Note: I frequently feature readers’ answers to one or more of the questions Emma and I asked on our road trip. Find out how to submit

Gabrielle, 19: Born and raised in Atlanta, GA, to her former fashion-designer mother, currently an artist, student, and founder of The Stripped Project, a subversive art project about reality, body image, and beauty.

What’s your number one women-related issue that really gets under your skin?

I’m sick of unhealthily thin women being idolized. I get so angry when my friends complain about their belly fat or I see an article on some new expensive fad diet, because I’ve been there and I know what it’s like to hate your body. I used to obsess over my thighs, my stomach, and especially my breasts. I desperately wanted to look like a little boy — flat-chested, no hips, all bones and angles — because I thought that would make me happy. I thought looking a certain prescribed way would make me loveable. Eventually I realized that I wasn’t missing anything. Being thinner didn’t make me happy. All those women who live on lettuce and lime jello are not enjoying themselves. They’re dying.

Check it out…it’s pretty amusing:

Annie: 22, lives in Los Angeles, web host for SHETV’s G.I.R.L, rape prevention educator, writing workshop facilitator for homeless women in Los Angeles, band mate, Feminist Majority Foundation intern, student.

Do you consider yourself a feminist; why or why not?

Yes! And very much so. I identify as a feminist because it has added so much to my life. All through my life I have had feelings of insecurity and fear of being myself. It took me a long time to realize exactly how I define myself, and what I believe in (as is the case for most young women I assume). When I found feminism in college I saw it as a word to describe me. I believe in equal rights for everyone, I believe everyone has a right to be who they are and define and change themselves any way they want to. But how feminism really touched me was in the work of how young women are socialized by the media. I saw that we do not really get a chance to define ourselves when we are processed by this machine. When I began to see just how much this effects our lives, I was able to connect my feelings of never feeling good enough or not knowing who I am, with this image I was choking on. Now that I have feminism I can breathe. On top of that it stands for some great issues I believe in.

What’s your number one women-related issue that really gets under your skin?

There are many many issues that I live for, but the main issue I care about are the relationships between young women. I often hear young women say they hate girls or can’t trust them. I have also noticed this unspoken hierarchy that we compare ourselves and other girls to. I am fascinated by this unspoken world, and how it manifests in all of us. I am also passionate about giving women the right to choose, and the obsession with young women’s sexuality.

How is your experience of being a woman affected by where you live or where you come from?

Living in Los Angeles you can image all the sexist and sad bullshit that goes on. Everytime I go into a coffee shop in SOME areas of LA I see big lips, boobs, and processed hair. There is a great, but often sexist, indie rock music scene here, one that is very much a boys club, and I am very interested in understanding how it manifests. However what I can say about LA is that it fucking rocks. I love it! I am in the belly of the media/music beast, and on the outskirts of this overprocessed often sexist town is amazing areas with real girls doing great things.

Javacia: 28, writer and educator, lives in Birmingham, Alabama, blogs at GeorgiaMae.com, where she writes about feminism, race issues, media, pop culture and more.

Do you consider yourself a feminist; why or why not?

I am a black feminist, though I’ve been told that phrase is an oxymoron. People have told me my feminist beliefs emasculate black men and have asked why I choose to associate myself with a movement started by “rich, racist white women with nothing better to do.”

But when it comes to the issue of feminism and race, my favorite poet June Jordan said it best: “I am feminist, and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of the fact that I am Black: it means that I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect.”

So while people ask how I can be black and feminist, I ask, “How could I not?”

I am also a Christian feminist, though men standing in pulpits have said my feminism is a sin. Yet, over two millennia ago Jesus was protesting the stoning of women and dispelling the notion that a woman’s place is in the kitchen. So I tell them Jesus was a feminist–this I know, for the Bible tells me so.

How is your experience of being a woman affected by where you live or where you come from?

I recently returned to my hometown, Birmingham, Alabama after living in the Midwest and on the West Coast for several years. I am very proud of my Southern roots, but I come from a family that bucked many conventions. My mom, who loves watching Spike TV and wears a skirt about twice a year, doesn’t exactly conform to old-fashioned ideas of what it means to be “lady-like.” My dad, who does all the cooking and loves watching soap operas, always encouraged me to be ambitious and independent. He once said he wanted me to be America’s first female president.

I became a writer instead. I write to tell my stories and those of other young women, which I believe can be as political as running for office because as poet Aracelis Girmay once said, “As long as we are living in a society or culture that says that it’s okay for some people to have voices and others to not have voices, then speaking is a political act.”

Note: I frequently feature readers’ answers to one or more of the questions Emma and I asked on our road trip. Find out how to submit here!

Kerry: 24, lives in Los Angeles, blogs at girltalkzine.blogspot.com about her own feminist zine, co-runs a small art-book publishing company Amigos Publishing, applying to grad school, feminist.

Do you consider yourself a feminist; why or why not?

Yes I definitely consider myself a feminist. Everything that is important to me and that I feel thankful for, I have feminism and our fore-feminists to thank! From the right to vote to the right to have a safe, legal abortion, to the right to go to college, get a divorce, earn a living (and keep the money I earn), to choose when (or if I want to) have children, the list goes on and on. I can’t even imagine my life without feminism and I wish all young women/people were able to grasp the importance of the work that many women (and men) did before us in order to give us the opportunities we have.

