Pop Culture

Man Wearing Native American Headdress

Inappropriate Appropriation

Sofia Heller

My classmates started posting pictures from last year’s Coachella, their excitement for the music festival illuminating my phone screen. However, amidst all the elation, I couldn’t help but notice the troubling cultural appropriation that also filled the pictures. In the backgrounds of nearly every photo I saw, there were young women wearing bindis and feathered headdresses, and young men wearing war paint. Unfortunately, this insensitivity to and misappropriation of cultures is not specific to Coachella, nor is it a new problem in fashion.

Josie Rosman's Roller Derby Team

Derby Girl

Josephine Rosman

When I first started playing roller derby (a contact sport played on roller skates) as an 11-year-old, I didn’t know how to skate. I could barely make it one lap around the track in my rental skates. Fast forward to last summer–my team and I made it to the national championships in Colorado. I think it’s safe to say that I’ve come a long way during the past four years—not just as a skater, but as a person. Roller derby has been one of the most empowering forces in my life, and it’s contributed significantly to who I am today.

Topics: Feminism, Athletes
Julia Clardy's Legs

Wearing the Pants, and the Dress as Well

Julia Clardy

When I showed a girl in my class the prom dress I was thinking about buying, the first thing she asked me was whether or not I was going to shave for prom. Her question wasn’t really that surprising. People often associate body hair with uncleanliness, and they don’t expect it to appear in formal situations. The fact is, people only question me about my body hair when I’m wearing something more traditionally feminine. When I’m wearing shorts and a t-shirt people rarely look twice at my legs or armpits, but when I’m wearing a dress, people consistently double-take. When it comes to how other people see me, it seems that my casual clothes and body hair make more sense together than my more feminine clothes and body hair.

Shira Small's High School Softball Team

Sexism and Softball: Covering All the Bases

Shira Small

At five years old, I launched into little league stardom by hitting a home run without even using the tee. From then on, my coach called me “Slugger,” a name I proudly wore throughout my thirteen years playing softball.

Topics: Schools, Athletes
Warriors, Witches, Whores by Rachel Harris (cropped)

Israeli Cinema, Feminist Style

Dr. Helene Meyers

Harris’s questions are worth the consideration of every committed cinephile and feminist. She asks whether a director’s gender necessarily determines the politics of a film, whether women’s stories are necessarily feminist ones, which women’s stories are represented on-screen, and how some depictions of sexual violence intended to critique rape culture are actually complicit with it.

Topics: Film
Legends Football League Game

1 Down and Yards to Go for the Lingerie Football League

Natalie Harder

I’d like to think that I’m really good at pretending to know about football. As a self-proclaimed Green Bay Packers fan, I can name about 5 players and can usually tell which team is scoring the touchdown. Needless to say, when I found myself watching a Packers game at a friend’s house with all of her friends (who didn’t know me, but certainly knew football), I felt pretty out of place. I couldn’t offer much to the conversation comparing Packers’ quarterbacks Brett Hundley and Aaron Rodgers, but when the conversation turned to the Legends Football League (LFL), formerly known as the Lingerie League, I had plenty to contribute. 

Topics: Feminism, Athletes
Michelle Wolf (2016)

Nice Ladies

Larisa Klebe

I’m not a nice lady. I express my (many) opinions loudly, I’ve perfected the sarcastic comment as an art form, and I’m the proud owner of both a copper IUD and a sweatshirt that reads “I’ve got 99 problems and white heteronormative patriarchy is basically all of them.”

Topics: Television, Comedy
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

A Tale of Two Maisels

Rachel King
Larisa Klebe

When it comes to the new Amazon original series, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, we are an office divided. The newest series from Gilmore Girls showrunner Amy Sherman-Palladino has a whole lot to love, especially if you love history, Jewish women, and feminism (which we do!). At the same time, this first season pays little homage to the many funny Jewish women that were making waves in comedy before Midge grabbed the mic.

Topics: Television, Comedy
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Season 3 Promo

Thankful for Crazy

Bella Book
Emily Cataneo

This isn't some prestige drama about anti-heroes doing “Bad Man Things;” it's a rom-com send-up about a "quirky" woman. The fact that Bloom and Mckenna are willing to go there and delve into that "quirky" woman's very real mental health problems makes an important statement about how pervasive mental health problems are for so many people.

Gloria Greenfield Cropped

Lights, Camera, Social Change!

Natalie Harder

Everyone has that movie. The movie you’ve seen a million times and every time you watch it you’re slightly horrified with yourself because you quoted the entire thing and sang some of the background music. But that isn’t what horrifies me most about Spy Kids now. What currently horrifies me the most is that its executive producer, Harvey Weinstein, has been accused by over 30 people of being a sexual predator. 

Delegates at the First National Conference for Women (1977), by Diana Mara Henry

Photographic Memory: On Being the Official Photographer of the First National Women's Conference

Diana Mara Henry

When, in 1977, Abzug and Senator Patsy Mink called for a national women’s conference, I foresaw that being hired to photograph the First National Women’s Conference as official photographer might be the most historic assignment of my lifetime.

