Dating white people is tricky—when you’re a person of color. Even though the Supreme Court’s Loving v. Virginia decision legalized cracker fever in the U.S. 48 years ago, many American PoC still hesitate to embrace our lighter, whiter brethren (in the Biblical sense). Now, why is that? Shouldn’t we be rushing in droves to bring some of that Aryan hotness home to show our grandmas that we finally made it to the big time? Continue reading
Filed under Everything Else
My cold hand lands on Laura’s leg while the woman behind us holds her husband’s hands tight, whispering cariñitos to him. We’re here to prove we love each other. To prove this is a true white-picket-fence-two-point-five-children-Christmas-card kind of love, even if it’s homo love. Promises of a better future after this horrid appointment fly in the air in Spanish, Arabic, Russian. Inside the Soviet-looking immigration building Laura and I are literally moscas en leche. Perro en misa. Gallina en corral ajeno, etc. All the couples here are straight. Some even brought their kids, dressed in their Sunday’s best. The children are instructed to shut the fuck up and smile. Arturito, saluda al oficial mi rey. They’re here as evidence. The mamis with their hairs done, nails done, high heels and glossy lipstick. Men with gelled black hair, black button-down shirts with a few open buttons revealing gold crosses, chest hair. Legs crossed impossibly tight, smiling at every and any immigration officer walking through. Good afternoon, Mr. Officer. Nobody speaks loudly, we all hush and whisper and hold tight to our brown folders, our photo albums.
Porque mamita, you never know.
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Filed under Everything Else
Image via Caroline Gormley
OMG you guys—so, I’m getting caught up on The Bachelorette for tonight’s FINALE!!! and just needed to report back on some important findings from the “Men Tell All” episode that aired last Monday! So like, color me shocked-as-fuck—my jaw is literally hanging open; YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BELIEVE THIS: I learned on “The Men Tell All” that Kaitlyn had the extremely rare and shocking experience of being a female public figure who was slut-shamed and harassed on the internet! She even received death threats! Continue reading
Filed under Everything Else, Movies + TV
We love this post on masculinity, sports, and literacy from our amazing friends at The Peach Basket, a blog featuring poets writing about basketball that you should check out immediately! <3
by Matt L Rohrer:
“Sports provide a rare sanctioned opportunity for men to express emotions besides anger. When I was a valet parker in my teens I remember my macho boss speaking openly about crying in his room when the A’s were eliminated from the playoffs. We didn’t judge him. We just nodded our heads and laughed a little. We were secretly rooting for him. Sports are vessels that equally display our peak capabilities and limitations. We watch and play not just because games are thrilling, beautiful, and occasionally cruel, but because we want to feel. We experience our failures and moments of grace. We get close to our desires, close to the pain of knowing some of them will never actualize.”
Read the full piece here on The Peach Basket.
Filed under Everything Else
My mother was rolled over to me in a hospital gown with new corneas and loose lips. “When are you and AJ going to get married? It’s legal now—isn’t it?” I quickly web searched to confirm that. I had stopped caring about all that after the last elections. She sighed, “That’d be cute.” Then, “It’s like I’m in a rainbow tunnel. So many colors, like I’m at Disneyland.”
•••••
I hadn’t considered marriage before 2008. Bigotry and casual homophobia were out of the closet in the ongoing debates over California Proposition 8, and the gay community reacted in the sharpest and most active defense formation I had seen. We were in the streets, gay and proud and loud, explaining: no, yes does not support gay marriage, no does. And in the aftermath, I huddled with activists around a stage and a TV interview with George Takei to learn what we already knew. My mother told me, “Just give it time.”
In the months following, the community that had gathered didn’t have a proposition to oppose. I joined a couple lackluster, vanilla activists groups before deciding to give myself some time to consider marriage for myself. Continue reading
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If you live in New York or happen to be visiting, next week is your last week to check out Kim Gordon’s solo exhibition of new works at 303 Gallery.
Filed under Everything Else, Rah! Rah! Roundup
I used to be one of those ideological pseudo-purists that only engaged with media that jived with my politics—a totally sustainable way of life if you want to think about !!Important Issues!! 24/7. Don’t get me wrong: I’m still all about Racebending and #WeNeedDiverseBooks, but American popular culture sure doesn’t make the struggle easy. Before I started working full-time, I had the mental fortitude to read plot summaries and cast lists to seek out media that passed the Bechdel Test at the very least, but the pacifying ease of shitty media slowly brought me over to the Dark Bland Side. I had so few fucks to spare after standing in a 120˚F kitchen for 10 hours, and that’s how I ended up watching The Phantom of the Opera productions every night for three months.
