the world with the confidence of a man is a beautiful, magnetic, and periodically unnerving sight to behold.

few things enrage, confuse, and repulse audiences more than the suggestion that the primary visual purpose of a woman’s body is not the pleasure of men.

Put simply: you’re damned if you do; you’re damned if you don’t. Try too hard, and you’re disgusting; don’t try at all, and you’re invisible.