Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has shared her daily make-up routine with Vogue magazine. “The key to beauty is feeling beautiful, and no amount of money or makeup can really compensate for loving yourself,” the congresswoman said. “Femininity has power, and, in politics, there is so much criticism and nitpicking about how women and femme people present ourselves,” AOC said. “Just being a woman is quite politicised here in Washington.” Fresh from the glitz of the virtual Democratic National Convention broadcast from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, AOC denied that style can be separated from substance in politics. “There’s this really false idea that if […]
Feminism
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One hundred years to the day after women first won the right to vote in America, and the country is in a weird, dark place. There’s a kind of brutal symmetry between 1920, when the mass exodus of women from the home and into the workforce supercharged the movement, and 2020, as the pandemic forces working women back into the home. It’s all so retro. Even Kamala Harris, the first Black and South Asian woman on a major party’s presidential ticket, has to weather viciously misogynistic attacks while also pandering to 19th century notions of womanhood. Harris—who was 49 years old […]
Citing health concerns, the president of the National Organization for Women stepped down Sunday, amid a flurry of allegations of racism at the nation’s oldest and largest feminist organization. In an email to the NOW board, state presidents, and staff on Sunday night, President Toni Van Pelt announced she would be stepping down with two weeks’ notice effective Aug. 28. Vice President Christian Nunes will take her place, and the board will begin the process of appointing a new vice president. In her email, Van Pelt said she had been struggling with a “very painful health issue” over the last year […]
It’s clear enough that Ben Shapiro and Republican candidate James P. Bradley’s puritanical pearl clutching over Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s (censored!) music video “WAP,” which stands for Wet-Ass Pussy, is largely irrelevant. Shapiro’s and Bradley’s statements decrying the explicit message of the song and the (un)dress in the video constitute the kind of performative moral panics that are so baldly opportunistic as to render them banal. (Though, aside from his ranty and tedious video, Shapiro’s tweets express a bizarre curiosity about the rappers’ vaginal health in which he solicits input from his “doctor wife”.) Yet, here I am writing […]
The federal judge whose son was shot dead two weeks ago has, for the first time, spoken about the horrific moment her only child was killed on their doorstep by a “madman” posing as a FedEx courier. In a painfully emotional video statement, Judge Esther Salas said she is certain her family was targeted because of her job. Her husband, Mark Anderl, was also shot three times and is recovering in a hospital. The gunman is believed to be the self-described “anti-feminist” lawyer Roy Den Hollander, who was found dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound hours after the killing. “Two […]
Members of the so-called “men’s rights” movement want to get one thing straight: while a prominent member allegedly killed a judge’s son, seriously wounded her husband, and was implicated in the killing of another activist, it should not reflect badly on their community. In fact, the most deranged strand of the insular crowd’s alternately panicked and dismissive reaction to a bizarre internal beef spilling out into spectacular murders was the idea that all the shootings were a conspiracy to make men’s rights activists look bad. Roy Den Hollander, 72, is accused of targeting the family of a judge who was presiding […]
Paul Feig will not let a once-in-a-century pandemic slow him down. He’s balancing far too many plates. There’s the two features in pre-production that he’s planning to direct—This Country, a U.S. remake of the famed U.K. mockumentary about rural life at the margins, and an adaptation of the bestselling novel The School for Good and Evil, a potential Harry Potter-esque franchise. Or how about the projects he’s shepherding through his production company, Powderkeg, like the Issa Rae-starring Netflix film American Princess, Eva Longoria’s directorial debut 24-7, and East of La Brea, a Los Angeles-set TV show centered on two young Muslim-American […]
Furious that the National Organization for Women has yet to remove President Toni Van Pelt over allegations of racism, a group of state chapter leaders have started a social media campaign to push her out of office. Over the month of July, the California NOW chapter is hosting Facebook live streams with 20 other state chapter leaders who will demand Van Pelt’s resignation and discuss their experiences with racism in the organization more broadly. The point of the campaign, California NOW president Kolieka Seigel said in a recent broadcast, is to “address systemic racism within our own ranks, to uplift the […]
This week, the Supreme Court upheld Trump’s exceptions to the Affordable Care Act, which will allow universities and employers to deny insurers free birth control due to moral objections. The outcry from women’s rights advocates was swift. Many insisted that contraception is an imperative part of health care for women. On Twitter, former California congresswoman Katie Hill was quick to note that birth control does more than just prevent pregnancies. It also helps to treat some conditions like endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome. “Nothing to do with contraception,” Hill wrote. “Just with health, & preventing unimaginable pain. Clearly, people still don’t […]
I was on my path very young, 5-and-a-half going on 6, watching The Ed Sullivan Show, essential Sunday viewing for all American families. He would always have “something for the youngsters” at the end, and on this episode, out came Elvis Presley doing “Don’t Be Cruel.” My eldest sister by 9 years started screaming. I stared at her and wondered, why? Then I turned and watched the performance. I was drawn in, totally. Then, the light-bulb moment: I am going to do that. That pivotal moment has stayed with me my entire life. Funny thing is, it never occurred to me that I was […]
Two National Organization for Women board members say the group is retaliating against them and seven others for speaking up about racism within the iconic organization. The nine board members—including all four women of color on the board—previously called for President Toni Van Pelt’s resignation after a Daily Beast investigation revealed widespread allegations of racism in the group’s chapters and national headquarters. Now, according to board members Nina Ahmad and Victoria Steele, the whistleblowers are being subjected to an internal grievance process meant to keep them from speaking out. “We refuse to be silent on this matter because to be silent […]
Could someone please, for the love of God, teach J.K. Rowling how to read the room? Over the weekend, as protests calling for the protection of black lives spread across the world, the Harry Potter author took a moment to fire off a transphobic tweetstorm mocking the use of non-gendered language and insisting that “erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives.” And on Wednesday, hours after yet another Harry Potter actor disavowed her comments, Rowling tripled down in a blog post that attempts to characterize her views as feminism. In reality, it’s a […]
Nine national board members of the National Organization for Women are calling on the president, Toni Van Pelt, to resign after a Daily Beast investigation revealed a pattern of racism at the storied women rights group. The revolt comes as the organization’s black vice president says she has also been the subject of discrimination and tokenism—and was not even personally consulted before NOW sent out a statement on the death of George Floyd. “I was so upset and mad I called my mom crying,” Christian Nunes told The Daily Beast. As The Daily Beast reported this week, interviews and internal documents […]
Monica Weeks knew she was taking a risk when she ran for vice president of the National Organization for Women. She was young—29 years old—and campaigning on the first all-women-of-color ticket in the organization’s 50-year history. Her friends thought the group was old-fashioned, and her mother, an immigrant from Cuba, was anxious about her taking on such a high-profile role. But recent family events, coupled with the devastating results of the 2016 election, had convinced her that now was the time to step up. That’s how Weeks found herself in front of a sea of older white women at the Colors […]