Don’t be scared to tell them the truth when their lives are at stake. Stranger Danger was born in the 1980s. You couldn’t miss it; it was everywhere. I would know, I was a kid then, trained to be terrified of any person I didn’t know. It’s 10 o’clock Do You Know Where Your Kids Are?, […]
Public figures like Newton need to be held to higher standards than this—and, really, abstaining from harassment of journalists while representing the team isn’t a high bar. During a press conference Wednesday, Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton told a reporter it was “funny” to hear a “female” talk about routes. The only thing that’s funny […]
Dear Dana is a bi-weekly advice column for humans who engage in romantic relationships. Please send your dilemmas, issues, conundrums, assumptions, conflicts, anxieties, worriments, obstacles, complications, predicaments, queries, questions, and any other synonyms for “problems” to deardana@rolereboot.org. Dear Dana: After a couple of failed relationships over the last year, I’m back to online dating, but not […]
When female athletes are powerful, tough fighters, sweaty or bloody, or just simply muscular, the media reduces them to animal-like caricatures, as if attempting to shame them into their proper place as ladies. Dear Media, Heads-up: Athleticism is not gendered. Did I really just read this sentence by HuffPost sportswriter Justin Block, in an article […]
Conditioning girls to minimize themselves physically could be part of the underlying psychology that eventually casts women as victims. I fell off my first horse when I was 1 year old. No, I don’t mean that metaphorically—I literally fell off a horse, or rather, I was thrown off, along with my grandmother, who held on […]
I grew up playing team sports, and I don’t know where I’d be or who I’d be today without them. A crowd gathers at the airport outpost of a local brewery at Boston Logan. Leaning against rollerboards, strangers marvel together. It’s 4-0, 16 minutes in. A sign spotted behind the net reads “Let’s Party Like It’s 1999.” […]
Football is built on exploitation and violence on an industrial scale, and the fact that it remains so popular in America is a national disgrace. I just read a story about Adrian Peterson, the National Football League player who recently apologized for beating the hell out of his 4-year-old son. Even though I don’t watch football […]
This originally appeared on The Princess Free Zone. Republished here with permission. Asking girls to always be clean, proper, and pretty sets up an unrealistic expectation that hurts their ability to play side-by-side with the boys. Here’s a news bulletin: Little girls sweat. Oh, and sometimes they even stink. Yep, they play hard and get […]
Here’s the truth: Making space for more female heroes opens a corresponding space for more female villains. A famous footballer has been arrested on domestic violence charges after a family gathering got out of control, BleacherReport revealed on Saturday. That’s unfortunately not an uncommon headline, until you take into account that that footballer is a […]
