| | | An Election-Day story that will get you excited about voting for strong, smart women. | | | | | | | | | |  | | | | November 7, 2017 | Letter No. 111 | | | | | | | | | | | Advertisement | | |  | | | | | | | | | Dearest Lennys,
The phrase that keeps popping into my head is BURN IT ALL DOWN. Every morning, I wake up to fresh news of long-buried sexual assault and harassment. As I write this, the latest accusations are against Jeremy Piven, but this week has brought allegations of disgusting behavior by Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Spacey, director Brett Ratner, and NPR's Michael Oreskes.
As I turn all this over endlessly, two ideas keep floating up. The first: These men have been acting like complete shit birds for decades, with impunity. Brett Ratner allegedly masturbated in front of Olivia Munn, then publicly lied about sleeping with her in order to discredit her and make her look like "a whore" — his words, not mine. If you thought Dustin Hoffman was a bastion of progressive thinking, check out this AV Club interview with his Tootsie costar Teri Garr from 2008. Rumors of Kevin Spacey's creepiness and criminality have been circulating for a while. Don't get me started on Jeremy Piven.
The second is a lament, for the ripple effect of this abuse — which is seemingly endless. On a professional level, who knows what amazing performances would have come from Annabella Sciorra, had she not been smeared by Harvey Weinstein? On a personal level, who knows how many lives have been held back, altered, and destroyed by this abuse?
—Which brings me to Gretchen Carlson's stirring op-ed about why sexual assault and harassment are bipartisan issues. Since coming out as a victim of harassment last year, Gretchen has heard the most horrific stories: from a banker whose colleagues called her a "cum bucket" and pushed her out of a job, to an Army soldier whose peers told her to "dance" for them while waving dollar bills around. The lost potential of these women is staggering.
—To lighten the mood a bit, we have Lenny readers sharing their most questionable new-mom moments, which include taking a baby to inappropriate nude-performance-art shows.
—It's Election Day, and one major way to beat back misogynist men is to vote against them. Which is why we have an interview with Leann Jacobsen, who is running for Congress in Iowa's Fourth District against Republican representative Steve King (a list of his most appalling views is here, and they include suggesting that black people could afford abortions if they stopped buying iPhones).
—We have a profile of Aditi Mittal, the first woman to get a stand-up special on Netflix India. She's not letting any gross dudes hold her back.
—Finally, we have Keah Brown's bittersweet essay about starting her writing career outside of the glossy playgrounds of New York and Los Angeles.
I'm sure by the time you're reading this letter, there will be several more prominent men accused of horrors. Since Donald Trump is still president and Clarence Thomas is still on the Supreme Court, I'm wary of declaring that progress has been made in bringing harassing men down. But if just a few more of us can channel the goddess Mary Karr and say, "Not today! Not this bitch! You picked the wrong woman to fuck with today!," it's a start.
Xo,
Jess Grose, Lenny editor in chief | | | | | | | | | | | | Advertisement | | |  | | | | | | | | Sexual Assault Is Not a Partisan Issue | | | | By Gretchen Carlson | | |
Thanks to thousands of brave women, an avalanche of sexual-harassment allegations is crashing down across America. We will need to stay fierce to ensure this creates lasting change and not let things go back to "normal" after the media focus subsides.
I know how attention to this topic can wax and wane. After my story of sexual harassment unfolded last year, the spotlight was overwhelming. But when it dimmed, as media attention inevitably does, I wasn't ready to simply shut up and sit down.
Fortunately, that spotlight meant thousands of women reached out to me and shared their stories. Cops, doctors, lawyers, nannies, teachers — you name it. I realized that nearly every woman has experienced sexual harassment or assault. Like Joanne, a Wall Street banker whose colleagues called her a "cum bucket" and eventually pushed her out of a lucrative and prestigious job. Like Elizabeth, a U.S. Army soldier whose subordinates told her to "dance" for them while waving dollar bills in her face. Like Patricia, a fire investigator whose colleagues demanded sexual favors and allegedly planted marijuana in her vehicle in a coordinated effort to get her to quit.
So I began taking my message to college campuses and media outlets, encouraging women to stand up and speak out. And I joined Senator Al Franken and others in support of anti-arbitration legislation that will make it harder for harassers to hide behind legal loopholes.
