Moxie - Jennifer Mathieu

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Moxie girls fight back!

Vivian Carter is fed up. Fed up with her small-town Texas high school that thinks the football team can do no wrong. Fed up with sexist dress codes and hallway harassment. But most of all, Viv Carter is fed up with always following the rules.

Viv’s mom was a punk rock Riot Grrrl in the ’90s, so now Viv takes a page from her mother’s past and creates a feminist zine that she distributes anonymously to her classmates. She’s just blowing off steam, but other girls respond. Pretty soon Viv is forging friendships with other young women across the divides of cliques and popularity rankings, and she realizes that what she has started is nothing short of a girl revolution."

I mostly loved this, so let's start with the good stuff. It was beautiful to read a book about young women pushing back against negative behavior, and it was particularly awesome to see them courageously do so even with the fear that no one else would be standing next to them when they did. Awesome. It's hard to do that, and women of all ages need to see more examples of badass women taking a stand. Additionally, I greatly appreciated that the tension between Viv and her BFF after Viv started spending more time with the new girl was resolved in such a sweet way (although I do wish it hadn't come at the hands of sexual assault. Grrrrr.). Just as we need more examples of fantastic, courageous, vocal women, the world could do with fewer catty, pointless fights between friends. Kudos to Jennifer Mathieu for writing characters with the maturity to resolve their issues through communication and trust. Finally, it was refreshing to see romance included that supplemented, but did not supersede, the main narrative. Feminists need love too, so I'm not opposed to romantic elements in stories like this, but so often the romance becomes the focal point. Mathieu did a great job of weaving Viv's young love into the story in a balanced way.

Now...a couple of things that really got under my skin. One, there's no superintendent or school district administration to go to? I get that douchebag #1's dad was the principal, so no one at the school could be gone to for assistance, but for fuck's sake go over his head! How did it get to the point where this crazy-ass principal was trying to suspend/expel a third of the school before something happened? Bonkers. Second, Viv's clashes with her boyfriend when he said stupid things. I have a husband, and said husband is not a lady, so on occasion it can be hard for him to fully grasp the difficulties of womanhood. Consequently, he says dumb shit sometimes. When he does, I have two options. Option A: Get mad at him because he just couldn't understand. Option B: HELP HIM BE AN ALLY. Why is what he is saying frustrating? How could he reframe his thinking to be supportive instead? There were soooooooo many chances for Viv to be like, "look, bud, I get that not all guys are bad. It's awesome that you have cool, super into baseball stats, bros to eat lunch with. Would said cool bros be interested in joining the cause?" Open up a dialogue, yo. Help him understand.

Anyhoo...overall, fantastic read. I highly recommend it.