‘Misery Business’ and the Emancipation of the Bad Feminist

Image credit unknown

There are over 3,000 playlists curated by Spotify, of course not including ones independently made by its 248 million monthly users. I alone have 47. But while I am completely unqualified to have any valid opinion on Spotify playlists in all its totality, trust me when I say that the best one is by user Maj Hardikar, called “internalized misogyny slaps sometimes”.

Every track will make you stop and realize that damn, internalized misogyny really does slap sometimes, from Taylor Swift’s 2010 hit “Speak Now” (singing along to the bridge is just so fun I forgive her for ruining someone’s wedding), to the early 2000’s pop-punk essential “Sk8er Boi”. And of course, the pinnacle, the climax, the playlist’s first entry, the bearer of the world’s best guitar riff but also the lyrics Once a whore / you’re nothing more: Paramore’s “Misery Business”.

Hayley Williams wrote “Misery Business” when she was 17. She had been in Paramore—and in an industry that is not only predominantly male but also toxically so—for four years, and the song was from a page in her diary. She has profusely apologized, again and again, every single time it came up; and it came up often. (It is still their most streamed song on Spotify, despite being released 13 years ago.) In response to comments saying she ‘can’t be a feminist’ or that she’s ‘not a good feminist’, she said she hasn’t related to “Misery Business” in a long time. “What I couldn’t have known [when I wrote the song] was that I was feeding into a lie that I’d bought into, just like so many other teenagers—and many adults—before me,” she told Track Seven. “The whole, ‘I’m not like the other girls’ thing… this ‘cool girl’ religion. What even is that? Who are the gatekeepers of ‘cool’ anyway? Are they all men? Are they women that we’ve put on top of an unreachable pedestal?”

That’s why I was so keen on letting this issue pass; I didn’t think she committed as big a sin as we made it out to be. I also hated some of the girls I went to high school with, but like Williams, I now understand that I was simply placed in a culture that thrived in female insecurity, that drove women to pit themselves against each other. Why must she be denied the right to call herself a feminist for making a mistake we all made and sometimes still make? Why are we crucifying her for (publicly) falling victim to the same patriarchal trap we find ourselves in now?

Learning about internalized misogyny—finding out there’s a term for it, catching yourself reinforcing it—doesn’t mean you automatically stop doing it. Since childhood we have been conditioned to always hate on the woman, as if on instinct, even if they were not necessarily at fault. “Speak Now”, “Sk8er Boi”, and “Misery Business” are all anthems about girl-on-girl hate with a man at the center. The man as if a prize, someone so demanded and clamored for; the possessor a winner and every other woman a sore loser.  

Wiliams, again speaking about the song, added: “The problem with the lyrics is not that I had an issue with someone I went to school with. That’s just high school and friendships and breakups. It’s the way I tried to call her out using words that didn’t belong in the conversation. It’s the fact that the story was set up inside the context of a competition that didn’t exist over some fantasy romance.”

We use language we have been taught in interpreting our personal experiences. We must not bear the guilt of misogyny if misogyny was the only way we’ve been taught to respond to our negative feelings. Once you become aware of your place in this competition that doesn't exist against every woman you know, it becomes easier to let go of the instinct to see them as enemies. It has been liberating, at least personally, to let go of this guilt and shame that never belonged to me. I wasn’t the spawn of satan and an embarrassment to feminism because I used to be mean to other girls. I grew up in a culture that taught me women were subservient—of course I was going to think they were bitches and whores. This experience is what led me to feminism in the first place.

Paramore announced on the last night of their After Laughter tour that it was also the last time they were playing “Misery Business” live.”This is a choice that we’ve made because we feel that we should. We feel like it’s time to move away from it for a little while,” the frontwoman said. This saddened many fans, as it’s become tradition for the band to invite a fan to the stage to sing the bridge with them. In (yet another) apology Williams posted on her Tumblr, she said, “All my experiences—including my mistakes—have shaped me and made me someone I’m happier to be. I’m a 26-year-old person. And yes, a proud feminist. Just maybe not a perfect one?”

It wasn’t fair that she had to apologize again and again for something I believe wasn’t really her fault. It wasn’t fair that just because she is a woman in a male-dominated industry, we revered her as this Feminist Hero and vilified her the moment we realized the song we’ve been singing along to since we were kids was not actually very kind. Roxane Gay, in an essay from her book Bad Feminist, wrote, “Public women, and feminists in particular, have to be everything to everyone; when they aren’t, they are excoriated for their failure.” 

