‘Moxie’ embraces girl-power spirit

Jennifer Mathieu dedicated “Moxie,” her new young-adult novel, to the high school teacher who used to call her a “feminazi” in class.

“You insulted me, but you also sparked my interest in feminism, so really, the joke is on you,” she writes. “Revenge is best served cold, you jerk.”

Twenty years later, the Houston author still remembers the man who mocked her for believing in equal rights and access to birth control.

“It was such a joy to write that dedication,” she said. “Sometimes I just open the book and look at it because it’s so fun to read over and over again.”

“Moxie,” Mathieu’s fourth novel, is a story that claps back at him — and at all the other men who fail to recognize women and girls as their equals. It’s about a small-town Texas teen who, inspired by stories of her

mom’s Riot Grrrl past, steps up to start a girlpower revolution at her high school. And it’s as irresistibly delicious as its revenge-claiming dedication.

“Moxie” started getting nationwide buzz months ago, when Amy Poehler’s production company secured the film rights. Then last summer, Kirkus Reviews — a powerhouse in book reviewing — published an early review that criticized Mathieu’s feminist message, complaining that she glamorized “vigilante justice” and devalued the efforts of feminist men. The response to that review was swift and strong, with readers, librarians and other authors speaking out online in Mathieu’s defense.

So “Moxie” already was a household name when it published last week. Now Mathieu hopes it will spark a bit of ’90s-style feminist spirit in a new generation.

Fighting sexism

The small-town setting in “Moxie” is fictional, but it’ll ring true to anyone who’s attended high school in Texas. Vivian and her friends are juniors at East Rockport High School, and they’re sick of the way girls are treated like second-class citizens.

The football team gets lavish funding while the girls’ soccer team wears 20-year-old uniforms.

The girls are called out of class for humiliating dress-code checks so they won’t be a distraction to the guys.

And boys play “bump ’n’ grab” between classes, touching girls against their will with no fear of punishment — when Vivian’s best friend reports she was assaulted in the hallway, the principal tells her to “relax and forget about it.”

Frustrated, Vivian pulls out an old box in her mom’s closet labeled “MY MISSPENT YOUTH.” It’s from back in the ’90s, when her mom had a pierced eyebrow and purple lipstick, back when she left for the Pacific Northwest to follow her favorite girl bands.

Inspired by the large collection of girl-power zines, Vivian starts her own and calls it Moxie.

“Hey ladies!” she writes. “Are you tired of a certain group of male students telling you to ‘Make me a sandwich!’ when you voice an opinion in class? Are you tired of the football team getting tons of attention and getting away with anything they want? … THE GIRLS OF MOXIE ARE TIRED TOO!!!”

On copied pages left in the restrooms, Vivian urges other girls to show their solidarity by drawing hearts and X’s on their hands that Friday. She’s shocked when some of them do. She stays anonymous but gets bolder: Next, she urges the girls to wear bathrobes to protest the dress-code checks. Then she helps them call out guys for their bad behavior.

“Moxie Girls Fight Back!” becomes their rallying cry. And Vivian — usually shy and dutiful, not outspoken

and rebellious — watches her anonymous zine fuel an all-out revolution on campus, with girls banding together to fight the culture that keeps them down.

The sort of sexism the East Rockport girls fight can be found anywhere, Mathieu said, but it’s rampant in small towns like the one in her book, where the guys on the football or basketball team become little kings.

“There’s something about small towns and this sort of fantastical way these young boys are held up to be everything that the town believes in,” she said.

Feminism is fun

“Moxie” is written for teens, but it’s a joyful trip back in time for anyone who was young in the ’90s. The pages are filled with the punk rock lyrics of Bikini Kill and references to that band’s vocalist Kathleen Hanna, zines, baby doll dresses and Doc Martens. It’s also filled with passing references to feminist icons, from Audre Lorde to former Texas Gov. Ann Richards.

Mathieu, 40, got into the punk feminism of the riot grrrl movement while in college, when she left suburbia for Northwestern University and fell in with a group of friends who went to shows and discussed feminist theory. A friend sent her a Bikini Kill cassette that ignited a lifelong love for the band.

In high school, though, she was more like Vivian: “I worried about what people thought of me. I didn’t want to make waves; I didn’t want to call too much attention to myself.”

Vivian’s feminist awakening, Mathieu said, is “a bit of wish fulfillment for my own high school self — wishing Moxie had existed in my high school.”

Mathieu’s novel may address sexism and inequality, but it’s also a lot of fun. That’s on purpose. She wanted young readers, who may wince at the word “feminism,” to understand the wild, girlpower Riot Grrrl spirit.

“Feminism is fun,” she said. “That’s what I keep telling people. You can still have crushes on boys and still wear lipstick — it’s OK.”

There’s a generational, mother-daughter element to “Moxie” that might make some readers see their mothers in a whole new light. There’s also a believable, strong heroine — one who starts out as an “everygirl” afraid to make waves but ends up becoming wise, bold and outspoken.

Mathieu, who now runs her own classroom teaching English at Bellaire High, sees the roots of her feminism in that awful teacher’s class 20 years ago. “He’d say, ‘Let’s hear what the feminazi has to say.’ I would laugh about it in class, but I remember just dying inside.”

That’s why the “Moxie” dedication feels so good.

“I don’t think he’s still teaching,” she said. “But I hope he somehow finds out about it.” She laughs. “He was a jerk.”