After years of struggle, there is now a sense that larger change is possible. In Hollywood, allegations against Harvey Weinstein, James Toback, and Kevin Spacey are rocking the entertainment industry. In politics, women in statehouses across the country are calling out misogyny. And in the media world, allegations against MSNBC analyst Mark Halperin and The New Republic's Hamilton Fish and Leon Wieseltier underscore that my experience was not unique or unusual.
The overarching lesson here is that sexual harassment is rampant from Hollywood to Madison Avenue. It is not exclusive to any one industry or any political party. Yet most stories are never told. An estimated 71 percent of all sexual harassment is unreported, according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
There's a reason many complaints never come to light. Many of us are forced to sign arbitration clauses and nondisclosure agreements as a condition of employment. To give you a sense of forced arbitration's scale, a 2017 report by professor Imre Szalai of Loyola Law School found 80 percent of the companies in the Fortune 100 have used arbitration agreements in connection with workplace disputes since 2010. A separate 2017 study by Alexander Colvin of the Economic Policy Institute found that since 2000, the number of workers subject to mandatory arbitration has more than doubled and that, today, more than half of nonunion, private-sector employees in America — about 60 million people — are subject to forced arbitration.
These agreements prevent us from taking workplace disputes to court and — even more important — keep all proceedings secret.
The Arbitration Fairness Act of 2017 would make these clauses illegal and ensure that every woman keeps the right to her day in court. Legal proceedings also allow for public disclosure, meaning harassers can no longer hide behind laws that protect them.
This is not a partisan issue, it's a cultural one. Boorish behavior transcends ideology and political lines, despite the fact that there are many who seek to blame Democrats for Harvey Weinstein's behavior or Republicans for Bill O'Reilly's. It is not liberal to ask for a workplace where you are not fondled or groped. It's not conservative to expect to meet with a man without having him dangle his hotel key or ask you to sit on his lap while he has an erection. It's why I'm working with both parties to craft a bipartisan bill to take the secrecy out of sexual-harassment cases where women in the workplace have been forced to sign mandatory arbitration clauses. Please call your member of Congress to say you want to support this!
Yet all of us — Republicans, Democrats, and Independents alike — endure and even rationalize harassment because we are taught that women are inferior. A recent study showed that by age six, girls believe men are more likely than women to say something "smart"! By first grade, little girls have already internalized a feeling of inferiority. The result is a society where women still earn about 80 percent of what men earn in the workplace, and a pervasive sense that our voice doesn't matter.
This also leads too many men to feel it is OK to mistreat women. So not only do most harassment claims go unreported, but one in five undergraduate women say they've experienced sexual assault. (And most don't tell the school or police: only 12.5 percent of rapes are reported.)
I was first sexually harassed in my early twenties, by a powerful TV executive who thought it was OK to stick his tongue down my throat, after I'd met with him for tips on getting into journalism. Afterward, I sat in my best friend's apartment, crying and asking, "What the hell just happened to me?" It was the first of several such experiences.
I'm proud my case last year helped chart a course for the brave women who are now standing up and speaking out. Now our challenge is to speak up together. To sustain the public's focus on harassment, women must put aside our differences and collectively demand our basic rights. Change is possible. But it will require holding hands across the aisle. I'm encouraged that both Democrat and GOP senators have agreed to meet with me on my next trip to Washington, DC, to push for arbitration reform, and that women from both parties are signing on to statehouse letters calling for a culture change in politics. How ironic would it be if the Arbitration Fairness Act ended up on President Trump's desk?
I hope you will join me in staying loud and fierce, and in taking the concrete steps required to end our harassment culture. The progress we want — and that thousands of women are demanding — can happen. Women are more than a voice; we are action. Now is the time to take it.
