My 'Just In Case' Inheritance
When I learned that the jewelry my family had given me over the years was a morbid kind of safety net, I came to dread my future every time I put on a piece of gold.
View ArticleCritical Failure
Armond White's film reviews were once electric: part historical analysis, part posturing, part insult comedy, an attempt to take black art — and art in general — seriously. What happened?
View ArticleLike A Real Cowgirl
Is donning cowboy boots a symbol of independence for women, or an attempt to fit in with a culture that does not seem to recognize — or respect — our autonomy?
View ArticleThe Last Days Of The Leather Fortress
For a decade, the BDSM site Kink.com has filmed scenes for its more than 50,000 members in a hundred-year-old armory in downtown San Francisco. This year, the final erotic frames were shot on the...
View ArticleThe Man Behind Meat Loaf
Songwriter Jim Steinman found his muse in the performer — and, forty years ago, they released their iconic, operatic rock album, Bat Out of Hell.
View ArticleAnatomy Of A Surrogacy
They wanted a baby, she wanted to carry it for them — for a fee. It's a common transaction but illegal in Canada, and the system here leaves both parties vulnerable.
View ArticleThe Year In Cultivation
One thing I love about many types of guardianship in food is that it requires you watch, but not too closely.
View ArticleSearching For The Self-Loathing Woman Writer
Did these women hate themselves, or did they write about a world that hated them?
View ArticleLiving With Slenderman
Three little girls, an Internet boogeyman, and a stabbing in the woods on a sunny afternoon. Inside the trials of Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier.
View ArticleThe Short-Lived Normalization Of Breastfeeding On Television
Buffy Sainte-Marie’s decision to breastfeed her child on "Sesame Street" to educate viewers would be one of the last times the act was broadcast without being a punchline.
View ArticleUnder The Hollywood Gaslight
Rose McGowan suffered from the worst of the Hollywood machine and reclaimed her body and her narrative. But her all-for-one methods have alienated fellow activists.
View ArticleLife And Death Online
As more and more friendships are built virtually, we must confront the nuances of grieving someone you’ve never met in person.
View ArticleBarbra Streisand's Singular Women
In her fifty years on screen, her palpable desperation to be liked has moved audiences or grated on them. But she projects something constant and knowable — the marker of a true star.
View ArticleThe Women Who Speak For The Gods
Despite decades of persecution and discrimination, shamanism, Korea's oldest belief system, still maintains its hold on the national psyche.
View ArticleThe Fred Rogers We Know
With his unconventional take on children's television, Mr. Rogers helped redefine the male role model.
View ArticleThe Personal Business Of Being Laid Off
I was told getting laid off from my dream job had nothing to do with me, but after I was let go, I felt like I had lost a part of myself that I couldn't get back.
View ArticleWhat I Learned From Talking To Psychopaths
I lurked on the psychopath forum for three days before contacting anyone. It is, unsurprisingly, a scary place.
View ArticleThe Year In Taxidermy
A good way to think about taxidermy is to imagine you're God. Take the dead thing and resurrect it. Shape it in your own image.
View ArticleIn Search Of Absence In Antarctica
It's not that I divide my life into the periods before and after I went, exactly. It's more that the trip accelerated a gradual change that has been happening all my life.
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