The Female Persuasion

by Meg Wolitzer

  Surely other people here felt it too, didn’t they? And even if they’d been in a teenage stupor for years, staring at themselves in every reflective surface, frowning at their image as they popped a pimple with a little splat of greenish milk against glass, and railing to friends about their dumbass parents, or being forced to come to the chapel on this night despite being the kind of people Faith had described, who blithely went around saying they weren’t feminists, now a revelatory gong had been struck inside them. It vibrated and vibrated, and seemed like it would never stop, for here was this new, formidable person, speaking in such an exciting way about their place in the looming, disturbing world. Making them want to be more than they were.

  Faith said, “Okay, well, I think I’ve just about run out of things to tell you. I’m going to be quiet now and give the rest of you a chance to talk. Thank you so much for listening.”

  The room erupted with appreciative clapping, as loud as if an object had been dropped into a pan of hot oil from a great height. Greer immediately began clapping “like a maniac,” as she would say to Cory. She wanted to clap as loud as anyone in that room.

  Someone in the back called out, “FAITH, YOU ROCK!” and someone else shouted, “EFFING AWESOME BOOTS!” which made Faith Frank laugh. Of course she had a great laugh. The head went back and the mouth opened, the gullet exposed as if she were a sleek and elegant seal about to swallow a fish.

  The chapel was warmed a few degrees by human heat and excitement, and it smelled even more strongly of people and their wet jackets. The whole place was ripening. Faith looked out over the crowd, and hands went up.

  There was a dull, boilerplate question: “Do you have a message for the young people of today?” and then a hokey question that required Faith to assemble her dream dinner party: “You can invite anyone,” said the questioner. “No restrictions on what country they’re from, or what century. So who would you choose?” Greer remembered later that Faith had chosen Amelia Bloomer, the namesake of her magazine; and the hot young singer Opus, who had recently played the Super Bowl halftime show; also, the Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi; the aviatrix Bessie Coleman, who was the first African-American woman to hold a pilot’s license; Dorothy Parker; both Hepburns, Audrey and Katharine, “Because I like their style,” she said; and all four Beatles. And finally, “To liven things up, let’s throw in a couple of ardent anti-feminists,” said Faith. “Although I might be tempted to spit in their food.”

  It all blew by quickly because Greer had been distracted at the time, thinking that if she herself threw a dinner party, the main person she would want to invite was Faith Frank. She suddenly imagined Faith sitting comfortably in the Woolley first-floor lounge in her cool, tall boots, eating a bowl of instant ramen that Greer and Zee would have prepared for her in the microwave.

  A decrepit professor in the history department with skin like crumpled tracing paper asked such a narrow question (“Ms. Frank, I’m reminded of a little-known statute from the bad old days . . .”) that it could be of interest only to him. The audience grew restive and bored; people hunched down over their phones, or poked each other and whispered, or actually began chatting openly.

  The dean cut his question short, saying, “Perhaps you can ask Ms. Frank about this afterward. But I think we should move along now, in the interest of time. Let’s have one more question, people, and please make it a good one.”

  Greer’s hand flew right up, her whole arm shaking slightly, but still she kept it in the air, perilously. She wasn’t going to ask a question, exactly—only the vaguest approximation of one. She felt as though she had to establish contact with Faith Frank before it was too late. She’d thought it would be enough just to come here tonight and hear a lecture given by this admired and determined woman, and maybe feel cheered up by it after the whole rotten Darren Tinzler experience, but she couldn’t let the night end yet, couldn’t let Faith Frank get back into her town car and be driven back through the gates and away from here.

  Then, beside her in the pew, Zee’s arm went up too. Of course she had a real question, a political one; she probably even had follow-ups. Faith nodded her head in their direction. At first it was unclear which of them she was calling on. Greer tried to read Faith’s gaze—the female gaze, she thought with giddiness. But then she saw Faith seem to zero in on her, specifically her, Greer; and Greer looked quizzically at Zee, making sure she was reading this right. Zee gave her a quick, affirmative nod, as if to say: Yes. This is yours. Zee even smiled, wanting Greer to have it.