Gretchen Carlson is a journalist, author, and founder of the Gift of Courage Fund and the Gretchen Carlson Leadership Initiative. All proceeds from her new book, Be Fierce, fund programs serving low-income women facing sexual harassment and assault. www.GretchenCarlson.com/BeFierce. AITogether.org. | | | | | | | | | | | | Advertisement | | |  | | | | | | | | | | | | The Most Questionable Thing I Did As a Young Mom | | | | By Lenny Readers | | | | | | |
Based on a Sundance award-winning short film, the new SHOWTIME comedy series SMILF takes a hilarious and unabashedly honest look at Bridgette Bird, a twentysomething single mom from South Boston who sometimes doesn't get it right. Inspired by Bridgette, whose story is based on the life of series creator and star Frankie Shaw, we asked our readers to send in their most questionable early parenting moments. Here, they share tales of everything from that time they accidentally put a diaper on their baby's head to bringing their four-year-old to an art-school rager.
Art School, Baby
When I was 23, I left my small Midwestern hometown, where I had put in three years of wholesome parenting. The most exciting thing I had done there was picking new recipes to try, so when I left my husband and moved to Chicago to attend art school, I went full force into freshman, single-mom-in-art-school mode.
I was shy and new to the city, but having a kid made me stand out. I brought my son everywhere: ragers (I just put him in a bedroom to sleep!), inappropriate nude performances (a little nudity never hurt anyone!), three-hour lectures (here's an iPad!), late-night experimental-music concerts (use these noise-canceling headphones!). I have endless stories about my poor dating choices, questionable financial decisions, and extremely late bedtimes (he didn't have one until he was seven). I don't feel good about most of these choices, but they're part of my story.
I truly believed that no-rules parenting would work as long as there was love. But as I gradually grew up and started to implement consistency and discipline, my son began to flourish. All I needed was a dose of reality: I traded in the whiskey shots alone at dive bars for cereal and kid-friendly TV. I swapped late-night binges for Sunday-night meal prep. I settled down with a man who is mature, owns a house, and has a job. And my son has transformed from a slightly depressive wild child to a fiercely smart and grounded kid.
Now, we live in a neighborhood where most of the bars have stroller parking and all the moms at the grocery store know one another. I'm 32, and even though my 27-year-old self would think our new life is boring, I'd tell her, "Don't knock it till you try it." Because being a mom — especially a good one — rocks way harder than an invite-only, art-house rock show.
Sharpshooter
When my first child was about three months old, my sister came to visit for the weekend. I hadn't left the house since my son was born, but a nearby county was holding a carnival — we decided it was the perfect first outing.
At the fair, we browsed a few of the stands, but I needed to breastfeed. So we headed to the beer garden, the only place with available seating. I hadn't had a drink since before I got pregnant, so after my son was fed, I had a glass of Chardonnay. The wine went straight to my head.
My husband left to get some poutine, and I challenged my sister to a water-gun game. Two water pistols, two women — who's going to hold the baby? My husband returned to find his wife and sister-in-law sharpshooting a big target while a carnival employee held our firstborn son as if he were handling a large burrito. I'm not sure what my husband was more impressed with: my resourcefulness or my aim. A mom's gotta do what a mom's gotta do.
Five Simple Rules
When I found out that I was pregnant, I was 25 and had been very casually sleeping with my coworker for three weeks. Nine months later, I was still with the father, but when we brought our son home from the hospital, I looked up and realized, Holy fucking shit, I don't know either of these guys. AT ALL. I was scared and I made a lot of mistakes in the first few months. Here are the highlights:
1. I fed my son from a Dixie cup when he was just four days old because he wouldn't latch (and also because we ran out of clean bottles). It worked, but it wasn't pretty.
2. I took my son to the doctor at a week old in part because his diaper rash was chilling. When the doctor told me to use Aquaphor, I nodded like that meant something to me and waited for her to write a prescription for it. Later I realized anyone could buy it the pharmacy.
3. One night, I was so tired while I was changing his diaper in the dark that I accidentally put it on his head. I only realized what I'd done as I was trying to unstick his hair from the Velcro tab of a Pampers NB.
4. When he was around three months old, I took him out for dinner. It started to rain, so I bundled him up in the stroller and raced home. But the stroller hit a curb as I was crossing the street, and he ended up in a puddle with his arms swaddled at his side. I had forgotten to strap him in.
5. I did not realize that babies are supposed to wear shoes even though they can't walk — it literally never crossed my mind. During his first two New York winters, he wore a hat, gloves, a coat, fleece pants, and two pairs of socks. His poor feet were probably freezing.
