Latest Articles

What We Lose When Music Divas Become Movie Stars

 When pop stars turn to film, they’re at the whims of mostly male directors who squander their visionary talent.

The Secret Abortion Movement That Revolutionized Feminist Health Before “Roe v. Wade”

“We traveled everywhere, and everywhere there were women who wanted to learn this.”

Headhunters: Are Psychedelics Capitalism's New Productivity Hack?

What underlies the use and abuse of performance-enhancing drugs is an American obsession with self-improvement that will always find new targets and tools. And most recently, “plasticity”—another term for cognitive flexibility or the brain’s ability to adapt and change—has become a signifier of success in a time when constant productivity is an expectation. 

Policing Parents: Jessamine Chan’s “The School for Good Mothers” Imagines a Carceral State for “Bad” Moms

In Jessamine Chan’s debut novel, “The School for Good Mothers,” the question of how to punish bad mothers is answered by the state, in an America not much different from our own.

“Yellowjackets” and the Disturbing Reality of Social Contract

With Yellowjackets, the so-called “puzzle-box show” achieves a kind of maturity by doing away with the conspiratorially furrowed brow of the masculine heroes who are obsessed with, and eventually resolve, whatever metaphysical conundrum that has made life unlivable.

Our 10 Most-Read Stories of 2021

From the misogynoir Meghan Markle faced to people being weird about Elliot Page’s body, these were our most-read stories from 2021.

Waste Land: For Migrants, Water Bottles Are a Matter of Life and Death

Plasticity has historically been denied to the racialized “whose bodies are seen as rigid, inflexible, overly reactive, and insufficiently absorptive, contagions to the potential growth of the population.” Whiteness is defined by plasticity, by the capacity for change and growth. The land is allowed to change and grow, but only when it serves the interests of the state.

Her Prerogative: Britney Spears Can Do Whatever the Hell She Wants

Fans’ calls to #UnfreeBritney were a sharp contrast to the rallying cries that flooded social media and the streets outside Spears’ conservatorship hearings.

Rethinking Legacy: “Tastemakers” is a Starting Point for the Problematic History of Recipes and Food Media

The James Beard award winner Mayukh Sen’s first book invites trouble, but more questions come up in the process.

The Audacity of Confidence: Is It Imposter Syndrome or Is It Patriarchy?

At least 70 percent of people are estimated to experience this profound sense of phrenic inadequacy at some point in their lives, resulting in anxiety, lack of self-confidence, depression, frustration, and more.

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