| |  | | | | August 2, 2016 | Letter No. 45 | | | | | | | | | | | | Sup sup sup my dearest Lennys!
I can hardly believe it is August already. This summer is simultaneously flying by and moving as slow as molasses, and I can't decide if I prefer the feeling of being stuck in time or racing brazenly in front of it. I am still fighting the same anxieties as last time we spoke — wanting to be informed of what's going on in the world but also dreaming of traveling to a faraway island (maybe returning to Menorca, where I recently went on my first-ever alone vacation a few months ago) and just disconnecting from the Internet and peacing out from humanity as a whole — but I have to admit that watching the Democratic National Convention last week indeed gave me a bit of hope. Maybe we will be all right come November after all.
I think there is a lot of hope in the stories we bring you in this issue. Model Ashley Graham writes about the feeling of entitlement people have about her body. Because she is a plus-size model, the comments she hears are crazy enough to drive a woman crazy. She gets criticized for being "fat," but she also gets criticized if her fans think she has lost weight or is conforming to Hollywood standards of beauty. When it comes to existing in public places, women can so rarely win. Ashley's activism as part of the body-acceptance movement has already broken down so many barriers, and she's hopeful that things can continue changing for the best.
We also have a beautiful essay by Kaitlyn Greenidge, our contributing writer, about up and moving to Alaska after high school and being forced to confront her unreasonable but unassailable fear of fish. Kaitlyn is such a special writer, and reading her story left me feeling like I could maybe conquer the world if I really wanted to.
Plus, an interview with three Olympic hopefuls, a beautiful photo essay of an all-female production of The Taming of the Shrew, and, of course, Lennyscopes! This month, Melissa Broder tells me to let go and not beat myself up. The whole year I have been trying to be kinder to myself, to focus on the love and the great things I have that surround me as opposed to that pesky voice in the back of my head that makes me replay interactions I've had throughout the day and think of all the ways I botched them — and it was just the reminder that I needed. Be kind to yourself too, and to those around you. We are living in fragile times, and our kindness to one another might well be what we need to get through the day.
Love,
Laia
x | | | | | | | | | | | | Shamed If I Do, Shamed If I Don't | | | | By Ashley Graham | | |
Raise your hand if you go through a tough selfie-editing process before picking the perfect photo to post on Instagram. Most people wouldn't put up a picture they felt made them feel less than beautiful. Having been a model for sixteen years, I know my angles, just like we all know our favorite filters and lighting and our good sides. I pick the photos I like best.
They say you should never read the comments. But I simply can't not do it. Social media has given me a voice and allowed me to further my platform as a body activist. Without it, I couldn't have built the #BeautyBeyondSize community. My followers are the first people I turn to for feedback on anything I do, from designing my lingerie, dress, and swimsuit lines, to the things I discuss in my public speeches. I have to read the comments.
I know the comments won't all be positive. I'm a confident woman with thick skin, and as a model in the public eye, I'm conditioned to accept criticism. But last week, I admit that I had a tougher time brushing off the haters.
While I was on set filming America's Next Top Model, my hairstylist snapped a picture of me in a white knit skirt, matching crop top, and an amazing Balmain leather jacket that I absolutely loved. It was one of those photos where you look and say to yourself, "YESSSS, HONEY! I look damn good!" I didn't give it a second thought when I posted it, but soon the image went viral. Not because of how good I looked wearing a high-end designer that doesn't usually market to women my size, but because of people's misguided views on women's bodies and who owns the rights to them. Here is some of my feedback:
"I am so disappointed in you."
"You don't make plus-size dollars anymore, you make backstabbing dollars."
"You don't love the skin you're in, you want to conform to Hollywood, you believe being skinnier is prettier."
"You used to be a role model and I looked up to you." |
According to the comments, some people were upset because I appeared to be slimmer. (Knowing my angles is one thing, but I must be a magician to make people think I went from a size 14 to a size 6 in a week!) The reality is I haven't lost a pound this year. In fact, I'm actually heavier than I was three years ago, but I accept my body as it is today. I work out not to lose weight but to maintain my good health. And anyway, if I did want to lose weight, it would be no one's decision but my own. I love to sweat it out at the gym — two years ago, I even made workout videos — but I also don't restrict myself from eating certain foods or indulging on some extra-cheese mac 'n' cheese every once in a while.