By the time my son was two and a half, I had improved a little. But I still wasn't that surprised when his day-care teacher told me that my son had called one of his classmates a "juicebag" after his friend had refused to share a red marker. We pulled through, though. My son is ten now, his dad and I are married, and we have two more kids. Everyone is just fine.
These stories were submitted anonymously by Lenny readers. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Advertisement | | |  | | | | | | | | My Mom's Running Against One of the GOP's Most Vile Anti-Immigrant Congressman | | | | By Lacy Brunnette | | |
It's Election Day, and both this year and next, the political tide will be full of energized individuals across the nation, running to shift the progressive momentum that was lost in a disastrous 2016. We need it badly here in Iowa, as you see the hateful headline grabs that Representative Steve King, a populist Tea Party Republican, makes on a consistent basis. (He's famous for such anti-immigrant gems as "Can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies" and has proposed such anti-abortion nonsense as paying for the border wall with Planned Parenthood's funding.) I'm lucky enough get a behind-the-scenes look at the resistance: my mom, Leann Jacobsen, is running against King, one of America's most antagonistic congressmen, who is seeking reelection in 2018.
My mom almost always suppresses tears of passionate rage when asked about the current state of affairs for women and girls, and she definitely cries when she talks about her dad and lifelong hero, Grandpa Cliff, who was the first feminist she knew. To understand both of these things is to understand her complex need to constantly find new ways to lift up others around her, whether it's creating a bipartisan effort to get more women elected, organizing a farmers' market for sustainable produce, lobbying for children's-rights initiatives, or becoming the first city councilwoman elected in over three decades in Spencer, Iowa (her new home base after remarrying in 2011). Her hard work hasn't stopped since she had me at 22 and finished college at night after coming home from her day job.
She constantly worries about my four-year-old daughter, Gemma, and hopes that life on the campaign trail doesn't affect frequent trips to "Gram's house." And she understands that the previous Democratic candidate dropped out of the race after being concerned about death threats and intimidation. But the story that I will tell Gemma will be an inspiration in itself of when her grandma decided to forgo any normalcy at 54 and run for Congress.
LB: Why are you running for Congress?
LJ: I am running for Congress because I love Northwest Iowa. It is a beautiful and amazing place. But everywhere I look, it seems that there are people suffering, and rural communities are struggling. No one, including Steve King, is taking care of people in the district, and I know that we're not alone in this. I thought, Well, why not me? Why not fill that void?
LB: Are there specific instances you look back on that you feel have contributed to where you are now?
LJ: A lot of my experiences and things that I've done in life have prepared me for this moment. There's something very liberating about turning 50, so I think there's something there too. One of those instances would have to be moving to Iowa in 1998, and my first day on the job as VP of law and government affairs for AT&T, I walked into the legislature and could hardly tell people apart, because they all appeared to be 55-to-65-year-old white men. I wondered where all the women were. If we're going to create good laws that impact over half the population, shouldn't women be included to represent themselves?
We started a group called Iowa Women in Public Policy, and the purpose was to get more women involved at all levels of elected office, starting at city councils, boards and commissions, and supervisor roles, and all the way up to build that pipeline.
That organization was so instrumental in helping me see and understand how important it is to have a woman's perspective at the table when making policy. It was also a bipartisan effort, so I brought in strategic women leaders on both sides of the aisle, Democrats and Republicans, including Iowa's former lieutenant governor Sally Pederson and former lieutenant governor Joy Corning. We all worked toward the same goal of getting women elected to office. The lessons I learned and the women I met during that experience are helping lift me as I embark on this really big and important race.
| (From left to right: Elice Brunnette, Leann Jacobsen, and Lacy Brunnette; Photo courtesy of author) |
LB: What are some other issues that are close to your heart?
LJ: I worry, as a mother and a grandmother, about the world we are leaving behind with issues ranging from climate change and science to clean water to how we treat all of our children. Right now it seems to be spiraling out of control and out of their favor.
There needs to be a focus on education — every child, regardless of their socioeconomic status or location, deserves an excellent education and a chance to have a bright future and participate in a vibrant, innovative economy. How can we expect our young people to become contributing members of society and fulfill their dreams without a great education?
