Still, when it comes to the subject of bodies, Gay is always armed with a lightning rod response. But when you're first starting out, you're always expected to have an immediate response, often for 'exposure,'" she reveals. "Now I’m allowed to be more thoughtful in how I respond to things.
"It's singing for your supper." Fortunately, with three best-selling books under her belt, she is at a place in her career where she can be reflective, taking more time to formulate her opinions-a privilege she would like to see extended to other thinkers today. "When something terrible happens, people expect me to have an immediate response," says Gay. And that’s exhilarating," she says, adding, "I can be very daring on Twitter." This, though, has led to some impossible expectations from readers and fans, who often demand her to be, what she calls, an opinion vending machine. "I’m pretty shy and quiet, but writing is a place where I don’t have to be shy or quiet.
Gay, who grew up in Nebraska, admits that it is in her writing-on social media or otherwise-that she feels the most seen and heard. Or the time she simply responded, "GOOGLE ME". Often, people come for her simply because she is fat, black, and a (vocal) woman with a platform, but her comebacks are the tweets of legend: Like the time a troll declared her 140-character response to a topic insufficient, and she answered that her reply would be through The New York Times-and it was.
The best-selling author, who quickly became a hero for millennial women-myself included-with Bad Feminist in 2014 and Difficult Women last winter, is known for her social media clapbacks. “On Twitter, I just don’t give a fuck,” Roxane Gay tells me on the phone with a laugh. Here, Keah Brown talks to best-selling author Roxane Gay about some uncomfortable truths for our 2017 Women Who Dare series. They dare to do the impossible, encouraging young visionaries to break-not just push-boundaries, inspiring people around the world to fight for what they believe in. The new generation of #WomenWhoDare are those who refuse to conform.