And it made me concerned about my daughter. I'm a mess! And the fact that I wasn't really reflecting that truth and vulnerability made me feel like I was doing my readers a disservice. And I was like, Actually, I am not handling it well at all. People would be like, I was wondering how you are handling online harassment so well. We create a narrative on Facebook or Twitter or what have you, and I didn't feel like it was necessarily a reflection of who I am. The book came about in part because of the image that I was projecting online, on social media. I wanted her to know that it's not super straightforward. Becoming a parent added a big sense of urgency to my feminism. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play In an interview a few years ago, you said about your daughter: 'I hope that by modeling feminism in my own life and work and relationships, it will become an organic part of hers.' I was wondering if that's how 'Sex Object' came about.ĭefinitely. We spoke to the 'professional feminist' about being 'a mess,' the sense of urgency about feminism that comes with being a mother, and how she still thinks sex is one the best things about being a human being. As the adult Valenti notes in her new memoir, Sex Object(out June 7), 'If I was going to be a sex object, I was going to be the best sex object I could be.' Like many young women, she also had to figure out the best way to cope with that. The teenager-who would grow up to found write a column for the Guardian about gender and politics and publish several books about feminism, including The Purity Myth and Full Frontal Feminism-learned early on that being a woman meant being treated like an object sometimes. Her teacher told her that to pass, she just had to 'give him a hug.' A few days after she graduated, a thirty-something teacher, who'd known Valenti since she was 13, called her house to ask her out.

When Jessica Valenti was in her junior year of high school, there was one class she cut for weeks.

Sex Object by Jessica Valenti