Health care, of course. I've seen what happens when there are cracks in the system and the importance of making changes to our health-care system in a smart way. Many of the decisions being made in Congress right now benefit corporations and businesses, and people are being left without a voice.
And so near and dear to my heart is how women are treated. It's incredibly sad that after decades of work by our feminist forebears, we are still fighting for equality on many fronts. Just look at how our current president talks about assaulting women. America has moved backward — not everybody, but enough so that that behavior and that demeaning treatment of women is seen at the very highest levels as acceptable. There is a whole new generation thinking that women are less deserving of dignity, respect, and autonomy.
LB: For you, respect for others, public service, and integrity started at an early age at home with your parents, who were public-school teachers. You have talked a lot about Grandpa Cliff as a catalyst for spurring you to reach higher than you imagined for yourself.
LJ: Twenty years ago, when I was working on founding Iowa Women in Public Policy, and I would go to visit him in Minnesota on the weekends, the first thing he would say when he saw me was, "When are you going to run?"
That was before I even had a thought that it would be me. I felt much more comfortable helping others. He always encouraged me to be a leader, and I think he saw it in me. If he hadn't continually done that, I may have made other choices, and my life path would have been very different.
LB: What do you think are going to be the biggest challenges in campaigning?
LJ: Many people think that Northwest Iowa is "Steve King Country" and that he's just inevitable and everyone in our corner of the state is just like him. The people I know don't talk like him, they don't think like him, and one of the hardest things is going to be removing the perception of inevitability. Because he is not inevitable. Voters are ready for someone who shows strength and leadership and compassion, and I'm ready to be that person.
LB: The previous Democrat candidate, Kim Weaver, chose not to run this cycle because she felt overwhelmed and was concerned for her personal safety. How are you going to keep it together when things get negative?
LJ: There's so much that certain elected officials, like our current president and Steve King, are doing to divide us. They can't win when we're whole. What's different about me is that I've spent my entire life bringing people together, so as much as they work to divide, I'm going to work to bring people together. There's important work to do, creating better opportunities for all Americans and for our communities. The key here is being a humble and honorable public servant and remembering what public service is all about.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Lacy Brunnette is a writer and producer living in the Midwest oasis of Des Moines, Iowa. | | | | | | | | | | | | Advertisement | | |  | | | | | | | | Aditi Mittal Says Anything She Wants | | | | By Saba Imtiaz | | | |
"BREASTS," says the Indian stand-up comedian Aditi Mittal, as she explains the difference between breasts and tits. "Breasts drink wine. Breasts do networking. Tits … take money from their dad. You look at tits and you're like, Woohoo, girls gone wild! You look at breasts and you're like, That's food for a child."
It's a line from Mittal's spiel on breasts, tits, and the nightmare that is bra shopping, which has been viewed over five million times on YouTube. The 31-year-old comedian's popularity is set to explode further this year. In July, Mittal became the first female comedian in India to get a solo special on Netflix India — Things They Wouldn't Let Me Say — named after her solo show, which has made audiences laugh-cry all over the country.
So who is the they in Things They Wouldn't Let Me Say? "It's a combination — all of these biases and the people who represent them, these ideologies that keep women down and don't let them possess their bodies or talk about their bodies like they belong to them," Mittal says. "If you write this thing about bra shopping, there will be a thousand dudes who'll say, 'How dare you?!' And I'm just like, 'One minute — I have them, and I'm going to talk about them.'"
As I wait to speak to Mittal on a Friday afternoon, I think back to the Indian films I saw growing up in the '90s, when the idea of a "funny woman" was restricted to a cameo by an overweight character whose mere appearance was meant to elicit laughter and revulsion. Her weight was the joke. Things have progressed somewhat since then — Indian films now have layered female characters — but mainstream comedy in India is still dominated by male comedians doing deeply unfunny gags about women and jokes that only reinforce negative stereotypes.
"Big-name and small-time male comedians still only feature women in their material as angry girlfriend, crabby wife, suffocating mother," says Nisha Susan, the co-founder of the Ladies Finger site and the author of an upcoming book on Indian nurses. "Or: Isn't so-and-so female chief minister so dark, ha ha ha. Bore! After sitting stony-faced in more than a few of these shows, I've stopped going."