To some I'm too curvy. To others I'm too tall, too busty, too loud, and, now, too small — too much, but at the same time not enough. When I post a photo from a "good angle," I receive criticism for looking smaller and selling out. When I post photos showing my cellulite, stretch marks, and rolls, I'm accused of promoting obesity. The cycle of body-shaming needs to end. I'm over it.
No matter how many empowerment conferences, TED talks, and blog posts are out there, women keep tearing one another down over physical appearance. Body shaming isn't just telling the big girl to cover up. It's trying to shame me for working out. It's giving "skinny" a negative connotation. It's wanting me to be plus size, or assuming I'm pregnant because of some belly bulge. What type of example are we setting for young girls and their self-esteem if grown adults are on Instagram calling other women "cowards" for losing weight, or "ugly" for being overweight?
Yes, I am a curvy woman. My industry labels me a "plus size" model, and society has labeled me a "plus size" woman. But I am not just here for the size 8s (where plus-size modeling starts) or the size 14s (my current size) or the size 18s (my former size). I am here for all women who don't feel comfortable in their skin, who need a reminder that their unique bodies are beautiful. I'm very proud of my work as a model, and I'm even more proud of the work we've all done to raise awareness for body positivity and size diversity within the fashion industry. I understand that people follow me and look at my photos to see a different representation of beauty, one that is often excluded from mainstream media and advertising. When they look at me, they see themselves, and maybe that's why seeing me eat a cheeseburger makes some people feel good about eating whatever they want. However, I refuse to let others dictate how I live my life and what my body should look like for their own comfort. And neither should you.
"Fake fat person."
"Don't you dare get skinny on us."
"You shouldn't be considered the face of plus-size women anymore, you just want to be the face of women."
"I'll find another plus-size beautiful woman, because you're full of shit!!! #damnshame #justliketherest"
"Fame has made Ashley follow the herd, and lose her voluptuousness."
"Your thickness is your beauty." |
I am more than my measurements. I'm not Ashley Graham just because I'm curvy. For the past sixteen years, my body has been picked apart, manipulated, and controlled by others who don't understand it. But now my career has given me a platform to use my voice to make a difference. We can't create change until we recognize and check our own actions. If you see another woman taking a selfie or a photo in her bathing suit, encourage her because she actually feels beautiful, don't give her the side eye because you think she's feeling herself too hard. Why waste time and energy spewing negativity? Let's worry about our own bodies.
My body is MY body. I'll call the shots.
Ashley Graham is a model, designer, and body activist recently featured on the covers of the 2016 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, Cosmopolitan, and Maxim. She champions for change in the fashion and media industries by challenging society's beauty standards and empowering all people to celebrate their bodies. | | | | | | | | | | | | Eat the Fish | | | | By Kaitlyn Greenidge | | |
My earliest phobias were inherited. I learned to scream when my sisters did — when they imagined a cartoon mascot looming outside the bedroom window or when they encountered a stray piece of garbage on the street.
The first phobia I developed on my own was of a fish. I remember, very clearly, watching the kids' science program 3-2-1 Contact with my grandmother one afternoon when I was in first grade. This episode was all about the Arctic. The adolescent hosts were on a submarine; they were at a polar research station; they were pulling an enormous, pulsing, brown sturgeon from the black, icy waters that surrounded them, piercing her skin with hollow steel pipettes, and extracting a mess of bulbous eggs to squirt and slide over an antiseptic steel tray.
Or, at least, this is what I remember, because it was at this moment in the show that I began screaming and screaming and screaming and then experienced a blackout. When I came to, my grandmother was staring at me, terrified. I looked down at the living-room carpet I was sitting on and imagined it was the same sandy, pebbled brown as the sturgeon's skin, and I began to scream again, disgusted. I was paralyzed with fear: I couldn't move from the carpet, and yet I desperately wanted to get away from this reminder of fish skin, and I screamed and cried, unable to move, until my grandmother coaxed me onto an oversize pillow she set on the floor, and left me there, shaken.
When my mother came home, what felt like hours later, my grandmother could only look at me in disbelief and horror. "I've never seen anything like it," she said, shaking her head. "I've never seen a child behave like that."