Ilana Glazer Cropped

Broad City Helps Us Come Back

Larisa Klebe

Broad City’s “ Witches” is everything I need right now, and I’m gonna go out on a limb and say it’s what a lot of us need right now.

Topics: Television
Cropped Rokhl Holzer

Feminists For Halloween

Emily Cataneo

These days, “witch” is no longer just the epithet you hurl at, say, an older female candidate for president; the fed-up feminist sector of our popular culture is proudly claiming it for its own.

Dimona Twist Movie Poster

A Review of Dimona Twist

Mitali Desai

Upon arriving at the theater, I realize quickly that I am the youngest person in attendance by decades.This night of the film festival is titled “An Evening of Empowering Sephardi Women,” and I’m here to see Dimona Twist, an Israeli film created by documentarian Michal Aviad. Dimona Twist recounts the history of North African and Eastern European immigrants to Dimona, a development town in Southern Israel, told through individual stories of seven women.

Topics: Israel, Film
Bat Mitzvah or Check?

6 Bat Mitzvah Gifts to Look at Before Writing a Check

Sara Lebow

Here are six adorable Bat Mitzvah gifts to consider before just giving up and writing a check to the newly minted young adult in your life.

Jodie Whittaker as the 13th Doctor

A Female Doctor: It's About Time

Lisa Batya Feld
Over the past decade, some fans (as well as former stars of the show) have commented about the fact that while the infinitely curious and adventurous Doctor can regenerate into any body imaginable, somehow the actors that get chosen for the role have been uniformly white and male. Until now.
Topics: Feminism, Television
Ghosting Anxiety Image

Is Your Crush Ghosting You or Do They Just Observe Shabbat?

Sara Lebow

It’s Saturday evening, and it feels like your crush hasn’t talked to you in days. You’ve texted them five times with no response. Are you being ghosted? Or are they just resting for the Sabbath? We’ve created this helpful checklist to help you find out.

Topics: Comedy, Writing
Glow, a Netflix Original Series (2017-)

Wrestling with Women's Relationships in GLOW

Sara Lebow

The women who stumble into the wrestling show, filled with as much hope, desperation, and monotony as Ruth, do not simply to take over men’s parts, but redefine their own.

Buffy Season Six

Buffy Saw the Meninists Coming

Emily Cataneo

Where once Buffy and Co. had fought fast-talking vampires and demonic mayors, suddenly, in season six, they were grappling with problems like paying bills, depression, and the mundanity of everyday life. The Big Bad that season wasn't even supernatural: it was three nerdy dudes who whined about their alleged victimhood at the hands of badass Buffy.

Topics: Feminism, Television
Cover of Sarah Silverman's A Speck of Dust

A Speck of Silverman

Larisa Klebe

Silverman delivers the type of no-holds-barred, crude, hilarious, smart comedy that we’ve all come to expect from her. She also drops some serious truth bombs.

Topics: Television, Comedy
Gal Gadot cropped

Can Wonder Woman Come Fix Our World Now, Please?

Emily Cataneo

At the onset of Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman, protagonist Diana Prince has spent her millennia-long life on Themyscira, an idyllic Mediterranean colony of Amazonian women where she grows up learning badass warrior skills from wise matriarchs. The plot kicks off when an American pilot crash-lands off the island’s coast. He tells Diana, played by Israeli actress Gal Gadot, about a cataclysmic war raging back in the world of men, instigated by the bad guys. Who are the bad guys? she asks. He explains succinctly: the Germans.

Topics: Feminism, Film
The Wedding Plan (2017) Movie Poster

Rama Burshtein’s “The Wedding Plan”

Elena Hoffenberg

I did not know what to expect from a romantic comedy about a woman intent on getting married in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, but The Wedding Plan by Rama Burshtein is one of the most feminist films I’ve ever seen.

Topics: Comedy, Film
2015-2016 Rising Voices Fellow Caroline Kubzansky

RVF Alumna Spotlight: Caroline Kubzansky

Abby Richmond

This interview spotlights Caroline Kubzansky, a senior at Washington DC’s Edmund Burke School and an alumna of the 2015-2016 cohort of JWA's Rising Voices Fellowship.

Topics: Journalism
Justina Machado

A Tale of Two Quinces: How One Day at a Time Blends Tradition and Modernity

Katy Ronkin

One Day at a Time is about a Latino family…Oh wait, you thought I was talking about that show from the seventies about a single mother raising her daughter? Well I am. Sort of. The Netflix reboot of One Day at a Time (ODAAT) tells the story of Penelope Alvarez, an army vet, current nurse, and single mother who shares the screen with her two children and her mother. 

Rising Voices Fellow Molly Pifko Dressed as Princess Leia

The Women of Star Wars: Princesses and Jedi

Molly Pifko

When I was ten years old, I dressed up as Princess Leia for Halloween. I dressed up as her because I admired her, and because I felt like I had no choice. My brother and I were both deep in our Star Wars phases, and I knew I had to match his Darth Vader costume with an iconic character of my own. Of course, as a little girl, there weren’t many iconic female characters to choose from, but I didn’t mind too much at the time. 

Topics: Children, Film

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