  So Greer stood. It was sickening to be the only one standing, but what could she do? “Ms. Frank?” she said, her voice coming out like a tiny lamb-bleat in this sacred space. “Hello.”

  “Hello.”

  “There’s something I want to ask you.”

  “Duh,” she heard a nearby girl quietly mutter. “That’s why you raised your hand.”

  Greer took a breath, ignoring this. “What are we supposed to do?” she asked. Then she stopped right there, unsure of what to say next. Faith Frank patiently waited.

  When it was apparent that Greer wasn’t going to say anything else, Faith said, gently, “Do about what, exactly?”

  “About the way it is,” Greer pushed on. “The way it feels. Things like misogyny, which seems to be everywhere, kind of wallpapering the world, you know what I mean? It’s still acceptable in the twenty-first century, and why is that?”

  “I’m sorry. Can you speak up?” asked Faith, and this request further mortified Greer, who could not really speak up, even now. She thought it was possible she would faint; Zee watched her, concerned.

  Greer held on to the lip of curved wood on the pew in front of her. “Misogyny?” she said again, a little louder, but her intonation lifted the word uncertainly at the last syllable. She despised it when her voice did this. She had recently read about the phenomenon of girls lifting the ends of their sentences, as if unsure whether what they were saying was a statement or a question. Uptalking, it was called. I don’t want to be an uptalker! she thought. That kind of talking makes me sound foolish. But it was always so much easier to turn a statement into a question, because in the end you could backpedal and say you were only asking, and then you wouldn’t have to endure the shame of being wrong. Greer remembered lifting the edges of an imaginary skirt and curtsying at Darren Tinzler, because he’d been looming over her, tipping his cap, and she hadn’t known what else to do. If you were female and insecure, apparently you sometimes lifted words at the ends of sentences, and you even occasionally lifted nonexistent garments.

  She was careful now, knowing that if she rattled on for too long about misogyny, people’s heads would drop down to their chests and they would all go zzzzz. You needed to jazz things up when talking about a topic like this; you needed to be a dynamic, electric messenger, the way Faith Frank was.

  Because, she knew, everything wasn’t hopeless. It was true that the women’s movement of Faith Frank’s day hadn’t taken away contempt for women or injustice once and for all, like a mother’s hand passing a cool cloth over the hot head of the world. But despite the churn of rape and sexism; despite the wrist-slap Darren Tinzler had been given; despite unequal pay, even now, and the pathetically low number of women running anything powerful, whether corporation or country; and despite how densely packed the Internet was with blocks of male solidarity and fury—“Bros before hoes!” came the musketeers’ cry, as well as trolls’ starkly articulated descriptions of cutting off the body parts of female journalists and celebrities—in many ways the world was so much more hospitable for women now.

  Opus, that gorgeous singer with the knockout voice—and one of Faith’s dream dinner-party guests—had had a recent hit with an anthem called “The Strong Ones,” which could frequently be heard across campus, through speakers propped in open windows.

  And that funny, sad, affectionate, sometimes slightly disturbing play Ra
gtimes, essentially a series of skits about getting your period, or not getting it, which took the characters from age twelve through adolescence and then adulthood, through pregnancies both wanted and unwanted, and wound up in a hot-flash-and-hormone stew of later life, had had a robust off-Broadway run and was now being performed inexpensively all over the country in local playhouses and community theaters. All that was needed were four folding chairs and four female actors. Celebrities liked taking part in the New York and LA productions; it had become a status symbol to be in this show, which had made a great deal of money for its playwrights, who had been best friends since sixth grade. “Sharon got her period first,” according to a profile of them in the New York Times. “Maddy got hers a week later.”

  Then there were the feminist blogs that had sprung up, though Fem Fatale was the best and most well-known of them by far; out of Seattle, it was personal-essay heavy, often sarcastic, talking openly about sex acts and bodily functions, and described itself as “sex-positive, snark-friendly, and in-your-face, but also just a damn good read.” The blog was seemingly fearless and able to address any subject, regardless of blowback.

