Because women matter, and so do their voices.
6 years ago 0 Comments
Welcome to Demystified Book Club (#DBC), a new segment where we talk about the books we’ve been reading that we want to share, discuss, and promote. When They Call You a Terrorist has remained vividly in my mind in the weeks that I’ve read it. I’ve struggled to write a piece about it since then, but for awhile I couldn’t figure out how to. Often when I write about books I relate them to my
Over the past couple of years, I made a conscious effort to pursue activities that have always interested me, but that I had previously avoided out of my own fears or insecurities. One such activity was kickboxing. As a teenager, I admired the courage, strength, and fierce realness of the women who participated in male-dominated sports but did not yet have the confidence to enter into these spaces so outside my comfort zone. Initially, I
I’m in fifth grade, and I’ve been wanting to shave my legs since I realized that was an option. My mom buys me a bottle of Nair instead. She says most people only shave their calves, but she has fine, thin hair, and I end up doing my whole legs pretty soon. I shave my fingers and toes, too. I’m in sixth grade, and I have a unibrow. It’s the early ’00s, and thin, delicate
Last weekend, Amanda Hess wrote a piece for The New York Times about new “murder podcasts” that have been appealing to women. She explored why women might be drawn to such grisly tales: “A 2010 study suggests that women in particular are drawn to true crime because it provides an outlet for managing anxieties about becoming victims, and to glean survival skills on how to escape or outsmart predators.” This made me consider my love
A few weeks ago, I was having drinks with an ex-colleague who told me a story about my previous boss. This supervisor, “Tina,” had recently gone off during a work party, condemning the many sexual abusers coming to light. She brought up her daughters and how it infuriated her that they had to watch out for those who might harass or demean them. Beer to my lips, I smiled and shook my head with disbelief.
7 years ago 0 Comments
My roommates and I decorated our Christmas tree just after Thanksgiving. It’s a real tree, driven down by my roommate Deborah from her family’s farm in New Hampshire, though, weirdly, it doesn’t have that pine smell. We wrapped the tree in strings of colored lights (well, to be honest, my roommates did the wrapping after I draped them over my scooter and took selfies with them garlanded over my head) and all hung the respective
My favorite painting, “Lady Lilith” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, shows a beautiful woman watching herself in the mirror as she combs her long red hair. The same beauty that makes her worthy of a portrait is also what makes her literally demonic: in Jewish folklore, Lilith was Adam’s first wife, a female demon who was banished from the Garden of Eden after refusing to be subservient to him. Rossetti said of his painting, “Lady Lilith…
When I was 19 and I read the part of “Tracee” on The Sopranos, I immediately knew I would play her, and I knew I wanted to play her because there was something about her story that I understood so well and wanted to do justice to. I had never seen The Sopranos, but I knew it was a gangster show with plenty of violence and misogyny. Tracee was a young mother, stripping at the
I have always been interested in politics. I grew up the daughter of an attorney and elementary school principal. My grandmother was one of the first women to graduate from the University of Wisconsin Law School, where she met her husband, my grandfather. My great-grandfather was a judge. My uncle was a state representative. I knew all my life I wanted to be an attorney, but I also always kept politics on the radar. I
I’m a straight, white, male, Brooklynite attorney in his early thirties. I was raised by two avowed feminists in an affluent Philadelphia suburb. I studied at elite universities and always took pride in representing progressive viewpoints to my friends and classmates. I tangle with conservatives on social media. I donate to Planned Parenthood. I worked the polls for Hillary. I am, to be sure, a pure embodiment of the self-satisfied limousine liberalism that the right
