Here’s what happened. I wrote an essay critically analyzing a YouTube talk show I actually watch and enjoy — Hot […]
Women’s Liberation, Beauty Contests, and the 1920s: Swimsuit Edition
For several years, I’ve had a wall decoration in my office: a panoramic photo of a 1920s beauty contest. I […]
Superhumanization
On the cover of Black stands a lone Black man in red, hood up, hands to the sky, while cops […]
On Poverty, Morality, and Mothering
In 1930, nineteen-year-old black (preta) Jovelina Pereira dos Santos, a live-in domestic servant in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, hid her […]
Microwave Cookbooks: Technology, Convenience & Dining Alone
The microwave is celebrating its 50th birthday this year, but even that can’t redeem the innumerable copies of microwave cookbooks […]
Pornography on the Playground
When I was 19, I had a summer job supervising a playground. It was a pretty lame job. It paid […]
Our Favorite Podcasts
This week, we brought you interviews with the historians behind two new history podcasts, Dig and Sexing History. Today we polled our […]
Iron Man and the Science Fiction of Disability
In March 2015, a YouTube video sponsored by Microsoft’s #CollectiveProject made the social media rounds. In this video a well-known […]
No Excuses: The 21st-Century Supercrip in Three Snapshots
In the past decade, the landscape of commercial fitness has changed drastically. It has become less dependent on stationary exercise […]
“Witness the ‘Wall of Genitals’”: Anatomical Display at Brooklyn’s House of Wax
Located in the lobby of the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Brooklyn, the House of Wax is a dimly lit bar […]