  Greer had been reading Fem Fatale all fall, even as the women writing for it—a bodybuilder, a porn star, and various funny and searing young cultural critics—could intimidate her with their bold confidence. They weren’t much older than she was, and already they had a voice. She wondered how they’d gotten it.

  Greer took a shuddery breath and said to Faith, “Maybe you can see my T-shirt? And my friend’s too,” she added with magnanimity. “We’re wearing them because there was this assault and harassment case on campus this fall.” She pronounced it like harris-ment. God, why? It was bad enough to be an uptalker, but now she was a pretentious uptalker. This was nothing like the natural, confident way that Faith Frank spoke. “They just held a bogus hearing,” Greer added. “The decision they reached was a travesty.”

  She could hear the first stirrings of response in the pews—someone hesitantly clapping, and someone else saying, “That’s your opinion,” followed by mild hissing from another part of the chapel. “The person in question was told to get a little therapy,” Greer said, “and now he’s allowed to stay here, despite assaulting various women, including me.” She needed to pause. “So that’s the face on our T-shirts. Not that the T-shirts worked either. No one wanted them. So I guess I’m asking you what we can do next. How we can proceed.”

  Greer quickly sat back down, and Zee gave her a little hug. There was a tense, collecting moment, during which the whole chapel seemed to try to figure out whether it was worth it to get worked up all over again about this issue, which had already been decided and was officially over. Most people immediately seemed to decide it wasn’t worth it; it was a school night, a shitty, wet, windy night, and it was already getting late. Three-to-five-page response papers to Machiavelli’s The Prince still had to be written for one of the freshman colloquia. Moms and dads still had to be called. “I need more money in my account,” sons and daughters would flatly announce in place of hello.

  Faith Frank seemed to grow briefly taller behind the podium, and then she leaned forward onto it, resting her folded arms there, and quietly said, “Thank you for your question, which I know was heartfelt.”

  Greer didn’t move or breathe; beside her, Zee was equally still.

  “What amazes me again and again is how alarmingly improvised the legal process is on campuses,” said Faith. “So what should you do? I don’t know the circumstances here, but I know that you and your friends should definitely keep the conversation going.”

  She tipped her head up, about to say something more, but then the provost stood and said, “I’m afraid we’re out of time. Let’s thank our guest for this magical evening.”

  There was more applause, and Faith Frank receded, and that was the end of it. Greer watched as people surrounded Faith, planting themselves in her line of vision in order to have individual encounters with her. Even the ones who had been unimpressed before seemed to have been changed now. Students and professors and administrators and locals ringed her like the townspeople in an opera, though Greer hung back, with Zee right beside her. Greer had already had her public exchange with Faith Frank, and it had been nearly overwhelming and then in the end unfinished and disappointing. But there was nothing to do about it now; the crowd had thickened fast around Faith.

  “God, I would love to meet her, even for a second,” said Zee. “I mean, she’s right here. But there are too many people, and it would just be another fangirl moment. I don’t want that.”

  “I don’t either.”

  “Are you heading back to Woolley?”

  “Yeah. I have to work,” said Greer.

  “You always have to work.”

  “That’s true.”

  “At least we heard her speak, and you got to talk to her,” said Zee. “You did good. Want to get a pizza? Graziano’s delivers late.”

  “Oh, sure,” Greer said. Pizza would be their consolation prize: two girls alone late at night with the soft solace of warm dough.

  They pushed their arms into coat holes, and Zee put her watch cap on her head and inched into a pair of big oatmeal-colored mittens. She could wear boys’ clothes, girls’ clothes, and it all seemed like a casually shrewd fashion choice. Together they began to walk toward the exit. People who had been surrounding Faith were now splintering off into separate, smaller groups, or wandering away individually. Greer felt oddly hollow and even a little tragic. It was as if she’d been carried for a moment, squealing, on Faith Frank’s shoulders, and had then taken a tumble onto the hard, cold floor.

