How to Be a Grown Woman
“Maybe I could teach you how to do that and you could teach me a couple of things I’ve been wonderin’,” I told her. She shook my hand. It was a deal.
How To Grow Up Without Being Invited
The problem with birthdays, and graduations, is that endings and beginnings are so often the same thing. What we’re really celebrating is the motion, the opposite of stagnating, the skill of turning your head and blinking your eyes to see things in a new light, even if your feet and heart feel heavy and the landscape hasn’t changed.
Monday Roundtable: Sign of the Times
Nothing stays the same forever, and that includes our bods; here’s the Autostraddle team talking about how they’ve noticed their bodies aging and what that’s like.
Feelings, Rendered Material
I claimed to be a kid who “just loved birthdays,” when what I really loved was a socially sanctioned reason to shower my crushes with affection.
Another Day in May
My grandparents and mother were crowded around my grandfather’s laptop; they had lit candles on a cake and sang happy birthday. I was about to make excuses to go back to studying when my grandmother mentioned the referendum. “You know, we’ll see your sister in a few weeks. She’s coming back for the vote.”
Trapped At Birth
Breaking out of what we’re born into.
Our Father, Who Art
You see, my father was going to Heaven. He was raised an Orthodox Jew, the only child of Victor and Dorothy, but becoming Catholic, this was the way forward for him. He would be saved.
Monday Roundtable: What’s Your Age Again?
“I used to lie about my age to get deals off the kids’ menu. Like, why would we pay an extra five dollars when we all know I’m about to get chicken tenders and it’s only an appetizer if I’m over twelve??”
What If This Was a Celebration
“I knew if I could exert most of my energy in the painful icy parts of life, I could certainly make my way back to celebrating the good.”
The Birthday Issue: Letter From Your Editor
“Autostraddle is more like a guinea pig than like a human child, both for our experimental nature and for how long we were expected to live.”
On Shopping in Public
“Here I am, gaslighting myself, and all I want to do is buy some clothes.”
The Queer History of the Shaven Head
Shaven heads on women have challenged and informed ideas of beauty, power and tradition for centuries. Here’s the history of a very queer style.
Monday Roundtable: The Style Icons Who Inspired Our Gay Style
“My style icon is Nancy Meyers’ interpretation of a middle-aged white woman after she’s decided to pull herself together sometime in the second act. Wow that is… I feel very called out by own self.”
The Care and Keeping of Overalls
A lesser, straighter person might have given up the ghost at this point, but I was determined.
Intervention
I had “dressed” myself before driving drunk to my mother’s home. I had taken a shower thinking that water would take away the smell; that putting on leggings instead of leggings-that-I-slept-and-drank-in, would make me look like I was wearing clothes; that if I put on mascara I’d look like I had slept through the night and not spent the whole day drinking.
Neither Here Nor There: A BUTCH FEMME Photo Essay
I don’t want to be pigeonholed into a specific category or subject; I want to be seen as everything and nothing. I want to be seen as authentically myself, and to push myself to fully experiment with my favorite art.
Three Visits to Victoria’s Secret
“She doesn’t mean to be limiting. She just doesn’t see that the way she feels about her body is not the way that I feel about mine.”
A+ Roundtable: Our First Bras
“Amazingly, neither the training bra nor my actual boobs magically solved my very typical and very sad self-image issues.”
Powerful Perception
“I couldn’t help to associate this perception of my ‘powerfulness’ in drag as belittling my power when I dress and present as feminine.”
Hippie Pants Make Me Feel Pretty — and Guilty
“I wear Spiritual Awakening Pants, because I look good in them and sometimes I crave that feeling. I feel guilty while I do it, like I’m legitimising the remnants of colonialism that I see in the patterns of elephants.”