Of course I rationalized it, passionately defended it to friends, and parroted a line found in every think piece: “But it’s actually really smart!” I’m standing in the cold, unfeeling light of Acceptance now, but it’s been a struggle. Here’s how it went down: Continue reading
Filed under Everything Else, Movies + TV
Did you know that postpartum mothers who lose all their baby weight are actually able to fucking FLY?
10) Genetics. Or whatever, not genetics, but like, some complex cocktail of genetics and Lamarckian evolution, like how my mom was a giraffe with a short neck but she realized that if she just stretched her short neck she could reach a tall tree.
And then I was born being able to reach a tall tree, if by “reach a tall tree” you mean “maintain my lustrous dappled Irish skin and delicious baby-feeding boobs on 300 potato-famine calories a day.”
These are my great-great-grandparents, and they didn’t find a potato, but they found a boat I think. And there were Fritos on the boat, apparently.
Or, like, womb environment: This Important Scientist Hypothesizes that too many generations of American women devoured too much subsidized corn or whatever and got dishwashers and at first it made us The Fittest Americans In History (whoa can we talk about what “fit” means, hi Nazis) but now we are just a bunch of fat slobs who deserve to be killed when our huge fat babies tear us apart during labor, but you know, there are c-sections, so even though We Should Have All Died we all got to live to make America fat. No hope for me. No hope for Baby Jane. Maybe some hope for, like, my next baby’s grandchild, if I do enough fucking preggo Pilates.
Filed under Everything Else
Oh to be a teen in the age of Tumblr. Pretty-on-pink drawings by anonymous artist Ambivalently Yours thoroughly soothe and vindicate my inner teenage girl with reminders that it’s more than okay to be sensitive, emotional, complicated, and unabashedly “girly.” Ambivalently says, “I want my art to be about all of us boldly undecided girls.” Here are a few of my favorites:
Filed under Art + Comics, Everything Else
A monthly column, Funny Feminism features conversations with feminist-identifying artists who use humor in their creative work.
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Last year, when I moved to New York, a mutual friend of Liz Glazer and I told us that we had to meet. This mutual friend said that Liz was a lawyer and law professor who was about to walk away from a tenured position to focus full-time on standup comedy. The first time I met Liz several months ago, she invited me to check out a weekly night she was co-hosting with her good friend and comedic partner, Rhett Sever. Their night, Say Everything, stood out from traditional standup shows because audience members are actually encouraged to speak up and interrupt the comedian on stage with questions. These questions can throw off a comic with prepared material and these performances become intimate one-of-a-kind detours that often lead to either catharsis or collision. Whatever the outcome, it’s clear that Liz and Rhett are doing something really special and important, as some of the conversations I’ve had with strangers at Say Everything are not ones I’d likely have at any other comedy night and I thank them for that. Needless to say, I jumped at the chance to talk to Liz about her own creative practice immediately after she dragged me to my first and only SoulCycle class. After class, I was drenched in sweat, while Liz, the SoulCycle regular, was glowing. That Liz got me to bust my ass to techno music on a Sunday morning is proof of the sort of energetic draw she has. It’s no wonder she gets people to spill their guts on stage every week. Below are excerpts from our drenched discussion.
Photo by: Elizabeth Rogers
Cathy de la Cruz: Can you talk about your journey into comedy? I’m curious about how you went from being a lawyer and a law professor to a comedian.
Liz Glazer: In 2009, I moved to Chicago for the semester because I needed to move away from New York. I was being very self-destructive here. I was in a relationship that wasn’t working. I was doing drugs more than I wanted to be doing drugs. I felt like I maybe could have gone on, but I remember when I got the phone call from Loyola University Chicago, I was like, ‘I’m ready. Just take me somewhere.’ I was really depressed. I went to Chicago for that semester and I started doing improv because I needed to do something unrelated to my job. I took an improv class at IO, which was formerly called Improv Olympic, and became very affected by it. I thought I was terrible at it, but I was just really afraid and I noticed that I was really afraid. Improv forced me into this zone of discomfort, of being vulnerable and being myself and not caring what people were thinking of me when they looked at me, and I had not ever really been exposed to that.
Filed under Everything Else, Funny Feminism, Interviews
