This year I learned that Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, and Yoko Ono were all born on February 18. Can we scrap that holiday called Presidents’ Day and call it Radical Women Artists Day instead? Or, even better, let’s just call Lorde, Morrison, and Ono “presidents,” since they rule my world and no one really seems to know what Presidents’ Day is, anyway.
Filed under Rah! Rah! Roundup
from Kameelah Janan Rasheed’s “How to Suffer Politely (And Other Etiquette for the Lumpenproletariat)”
in spring of 2014 you hear Alice Notley read for the first time in your life. because it’s spring, you wear the wrong things and end up with a pile of cardigans and scarves piled at your feet and tucked into your armpits. you drink champagne because you were, at the time, in a depression. hours earlier, the day of the reading, you had seen Alice in front of a Popeye’s in Bed-Stuy. you couldn’t be sure but you were sure; it was her. you felt it, and it was a strange thing to feel. the day after the Notley reading, you find a brick wall near your apartment and write out in capital mint-colored letters the only thing you remember from her reading: “I DON’T HAVE A PLAN/ I HAVE A VOICE.” you don’t know why you do it but you do it. this feels important.
a few weeks before the Alice Notley sighting, you go to a colleague’s poetry reading at Unnameable Books. afterward they are going to the Copula reading at Wendy’s Subway—they ask if you want to join. you want to and don’t want to—something feels off—and ultimately walk home sulking. you don’t know how to make friends and this has become a problem. you feel shy. or are you distrustful? people make you nervous and exhausted. especially poetry people—the possibility for false intimacy is high. to ease your anxiety, you tell yourself you would have just gotten drunk at Copula and would be hungover the next day. you know what that space is like. later in the night, you get a few texts telling you to come to Copula but you don’t. the moon is full inside you like a knowing thing. Continue reading
Filed under Everything Else
1. Ibeyi
Yes, they’re only 20, yes they’re twins, and yes their music is dreamlike. Born in Paris, Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Díaz are daughters of the famed Cuban percussionist Anga Díaz who died when the girls were 11, but not before teaching them how to play the cajón and batá. I’m obsessed with their mix of Afro-Cuban beats with electronic textures, and with their English overlapping with Yoruba. Here is an NPR piece where Anastacia Tsioulcas calls their entrancing music “a world of intoxicating beauty, in songs that are smart, sweet and emotionally cracked wide open.” Do stop Instagramming and be lost in their brilliance. Also, here is a list of their upcoming shows. Continue reading
Filed under Books + Literature, Movies + TV, Music + Playlists
Hi! My name is Lizzy Acker and I am not Marisa Crawford. However, I am a feminist who watches The Bachelor. In fact, I started on this journey because of Marisa, years ago in a romantic land called San Francisco, where we used to watch the show together and drink drinks. Please note that I am absolutely here for the Right Reasons—those reasons being: I am going to tell you what happened on this season’s most commitment-heavy week while Marisa was out of town. I’m going to try to make sense of the madness and magic for you, as Marisa might, were she able.
This week was a two-day, four-hour extravaganza that began with a lot of dimly lit, confessional interviews with Chris Harrison. Especially on Sunday, there was a lot of time to fill, okay? And a lot of summarizing the season for anyone who, you know, decided to just start watching now, halfway through the season (who are you and why why why?).
Filed under Everything Else, Movies + TV
Dear Anais,
I’m writing to you because I’m a 30-year-old woman and I’m alone. I’m not in a relationship right now and haven’t been for a year and there’s nothing really on the horizon. This doesn’t bother me so much—of course I’d like to find love but my relationship with my ex was such an exhausting experience that I’m actually glad for the time off at this point. My problem is that I used to have friends, good ones. And now suddenly, they are all in relationships and I’m the single one. Even my two roommates are always over at their significant others’ apartments or closed off in their rooms here.
I’m lonely. I’m bored. Last week I finally synched up with one of my friends and we went to dinner and she was constantly checking her phone and stayed for one drink afterward and then said she was going to meet up with her boyfriend who was home from work. I’m so tired of being dropped.
Now that we are older, does friendship even exist anymore? The person who used to be my closest friend always talks about her boyfriend being her best friend. I get it—if you have a built-in companion you do everything with, who has use for friends? I’m not trying to sound bitter—I’m really trying to understand whether my expectations of having strong female friendships are realistic at this point.
Thanks in advance,
The Only Lonely
Filed under Go Ask Anais
With the movie version of Fifty Shades of Grey out in theaters now, and the conversation around both the film and the books reaching a fever pitch, I want to weigh in on it as a cultural text. And in case you’re wondering—although I have not yet seen the film (my hope is to see a Mystery Science Theater-style screening with a hundred of my closest kinky friends), yes, I have read the books. Or, at least, I took one or two of the books down from a public library shelf while my children played nearby, and I speed-read through it in horror, taking pictures of particularly appalling passages with my phone, because, after years of making assumptions about this piece of self-published fan fiction turned cultural “mommy porn” phenomenon, it turned out to be even worse than I’d imagined.
