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"  In the fall of 2007, former camp buddies Nona Willis Aronowitz, 23, and Emma Bee Bernstein, 22, hopped into Aronowitz&amp;#039;s Chevy Cavalier and took off on a cross-country quest to discover what feminism means to young women. This was more than just a joyride. The authors grew up in New York City as ideological heiresses to a rich feminist legacy (Aronowitz&amp;#039;s mom was the brilliant cultural critic and activist Ellen Willis, and Bernstein&amp;#039;s mother, Susan Bee, is a feminist artist), and they felt like it was their time to pick up the torch, especially since Aronowitz&amp;#039;s mother had just passed away. As Bernstein eloquently suggested, &amp;quot;Let&amp;#039;s fucking do something!&amp;quot;  They sought out twentysomethings who were involved with work that benefited other women, as well as some boldface feminists like Kathleen Hanna and Erica Jong. Aronowitz peppered them with questions like &amp;quot;Do you consider yourself a feminist?&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;What are some issues that are getting under your skin lately?&amp;quot; while Bernstein photographed their portraits. Aronowitz strongly urges women to likewise hit the road (why should the Beats and the frat boys have all the fun?), but those of us who are trapped in cubicles can ride along with the pair by checking out their new book,  Girldrive: Criss-Crossing America, Redefining Feminism (Seal Press). With its 100-plus profiles of women of different cultures, backgrounds and most importantly, opinions, Girldrive provides a wide-angle snapshot of contemporary feminism, and raises provocative questions about our responsibilities to the movement. Sadly, the book also serves as a eulogy for Bernstein, who committed suicide in 2008. Aronowitz explains that the road trip provided an escape from the pressures of real life, but Bernstein&amp;#039;s demons eventually caught up to her. After Bernstein&amp;#039;s death, the project took on a heightened importance for Aronowitz: &amp;quot;Finishing Girldrive would prove more than ever that utopianism can prevail over very real tragedy,&amp;quot; she writes.  ELLE spoke with Aronowitz about the most pressing issues on the minds of young women today, and about how her late co-author was affected by the project. Not all the women you interviewed have positive associations with the F-word.  The word &amp;quot;feminism&amp;quot; was a code word for us that meant seeing the world through the eyes of someone who notices gender disparity. For some women, it was too loaded a term, and for others, it literally didn&amp;#039;t mean anything.  You talked to two college roommates in Claremont who made the point that because the U.S. is so diverse, there is no one national identity as the &amp;quot;American woman.&amp;quot;   I&amp;#039;d agree that there is no national identity, but there are definitely common issues. Almost every woman we talked to was critical of the female ideal in the media. When we were talking about images in magazines, the issue was body image; when we were talking about movies, the issue was vapid, one-dimensional female characters. And across the board, women mentioned &amp;quot;whiteness.&amp;quot; They weren&amp;#039;t necessarily denouncing media; they were saying, &amp;quot;We get pleasure out of it, but we want to see it moving in a different direction.&amp;quot; That was the number one thing young women wanted to change.  What were some other big issues on their minds?  Almost everyone\u2014conservative, liberal, every race and class\u2014had something to say about reproductive rights: not just about abortion, but about our country&amp;#039;s attitude about sex, pregnancy, and reproductive rights. But there were some interesting complexities. We met a midwife in Nashville who told us that women need to take control of their own bodies, and that when they&amp;#039;re giving birth they should have a beautiful experience. Then she told us that she was very pro-life and worked in a crisis pregnancy center. What she was saying about being a midwife really complicated the narrative for me because we didn&amp;#039;t agree with her at all about abortion, but she was a great midwife who clearly cared about women.  Almost all the women you talked to practice feminist acts, but many rejected the label. Women who did identify did so with qualifiers: &amp;quot;a queer black radical feminist,&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;a personal feminist&amp;quot; (as vs. a political feminist). On one hand, this could be viewed as a positive sign of an evolving movement\u2014an idea of big-tent feminism. Or one could take all of this to mean that &amp;quot;feminism&amp;quot; is a limiting label that has outgrown its usefulness. How do you choose to interpret this?  It&amp;#039;s unacceptable to not be aware of how your gender affects you. And women who did identify as feminist were in the habit of talking about these issues. So in that way, I really want to keep the word alive. But in another way\u2014who cares? People can choose to reject feminism, but they should still know what they&amp;#039;re talking about. It&amp;#039;s really disturbing that first- and second-wave feminism aren&amp;#039;t taught in schools. Why do people know who Martin Luther King is, yet they don&amp;#039;t know Gloria Steinem? It&amp;#039;s embarrassing if you don&amp;#039;t know about most other US civil rights movements but it&amp;#039;s not embarrassing if you don&amp;#039;t know about feminism. Some women act as if they&amp;#039;re noticing these issues for the first time when the reality is that people have been fighting against these things for decades.  Does it matter whether women call themselves feminists if they&amp;#039;re doing feminist work?  That&amp;#039;s what Girldrive doesn&amp;#039;t answer: how do you strike this balance of identifying as a feminist and doing the work? When does it become a problem to do one and not the other? Do you have to be an activist to be a feminist? Well no, but...  There should be a word that&amp;#039;s bigger [than feminism] that means all this different kind of amazing work. I don&amp;#039;t think it should include women who go through their lives without having a critical understanding of how their lives are shaped by being a woman.  Here&amp;#039;s an example of someone in your book doing awesome things for women yet rejecting feminism: the bad-ass chef who runs the kitchen at a testosterone-charged Chicago burger joint.   She said that she wasn&amp;#039;t a feminist because she wasn&amp;#039;t a manhater. And I said, that&amp;#039;s what you think feminism is\u2014&amp;quot;wishing that men didn&amp;#039;t exist&amp;quot;? And she&amp;#039;s like, &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s how it&amp;#039;s been explained to me.&amp;quot; That&amp;#039;s completely different from women seeing the problems in establishment feminism and rejecting that and creating their own definition. People should be educated about feminism so they don&amp;#039;t hold on to these tired-ass stereotypes.  Your co-author, Emma Bee Bernstein, committed suicide a few months after your trip. How would you respond to those who wonder if Emma&amp;#039;s idealism and optimism, which are so apparent in her essays and photos in the book, were part of her undoing?   Emma had been suffering from severe depression and anxiety for a while. Feminism and the road trip were two of the most positive forces in Emma&amp;#039;s life, even though they weren&amp;#039;t enough to combat her depression. I really think it was awesome for her to talk to talk to so many women and to keep her own life in perspective. Emma never faulted on the fact that this project was important to her.  Do you think Emma was hopeful about the future of feminism?  Definitely. It really helped [her] to meet these inspiring women, and she championed all of them.  Do you think an actual feminist movement exists today\u2014is there a Fourth Wave?  No\u2014but I don&amp;#039;t think that&amp;#039;s a bad thing. There are so many women in this country, all fighting for their own issues. The idea of feminism is now very fractured \u2013 but it doesn&amp;#039;t have to be unified. It&amp;#039;s too hard to do that.  So, in sum, how do you feel about the state of American feminism?  Women are trying to make things better in their own communities. I&amp;#039;m optimistic.   Click here to read the Girldrive blog. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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