Culture

Margaret Cho's North Korea Skit Was Cringe-Worthy

On Sunday night at the Golden Globes, I cringed when Margaret Cho appeared, dressed in an oversized North Korean Army uniform, looking stoic and completely silent at the beginning of a comedy... Read more »

Cliff Huxtable is the Fantasy. Bill Cosby is the Reality.

So now the cliché is complete. Phylicia Rashad, Bill Cosby’s TV wife, has come to his defense. Read more »

Three Cheers for Gugu Mbatha-Raw

You’re going to hear a lot about Gugu Mbatha-Raw in 2015. She has a role in the much-anticipated Wachowski space opera Jupiter Ascending in February. She’s filming the “Untitled NFL... Read more »

A New Talk Show Puts Women of Color Front and Center

I have always been fascinated by talk shows because even though there are millions of people watching, the format seems made for introverts. Read more »

Artists Yarn-Bomb LA Museum With Words "Black Lives Matter"

Over the weekend, a group of artists stitched a giant phrase onto the fence of the Craft & Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles: Black Lives Matter. Read more »

Female College Coaches Get No Respect

Champion hockey coach Shannon Miller at a press conference in the fall, shortly before she was let go.   Right before the holidays, Shannon Miller, the women’s ice hockey coach... Read more »

The Killers Within: Home Invasion Movies and Violence Behind Closed Doors

They are movies about a kind of sadism and sociopathy that fuels sexual and domestic violence in our actual homes, but which we have no language to address directly. Read more »

Oh Joy Sex Toy: The Condom

Oh Joy Sex Toy is a weekly comics series that graphically explores sex and sexuality. In this week’s comic, Erika and Matt give a pitch for that ol’ classic: the condom.  Read more »

Scarlett Johansson is the Wrong Choice for "Ghost in the Shell"

Whitewashing, the practice of casting white actors to play characters that should have been people of color, has been a Hollywood staple since the very beginning of the film industry.  Read more »

Real-Life Nuns Are No Joke

Nuns are often portrayed as either evil or a joke—or in the case of this Nunzilla toy, both. Photo by Choking Sun.  Nuns get a bad rap. Until this year, my understanding of what nuns are like didn’... Read more »

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Ms. Opinionated: I'm a Man. How Can I Help the Feminist Movement?

Welcome to Ms. Opinionated, our weekly advice column dealing with questions of life, love, feminism, and pop culture. This week, a reader... Read more »

Hot Under the Bonnet: The Cooptation of Amish Culture in Mass-Market Fiction

Dubbed “Amish romance novels,” “Amish fiction,” or the more waggish “bonnet rippers,” these novels just one entry point into the varying images of Amish communities in U.S. popular culture. Read more »

Oh Joy Sex Toy: How I Realized I'm Asexual

Artist Kiku H shares her personal experiences learning what it means to be asexual. Read more »

Where My Girls At: Meet Two of Ferguson's Black Queer Activists

Amid national discussions of police brutality and systemic racism, Black women have been the loudest and most consistent voices demanding change. Read more »