Activism
Women and Children First!: What's Up With War Reporting's Chivalry?
“At least 19 victims, mostly men and children, were taken for treatment to the hospital in Kandahar.” “The Israeli missile…took the lives of at least 14 other people—including three men and nine children.” “Tens of thousands, including men, children and the elderly, were victims of chemical... Read more »
Queens of the Iron Age: On the New Feminist Hygiene Products
When i was 8, my father organized a present for my sisters and me to give my mom for Mother’s Day: a pressure cooker, wrapped up with other fun kitchen items like tea towels, pop-up sponges, spatulas, and an apron. It seemed like a good idea—Mom was the one who was always in the kitchen, and... Read more »
The Common Guy: One Seemingly Benign Phrase Makes a Man Out of All of Us
Oprah says it. My yoga instructor says it. College students around the country say it. The cast of Friends says it, as do my own friends, over and over again. At least 10 to 20 times a day, I hear someone say “you guys” to refer to groups or pairs that include and in some cases consist entirely of... Read more »
Ladies First: ...to protest with style and humor, of course
It was 1984. Ronald Reagan was running for reelection and Phyllis Schlafly—conservative gadfly, ardent foe of the Equal Rights Amendment, and self-identified “little homemaker”—was presiding over a fashion show at the Republican National Convention in the sweltering heat of a Dallas August. As a... Read more »
My Meidel Is the Centerfold: Is Playboy's first Jewish bunny a role model?
Growing up, I learned a few things about Jewish girls from the copy of Truly Tasteless Jokes my brother kept in our bathroom. In addition to being frigid and cheap, I learned that we love Bloomingdale's, dislike oral sex, and prefer circumcised penises—as the joke goes, we like everything better... Read more »
O is for the Other Things She Gave Me: Jonathan Franzen’s "The Corrections" and contemporary women’s fiction
As every tabloid reader knows, it’s a short step from a celebrity marriage to a publicity-filled divorce. When Jonathan Franzen’s new novel, The Corrections, was published this fall, critics waxed hyperbolic over its wedding of character-driven family drama and up-to-the-nanosecond cultural... Read more »
Grrrl, You'll Be a Lady Soon
Last fall, at a reading for Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future, a 50-ish audience member questioned the thirtysomething authors’ ever-so-casual usage of the word “ladies.” To this woman (who turned out to be tireless second-wave activist Laura X, creator of the Women’s History... Read more »
Sex, Lies, and Videotape: An Interview with <em>The Center of the World</em>'s Molly Parker
Reviewers have likened it to a dot-com Pretty Woman, but The Center of the World, the latest film from director Wayne Wang (Smoke, Blue in the Face, The Joy Luck Club), is a far more complex rumination on the intersections of sex, love, and commerce. Set in southern California, the story follows... Read more »
Sister Outsider Headbanger: On Being a Black Feminist Metalhead
“I wasn’t ashamed of my love for metal (well, except for maybe hair metal). I just couldn’t explain it to most people.”
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