Debates about whether women’s writing was uniquely female or if there was a “feminine voice” permeated much femininist theorizing in the ’70s and ’80s. While I tend to be wary […]
Tag: Twilight
A Feminist Visits Comic-Con
This weekend, I attended my first ever Comic-Con–the annual comic-book industry bonanza–with my 12-year-old daughter. As always, I wore my feminist lenses, and noticed many things, both good and bad, […]
Will the New Hermione Please Stand Up?
Don’t hate me, Potterites, but I would have preferred the Harry Potter series had been instead the Hermione Granger series. Sure, Harry is great and all, but, given that men […]
Heterosexual Vampire Monogamy
Popular culture continues to frame weddings as THE EVENT of a woman’s life, as in all the shows dedicated to getting married (The Bachelor), to planning a wedding (My Fair […]
Hanna’s Hair May Be Tangled, But She’s No Rapunzel.
Rather than falling into the typical princess/witch or angel/whore binary most films trade in, Hanna gives us a movie rarity–a female protagonist who is strong, smart, brave and decidedly not […]
Little Red Riding Hood Makes Twilight Look Like a Masterpiece.
There is no doubt that the studio execs who greenlit the new film Little Red Riding Hood were likely licking their wolfy chops at the thought of creating the next […]
World of Magic
A review of Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor By Nisi Shawl Young-adult fiction is influential; women and men often act out stories they read as teens. But try finding feminism […]
YA Novelist Reimagines Red Riding Hood–Yet Again
Do good girls talk to strangers? Perhaps we should ask Little Red Riding Hood. Her story has long intrigued feminist scholars for what its complex history reveals about changing attitudes […]
How I Picked 10 Best Feminist Teen Books of All Time
For my new Ms. magazine article on feminist young-adult fiction (YA), I set out to pick 10 Must-Reads–those books which every 13-year-old with a spark of gender consciousness should have […]
Let This Feminist Vampire In
Warning: spoilers Vampires have become so common in contemporary texts that they have lost some of their bite. With most of them falling into the emo, brooding, love-struck and angst-ridden […]