So my one true fear was born — fish — and made worse by a story told to me in summer camp, about a pregnant goldfish bought at the town fair whose distended belly exploded on the ride home; by the minnows my grandfather kept in an aquarium in the dining room that he flushed occasionally down the first-floor toilet, a bathroom I could never use again because I imagined all those ghosted fish, rising through the bowl to greet my bare ass whenever I sat on the seat. Fish tanks in restaurants were to be avoided. I became convinced that the sleazy tiki-themed restaurant that we snuck into after school was harboring a deep secret because its soft-serve machine was too close to its wall-length aquarium — I knew, in my fish-terror, that the two were intimately connected.
I knew it was an irrational fear, and I took pride in that. It was not one that I was interested in conquering. It was more like a logic to the world, that I could not understand why no one else could see it as well — fish were disgusting, insidious beings, and just to think of them made my body curl in revulsion.
When I was eighteen, my skin began to grow scales — thick patches that looked like an animal's hide or a swordfish's back and fostered ugly, weeping sores. I lost the ability to burp and sometimes swallow. I slept almost all the time. I was in my first year of college, against my will — I had wanted to take a year off and work on an organic farm, instinctively knowing that I wasn't ready for school. But my mother balked. She was close, so close, to having every girl of hers safely out of high school and maybe, finally, taking a breath. So she told me the farming plan was not a good one, that school was best, and I went and promptly fell into a depression so deep that my skin swirled over with scurf and my mind dropped me into a long, restless sleep from which I emerged only to go to class and work.
I worked three jobs — in the school cafeteria; in a day-care center with infants who seemed vaguely menacing and eerily cognizant in my depressive haze; and at Ellis Island, in the visitor-services office. Every Friday morning, I got up at six a.m. and took the 1 train from Washington Heights to the bottom of Manhattan. Then I got on the grimly quiet "staff boat" with the other Ellis Island workers, all of us avoiding eye contact that early in the morning. Instead, I watched the water.
I was assigned to work with an aggressively chipper woman, short and blonde, who told me all about her daughter, whom she hated. "We adopted her from Korea," she explained, "but she doesn't act right. Always goes out with boys all the time. She won't stay home." I smiled politely, unsure what to say, and the woman gasped, delighted. "You look just like her when you do that," she laughed. "I know it's weird to say. But you got those Chink-y eyes, like my girl." She saw my expression. "Don't worry, I can say that. My daughter's Korean, remember?"
I knew I had to escape this existence or sink further down to nothing. So my best friend from high school and I decided to move to Alaska. We moved there without a plan, for the sole reason that we'd read on a scarcely populated website that Juneau's public-transportation system was voted the best in the United States. By whom? At what time? We didn't know; it didn't matter. Neither of us had driver's licenses, so we told ourselves we were doing research and being practical in picking this place. We wouldn't even need a car, but we could still live in a place like Alaska.
We were not prepared for how small it all is. Downtown Juneau is only a few blocks wide. It feels promising, at first, to shrink your world down to this single space. We take a ferry to Alaska in September, unable to afford cabins, sleeping in blankets on the deck. We pass the time talking about public-radio hosts Ira Glass and Scott Simon (this was the year 2000), and we are charmed and delighted when a fellow passenger overhears us and our love for listener-supported broadcasting and tells us that he works at the city's public-radio station, and we should find him again when we land. With all the certainty of being nineteen, we agree that this is a good idea, and we do not even realize how lucky we are when we discover this man is telling the truth. It seems like being here is maybe ordained.
We land with a thud at the youth hostel while we look for temporary jobs. The ones promised at the station won't come through for a few more months, we are told. They'll be able to hire in January. And we can't find a place to live yet. And the hostel owners are increasingly annoyed with us. For staying past the allotted deadline of two weeks, we are asked to work chores in the hostel, and mine is clearing out the abandoned food of other travelers. I open one of the cupboards in the hostel's kitchen and find six blocks of Philadelphia cream cheese sitting on a shelf. I throw them away and head back to my room at the hostel where I am ambushed by an angry Finnish woman a few hours later. "You threw away my cheese," she says, desperately. "It was in its home, where it belonged, and you threw it away."
