I volunteer at the children’s service at my synagogue on Shabbat (the Sabbath). Every week, the kids walk around with kid-sized Torahs, some of which are stuffed toys. The Torahs are red, yellow, blue...
A couple days ago, I, like millions of other college students across the country, logged on to Facebook as a pathetic attempt at procrastination. I expected to flip through some of my friends’ newly p...
I never thought much of gender construction as a child. I just knew what I wanted to wear, how my hair should be cut, and what interested me. Did I want to proudly wear my new matching dragon shirt an...
I’ve often wondered if those who are provided with less, make more with what they are given. A few weeks ago, I went to a screening of a documentary called To Educate A Girl, and was convinced once ag...
It’s a common presumption in our society that if you’re female, tall and skinny, you have it all. You are the perfect woman: you have the attributes of a high fashion model, and you should be extremel...
When I first saw Miss Representation it stunned me—in the best of ways. I didn’t immediately take the time to reflect on it, but then a few nights ago I was unlucky enough to witness the newest Carl’s...
Political disagreements aside, I have to respect Meghan McCain's recent discussion about her body: specifically her criticism of the way the media has responded to her body and her refusal to change a...
I’m currently a senior at my high school here in the Dominican Republic. I was born in the States and have lived overseas almost my entire life. I’m also Hispanic-- both my parents and the rest of my ...
I've always hated numbers.
Ok, maybe not "hate" since they do impact my daily life in positive ways.
But overall I really dislike numbers.
Not for what they inherently are or what good they've done fo...
If you had asked me six months ago if I was affected by the media’s presentation of women, I would have responded with an unequivocal no. Yes, TV and magazines bombard us with horribly warped images o...
The majority of us in the UK will remember the controversial 2002 campaign for the chunky, ‘King size, not Queen sized’ Yorkie chocolate bar. This campaign's primary slogan stated daringly: ‘It’s Not ...
Recently, I was taking a course on linguistics, and we were discussing syntax. My professor asked the class-- a room of roughly a hundred English students, mostly female-- what pronoun to use when rep...
As Grand Rapids, Michigan yawned good morning at 7:45 am and the sun began blinking hello, I sat in my human sexuality and relationships class, watching one of the best videos I have ever seen in an a...
A friend of mine recently created a zine about the slut/stud double standard for a electives course called Feminisms that she’s taking. She included various fairy-tale-esque ads she found in magazines...
Right after we graduated high school, I gave one of my best friends a bumper sticker that read "This Is What A Feminist Looks Like." It was partially a joke - something to remember her über-feminist f...
In its formative days (in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and then in the 1960s and ‘70s), feminism was, above all, about promoting equal social and political citizenship for women. Contempora...
As I was doing my AP Psychology homework about the psychology of language recently, I came across some interesting studies about the effect of using gender-neutral speech.
Janet Hyde, a professor of ...
Many people don’t know what being transgender means. I, not being transgendered, don’t fully understand every aspect of it either but my fiancée is in the middle of transitioning so I want to express ...
society told her she was ugly and she bought into the lie
she dissected every bit of herself for judgmental inspection
and tried to feel beautiful all in vain
comparing herself to photoshopped figures...
Being the avid history nerd that I am, I was basically counting down the minutes until the opening of Iron Lady, the new film chronicling Margaret Thatcher’s life, starring Meryl Streep. I mean, what ...
“Let me buy you dinner,” he said with a smile. He looked at me with confidence. He was close to me in age, and handsome. His actions were presumably innocent. On the surface, there was no reason for m...
I've always wanted to be a historian, and not just your run of the mill historian but one that changes the study and review of the discipline. But I've faced a problem, it's such a subtle problem that...
The number one question my high school friends always ask me whenever we chat now is, “So are you sick of being around all those girls yet?” Despite the fact that I have attempted to explain my decisi...