I missed my usual Mom’N’Pop Culture post at the beginning of the month, and I’m going to blame the cookies. Thin Mints, Samoas, Tagalongs, Dos-si-dos, and about four other varieties of cookies peddled by little girls wearing adorable, sometimes toothless smiles, and patch-covered vests, are to blame for every missed deadline over the past two months.
Women Who Shaped Me: Lessons from My Mother
I’ve only just recently, in the last few years, come to call myself a feminist. I’ve only just recently, in the past few years, come to understand what feminism actually means. Prior to that, I was very much anti-feminist, because of my limited understanding of the term. Turns out, if I’d had a better definition…
Canada Reads: In Defence of Saleema Nawaz’s Bone & Bread
Bone & Bread was first published in 2012, but four years later it still feels timely. It opens with Beena coping with the death of her younger sister, Sadhana, but as it goes on it tells the story of their lives, from when they were children to when Beena’s own child is getting ready to…
Into: Now Our Lives are Stranger
Welcome to An Adventure in Small Games, a monthly series focused on games that cost less than $20, ideally less than $10. In this series, Eve Golden Woods will focus on the indie game and what it has to offer the world of gaming. There will be spoilers. This month Eve takes a look at Into or I Turned…
Elektra’s Silence and Victimization in Dark Reign
This month, Netflix’s Daredevil series adds a much-anticipated character: Elektra. Elektra debuted in Marvel comics in the 1980s. The recap page of the 2009 miniseries Dark Reign: Elektra describes her thusly: “Elektra Natchios was the most dangerous woman in the world: an assassin, master martial artist, and weapons expert.” I had never read any comics starring Elektra,…
Kill the Fatphobia: Fat Girls in YA
Kill the Boy Band by Goldy Moldavsky is a recent young adult novel about a group of fangirl friends who kidnap a member of their favorite boy band, The Ruperts. The first major description given of Apple, the fat girl in the group, is this: “Apple’s forehead crinkled, and having no food on hand to…
Is Tank Girl Still the Girl You Want?
Riding on the heels of the successfully crowd funded 21st Century Tank Girl we’re getting another Tank Girl run from Titan Comics–Two Girls One Tank, written by Tank Girl co-creator Alan Martin with art by Brett Parson. But is Tank Girl still the girl you want, or is this new run going to be just as…
The Working Class Substitute to the American Girl Dolls
What I love and simultaneously resent most about sites and online magazines, like Bustle, Buzzfeed, The Hairpin, and The Toast, is how they fuel my childhood nostalgia. It’s like kids born in the 1980s are retroactively trying to create online fan cultures over fandoms and cultural artifacts long past their expiration date (which is really…
The Role Model Right Under My Nose
For women’s history month, lifestyle is featuring essays and stories about the women in our own lives who have influenced us and made their own kind of history in our worlds. In this article, Games Editor Al Rosenberg shares her story of finding a role model in her own life; one right under her nose.
Music Videos That Shaped Me: AFI’s “The Leaving Song, Part I”
I could not tell if the singer was a man or a woman. All I knew is that they made me feel queasy.
Sisterhood in Jenny Han’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before
I recently realized that many protagonists in books and shows I loved growing up didn’t have siblings. Hermione is an only child, as is Rory Gilmore, Hazel Grace Lancaster, and Glee‘s Rachel, Quinn, Santana, and Brittany (or their siblings did not appear in the story). Katniss’ relationship to her sister Prim was pivotal to The…
Music Videos that Shaped Me: P!nk’s “Stupid Girls”
“Stupid Girls” by P!nk was something of an anthem to my high school self. At the time, I had a hard luck case of special snowflake syndrome. My identity was formed in direct opposition to traditional femininity and the current trends among my peer group. “Stupid Girls” reinforced a lot of my internalized misogyny. Lyrically,…