On Friday night, singer Katy Perry was named woman of the year at the Billboard Women in Music Awards. She accepted it graciously saying, "I'm not a feminist, but I do believe in the strength of women." Millennial women often bewilder their feminist elders. I'm not supposed to say that out loud — it's thought to be divisive — but it's true. We feminists stand there mystified, mouths slightly agape, each time yet another of these young women expresses egalitarian values in one breath, then uses the next to make sure we don't accidentally mistake her for a feminist. They demand equal opportunity, rail against unacceptable beauty standards, and want control over their reproductive lives. Yet — they pre-qualify each feminist tinged sentiment with "I'm not a feminist, but..." "I'm not a feminist, but women and men should absolutely receive equal pay for equal work." "I'm not a feminist, but the fact that she had been drinking doesn't mean that she was 'asking for it.'" "I'm not a feminist, but women are just as capable of holding high political office as men."

Saying, "I'm not a feminist, but..." is a proxy for "Please don't see me as uptight or annoying."

Who can blame these millennials? Spend a little time on Twitter, reading YouTube comments or listening to talk radio, and you will learn that feminists are fat, ugly, uptight, annoying, man-hating killjoys. This is an off putting image for young women who live in a world that tells them that their value hinges on whether they are "cool" — wry, laid-back and spontaneous — and the extent to which they are "hot," with luminous skin and a genetically improbable body that is both thin and curvy. The caricature of feminism doesn't do so well on this cool/hot meter. It is no wonder that so many young women keep the label at arm's length. Saying, "I'm not a feminist, but..." is a proxy for "Please don't see me as uptight or annoying." Furthermore, elder feminists should not be so stunned by millennials' anxieties. We share them. Some feminists could care less about how others see them, but plenty of us want to be liked, doing our own "feminist, but..." tango as we work to separate ourselves from the pernicious stereotypes that devalue feminist voices. We can see this complicated negotiation in blogs with titles like Sexy Feminist and The Funny Feminist, in Jezebel's pronouncement that it is "The Home of Shiny, Happy Ladies," in the way feminist scholar Susan Douglas's book "The Rise of Enlightened Sexism: How Pop Culture Took Us From Girl Power to Girls Gone Wild" is peppered with confessions about her love of cosmetics. Even Jessica Valenti, co-founder of Feministing.com and author of five books, has a tagline at The Nation that reads: "Feminism, sexuality & social justice. With a sense of humor."

Feminists never were the stereotype foisted upon them, and there is nothing wrong with highlighting the hollowness of that construction.