I used to exercise a lot. I mean A LOT, because I was a girl in my twenties, and I was raised in America, so I wanted very very badly for my body to look just like it was supposed to, you know, like the movie stars or the models or whatever the magazines said. …
I dedicate this column to the waify little bimbo wearing shorty shorts that looked like she’d skinned a disco ball to make them who sat on my patio sneaking sips of her gin and tonic to her teenage companion until I took it away, and she yelled at my back, “I’m sorry you’re old and…
Marlene Dietrich was an all around looker. You might recall her from the silver screen, or at least from that famous photo where she’s wearing a suit and top hat, seated and leaning conspiratorially with her cigarette draped between two fingers. Like many before and since lucky enough to get that far, Marlene turned forty,…
l have always loved the word filibuster. It has a spectacular ring to it. It’s clunky and awkward and mysterious. I assumed that the bust part had something to do with busting in on senate business. But I just looked up the etymology for you, and I was wrong. Filibuster originally comes from a Dutch…
A few years ago, I wrote a piece on sexism in indie hip hop, and it’s something that continues to get traffic to this day, possibly because there aren’t a ton of people talking about the issue. One part of that piece that I think deserves a closer look is representation. At every level of…
(I’ve been grappling with a lot of gender stuff in columns recently, so I figured I’d keep going and make it a series for this month. This is #3 out of 4.) Any conversation about language is a can of worms. So I want to be very clear that this piece is about nothing more…
Because this is a follow-up to last week’s column on Men’s Rights Activists, it’s tempting to frame it as “an open letter to MRAs and critics of feminism.” But I’m not going to do that, for three reasons: 1. Let’s be honest: arguing in circles about terminology and engaging in endless link wars over studies…
When I was four years old I announced to my mother that after weighing the pros and cons I had decided that I was glad I was a girl. My reasoning for this was that girls had the option of wearing both pants and dresses. Even at this delicate young age I didn’t want to…
As an artist who talks a lot about gender issues, I’ve run across men’s rights activists (MRAs) here and there over the past few years, never giving them much thought. But last week, a video of poet Kait Rokowski’s darkly satirical poem “How to Cure a Feminist” that I host on my YouTube channel went…
Opine Season 