It was the first day of the year that felt like spring, and I was walking to Dairy Queen with two of my friends. I was excited to have a milkshake, especially after walking uphill for half an hour in the sun.  

Two men were hanging outside of the strip mall, and they stared at us as if they wanted to devour us. The three of us lowered our heads, as if not looking would make them and their predatory eyes disappear.    

“Look at these pretty ladies,” the balding one called out. 

Suddenly I transformed myself from the passive person I’d been only a moment before. “Ugh,” I retorted loudly, hoping to get them to back off.  

But they kept saying things to us. The way they looked so bemused and proud of themselves for being gross to 17-year-olds really disgusted me. I shouted “ugh” and made some hand gestures, to which one of the men asked why I was such a bitch.  

The real question is, how could I not be? My favorite biblical heroines have always been Vashti and Lilith, women who refused to listen to men's frivolous demands. My favorite actress, Elizabeth Taylor, originated my favorite phrase, “Bitch, do something.” My favorite music artist has been Courtney Love since middle school, and everyone seems to think she’s a bitch.  With these women as my guides, it would honestly be disrespectful not to be a bitch. 

To that man, in seconds, I had gone from a pretty lady to a bitch. A bitch is any woman who doesn’t act as docile, forgiving or nurturing, or fill-in-the-blank as she's “supposed to.” In other words, the word bitch a set definition; that is why it is so easy to be one. When I was a pretty lady, in the man's eyes, I existed for his gaze and enjoyment. But when I repudiated this, I showed that I had my own thoughts and opinions. Therefore, I was a bitch. 

Elizabeth Wurtzel, one of my favorite authors, in her book (fittingly titled Bitch), makes the case that every woman is a bitch, no matter what life she chooses to lead. That is because every woman is a person with her own desires and behavior. Bitch follows women like Sylvia Plath and Delilah, who follow their desires. Wurtzel’s feminist journey started during her Orthodox Jewish education, where she was more drawn to the women “villains,” who she found sympathetic. That characteristic influences her analysis of women for the rest of the book. Women like Bette Davis or Amy Fisher, are often through the media reduced to cheap stereotypes about women. Wurtzel dares to examine women in all their vibrancy and intensity.  We are just too vibrant and complex to be “pretty ladies.”  

Wurtzel’s book is messy, written in a Kerouac-esque stream of consciousness. It doesn’t try to be the next feminist manifesto. Rather, it is a compilation of various women from pop culture, historical figures, and politics, how the media covered them, and the author’s relationship with these women. Bitch made me realize how these stereotypes have been used to bring down women since pre-biblical times. Critics called the book frenzied. But I loved it. The earnestness and insistence of the book, of Wurtzel, needing to be heard, was the literary equivalent of what I felt after the street harassment episode. 

When I was little, my favorite characters were always the evil stepmothers, rather than beautiful, bland maidens. I used to feel a little bad about this. Of course, I was supposed to align myself with the princesses. Recently though, I’ve reconsidered. The stepmothers at least had their own (wicked) agency, while the princesses seemed to mindlessly wander to their fates. Even though Grimm's stepmothers seemingly always faced gruesome fates, at least they had chances to truly live. 

After the Dairy Queen episode, I apologized to my friends for causing a scene. One of them stopped me in the middle of my sentence and told me she was thankful for my outburst. She said she never knew what to say in (far too common) situations like this.  

There’s no perfect way to perform femininity that will leave one safe, so why don’t we embrace being bitches?