When you suffer from compulsive over-eating, it feels impossible to resist the urge to eat, even when you’re not hungry. Maybe you’re watching TV or talking on the phone when you feel it: That glitch ...
I recently had the chance to attend two events meant to inspire my burgeoning professional career: Glamour Magazine’s “Top Ten College Women” event and the Bloomberg Enterprise Tech Summit. However, I...
The first time I felt bad about my body was at my best friend’s swimming pool birthday party, when I was just 11 years old. My friend, who has a very different body shape than I do, was much smaller t...
A few days ago, a friend of mine came to me with an all too common complaint. She was trying to get into a predominantly male fandom and was being met with accusations of being a “Fake Geek Girl”. For...
It has been a pretty good month to be from Connecticut. March Madness came to a close on Monday, April 7th and Tuesday, April 8th, with the championship victories of the Men and Women’s National Baske...
As an artist for my college's newspaper, the Columbia Spectator, I sometimes have to illustrate pieces laced with unrecognized privilege. I’ve drawn for articles that fetishize poverty in Spanish Harl...
Discovering the world of feminist blogging was an experience of simultaneous relief and isolation: just as Second Wave feminists have described the way consciousness raising allowed them to realize th...
I love Sara Bareilles’ Brave. Who doesn’t love a message about overcoming fear in order to express one’s opinions?
Say what you wanna say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave
W...
When girls are young, Cinderella tells them “dreams really do come true.” As we get older, that philosophy changes and we learn that life isn’t actually a fairytale. You have to work hard in order to ...
Kim Lee met Li Yang on a trip to China in 1999, when he was lecturing about “Crazy English,” a way of learning the language that involved overcoming inhibitions through shouting slogans such as “Conquer English to Make China Stronger!”
It all started after a commentator on Thought Catalog assumed I was married after reading one of my articles. Although the article focused on questions surrounding racial bias in college hook-up cultu...
Women face a variety of barriers to full and equal access, including cost, lack of digital literacy, lack of awareness of the Internet’s potential, and entrenched cultural and gender norms that limit them from forming independent connections outside their home or community. These obstacles are worth overcoming.
I am a feminist. I wear shirts that say “Riots not Diets” and tweet articles about women's issues. I am the founder of the feminist club on the campus of my women's college. I could probably take some...
Many people underestimate the power that representation in the media can have for young girls, and especially young girls of color–but connecting with the experiences of another person and empathizing...
I clearly did not wake up like this. There is liquid eyeliner on my eyes to create this cat eye, there is bronzer on my cheekbones to create the illusion that I have been in the sunlight, and there is...
Each Valentine’s Day I can count on one thing: a bouquet of flowers from my mom. This bouquet used to make me feel lame, lonely, not loved in any “real” romantic, non-mommy way. As a feminist I have a...
A few weeks ago I was talking to a friend who is going to publish a novel next year. She is exuberant to have become a novelist and was excitedly telling me about the characters in her book. My heart ...
There is a movement in India that is seeking to secure 33 percent of seats for women in elected bodies. And while the "intellectuals" are racking up op-eds and the celebrities are lavishing their endorsements for the Women's Reservation Bill, I have some serious reservations of my own.
I'm currently taking a sociology class called "Perspectives on Inequality" and the first major issue we've addressed is the current state of income inequality in the United States. The U.S. is the mos...
The term incorporated is often used to describe an organization or business that has become legalized and made official. People can become incorporated as well, as in the cases of celebrities putting ...
While women’s rights in India have begun to make news this year, we are barely off the starting line yet. The news includes domestic and international outrage over the gang rapes of strangers, but these make up a very small percentage of the sexual attacks in the country. In India, more than 90 percent of rapes are committed by people known to the victim, according to a 2012 report by India’s National Crime Records Bureau.
In her TED talk, Sally Kohn makes the brilliant case for "emotional correctness" as a way for us to transcend our political differences and actually listen to each other.
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When I was younger, I owned an American Girl doll, like many girls my age. I wasn’t as big a fan as some girls, but I really loved the books that went with each doll. I read all the stories that were ...
There are so many little things we do that unconsciously lock us into the mindset that women are inferior. There are of course the big things that cause inequality that we obviously need to change, li...
Debora Spar is the president of Barnard College, a women’s undergraduate college affiliated with Columbia University. Since her arrival at the College, Spar has been a vocal proponent of women’s educa...