By now we’ve all heard the news about Ginni and Anita. Nearly 20 years after the Hill/Thomas sexual harassment scandal, Thomas’s wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, made an utterly bizarre early-morning call to Anita Hill on Saturday, Oct. 9, suggesting Hill apologize and provide “some full explanation of why you did what you did with my […]
Month: October 2010
Vag Magazine: The Laugh’s on Feminist Journalists
The first episode of Vag Magazine, a six-part web series, has debuted online–and even though we’re in the line of comedic fire, we’re grinning, if not yet guffawing. The show was created by some funny women from the Upright Citizen’s Brigade, an improv and sketch-comedy group where famous peeps like Amy Poehler got their start. […]
(Self)Love is a Battlefield
My body is a battleground. I have spent most of my life waging a war on it. I have vivid girlhood memories of my worth being measured by my waist size and numbers on a scale. I was taught that I must “suffer to be beautiful.” This irreconcilable relationship with body and self continued into middle school, as […]
Living Lopsided in a Symmetrical World
When I first saw the silicon breast shells that I had bought at My Secret mastectomy boutique on Manhattan’s Upper West Side for sale at Lord and Taylor, I was stunned. One of those shells—called in medical parlance a prosthesis—had been a secret part of my life for years, from the time I surrendered half of my […]
We Still Believe Anita Hill (and We’re Dumbstruck by Ginni Thomas)
I somehow read The New York Times piece wrong when I first glanced at it yesterday: I thought it said that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife Virginia–she of the new tea party-linked lobbying group Liberty Central Inc.–called Anita Hill to apologize to her. Wow, Mrs. T wanted to offer an olive branch to the […]
Today’s the Day to Love Your Body
There are things we say to ourselves that we would never say to the people we love. Can you imagine telling your best friend her butt is too big or her breasts are too small? Or telling your daughter she’d have more friends if she just lost a few pounds? How about letting grandmother in on how much more beautiful […]
“For God, For Country and For Men”: A Yale Alumna Speaks Out
When incoming freshmen enter their Yale dorm room for the first time, they encounter a blue banner with white lettering that reads, “For God, For Country and For Yale.” Initially this banner strikes many–including my freshman self four years ago–as outdated and overly earnest. But allegiance to Yale ends up sticking with many students and […]
Are Women More Aggressive These Days?
For a book that might be mistaken for a treatise on violent women, Maud Lavin’s recent Push Comes to Shove covers territory of another kind: specific case studies of women’s aggression as heard in pop music, seen in films and increasingly experienced in professional and private settings over the course of the last decade. Lavin […]
A Return to Sisterhood
In the wake of anti-feminist backlash, and fueled by the fear of being an “out” feminist (think: “I’m not a feminist, but…”), the concept and power of sisterhood has faded away. But perhaps it is (high) time for the return of this simple, yet powerful, idea. Sisters: Talk to each other, be connected and informed, […]
Getting Crisis Pregnancy Centers to Confess
If only “crisis pregnancy centers” came with their own FDA warning labels: “contains misinformation,” or “may result in poor decision-making.” Generally, however, crisis pregnancy centers have long operated under the radar in communities around the country, quietly suppressing a woman’s right to choose under the pretense of offering reproductive health care. There are an estimated […]