Thankfully, there are funny, irreverent female voices — in stand-up and on Snapchat — that are getting directly to the people. And thankfully, Aditi Mittal exists, even if her audience features someone tsk-tsking, apparently surprised by Mittal's seeming audacity to talk about the female body.
This is relatively new in India. While there are women who make a living as stand-ups or as comic personas, there are only a few brave souls are carving out a space in the genre of no-holds-barred performances. Susan points to comedians like Sumukhi Suresh, whose women's-only show, called Disgust Me, talks about sex and all things generally considered "gross." For women to talk about sex in India, whether in comedy or mainstream cinema, is still uncommon, and women who do so are often stereotyped as being "bold" — shorthand for comfortable with sex.
Mittal grew up in Mumbai but went to boarding school in Pune and Panchgani. She started doing stand-up in her early twenties, had some initial success, then fell flat at a show. But she kept at it, and kept getting better. At a TEDx talk, Mittal talked about how she wanted to join the Indian film industry — ending up at a screen test where she was asked to read for regressive bits with dialogues rife with crass double entendres.
When she started doing stand-up, she became enamored with the idea that comedy is honesty. "I wasn't too aware of the myriad misconceptions or biases that people have," she says. "I was literally told that if you are as authentic as possible and if you tell your version of the truth, you will have no problem saying it, because you won't feel ashamed, you'll be able to own it."
But being honest is also a considerably difficult proposition, particularly in India. Mittal scathingly says that people would like to believe racism or casteism doesn't exist in the way it did in the past — but that it still exists and manifests in different ways in society.
"There's this constant conversation of 'Why is there no Indian Jon Stewart, why is there no Indian Samantha Bee?'" Mittal says. But she questions whether Indians are prepared to hear the things that are wrong with themselves. "Comedy is seen as a cure-all, which is very sad, because the expectations people have out of comedians are hilarious. Man, have these expectations of people you voted for. We're people sitting at two o'clock in pajamas trying to heat up yesterday's lunch."
But there's also an ultra-nationalist mood that currently dictates the political and social discourse in India — and seeps into comedy. Criminal complaints have been filed against comedians for using the Snapchat dog filter for the prime minister and even for making bawdy jokes. While Mittal reacts to political events on Twitter, her stand-up act is more about the social politics and the stereotypes that challenge young Indian women.
Going through an archive of her sketches over the past seven-odd years is to see her voice evolving. Some gags work, others don't, some take their time to land. But what's consistent throughout is a streak of brutal honesty, exemplified through a character she plays: Dr. Mrs. Savitri Lutchuke. It's Mittal dressed up as an older woman in a sari, playing the role of a friendly neighborhood doctor-meets-sex-coach, whose advice is peppered with a commentary on society. ("Another word for the female reproductive system is family honor.") Lutchuke is Mittal's favorite voice, and how she gets around the urban, middle-class guilt that accompanies sex.
"I realized the impunity of being older — because you exit fuckable age," Mittal says. "I see this from my grandmothers and my friends' grandmothers. They'll yell at the fishmonger from across three buildings, and they don't care. The levels of fucks given by older women are so low — I love it! When I do Lutchuke, I feel like I am taking the permission of the world, like I got it."
Though Mittal has been working, performing, writing, acting, and hustling since 2011, the notion that a woman's success must be because of some guy who gave her a shot persists. In Mittal's case, that was being part of an infamous 2014 roast of two Indian actors that went viral. As Jugal Mody, a writer and friend of Mittal's, puts it, she was on the show "because she was famous," not the other way around.
Even Mittal's major moment in the sun — the announcement that she was getting a solo Netflix special — was seen as a response to an Amazon Prime deal for fourteen stand-up specials with male comedians in India. Mittal was on a show with male comedians when a question posed to her about the deal and sexism in comedy was drowned out by the men … mansplaining. She says she'd been in talks with Netflix for months, far in advance of when the Amazon deal was announced. The framing of Mittal's success is understandably frustrating.
But she's still very, very excited — and she wants to keep doing stand-up. "I feel like I've arrived. I'm talking about the things I want to talk about, in the manner that I want to say them." With every quietly devastating punch line, Mittal is announcing it: she's arrived, she's going to talk about her breasts — and tits — and she's not going to be drowned by the conversation and noise around her work. They can't keep Mittal down.
