Feb 11, 2021
How Dungeons & Dragons Helped Me Make Sense of My Mania
The simplicity and certainty of the game was precisely what I needed. Who was I to refuse the guarantee of a certain reality?
The French Cartoon that Led Me to Fandom and Friendship
Priyanka Bose on How Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir Helped Her Overcome Loneliness
Dec 08, 2020
Moon Prism Power! Re-examining the Power of the Magical Asian Schoolgirl
When your youth is marked so clearly, by a crisp sailor collar and the deep pleats of your skirt, everyone feels like they deserve a piece of it, of you.
Sep 02, 2020
Becoming an American Girl: Lessons from The Babysitter’s Club
If we had left Venezuela, it had to be because life in America was going to be better, but the BSC world didn’t seem inherently better—just different.
Sep 01, 2020
Carly Rae Jepsen’s Music Helped Me Stop Apologizing for Being “Too Much”
There is something freeing about being in a ballroom full of people singing about how we all deserve to feel a love that reverberates through the walls of our body.
Aug 03, 2020
After Losing My Father, One Direction Helped Me Find Joy During Grief
That first time I heard it, the music was so catchy and the words were so ridiculous that I threw my head back and laughed. I opened the curtains that had been closed for a month.
Jan 22, 2020
Why Wrestler Tetsuya Naito Is the Unlikely Hero I Needed
For my generation of fans, Naito embodies our time and our struggles. The closest thing he has to a superpower is survival.
Oct 01, 2019
For Black Women, Love Is a Dangerous Thing—“Bitter” Showed Me How to Do It Anyway
I imagine she wrote it for women like me. Women who wear their hearts on their sleeves but hold their hands over their mouths.
Aug 01, 2019
Love, Peace, and Taco Grease: How I Left My Abusive Husband and Found Guy Fieri
Guy Fieri allowed me to ask: who do I fear noise and brightness for? Who do I fear food for? And he gave me the answer: I fear it for myself.
Jul 29, 2019
How Wrestling Saved My Life and Let Me Express My Queerness
Wrestling never stops, so I couldn’t stop, and thus I am still here.
Jul 09, 2019
How the Grateful Dead Helped Me Embrace Mortality
Suddenly, miraculously, it was no longer dismay that I felt. It was freedom. It was Death doffing its blackness and revealing itself to me as life.
May 28, 2019
Falling in Love and (Finally) Finding Queer Representation on a Telenovela
I know that their lips are touching, and that this is the first time it’s ever happened on a free-to-air telenovela.
Apr 02, 2019
Spice Girls and the Rise and Fall of Girl Power
Girl power was the freedom to make a scene, make no sense, join together and make something irresistible, spectacular, unproductive, joyful, and to radically claim one another.
Mar 26, 2019
What Springsteen’s Music Means to This Child of Working-Class Immigrants
I relate to what Springsteen sings because he reveals much of the American Dream as an intoxicating illusion.
Jan 31, 2019
What ‘The Proud Family’ Gave to Millennial Muslims
The violence of the moment, conveyed in shades of melancholy purple, is bleak even for a cartoon. But it’s also honest.
Jul 23, 2018
Melancholia, Death Motion, and the Makings of Marilyn Manson
“Manson’s magical proximity to massacres of gun violence is, we know, not magical. His practice is prismatic, his lyrics a sieve.”
Apr 24, 2018
When the Way You Love Things Is “Too Much”; or: Why I Went to Portmeirion
As an autistic child, I scrambled to figure out when my passions became too overbearing, too ‘me’ for other people.
Mar 27, 2018
“If a Girl Isn’t Pretty”: When Beauty Is the Ideal and Humor the Fallback
“Being a funny girl like Fanny continues to skew the way I see myself.”
Nov 28, 2017
On the Internet, Everybody Knows You’re a Horndog: On “Beach Rats” and Gay Chat Rooms
Remembering the online world of gay chat rooms in the digital moment before social media.
Nov 16, 2017