What’s your number one women-related issue that really gets under your skin?

I’ve thought about this long and hard and it’s almost impossible to pick just one! But one of the most important has to be the ways in which education and learning shapes the futures of girls and young women vs. boys. Girls and boys are still presented with so many different choices and are taught so many different behaviors that the playing field does not start out level for either of them.

How is your experience of being a woman affected by where you live or where you come from?

I grew up in a household with a majority of women so my perspective is really shaped by the ways in which I watched my sisters and mother succeed at everything they put their minds to. As a teenager, I also spent a lot of time in the very white male-oriented local punk/hardcore scene which excluded women in a lot of ways. As I learned how to put words and theories into the exclusion I was feeling in this community, my feminism and worldview became that much more informed by the sexist culture I bought into for a long time. Now I try to support women as often as I can!

Do I consider myself a feminist? I would have to say yes, more specifically a black feminist. It’s been an ongoing process for me. I didn’t realize that taking on the label feminist would involve so much. When I first began reading about feminism, it was overwhelming how diverse it is. I always think about why I chose to call myself a feminist, and the answers sometimes change. It can be difficult at times to, but other times the answer is quite simple. Feminism for some is about believing men and women should be equal and about having choices. But for me, it is much more than that, it’s philosophical, it’s much more than a political tool.

As a woman of color I’m put into a position where I have to deal with both racism and sexism, and perhaps even class. As a black feminist these issues are part of the reason why I identify as a feminist. So there are many issues that get under my skin, from discrimination to violence against women, racism and sexism etc. There’s isn’t a number one issue for me.

I will acknowledge that significant amount of progress has been made, there’s still a lot of work that must be done.

My feminist journey is deeply intertwined with my race.

My mother taught me from an early age that I would have to work twice as hard as everyone else because I was a black woman. I should always be proud of whom I was, she said, but that I should be prepared to be judged, treated unfairly and looked down upon because of who God made me.

Mommy was right. I’ve been mocked for being a woman and judged for being black. But it was my mother’s mantra that drove me to perfection in academics. I skipped the first grade, had a 4.0 throughout most of my public-school education and delivered the valedictorian speech in high school.

The words of my mother echoed throughout my head with each accomplishment. But I morphed her advice into a self-loathing message: succeed in spite of being a black woman, not because of the fate I was dealt. I didn’t embrace the woman I was, I fought against it and attempted to ignore it so I could be seen as equal to my white male counterparts.

I have since learned to love, not ignore, my gender and race. It gives me a unique viewpoint of the world that no one can take away. I don’t know what prompted the change. Maybe it was going to college and taking a few sociology classes. Maybe it was being exposed to people who couldn’t look beyond my status as a black woman. Or maybe it was just part of growing up.

Note: I frequently feature a reader’s answer to one of the questions Emma and I asked on our road trip. Find out how to submit

Becca, 25, grew up in St. Louis, MO, currently attends Yale Divinity School and aspires to do Christian ministry, gay and not raised religious.

Despite what one might think, it is really not at all strange to be a lesbian at a Christian seminary. The divinity school is an extremely welcoming place where there are fairly large numbers of openly gay, lesbian and bisexual students. For most students, Christian ministry is as much concerned with feminism, environmentalism, labor organizing and fair housing as it is about giving a sermon in church. Working for social justice is understood to be a scriptural imperative by most students and faculty here.

As with most any institution of higher learning, however, it’s a privileged bubble where it is relatively easy to put utopian ideals into practice. I have recently begun to worry about the eventual reality of leaving grad school and practicing real world, real life ministry as a gay woman. My denomination recently voted to ordain ministers in committed same-sex relationships and I was ecstatic about it. However, I was talking to my pastor and he mentioned sadly that most churches, even the politically liberal ones, tend to want straight, white, male pastors. Although this seems pretty obvious in terms of who has privilege in the world, it came as I shock to me. I had been so focused on overcoming the institutional restrictions on gay clergy that I hadn’t really thought much about the struggles that a lesbian pastor would face in her ministry. So, that’s a concern. I have been lucky enough to live my whole life in very safe, privileged places where I have felt my queerness to be a positive thing, not a hurdle. When I leave seminary, whether it is to go into parish ministry or some other form of religious leadership, I walk into an unknown territory where my identity can become a political football and a career liability, despite rapidly improving attitudes toward LGBTQ people. The risk seems highest in the parts of the country where out, gay, female clergy might be able to do the most good. Although I am not sure how, I will have to learn to cope with those challenges in a way that allows me to maintain my mental health while enabling whatever work I do to effectively bear witness to the suffering of LGBTQ and other marginalized people. To be perfectly honest, it’s terrifying.

Ericka, 31, native Virginian, currently living in Charlotte, avid TV watcher, internet surfer, writer, yogi, feminist.

I absolutely consider myself a feminist. The basis for this is that it is so hard to figure out who you are and to enjoy that – to truly cherish yourself. And I don’t think that anyone – whether it be society or people who claim they love you – should put you in a role that you haven’t defined for yourself. When I tell people that I’m a feminist, I quickly follow it by saying that it’s not about burning bras or hating men. It’s about having the freedom to truly discover who you are without meaningless boundaries created by others.

Looking forward to hearing from you!