  Now, out in the vestibule, she saw a flash of maroon, a blood-colored thing. A scarf, she realized, Faith’s scarf, floating slightly as it was ferried by its wearer into the ladies’ room; as it was ferried there by Faith Frank herself. The irony of this, she thought: Faith Frank having to use a ladies’ room, submitting to the word ladies even now, into the twenty-first century.

  “Look,” Greer said quietly.

  “Let’s do it,” said Zee. “You can finish up what you started. And we can each try to have a moment with her.”

  Inside the warm ladies’ room, with its milky gray, acoustically sensitive tile, only one stall was in use. Zee and Greer took the ones on either side of it, trying to look like normal people availing themselves of a public bathroom. Greer sat down and dipped her head, seeing the edge of a woman’s gray suede boot beneath the divider. She held very still and didn’t make a sound. From the other side of the graffitied wall, with a disturbing message scratched onto it in a very small hand—please can anyone help me i like to cut myself—there was a pause, and then the predictable release. The single strand, the straight line from body-opening to waiting water, the ordinariness of Faith Frank, famous feminist, peeing.

  The vulnerability and realness of women were on display right here, and Faith flushed and emerged. Greer stood. Through the space between door and frame she watched Faith go over to the mirror. Zee hadn’t come out of her own stall yet. She was obviously waiting, kindly allowing Greer to approach first. But Greer noticed then that Faith was leaning on the sink for a moment, closing her eyes; and then Faith sighed. Greer knew that Faith was taking a second for herself, which she probably really needed. Tonight everyone had wanted something from her, and it had all had a cumulative effect. No one was a bottomless well of giving; not even Faith Frank. Greer had been all set to burst forth and try to finish her conversation with Faith, but now she hesitated. She didn’t want to add to Faith’s burden. But she couldn’t keep staying in here forever, so she unlatched the door and walked to the sink, smiling tentatively at Faith, attempting a state that would appear the opposite of demanding.

  Faith looked at Greer in the mirror and said, “Oh, hello. You were asking me a question in there, right? And then the evening was suddenly cut off. I’m sorry about that.”

&n
bsp; Greer just looked at her. Faith was apologizing for not finishing her exchange with Greer, a stranger, in the chapel. How are you like this? Greer thought, she who could barely manage her own needs, and to some extent Cory’s. But it all came naturally to Faith; she had been doing this for a very long time.

  “That’s so nice of you,” Greer said. “It’s just that . . . when you told me to speak up in there, it was hard for me? Listen to that. My voice just goes up. I don’t really know how to be,” she admitted, and then she stopped talking.

  Faith considered her. “Tell me your name.”

  “Greer Kadetsky.”

  “All right, Greer. No one said there was one way to be. There isn’t.”

  “But it would be nice to be able to say what I think, what I believe, without feeling like I’m about to have a stroke.”

  “Well, that is certainly true.”

  “I had a teacher who used to tell the boys to use their inside voices. I’m thinking, maybe I should use my outside voice.”

  “Maybe. But don’t be hard on yourself; don’t beat yourself up. Just try to accomplish what you can, and what you care about, while being yourself.”

  Greer quickly licked her dry lips. Zee was still in the stall, giving Greer this time with Faith. Any moment now she would appear, and Greer would have to cede the floor to her. “I cared about this thing that happened here,” Greer said. “This entitled guy who said things and grabbed us. We testified, but it went nowhere. I feel like I don’t belong at this school,” she added. “It’s the wrong place for me. I knew it would be wrong.”

  “So why did you come here?”

  “My parents screwed up when it came to my financial aid,” Greer said hotly. “They acted really badly.”

  Faith kept looking at her. “I see. So you’re quiet but you’re also furious,” she said. “It seems like it’s very hard for you to keep asserting yourself. But you’re doing it anyway, because you want to find meaning, is that right?” Greer hadn’t thought of it that way, exactly. But as soon as Faith said it, she understood it to be true. She wanted to find meaning. That had been the missing piece, or one of them. “I admire that,” said Faith. “I admire you.”