Fairy princesses can be mighty girls, as long as we don’t shame them first
My daughter wanted a “fairy princess birthday party,” so I was making wands out pink glitter-glue and pipe cleaners and cutting the crusts off fairy bread while obsessively refreshing my Twitter feed for more news about the extent of Weinstein’s depravity. The invitation to her party was a photo of my daughter wearing a tutu and crown, Photoshopped to make it look like it appeared in the pages of a storybook. She loved it.
After the invitation went out, I received messages RSVPing to the party, but they also asked a question, the same one over again: “Are you okay with this?”
High-key femininity isn’t weakness and here’s why Sansa proves it
Why is Sansa Stark presumed weak because she is high-key feminine? And what the hell make a female character “strong” anyway? Let’s lay out Sansa’s more powerful turns and see if a dress-wearing, high-key feminine character (even in a fictional Medieval-style universe) can overcome her gender spectrum stigma. Femininity doesn’t undercut feminism, and here’s why Sansa proves it…
Defying gender binaries with Alok Vaid-Menon — a gender non-conforming writer, performer, & fashion icon
Alok feels that the concepts of masculinity and femininity shouldn’t have relevance in this day and age. “We need to be much more colorful, expansive, and precise about what we mean rather than defaulting into ideological catchalls that do more harm than good,” he tells me.
Being that Alok is a person of color, I wonder if they feel that ethnicity/race ties into the equation in a meaningful way. Their reply is so profound that I’m still sort of reeling from it…
I want my son to understand that he can wear, do, or play with anything he wants
I have a four-year-old son, and his father is very “that’s for boys and this is for girls,” and “you can’t wear/do/play with that because you’re a BOY.”
My hope is that this beautiful community of families can help me by suggesting books, movies, or other resources that might help us get the point across to our son. I have looked high and low and I’ve nabbed the materials that I feel express my feelings, but I want as many tools as I can to help my son understand that he can wear, do, or play with anything he wants.
How to be period positive in 5 easy steps!
Newsflash: uteri bleed. This statement seems so innocuous, but even discussing menstruation is often considered taboo in many societies, including, to some degree, ours. It’s time to evolve the way we think and speak about menstruation in an effort to become more period-positive.
Here are five easy ways to become more #PeriodPositive…
The tricks to getting dressed when your gender is ambiguous
Given my strange gender identity, this means that my outside rarely feels like it’s reflecting myself. It can be frustrating. And depressing. This means I had to develop a few coping mechanisms just to be able to get out the door every day.
So here are my tips for getting dressed when your gender is ambiguous…
My gender identity is confused and I’m okay with it
I should probably start by identifying my gender, but that is… complicated. I am a female, physically. What I identify as is where it gets blurry.
As a teenager, in the early nineties, I had no internet to help me figure it out. And, as a broke young adult in the new millenia, I still didn’t have the amazing resources and web connection of, “Hey, my specific gender identity has a name and I’m not alone!”
Why my feminism includes traditional gender roles
When you hear the word “feminist,” you likely don’t picture is me: a housewife who does all the cooking and housekeeping, who makes dinner from scratch, and a solid effort to look pretty for her husband everyday when he comes home from work. I’m “mom” to my two rescued mutts. I’m a published writer. I’m a wife. And my feminism includes my right to want to be the best wife and partner that I can possibly be to my husband. The keyword there being “partner.”