Peggy Orenstein’s “The Way We Live Now” piece in New York Times Magazine a couple months ago explores what she calls the “empowerment mystique,” or using themes of girl power to sell products that hav...
One of my extremely good friends is finishing out her high school career abroad, and I spent the weekend at her apartment with some other friends as a send-off party before she left. When we were disc...
I know it’s been said before but, as a teenage girl with friends of both genders, double standards are a massive issue for me. It’s come to a head recently, because of two entirely unrelated events.
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Originally embedded in Rose M's post, this video about Dr. Robyn Silverman's book Good Girls Don't Get Fat: How Weight Obsession is Messing Up Our Girls & How We Can Help Them Thrive Despite It sh...
This year in school, I'm taking a really amazing English elective called Gender, Culture, Power (SURPRISE! It's taught by the same awesome teacher who handed me Jessica Valenti's Full Frontal Feminism...
Blazing stink of an august sidewalk. My fingers my eyeballs are grey with the newsprint of this morning’s sins and a heavy shamed sickness knowing I am born with Certain Inalienable Rights: to have le...
Whether we were actually at the party where it went down or heard about it at school the Monday after, we've all witnessed it. Two people hook up. As they walk into school, the rumor spreads with thei...
In 1990, Wellesley College professor Peggy McIntosh wrote an essay called “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”. McIntosh observes that whites in the U.S. are “taught to see racism only ...
Over the summer, I read Half the Sky. The entire book was incredible, but I was moved by the chapter on the sex trafficking industry. I wrote this story as a way to try to imagine what that experience...
First off, I want to clearly state that I’m well informed about feminism and I associate myself with feminism, despite the fact that many things within the feminist movement bother me. For example, th...
In my opinion, Courtney Martin is one of the coolest people ever. I appreciate nothing more than honesty - especially when backed up by intelligence and clear hard work - and nobody is more emblematic...
Far from self involvement, far from apathy, WMC Progressive Women's Voices alumna Courtney Martin sees the promise of new forms of activism developing from her generation. She tells us about it in her new book published this week.
Crank and Glass, both written by Ellen Hopkins, follow Kristina Snow, a high achieving 17 year old, as she nose dives into a meth addiction, with details on her subsequent rape, unwanted pregnancy and...
When Allison Iraheta was on American Idol, I really liked her, and was upset when she got voted off. One of my friends fell totally in love with her. "You gotta hear her single, 'Friday I’ll Be Over U...
This video, by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, made me feel super warm and fuzzy on the inside. Plus, it's always nice to hear this message. See, everybody, feminists LIKE being nice!
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I’m not happy with the way I look. I may tell you that I am, but I’m not. I constantly worry if I’m too fat to wear certain clothes, too fat to be desirable, too fat to be beautiful. Who should I turn...
After reading reports that Charice Pempengco, an 18-year-old singer who recently landed a part on Glee, got Botox treatments for her TV debut, I proceeded to bang my head against a wall–ironically ach...
You may remember Nona from the post I wrote about GirlDrive (her really super awesome book) and her guest post about Hooking Up. Well, Nona recently did some social experimentin' involving feminism, t...
Apparently, when it comes to education in New York City, boys are "second class citizens." Or at least that’s what Christina Hoff Sommers, author of The War Against Boys and the recent article Are The...
On my last procrastination streak, in addition to watching dozens of videos of young children singing pop songs on YouTube, I stumbled upon a gem from my childhood – all 44 minutes of ‘Free to Be… You...
I'll admit it. The first time I watched the video for California Gurls, I thought it was pretty cool. Until Katy Perry went crazy with the whipped cream on her boobs. Of course, from the beginning of ...
As Joan Jacobs, in her great book The Body Project illuminated, the idea of teen girls working to improve their bodies in a detached way – as if it were a project with perfection as its goal, rather t...
After reading Dodai at Jezebel's minute-by-minute blog of Eclipse, I thought that I could finally pass on an opportunity to fund Twilight mania. Alas, I was wrong: the dark cyclone of doom that is Ste...
I'm a feminist. Man, that feels good.
I've been a feminist all my life but didn't realize it until a few weeks ago when I checked out a twenty-pound stack of books from the library (everything from J...
Gloria Feldt, a former teen mother, was the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood. She is currently an activist, author and leading expert in women’s rights, leadership and politics and blogs ab...