I didn’t want to always have to pay attention to my body. I wanted to have a life. Women are not supposed to talk about their periods, we have to be discreet and hide the fact that we have them every month. Luckily, more women are publicly talking about periods these days. For example, photographer Rupi Kaur […]
A woman, no matter her background, should never be asked to prove she is a woman. It was with nearly flawless timing that, just as the national conversation around Caitlyn Jenner, transgender identities, and the definition of womanhood was building to a screaming crescendo, Netflix released the third season of Orange is the New Black. […]
Sure, I have met some cool children over the course of my life, but deep down, I just know it’s not for me. What I am about to say may stun and horrify readers… I do not want children. Ever. I know some of you are probably wondering why I would deny myself the joys […]
Nope, cat-calling isn’t cute when handsome or successful men do it. One of the most frustrating and common experiences of being a woman is having men tell you they know better than you do what women think and feel. By increasing the number of conversations people get to have, the Internet has also increased the number […]
Be beautiful, be sexy, be active, be nurturing, be domestic, be focused on everyone else, and by God, make it all look effortless. What is a good woman? What constitutes goodness and who is the arbiter of the standards that would indicate goodness? If women take their cues about how to “be,” either good or […]
Many women feel ashamed of their bodies, their sexuality, their parenting skills, and even their pain. Is shame so ingrained in us that it’s become our default response to practically everything? Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day was earlier this month. I wouldn’t have known, if not for the fact that my Facebook newsfeed included […]
This originally appeared on The Manifest-Station. Republished here with permission. I realized that I didn’t want a child for the rest of his or her life, I wanted a child to take away my loneliness, my emptiness…for a month or two. He was a spiritual advisor/therapist of sorts. More like a healer/shaman. I had known […]
Are we often more comfortable feeling stuck in the mire? When I was an angst-ridden teen, all mopey with my incense and Smiths and exposed-nerve heartache, my mom would tell me “don’t look for hurts.” I had always been the emotional type, ever since preschool when they told my parents that maybe ice cream rewards […]
This originally appeared on The Date Report. Republished here with permission. The bad, old stereotypes of pathetic single women had been blasted—to be unhappy was to betray womankind, and myself. The setting was sufficiently glamorous: a friend’s book party in a 5th Avenue penthouse. I wore a chiffon dress with a Jackson-Pollock paint-splatter design, sipped […]
This originally appeared on Manifest-Station. Republished here with permission. Note: Sensitive material contained in this piece. Mention of sexual assault. If I had told that guy I didn’t want to sit on his lap, or I had yelled at that man to let go of my chest, then I would have lost them, and in […]
Do you believe that all women, deep down, yearn for motherhood? Well, you’re wrong. When I set out to write a book about society’s assumption that all women, deep down, want to become mothers, I did not realize that my words would be a hot commodity. On my first attempt, I found not one, but […]
Given how common an experience abortion is, the mainstream stories are few and far between, and the ones that are the most memorable are half a century old. As of today, Obvious Child, the Jenny Slate “abortion rom-com” about a New York City comedian who has an abortion after a one-night-stand-that-maybe-won’t-be-a-one-night-stand, is 119th on the box office charts for […]
