For symbols of the freedom of the road, you can't beat the wind in your hair, piles of crinkly state road maps at your side, and a whole continent of asphalt spilling out underneath your wheels. The devil-may-care excitement that goes with exploring the American continent has lured many a traveler since the invention of the automobile.

But would one ever call taking a road trip a feminist activity? I don’t mean Thelma and Louise on a tear in a Ford Thunderbird, shooting criminals and running from the law. That’s Hollywood. I mean real, adventuresome women out to investigate what there is to see in these United States.

As with any such discussion, the answer to our question hinges on what definition of Feminism one accepts. While there are many faces to the Feminist movement, for our purposes let’s assume that asserting one’s independence to undertake revolutionary acts, flying in the face of gender-based societal disapproval, fits the bill. Using these standards, the authors of two different travelogues published more than 80 years apart would likely agree with us that, yes, putting foot to metal is a feminist act.

In the book Girldrive, published in 2009, authors Nona Willis Aronowitz and Emma Bee Bernstein describe their cross-country travels, during which they interviewed women from coast to coast about whether they subscribe to Feminism, and what exactly it means to them. Aronowitz and Bernstein focused primarily on women of their own age—both are in their early 20s—and attempted to answer a question posed in the media and by many second wavers: why are so few of the younger generations active, self-proclaimed feminists? Interestingly, what they found is that many young women do believe in the movement’s ideas, and are actively involved in a number of related causes. From this standpoint, the book is a must-read for all of those sounding Feminism’s death knell.

The book is also a must-read to discover why those who don’t adhere to the term have rejected it. Many of these women, far from being old-fashioned traditionalists, hold with the beliefs but choose not to identify with the movement. For them, the movement is too “wimpy,” doesn’t address the issues they experience as a racial or religious minority, or feels too constraining and of an alienating scholarly bent. And sadly, Aronowitz and Bernstein also found ample evidence that the movement lost in a branding war before the public arena: the old tropes “feminazi,” “angry, hairy-armpitted lesbian,” and other related concepts make appearances in some of the discussions.

An ironic depiction of feminists

Hulme and Tuny camped in outdoor car camping sites that foreshadowed the Hoovervilles to come, met some cowboys with whom they shared a campfire and breakfast in the South Dakota Badlands, and ignored the advice of a garage man that they shouldn’t try to pass over the Wyoming Big Horn Mountains until July. This last was met by an air kiss blown over the shoulder from Hulme, as Tuny grinningly drove onwards.