The girl-woman singer died in her flat, alone in bed. Too many people said, It was to be expected, because we knew this girl who was a woman was really a girl. We knew she had problems, and she did no...
The [Sweet Valley High] books were the most familiar and resonant expressions of our angst and our fondest wishes for ourselves, the girls we wanted to become.
Su, an Australian woman who, when interviewed for Kathy Bail’s 1996 anthology DIY Feminism, said feminists are just women who don’t want to be treated like shit.
Specific body parts, problem areas, also get labels—fupa, gunt, cankles, thunder thighs, Hi Susans, wings, cottage cheese thighs, hail damage, muffin tops, side boob, back fat, love handles, saddlebag...
Sometimes, when you least expect it, you become the girl in the woods. You lose your name because another one is forced on you. You think you are alone until you find books about girls like you. Salva...
Somehow, though, it is only books by women, or books about certain topics, that require this special women’s fiction designation, particularly when those books have the audacity to explore, in some ma...
Sherman Alexie wrote, There are millions of teens who read because they are sad and lonely and enraged. They read because they live in an often-terrible world. They read because they believe, despite...
She was trying to disappear and she couldn’t. It is unbearable to want something so little and need it so much.
She tries to walk not too fast and not too slow. She doesn’t want to attract any attention. She pretends she doesn’t hear the whistles and catcalls and lewd comments.Sometimes she forgets and leaves h...
Reading and writing have always pulled me out of the darkest experiences in my life. Stories have given me a place in which to lose myself. They have allowed me to remember. They have allowed me to fo...
Rather than solve the real problems the United States is facing, some politicians, mostly conservative, have decided to try to solve the female problem by creating a smoke screen, reintroducing aborti...
Perhaps we expect gay public figures and other prominent queer people to come out, to stand and be counted, so they can do the work we’re unwilling to do to change the world, to carry the burdens we a...
On bad days, though, I forget how to separate my personality, the heart of who I am, from my body. I forget how to shield myself from the cruelties of the world.
My other wardrobe, the one that dominates most of my closet, is full of the clothes I don’t have the courage to wear.
My amusement with the Fifty Shades series only goes so far. The books are, essentially, a detailed primer for how to successfully engage in a controlling, abusive relationship. The trilogy represents...
Mr. Peter was sorry for every terrible thing he did to us. Mr. Peter couldn’t resist two beautiful little girls. Mr. Peter wanted us so bad he couldn’t help himself. Mr. Peter was an old man now, coul...
Most black movies, for better or worse, carry a burden of expectation, having to be everything to everyone because we have so little to choose from. Suffice
More often than not, I feel hopeless. I give up. I cannot overcome myself, my body, these hundreds of pounds shrouding my body. It is easier, I think, to be miserable, to remain mired in self-loathing...
Living in my body has expanded my empathy for other people and the truths of their bodies.
Like most people, I’m full of contradictions, but I also don’t want to be treated like shit for being a woman.