Because cultures are becoming increasingly individualistic, feminism always gets shrunk down to the micro. It becomes an identity as opposed to a social movement. Because I identify as one, I can’t be anything else or do anything misaligned from other people’s idea of what a feminist is. (Sometimes it’s not even because of that—we can still be subjected to the same pressures for simply being a woman.)

I always thought feminism was something ubiquitous, probably because I spent a lot of time in spaces where feminism was the norm. But I am still a feminist when I go out of such spaces, and people outside such spaces—often having distorted definitions of feminism, because god knows it has been botched and mythicized to an ungodly extent—have certain expectations of me. When I inevitably do and/or say something wrong, I hear the retort, “I thought you were a feminist.” I have no room for error, because if I make a mistake, it’s never, “Oh, Andrea made a mistake,”—it’s feminism that’s making the mistakes. 

If you call yourself something, you suddenly become the spokesperson of that entire thing. But I cannot carry an entire global movement spanning centuries on my shoulders. I don’t want to be the receptionist at the receiving end of other people’s (mostly men’s) complaints and statements where they say “not to play the devil’s advocate” but they proceed to play the devil’s advocate anyway. I am tired of feeling like every mistake I make is at the expense of feminism, as if feminism is a performance art and my identifying with it requires me to put up an endless act aligned with what others think feminism is. 

This scrutiny from others, we inevitably turn inward. Even feminists themselves have this idea of what a feminist is, and there are many, many, many times when I don’t adhere to it. I am never sure of myself, and I often don’t speak out because I always feel like I don’t know enough. Sometimes I say sorry too much on purpose, because it’s less tiring. I want to stand my ground, Speak Out like my Feminist Heroes taught me, but it just takes more time and energy and I’m tired of doing it on every single conversation. A guy I dated kept using ‘gay’ as an insult, and when I called him out (I did it lovingly, thank you very much), he kept irrationally justifying it that I just gave up and said, “Just don’t show it to me when you do it.” Why should I be the one compensating for his lack of social awareness anyway?

This feeling did not dissipate when I started using dating apps, where I had to talk to different men who all practically responded to me the same way. It was easier to just pander to them, to agree; so I can spend less time trying (and failing) to convince this one (1) man to hear me out and focus instead on reading more Roxane Gay. 

I realized, though, that if I could just turn off my ‘feminist identity’ like flipping a switch, then my feminism was ultimately self-serving. I should not be satisfied with my feminism existing in this echochamber; I should not be satisfied with being a feminist in a vacuum that’s already feminist to begin with and call it a day. If I keep shedding what feminism has taught me once I exit its safe space, that just means I need feminism all the more. 

I will not stop being a feminist just because I do things that don’t conform to mainstream feminism, or because I don’t always get it right. I am a feminist even if I’m still not fully familiar with its history; and I am one even on days when I let The Patriarchy win. After all, there is no right way to be a feminist—even mainstream feminism, with its penchant for identity politics, still gets things wrong. Feminism is against patriarchy—a social structure that negatively affects both men and women—but because both words are gendered, it is so easily misconstrued as women hating on men. Of course men will demonize a movement they think demonized them first.

(This goes without saying, but feminists don’t hate men. Men can be feminists too. I like most men, even ones who don’t particularly adhere to the label. The guy I’m dating right now laughs with me about softboys and simps and asks me about toxic masculinity. I like him the most.) 

That said, stop absolving men of their role in reinforcing the patriarchy. “Misery Business” begins with a breakup (When I thought he was mine, she caught him by the mouth), and the blame was placed on his new girlfriend as opposed to him. This happens too often. Men are not passive beings at the mercy of their impulses. Call them out if they don’t listen. If they are that interested in discourse, engage with them. Give your female friends the same treatment, as they can be enforcers of the patriarchy too. Often I get treated like a novelty—oh she’s my feminist friend; I’m dating a feminist; as if ‘feminist’ deserves its own trademark symbol—so I’m choosing to stick to it. Let your feminist friend be her feminist self. 

Sometimes that ‘feminist self’ is not always going to get it right, and that’s completely okay. Learning to forgive yourself for your shortcomings makes the fight less exhausting. Hayley Williams is currently working on solo music, and one of her songs, the haunting “Roses/Lotus/Violet/Iris”, is about her personal journey with femininity. In it she sings, And I will not compare other beauty to mine / And I will not become a thorn in my own side. May we all break through the earth, coming up softly and wildly, as gracefully as she did.