Book Club: A Lookbook

Moda Magazine’s

Book Club

Directed by Kate Lawless, Deputy Editor

Layout Design by Annika Ide, Photography Director

Creative Direction and Styling by Emily Fleming, Creative Direction Assistant

Written by Kate Lawless, Deputy Editor, Shelby Evans, Lifestyle Editor, and Jessica Katz, Lifestyle Editorial Assistant

Photographed by Hunter Kiehl, Staff Photographer

Modeled by Emily Fleming, Nzinga Acosta, Jessica Katz, Riley August and Isha Camaro

Makeup by Riley August and Isha Camaro

Welcome to Moda Magazine’s BOOK CLUB

Every year the Wisconsin Union hosts a Literary Festival that celebrates our community’s storytelling, especially through literature. This year’s theme is Activism in the Literary Arts, and as a Wisconsin Union Directorate publication, Moda is excited to bring to you Book Club: A Lookbook. As a magazine with a majority female audience, it is important to connect our community’s love for creative expression with our commitment to growing together in our intersectional feminism. This year’s Literary Festival was a perfect opportunity to collaborate in this mission.

Our small team of creators put together this lookbook to show a diversity of fashion styles that also reflect the diversity of feminist literary activism. Here we can see that there is a story and a style that empowers every woman. We hope Book Club gives you some book recommendations, but also that it inspires readers to engage with women’s storytelling and activism as feminism continues to expand and amplify new voices.

“The Feminine Mystique”

BY BETTY FRIEDAN

Known as “the problem with no name,” Friedan’s book awoke the second wave of feminism in the United States after it was published in 1963. It’s a classic taught in high schools and colleges across the country and still causes controversy today, as much as it did back in the 60s.

Friedan found that most women felt unfulfilled in their housework, yet society assumed they were happy. Friedan named this disconnect as the “feminine mystique.” Women wanted to go to university or work and grow as people, they just lacked the ability or resources to voice that. She called on women to reject their feminine mystique lives, and seek a new life free from those expectations. In the modern context, it may not seem as radical as when it was released, but the interviews with housewives and the examination of suburban life in the ’50s are important herstory.

“The Beauty Myth”

BY NAOMI WOLF

Wolf’s landmark book “The Beauty Myth” explores how harmful narratives about female beauty work against the progress women have made toward liberation. The beauty myth claims that beauty is a quality that women should do everything in their power to achieve and maintain. That without beauty, women are worthless and invisible. As beauty standards adapt with time, women are trapped in a cycle of constant vulnerability with a need for external validation.”

The beauty myth has not only created unrealistic social standards for women but has affected them in many aspects of life, both personal and professional. But this book helps us see through the beauty industry’s bullshit and shows us that despite society’s expectations, women’s value does not depend on their appearance.

“Bad Feminist”

BY ROXANNE GAY

In a collection of essays, Roxanne Gay explores the nuances of feminism and how sometimes, enjoying the things you like seems to be at odds with the movement. She finds that there has been a “right” and a “wrong” way to be a feminist in culture, and she puts herself against those standards and finds they probably not accurate measurements.

Gay examines feminist literature and finds that there are always pieces missing from different women’s analyses. She admits to liking female degrading rap music and the color pink and she wants babies and would make sacrifices to her career for them. She continues to admit why she has failed as a feminist, but tells readers that feminism isn’t for one specific type of person. And in all the way’s Gay is a “bad femnist,” feminism has also failed her as a Black queer woman. This book is essential for empowering readers who feel like they’re also “bad feminists” or have been left out of feminist discourse.

“Entitled”

BY KATE MANNE

Kate Manne’s latest book elaborates on how patriarchal structures enforce the idea that men’s desires and needs deserve to be fulfilled, while women fall by the wayside.

“Entitled” begins by explaining male entitlement as it functioned in the Senate confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh and goes on to cover patriarchal norms that, in Manne’s own words, “take the form of what men are deemed to be entitled to and what women are held to be obligated to give to them.”

In this book, readers learn about mansplaining, women’s pain, mass shooting phenomenons and toxic masculinity in its many different forms. “Entitled” is a timely read that explains how male privilege functions in our society and how we as women also deserve to take up space and speak our minds.

“Hood Feminism”

BY MIKKI KENDALL

This book is perfect for those readers who want to add depth and range to their understanding of feminism. “Hood Feminism” was published around the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, a change that brought white women more equality to white men, but relegated the needs and rights of women of color to the backburner. “Hood Feminism” confronts white feminism and shows us that even mainstream feminists tend to ignore the needs of their less privileged sisters.

Kendall illustrates how women in poverty are forced to make “messy,” often illegal decisions. In desperation, they turn to sex work or selling drugs to survive. Feminist issues encompass a much wider array of societal woes, including inadequate wages, food insecurity, unsafe living conditions, poor healthcare and the flawed public education system. These are issues that millions of women continue to struggle with in the U.S. and it’s time that well-off white women use their privilege to help.