Culture

White Lies: Unilever and L’Oréal Can’t Rebrand Their Way Out of Colorism

The sales pitch of whitening products isn’t just a paler complexion, but also the promise of hygiene and health. Read more »

“Palm Springs” Taps into the Idea That Time Loops Fix Women

The pursuit of betterment means losing a part of themselves along the way. Read more »

Stinging Stans: Swifties Doxxing Journalists Is Just the Beginning

People don’t really know what to think about fangirls or teenage girls in general. Read more »

Eugenics as Entertainment: “Indian Matchmaking’s” Lighthearted View of Caste Oppression

Indian Matchmaking reveals all the isms associated with arranged marriages—colorism, casteism, sizeism, ableism, and classism—without criticizing any of it. Read more »

Valorizing Purity: What White Women Gain from Racial Hatred

Women have often been written out of the history of hate and related phenomena. Read more »

Journalistic Norms Dishonor Sexual Assault Survivors

A journalist’s hands are frequently tied by the same unjust systems. Read more »

Streaming Isn’t Music’s Magic Bullet

Independent artists are reckoning with what it means to work on their own terms in an industry that’s increasingly led by a small number of billion-dollar data and tech companies. Read more »

Fanfiction to Film: “The Kissing Booth” Brings Misogyny from Wattpad to Netflix

Why are the fanfics that become films so misogynist? Read more »

Like Kat Edison, Many Black Women in Media Can’t Catch a Break

The Bold Type isn’t so bold when it comes to Kat, its Black, queer protagonist.  Read more »

Pages

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 »

The Dramatic History of American Sex-Ed Films

In 1948, in a seventh grade classroom in Eugene, Oregon, a teacher dimmed the lights and flipped on 16mm projector. A film called Human... Read more »

One-Sentence Reviews of the Lesbian Netflix Canon

Lez face it: when you’re a ladygay like myself, cruising the internet for something to watch, you realize very quickly that there are a whole... Read more »

Game Changer: Why Gaming Culture Allows Abuse... and How We Can Stop It

You're a Bolshevik feminist jewess that hates white people… and you expect to be taken seriously when you're “critique-ing” ...

Read more »