"Where are you really from?"
"What are you?"
"You don't look Latina."
"Microaggressions" are “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unint...
It happened a couple of weeks after my 12th birthday. I hadn't entered high school, I didn't have my period or a crush on anyone. I was too young to experience the best, empowering parts of my sexuali...
At the end of his VMA performance on Sunday night, Justin Bieber began to cry. This image has already launched debates about his motivations and as someone who has spent the past 4 years imme...
The spring semester of my freshmen year of college, I took a class called "Intro to Political Theory." I was obsessed with the syllabus (Kant and Marx make my head hurt in all the right ways) and more...
I used to be a White Feminist. As a white woman, I thought it was my only option. But, as a video produced by the Huffington Post and a thoughtful post by the young star Rowan Blanchard both explai...
Ok, I’ll admit to watching an episode or two (or six) of The Bachelorette this season. For those who haven't watched, the show focuses on one woman's quest to find a perfect match among a group of mal...
We're often taught that college is training for "real" life. The time we spend on campus and in class is supposed to prepare us for the rest of our lives. But I feel that my summer breaks have actuall...
A hush quickly fell over the crowd of girls surrounding me. While everyone was craning their necks for a better view, I had only one thought: “This is so. freaking. cool.” A second later, the group er...
I was a teen in the '90s, and heavily influenced by Riot Grrrl feminism. Everything was DIY, dress how you want, and live with a militant independence. My feminism was raw, precocious, and wild. Now t...
Although we have made a lot of progress towards achieving gender equality, there is still much work to be done. One still-pervasive form of sexism women face is being subjected to sexist comments whil...
Growing up, I was neither educated nor had positive conversations about sex. It was a taboo topic in my family. My mother especially refused to discuss it (even when I brought it up) and my father com...
Shopping for school clothes was a nightmare in high school. Attending a private Christian school with a strict dress code, I had a lot of rules to follow: No jeans, sweat pants, yoga pants, or anythin...
If you’re anything like me, words like “fiscal” and “economic” and “marketplace” have always been like a Muggle version of the Petrificus Totalus curse. Despite my disdain for the stereotype of women ...
On March 30th, 33-year-old Purvi Patel was sentenced to 20 years in prison. She is the first woman in the United States convicted of feticide. But there is far more to this case than that fact alone r...
Today is the 3rd National Youth HIV and AIDS Awareness Day — a meaningful day for us as an adolescent health educator and feminist youth worker. But we weren't always as aware or passionate about educ...
I am the proud graduate of an all-girls high school. While some of my peers sought boys out, spending time at our brother school down the road, I ended up having limited contact with the opposite sex,...
I'm a fan of both Lena Dunham and Mindy Kaling. Yet I found myself somewhat surprised by just how impressive I found both women while recently watching their contributions to a Sundance live panel mod...
I love math and science and I don’t think I’d be who I am now without it. While I may not know how to code or have taken AP Physics, I appreciate these fields immensely. However, there have been i...
My right to safety and bodily integrity were robbed the night I was drugged. I, as well as three other female students at my law school, were drugged at three different house parties. No one attempted...
Earlier this Fall, as leaves fell all over my college’s campus, something bubbled under the surface and all over Yik Yak, the popular anonymous Twitter-like app. It began as a series of “yaks” attacki...
I remember sitting in a circle of girls on the playground. One girl, I'll call her Sarah, showed us that she could fold her tongue. I didn’t know how to fold my tongue, but I lied and told m...
While I have always felt passionate about advocating for equal rights and opportunities for all people, I didn’t find my feminism until my Junior year of college. After having several personal experie...
“Let our girls possess what amiable qualities of soul they may; let their characters be fair and spotless as innocence itself; let their natural taste and ingenuity be what they may; it is impossible...
When Laurel School and I met for the first time, I was terrified. I was too shy to speak, too anxious to let go of my parents. I spent the summer before school began feeling worried. My parents, in tu...
When my sister came home from college the first time, I had so many questions. How were the dorms? How were her friends? Had she met anybody special? She answered them all honestly and had mostly good...