Latest Articles

Bechdel Test Canon: The Headless Woman

November 5, 2010 at 11:43am

Today's entry is the first in the series to focus on the work of a female director. In the coming weeks, we'll discuss contributions from filmmakers like Jane Campion, Catherine Breillat, Deepa Mehta, Rachel Raimist, G.B. Jones, Lynne Ramsay, Julie Dash, and Courtney Hunt, among others. But Argentinian writer-director Lucrecia Martel more than deserves her place in that list of auspicious...

Political InQueery: Know the Women in Congress, Part I

by Everett Maroon

November 5, 2010 at 11:00am

A record number of women—262, in all—ran campaigns for the House in the 2010 midterm elections. Despite this wave of women, fewer will be in the House once the 112th Congress begins than were in the 111th. 75 women will take their seats in the voting body, many of them for the first time. Here is a look at several first-year Representatives. On the Senate side, 36 women ran campaigns—also a...

Music Matters: The Man in Black

by Sarah Jaffe

November 5, 2010 at 10:10am

Johnny Cash, "The Man In Black" (Click for lyrics)

A few months ago, I read a lovely post on country music by Garland Grey over at Tiger Beatdown, and I was quite enjoying myself until he included Johnny Cash as a "toxic model for masculinity" and I hit the roof internally*.

Because Johnny Cash may be the only model for masculinity I turn to. (Well, aside from Springsteen, about...

Douchebag Decree: Clint McCance

by Katie Presley

November 4, 2010 at 2:58pm

It’s Dia de los Douches here at Bitch HQ, and Clint McCance, anti-gay bigot and former school board member in Arkansas, is our Master of Ceremonies this afternoon. McCance posted the following on his facebook page in response to Spirit Day at the end of October (TRIGGER warning- warped thinking AND warped grammar)…

House Proud : The troubling rise of stay-at-home daughters

November 4, 2010 at 1:28pm

“Daughters aren’t to be independent. They’re not to act outside the scope  of their father. As long as they’re under the authority of their fathers, fathers have the ability to nullify or not the oaths and the vows. Daughters can’t just go out  independently and say, ‘I’m going to marry whoever I want.’ No. The father has  the ability to say,...

Remote Control: Media activist Jennifer L. Pozner talks back to TV

by Shira Tarrant

November 4, 2010 at 1:21pm

I'm meeting up with journalist, media critic, and activist Jennifer L. Pozner at a chic West Village doughnut café. As Pozner strolls in on a pair of Marc Jacobs platform slingbacks, she casually tosses her Kooba tote over the back of the patio chair. Her floppy- brimmed Prada hat catches a late-summer Manhattan breeze and, fresh from an appointment with celebrity stylist Garren, her...

Past Imperfect: The Feminine Mystique and the persistence of nostalgia

by Eryn Loeb

November 4, 2010 at 12:52pm

In a sweetly musty used-book-store, I recently bought a few thick, oversize issues of Good Housekeeping and Ladies' Home Journal. Dating from the early 1950s, they were full of ads for Del Monte fruit cocktail (serving suggestion: use it to top a loaf of canned ham, for something “really different!”), Lustroware plastic wastebaskets (“Love its elegant beauty”), and articles worrying that...

Tube Tied: In Which I Praise Six Feet Under

by Michelle Dean

November 4, 2010 at 12:20pm

My life has been unusually stressful lately, for a variety of reasons, and my personal strategy to get through such times has always been to devour certain television shows as though they were comfort food. The advent of the show-on-DVD has been a great comfort to me in that respect, because when I'm down and needing to spend some quality time with my cat and my couch, I can get lost in these...

Music Matters: A Time for Horror

by Sarah Jaffe

November 4, 2010 at 9:03am

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, “Tupelo” (click for lyrics)

On election day I was cheerily envisioning a future beyond hate and war with Robyn and Janelle Monae. Yesterday and today I woke up and the future looked impossibly angry and male and white, surging up from the past, all grudge-guns firing.

Bibliobitch: Daddy's by Lindsay Hunter

by Lindsay Baltus

November 3, 2010 at 1:45pm

As a big fan of the strange short work by writers like Gary Lutz and Lydia Davis, I was drawn to Lindsay Hunter's new book, Daddy's, nestled next to an anticipated Lutz rerelease in the small press section of Powell's Books. Many of the writers in this section are faithful upholders of the short story, a form that can be hard to market and is often thought of by more commercial...