Ms. magazine is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, feminist magazines in America. The mag has occasionally featured celebrities on the cover; Wonder Woman was its very first cover girl, while other cover stars include Meryl Streep, Cher, Cecily Tyson, Ani DiFranco and Pam Grier. But the mag’s latest cover girl, Beyoncé, is causing controversy for…
When I was growing up, the word bitch was not a nice word.
Remember those old Case Logic cd cases that held a gazillion cds? Well, I have one that is full of about 200 cds mostly from the mid 90s. Some of them are on my iTunes, but most of them are not. We’re talking everything from Norah Jones to Wu-Tang to Carl Thomas. So, I multi-tasked…
It struck a chord to hear Esquire editor, Alex Bilmes, refer to women as pure “ornamental,” and “objects” to his racy hetero male magazine. Bilmes was frighteningly comfortable enough in his sexist position to openly associate women as “ornaments” to be “objectified.” The editor of the trendy Mens magazine admitted: “We use pretty girls in…
Feminism is back, guys! (Of course, if you ask the editors at Ms. Magazine and the women of NOW, it never left.) But thanks to Sheryl Sandberg’s book “Lean In” and its advice that women need to stop pussyfooting around and get to running stuff everyone’s talking about feminism like it’s 1969. Case in point: New York Magazine has a feature called “The…
Some Generation Xers and Baby Boomers are tough on millennials. We’re not feminist enough. We’re armchair activists. We’ve been brainwashed by post-racial and post-feminist and post-activism ideologies and it’s impacted our understanding of how social institutions are constructed to marginalize us. There is truth in those monolithic assumptions for some millennials, but Ms. discovered young…
If there were ever any doubts that white feminists are disengaged from and apathetic to the concurrent racism that Black feminists must navigate in an increasingly hipster and kyriarchal society, look no further than their deafening silence when satirical website, The Onion, called 9-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis a “cunt” on Twitter. The arc of white feminist dialogue…
Once again, there is a conversation in the mainstream press about whether Michelle Obama is feminist enough. Her platform is being debated, as well as her decision to identify as “Mom-in-Chief.” This conversation really brings to fore the breach between White feminists and many Black women. Feminism has a long history of racism and these issues…
Six months ago, I determined that I am a womanist. Though I spent a portion of my undergraduate career at an institution designed to empower and educate black women, I was so entrenched in the misconceptions of feminism that I struggled with embracing the label. I, and a legion of my peers, was against the…
It does my heart good to see women of all races embrace Michelle Obama. It is too rare indeed for a brown-skinned woman, a descendant of slaves, a product of Chicago’s South Side to be lauded on an international stage. Considering the heavy burden of stereotype still faced by black women, I cheer a little…
