Latest Articles

Pop Goes the World: Looking at pop culture in the wake of 9-11

September 15, 2007 at 3:49pm

It's been almost three months since September 11, and while the onslaught of the holidays (and for those of us around the Bitch HQ , the onslaught of production on a new issue) has provided a bit of distraction, it's still almost impossible not to feel that our jobs, our ambitions, and our daily dramas have been permanently dwarfed by the sadness and horror of everything that happened...

Tears of a Clone: Why Hollywood’s Women Are All Choked Up

September 15, 2007 at 3:46pm

From all the films made every year, the Academy must choose the performance that deserves its Best Actress accolade—and avid watchers of their annual awards might well conclude it has no sensible criteria. Some years, the voting body wants to show its integrity. Other years, it wants to pet its poodles. This year, it wanted to pretend that racism isn't an industry given, and rolled out an...

How to Write a Protest Letter

September 14, 2007 at 9:00pm

You flip to your local Clear Channel station to find a shock jock "joking" about where kidnappers can most easily buy nylon rope, tarps, and lye for tying up, hiding, and dissolving the bodies of little girls. Reuters runs an important international news brief about a Nigerian woman sentenced to death by stoning for an alleged sexual infraction—in its "Oddly Enough" section, where typical...

Multiply & Conquer: How to Have 17 Children and Still Believe in Jesus

September 1, 2007 at 12:00am

When she was presented with the state of Arkansas's Young Mother of the Year award in April 2004, Michelle Duggar was 37 years old and seven months pregnant. A USA Today profile on the award ceremony noted her current reproductive status by describing with notable amusement how she "waddled" into the Capitol building to accept the honor.

Hold on—a USA Today profile? Of a stay-at-home...

Feminine Protection: An Interview with “Whipping Girl” author Julia Serano

by Debbie Rasmussen
June 1, 2007 at 12:00am

We should focus our energies on challenging the rather arbitrary meanings and values that get placed onto our sexed bodies, gender expressions, and sexualities.

Desert Hearts: In a New Crop of Romance Novels, It's Always Midnight at the Oasis

June 1, 2007 at 12:00am

The average romance-novel hero hasn't changed much since the genre's development in the late 19th century—he's dashing, arrogant, commanding, hopefully rich, possibly even a prince. But is he an Arab? More and more commonly, the answer is yes.

It seems that an Arab man can now get on the cover of a romance novel in the United States almost more easily than he can get past airport...

The Cold Shoulder: Saving Superheroines from Comic-book Violence

February 28, 2007 at 11:00pm

There's a new Bat in Gotham City. Like Bruce Wayne, she's a rich socialite by day and a black-clad vigilante at night. And, also like Bruce Wayne, in both incarnations she's apt to sweep the ladies off their feet. Kate Kane, the new, revamped Batwoman, isn't the first lesbian character to debut in the DC Comics universe, but she might have the highest profile. Last June, DC Executive Director...

Mom's the Word: Yummy mummies, alternadads, and other literary offspring

February 28, 2007 at 11:00pm

At the turn of the millennium, Bridget Jones and the Sex and the City girls heralded a new era of fun, fearless singledom. Chick lit, accompanied by memoirs and anthologies about single womanhood, made it whimsical for an otherwise-capable woman to be vain, proud of her missteps and mistakes, and heartbroken over her inability to find a man. Now, what happens in the next chapter after Ms....

Egos Without Borders: Mapping the New Celebrity Philanthropy

December 31, 2006 at 11:00pm

You can't turn on the television or flip open a magazine these days without encountering an image of a star promoting his or her latest cause célèbre: Oprah handing out makeup kits at a women's hospital in Ethiopia; Angelina Jolie visiting refugee camps (alone or with Brad Pitt); George Clooney zipping around in his tiny electric car and making speeches about Darfur; Jay-Z and Kofi Annan...

When Tyra Met Naomi: Race, Fashion, and Rivalry

December 31, 2006 at 11:00pm

One of the last places I expected to hear an engaging antiracist and feminist critique of the fashion industry was on The Tyra Banks Show. But on a January 2006 episode, there was Banks, sitting couch-to-couch with supposed arch­nemesis and fellow supermodel Naomi Campbell, discussing the forces that years ago had pitted the two women against each other on the assumption that America had room...

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