The woman in the photo is wearing no clothes. She has light brown skin, lighter than me, and her dark hair is swept back in a wave. Her breasts are emblazoned with the message “Made in Bangladesh.” It’s not shocking to me – I too am a child of diaspora, an American Bengali or Bengali […]
Purdah: A social practice throughout South Asia that involves separating men from women; it was used historically as a way to keep men and women in their respective social roles and currently is used to varying degrees in contemporary social life. I learned more about purdah in a class this semester. Western perspectives of purdah […]
This Thursday and Friday, I have the great privilege to be attending the Womensphere Emerging Leaders Summit (of which I’ll be writing a solid retrospective next week), so rather than suspend posting, I’ll be putting up two of my favorite posts from the past about women, leadership, and busting stereotypes. Enjoy! Last Friday, I spent […]
This weekend, I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the roller derby championship bout of the Rat City Roller Girls in Seattle. It was at the Key Arena, which is a huge venue, and there were a ton of people who came to watch. It was a phenomenal bout with Grave Danger finally taking home […]
Muslimah Media Watch gives a great perspective on voices that are not often allowed to speak in either Western or global media: Muslim women. They bring together broad opinions about representation with very focused stories on the impact of decisions by governing bodies on Muslim women (such as FIFA’s treatment of the Iranian womens’ soccer […]
This week, I read Colonize This!, a book of essays by women of color about their experiences finding – and molding – feminism. I read this book (394 pages) within four days – not just because the library due date was coming up, but because I was absorbed in the stories of these amazing women […]
The Safe and Sexy Photography Project is a website that features women in two outfits: their “sexiest” and their “safest,” as chosen by the participants. The website also features captions that have the stories of why these women chose their outfits – I think it’s really interesting to look at them first without reading and […]
Last Friday, I spent several hours teaching 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade girls about body image in downtown Manhattan at Girls Prep Charter School. So this week I am weighing in on single sex education.Going to Girls Prep, and talking to their amazing health teacher Lo (who is also a former Well Woman and hosts […]
In this post, I want to begin take you through my process of making art through the example of making a collage. I have been wanting to start this project for a while now, so I think it will be interesting to track my steps over the next few weeks. Hope you have a good […]
In light of some intellectual talk over this weekend, I have been thinking a lot about how discrimination works in our society. I believe that it comes from mixed metaphors. Have you ever thought about how stereotypes form? Typically, they come about because of a categorization projected from the majority group to the minority, regardless […]