Growing up poor, I knew a lot about bitterness. I was bitter that other kids got to go on vacations, got to have cable TV, got air conditioning and dinner served every night. Mine was the pure bitterness of a child, the black-and-white unfairness of a melodrama heroine. And my Read more
Yes, rather than write yet another year-in-review post for New Years Eve, I’ve decided to give you just the next thing I had on my mind. I’ve noticed again that people like to write about characters with long, flowing hair, and then they like to ignore the consequences of that Read more
At a recent panel, the moderator asked me, “Has Cancel Culture gotten out of hand?” or some such question like that. I don’t remember clearly because my mind was already whirling with dismay at what was really being asked and how to answer it because every time I’ve seen this Read more
“We live in a classless society,” I’d been told as a kid in a white suburban school where most of my classmates were from comfortable middle-class families. I’d been told it so many times I regurgitated it myself, in a conversation with my Government teacher, Mr. D. I loved hanging Read more
I’m starting to wonder if my culture has turned a vice into a virtue. We are inundated constantly by the industries that profit off of vanity. Imaginary new “problems” are invented for perfect people – do you have thigh gap? Are your teeth white enough? Are your eyebrows the right Read more
This is a memoir piece I wrote for Argot Magazine, which has since been taken down. I’m a nerdy freshman at Case Western Reserve University, hoping to major in Science Fiction and Some Type of Science (I hadn’t picked one yet) when I’m walking back from class. I see a Read more
There is a trope in movies were a gorgeous actress wears glasses and baggy clothes in the first act, then someone gives her fashionable clothes, contact lenses, and does her hair, and she spends the rest of the movie acknowledged as pretty. They call this “The Pretty Ugly Girl” and Read more