How is it worse? What are my issues with it? Well, for starters, I feel that the prose is so bad, you guys. SO. BAD. It is trite and clumsy and repetitive and dull. It’s not even worth it for me to bother quoting it here: you can find plenty of excerpted examples online, or you can do what I did, and pull a copy off your local library shelf and flip to any page at random. But trust me: I’ve been teaching and editing creative writing for many years: I know what I’m talking about here. E.L. James writes shoddy, sorry-ass prose. Continue reading
Filed under Everything Else, Movies + TV
Happy Valentine’s Day, weird sister cupids! Revisit our Valentine’s Day content for feminist perspectives on celebrating female friendship, rejecting rom-coms, and more. Also, check out these feminist Valentine’s Day cards (Ovaries Before Brovaries, anyone?), and why not #treatyoself to the perfect sex toys for some extra-spesh V-Day self love?
Image via comics365.tumblr.com
In literary news, The Amelia Bloomer Project List recommends feminist books for young people. Check out the new 2015 list here. Continue reading
Filed under Rah! Rah! Roundup
The cover of Rufi Thorpe’s first novel, The Girls From Corona Del Mar, depicts two girls, probably 11 or 12 years old, in swimsuits, sitting like perfect copies of one another. I immediately wanted to read it. Inside, there’s the story of two childhood best friends: Mia, in her mind the bad one, and the narrator of the story; and Lorrie Ann, the beautiful one with what looks from the outside like the perfect family, the perfect life. As we follow the girls, and the city of Corona Del Mar itself, throughout the years past that pivotal point of first friendships and high-school loyalties, the girls’ roles are almost reversed: Mia becomes the settled one with a child, husband and family; Lorrie Ann the runaway, adrift in parties and drugs, a chaser of the latest craze.
Author Rufi Thorpe
I had the chance to talk to Rufi Thorpe about her first novel, and about the importance of those relationships you create at age 12—how they can last throughout adulthood, motherhood, and more. Continue reading
Filed under Books + Literature, Everything Else
Illustration by Matt L Rohrer
OMGGGggggg there is so much to say about this week’s episode that I don’t even know where to begin! I guess I’ll start at the beginning, which was really the end of last week’s episode (which is annoying, The Bachelor, end each episode with a fucking rose ceremony, we already have enough confusion and mayhem in our lives). Kelsey is on the floor and having or staging a panic attack. They’re basically playing her sobs in a loop because they think we won’t notice, and the paramedic tries to distract Kelsey by asking her about some brownies (what brownies?!), which works like a charm. Kelsey laughs “I better get a rose tonight,” and asks to see Chris, then returns to the group of other womyn, who are all pissed. Kelsey laughs off her panic attack and says things like, “these puppies don’t come out every night” about her choice to wear a dress that shows off her cleavage. That’s what we all call our breasts right, “these puppies”?
At the rose ceremony, Farmer Chris speaks more words than we’ve ever heard him utter in all five preceding episodes combined, Exhibit A that we May Not Actually Like Him. And then Kelsey’s like, wait, why am I, a 28-year-old guidance counselor, fighting over this dumb-as-box-of-hammers farmer guy who has marbles in his mouth all the time? JUST KIDDING, you guys, that would of course never happen. You know that moment when you’re dating someone and obsessively asking yourself “does ze like me???”, and then your feminist BFF has to remind you to ask whether or not you’re even into said love object in the first place?? As women, we are socialized to please. And sometimes we forget to think about our actual desires in light of other people’s. If this were the real world, these ladieeeeesssss likely would have moved on from Farmer Chris by now. But this is the Bachelor universe, and there are no feminist best friends, and no alternative suitors. There’s just Farmer Chris, with his mouth slightly agape as he hands out roses to Jade, Kaitlyn, Megan, Becca, Hot V Ashley, and Kelsey, and they all gleefully accept. He sends home Samantha (who is this person?) and 21-year-old Mackenzie (Thank God. Although I was enjoying seeing her and No Longer Hot Virgin Ashley’s friendship forming over a bond of incredible immaturity.) Continue reading
Filed under Everything Else, Movies + TV
Those of you who know me know that I usually look like this when I’m walking around in the world, plus an Instagram filter:
I know, kinda cute right?!
So in case anyone saw me today and was confused or shocked or baffled or felt betrayed by my utterly unrecognizable face, before I get the Uma treatment, I just want a chance to explain. Let me start from the beginning.* Continue reading
Filed under Everything Else
