On Thursday, October 30th my group met with esteemed writer Liba Bray,, and author of book Beauty Queens, in Little Red’s library. She was initially at our school because she was interviewing a few students, my social justice group included, about books and sexism. After she interviewed us, we asked if we could interview her. She gladly sat with us for about ten minutes while she answered our questions. We asked her why she chose to write a book about young women. She answered, “Well, I think it is because I care very much about feminism and gender issues.” She later went on to talk about what sparked her interest in women’s rights. Once she was at a Rite Aid and she recalled what she saw on the tabloids, “I grew up with Mary Tyler Moore throwing her hat up I’m the air and going off to work in the news business, and all of these images of empowered women, and then suddenly here we are like, ‘Is Kim pregnant again?’ It’s so reductive!”‘

We later went on to talk about how the portrayal of women in the media affects young girls like us, and our self-esteem. Liba shared, “I think it is impossible not to have these things affect your self esteem, for all the reasons that you have said. We look at these photoshopped bodies and faces and think, ‘that’s what I’m supposed to look like?? I think being constantly bombarded with these images of what beauty looks like, which is almost always unrealistic, really takes a toll on young girls.” After this, we started to talk about women’s sexuality and the “Madonna-Whore Complex” which is the idea that women can either be extremely innocent and fragile, or be a total slut and very sexual. According to this idea, there is no crossroad; it’s one or the other.

While talking about the Madonna-Whore Complex, it sparked a memory for Liba. She started to talk about her personal life and how she grew up in the church and the affects it had on her as a young girl, “The day that I really said, ‘I can’t do this anymore’ was when I thought about Christianity, in my case, and thought wow so really the only two options I’m being presented with are Mary Magdalene who was the whore, and who is the fallen woman who is redeemed by Jesus, not even of her own agency, by Jesus, or there is the Virgin Mary who’s single achievement is something that is impossible and could never be repeated, and I thought, ‘really these are my options? Screw you.'”