If You Don’t Think This Is About Misogyny, There Is Nothing Wrong With You

Back in June, Slate published a piece about adults reading books meant for kids, making the case that we should read more sophisticated, age-appropriate material. Three days later, Medium published a response entitled “Why Criticizing Young Adult Fiction is Sexist.” If irritation were fatal, I’d have perished where I sat.

But my patience around other purportedly feminist issues had been tried in smaller ways. Like last year, when Sheryl Sandberg declared that the word “bossy” needed to be reclaimed. #BanBossy, the moms on my Facebook feed chorused, bragging about how they were going to teach their daughters that being bossy was actually great. Now, there is a reasonable conversation to be had about how women’s assertiveness is not valued, but #BanBossy was not my idea of a conversation. It was a cheap commodification of something more complicated.

#BanBossy was just one of the feminist flavors on Facebook that I tasted and immediately wanted to spit out. There is also the persistent complaint about airbrushing in magazines, as if fashion magazines have ever promised to be a woman’s friend, as if someone were forcing us to buy them.

Hot 44-year-old and known David Brooks impersonator Sarah Miller is on TIME today, advocating for messiness and ambiguity where messiness and ambiguity is deserved.