Screen
Abortion: the "shmashmortion" of 2008?
In a tiny bit of synergy, I read this excellent piece by Katha Pollitt only an hour after sitting at my ob-gyn's office next to a pregnant teen gabbing on a hot-pink cellphone. In other news, all the abortion discussion that was nowhere to be found in 2007's trifecta of unplanned-pregnancy films... Read more »
Crowned: Riches of Embarrassment
I don't know if there's a clearer sign that the writer's strike is killing good television than the insanity broadcast last night on the CW. Crowned offered up 11 mother-daughter pairings competing for a prize of $100,000 in what's being called "The Mother of All Beauty Pageants," but what a Boston... Read more »
Pumpkins in Philly
On the subway this morning, I sat next to a man reading, Why Men Marry Bitches. Somewhat comically, the woman sitting on the other side of me was reading Che Guevara's essays on How to Change the World.
Lisa and I met again at Penn Station, where we boarded our train to Philadelphia. This city... Read more »
The closest I'll ever get to Sacha Baron Cohen (and I'm ok with that)
We took a train back to New York this morning and headed to the grocery store for food and drink for tonight's fundraising party. Unbeknownst to us, a good chunk of the city's population had this, Indigenous People's Day, off. And a good chunk of them decided to spend it grocery shopping. I'd never... Read more »
Overheated in DC
As I climbed the stairs from the subway headed for Penn station, the strap on my enormous bag broke, so I was left carrying it like a sack of potatoes. Which was a huge bummer because I'd left my other bags in Brooklyn.
Lisa was waiting for me inside the station, and we boarded the train to... Read more »
Tears of a Clone: Why Hollywood’s Women Are All Choked Up
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... Read more »
Multiply & Conquer: How to Have 17 Children and Still Believe in Jesus
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... Read more »
When Tyra Met Naomi: Race, Fashion, and Rivalry
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... Read more »
Weighing Reality: Who's Really the Biggest Loser?
"Obesity," declares Charlotte Cooper, author of 1998's Fat and Proud: The Politics of Size, "is just a word used by people to medicalize fat." Extra weight, once considered a genetic short straw, is increasingly characterized as a crisis threatening the physical, political, and moral health of our... Read more »
Sims Like the Real Thing
The Sims is a game that consists of little more than creating characters and pushing them through the day, making sure they eat, sleep, stay clean, make friends, advance in a career, and buy stuff. The bodily functions are tedious and the rest is everything I hate about life in a capitalist society... Read more »
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