Saba Imtiaz is a freelance journalist and author currently based in the Middle East. @SabaImtiaz / sabaimtiaz.com | | | | | | | | | | | | Advertisement | | | | | | | | | | | Writing My Way Out | | | | By Keah Brown | | |
For as long as I can remember, I've wanted to live in California, specifically Los Angeles. I've wanted to call the West Coast sun, palm trees, In-N-Out burgers, and my biggest dreams home. LA has been the place where I believe I can best be myself. I've dreamed of LA living since my freshman year of high school. I knew the next four years would be hard, so I tackled each one initially thinking that I would go to college in California. I had the fantasy of reinventing myself and distancing myself from often being the only disabled black girl in the room. I always knew LA would be a place so vibrant and vast that I wouldn't have to worry about the mistakes I made in my past, or any preconceived notions about who I am. I wouldn't just be the sister or the cousin of, I could be my own person, a reinvention of who I was, a discovering of who I could be.
In my defense, there is a glamorous sheen to LA. We see in countless movies how California is life-changing in the best way. How shows based in these cities matter as much as the characters, and how no matter the situation, there is always a silver lining or a reminder that there's something special about where they are. Watching The Hills as a teenager, I longed to go to the bars and businesses they frequented. When Lauren confronted Heidi at Les Deux, I was riveted and longed to be 21 just so I could visit. In these shows, the possibilities felt endless: job promotions, friendships both real and fake that could make a delightful story either way. And the potential for love was around every corner. When every guy in high school and college liked every girl but me, I held on to the idea that love would find me in the big city simply to keep myself going.
But moving there for college became impossible in part because I wasn't emotionally ready to be that far from home. I come from a big, close-knit family, and the idea of being across the country from them scared me. Could I make it without them? Should I even try? I didn't have enough of a financial-aid package to swing tuition as an out-of-state student for most California universities anyway, so I set my sights on a post-college move.
I hoped that I would be emotionally ready after spending four years just an hour and fifteen minutes away. Immediately after I graduated, from the State University of New York at Fredonia, I applied for every media job Los Angeles had to offer. While many didn't respond, those that did were kind enough to tell me the truth: I had to live there already to be seriously considered.
I currently write in the living room on the couch of my Western New York home, where I live with my mother, sister, and brother. From that comfortable dark-brown couch, I have written for national publications with millions of readers. I have been interviewed by various news outlets for my viral hashtag #DisabledAndCute, which I started in part to celebrate feeling whole for the first time in my life, instead of like the fragmented pieces of a sad woman. I understand now that the hashtag has helped many people. In sharing their favorite pictures of themselves and things they like with pride, it has given them a community to belong to, and it has given me the same.
On this couch in my home, despite these things, I've felt like an impostor, scrolled through Twitter and wished to be elsewhere, felt like there was some big secret I wasn't privy to and a community of writers in California to which I'd never belong.
I have been blessed with remote work, far more blessed than many other young people I know. The truth is, though, remote work can and will only get me so far. My hope is that these connections and opportunities that I am currently taking will land me in a better financial place, giving me the ability to live comfortably in California later. I am currently saving money in order to move, but as I write these words, I don't have the necessary amount that the move requires.
When I went back to the West Coast — Portland, so much closer to California — in September to speak at a social-change conference, my love for the area only grew. The trip strengthened my resolve to be there permanently. The joy and comfort I find there is a work of magic I wish to bottle every time I must leave it again. Until I can find a big enough bottle and save enough money, I will be here waiting.
The feeling of being stuck is not mine alone. In fact, it is common for anyone who has ever longed for more, whether it's an office promotion you spent years climbing the ladder for, putting your dream career on hold to raise your children and wondering if it's too late to go back to school, or simply wanting out of a toxic environment without the means to leave. The feeling can be debilitating and leave one to second-guess the decisions they make. However, I am a firm believer that everything happens for reason and "not right now" doesn't necessarily mean "not ever." For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to live in Los Angeles, and I will, someday.
Keah Brown is a writer and journalist who is trying to write her way out like Hamilton. Read her other work here. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The email newsletter where there's no such thing as too much information.
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