On Seeing Myself: Representation and Ryan O’Connell’s Special
“What does disabled look like?”
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Media
Watching Roots in the Age of Trump
…slavery isn’t African-American history, it’s American history.
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You Like That, Baby?: The Myth of Feminine Mystery
“It’s like a damn Rubik’s cube down there!”
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Black Panther and Strong Women
I saw myself on the big screen—the strong black woman that I am, and the stronger black woman I aspire to become.
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Look at How the Bullets Have Missed
I praise everyone I can still touch, their warmth a violent protest against the cold weapons of death.
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We Have to Trust Our Punch: A Conversation with Kevin Young
Kevin Young discusses Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News, America’s relationship to hoaxes, and what we can learn from that relationship.
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The Real Fake News
In 2017, newscaster cameos may be the only fact-fiction crossovers for which people have no difficulty keeping the two concepts apart.
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No Pressure: Bieber, Blackness, the Cult of Perfection
Bieber is like a prism that reflects back whatever you want to see.
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Fidel Castro: The Playboy Comandante
The comandante produced ideological fantasies on a mass scale within the context of the Cold War which led to an exotic, sexy, and happy vision of Cuba.
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Watching the World End: A History of The Weather Channel
[A]ll this sensationalism has made The Weather Channel, inadvertently and ever increasingly, the essential television viewing experience of the Anthropocene.
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The Lens Magnifies, the Mirror Reflects: What Photos from the Race War Show Us about Ourselves
[Still photos] grab what otherwise might feel too foreign to understand.
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The Aura of Baby Einstein, the Child, the Toy
If there is no distinction between show and commercial, ethics and entertainment, what kind of distinctions, if any, exists between her imaginary play, her consumer life, and our reality?
...more#SuicideGirls: Why I Teach Sylvia Plath
But let’s not forget: feminism is, at least in part, about choice, and portions of life are play, not politics. Play and relationships and creativity and whatever we want.
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Sound & Vision: Leah Hennessey
Allyson McCabe talks with Leah Hennessey, a co-creator of the DIY web series Zhe Zhe, about the art of performance in the age of Trump.
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Peeping under the Goddamn Door: The Price of Empathy in S-Town
[F]or the first time, I really see the tradeoffs between privacy and honest-to-god, up-close empathy.
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Susan Sarandon, “Bernie Bro” Politics, and White Privilege
As a longtime fan, it pains me to say it, but Sarandon is everything that’s wrong with mainstream, non-intersectional white feminism.
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“Language Orthodoxy,” the Adichie Wars, and Western Feminism’s Enduring Myopia
Adichie is far more significant than her accusers seem to know.
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A Certain Frequency: Radio’s Appeal Across 75 Years
Today, radio is bigger than ever—but in vastly different forms. More people listen to the radio than watch TV, according to Nielsen, only now it’s on a computer, a tablet, or a smartphone.
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What We Lost: Undoing the Fairy Tale Narrative of Adoption
The singular, unavoidable truth about adoption is that it requires the undoing of one family so that another one can come into being.
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#Betrayal: On Instagram, Is Hell Other Women?
Instagram: an app powerful enough to blow a million Think Pieces to smithereens in everything it says about female relations.
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Kahlo vs. Kardashian: The Subversive Potential of the Female Self-Portrait
Where does the line between the self-portrait and the selfie fall?
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Choosing Stories: On Partisanship, the Media, & American Ideology in 2016
What kind of change do I want, and what does fighting for it look like, today?
...moreSong of the Day: “Luv N’ Haight”
Sly and the Family Stone’s anarchic album There’s a Riot Goin’ On, released in 1971 following several tumultuous years in America, has been called “blunt and unflinching” and “very much informed by drugs” and “paranoia.” While the funk group’s creative dynamo, Sly Stone, had indeed been sidelined by drug abuse for months, his disillusionment with the […]
...moreSong of the Day: “Everything In Its Right Place”
“Yesterday I woke up sucking on lemon,” sings Thom Yorke in the enthralling first song from Radiohead’s groundbreaking 2000 album, Kid A, which Rolling Stone called the “weirdest Number One album of the year.” Take what you will from Yorke’s reference to lemons—their bitterness, the possibility of making lemonade out of them—but the message in the title […]
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Southern Girl: Beyoncé, Badu, and Southern Black Womanhood
None of the imagery of Lemonade is foreign to those of us who grew up in the South or who have Southern roots.
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The Great Film Festival Swindle
“Never pay an entry fee. If they won’t give you a waiver they aren’t interested in the film.”—Programmer for a major film festival
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On Playing Games, Productivity, and Right Livelihood
One week last spring I said it out loud for the first time: “Sometimes I play so long, my fingers go numb.”
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Female Friendships and Online Literary Sexism
As an essayist who often writes from personal experience and who’s working on a memoir, I believe deeply it is a feminist act for women to tell their stories.
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#OscarsSoWhite: Calling Out Academy Bias
Instead of influencing our movie-going habits, The Academy can take its cues from us. We can continue to speak up through social media and—more importantly—our dollars.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Bill Cosby’s Faux Legacy
Bill Cosby was never the man, the icon, the protector and illustrator of black culture, the guide, the genius we have created in our minds.
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