On Thursday, October 30, we met with and interviewed feminist author Libba Bray
. Walking into the library, we had not read her book, or knew much about her, but after meeting her, we learned so much about her opinions, and goals and could not wait to read her book, Beauty Queens. Libba told us about how she had learned about women’s rights and began to notice the problems of how women are portrayed in the media. She talked a lot about “boy boo
Before we had the chance to interview Libba, Libba interviewed our group and a couple other of our peers to ask us about our opinions and experiences with “boy books” versus “girl books” and whether we thought those stereotypes were a problem. During this time we got to tell Libba about many of our own opinions on gender based stereotypes and share a lot of the research we have done for our social justice project. Something that was discussed that I had never even considered before was that books are often categorized by the colors of the cover and how many people really do judge a book by it’s cover. People can are often embarrassed into the point of not reading certain books simply due to a pink, or otherwise “girly,” coks” versus “girl books” and how related stereotypes have an effect on the minds and self esteems of children and young adults. After being asked why she wrote a book about young women, she replied, “I think it’s because I care very much about feminism and about gender issues…Where does this come from? Is some of it innate, is most of it cultural, is it society that puts these expectations on us and how do we change how we are perceived.” Talking about where the gender expectations that we face come from, Libba raised important points and brought attention to topics and ideas we had not even considered.
ver. It was amazing to learn all this from someone who had so much experience in the publishing business and who had so many of same opinions as our group. She told a story th
at related to our topic so much, she said, “I remember walking into some store and I am in line…well I noticed that all the images of women were kind of pouting…it was as if women had no agency.” She continued to talk about how all the magazines she saw were about dresses, and marriage, and appearances. She summarized it as, “all about body image, or marriage, pregnancy.” Libba shared how this made her see that as a society, were are regressing. She talks about how she grew up with all these powerful women around her, and now all society seems to care about is whether or not Kim Kardashian is pregnant.
Libba’s thoughts on the topic were inspiring. I felt her passion to make a difference in the world and to stop the way society is exposing women. Unlike so many others,
Libba did not just point out all the problems with the way women are portrayed, she talked about h
ow every woman, including herself, embraced so many of
the stereotypes that are expected of them. For example, Libba talked about how make up made her happy and how she knew countless girls who would prefer a romance novel over a fantasy comic book. She wants to open the topic and raise awareness. She said, “No, I am asking questions… but I am pushing the status quo, I am really curious and want to know, why does this happen.” Overall, I think that we could not have left the interview more inspired, newly educated and excited about further working on our social justice project.