This encounter causes a panic attack, though I don't know the name for it. But I can't swallow, and I feel something rise up from my stomach and hover somewhere near the back of my throat for days. I walk and walk and walk the few blocks of Juneau, and I try to remind myself of how this is a promised land, how this is a place where things are supposed to be better.
A few days later, in the same hostel kitchen, a middle-aged woman traveling alone makes a pan of oven-baked salmon. She insists that we taste it — my friend begs off because she is a vegan, so the woman turns to me, expectant. The woman tells us that it's fresh, that she's in Juneau at the end of canning season. As she speaks, I look at the fish where it sits in the pan, the skin falling off, the meat pink and glistening. She holds out a forkful to me, and I force myself to take it because I'm worried about offending her. I force myself to swallow.
In the next few weeks we get an apartment at the base of the mountain, what seems to be another stroke of luck. Except it has a dead fish in the freezer. I know it's something bad as soon as I open the freezer door and see the bulk masked by a flurry of plastic bags. I reach out. I touch it. I feel the gap of the fish's mouth against my hand. I shudder, I squeeze my eyes shut and I shove the fish's body farther back into the dark and the cold and resolve not to ever use the freezer again.
The job that eventually turns up in January is not the public-radio reportage that I have fantasized about. It is still compelling — my friend and I are camera operators for the public-television show Gavel to Gavel, essentially the Alaska State Legislature's version of C-Span. The job consists of pushing a very heavy camera mounted on an equally heavy rolling tripod through the halls of the Alaska State House, following various committee meetings and hearings around from room to room.
I am used to the perceived invisibility of the big city, so it does not occur to me that my friend and I will be of any interest to any of the people working in the State House, much less the legislators. But we are. The first few days on the job, we watch as the members of the House and Senate stand to say the Pledge of Allegiance every day. It does not occur to me to join them — I haven't said the Pledge of Allegiance since I was in third grade, and I don't feel inclined to start now. My friend is technically a Canadian citizen, so it does not occur to her to stand and put her hand over her heart, either.
We do this for three days, and then our producer asks me and my friend to come to his office, where we are told that we've upset many of the state legislators with our un-American stance. We are to join in the Pledge of Allegiance the next time we are present for it. In a few days' time, we are in the first legislative session of the day, the legislators rise, and ten of them crane their heads to watch where our hands go, if our mouths move, during this moment. They smile, triumphant, when they catch us complying.
There it is again, that old sense of panic, the rise in my throat. A special feeling to know that tens of elected officials hold you in disdain.
A few weeks later, one of the legislators, a kind one, one of the few Native women serving, invites me and my friend to her office. She says, "It's a celebration." She says, "The ban on whale hunting has been lifted for us." She shows us a tray with a number of thick, pale squares on it. "It's blubber," she smiles. She knows this is a test. We know this is a test. My friend, again, begs off because of veganism. The legislator turns to me. "It's a delicacy."
In that moment, I reach out for the piece of flesh on the tray. I pull it toward my mouth. I think of the animal it was a part of, twisting in some cold and silent ocean a thousand miles from here, sounding noises strange and terrible. I think of the sea and all the horrors it contains.
I force myself to swallow.
I left Alaska in the spring. When I got there, I had been convinced, before even seeing the place, that I would never go home again. I imagined meeting an Alaskan lumberjack and having babies on an Alaskan commune and generally divorcing myself from any of the confusion and anxiety of life in the Lower 48. That's what Alaskans call the contiguous United States, and I liked that: I reveled in the underlying sense of superiority in that phrase.
But I left in the spring, fleeing back home to resume a conventional life. My fear of fish came with me — but now it was part of a story. I was afraid of fish and had temporarily moved to a state that worshipped them. Wasn't that funny? It would take a long time for me to understand what that story meant. Holding so tightly to your fear while also running toward it is supposed to be a sign of freedom.
Not always. It's also a move of self-sabotage. Sabotage is very seductive — it has to be, to persuade you to work against your own best interests. There is something comforting in always knowing how a situation will end — in discomfort and the sense of having failed.
I think of myself, sitting on a carpet that is pebbled like a fish's skin, in the first squirm of fear. The adrenaline does not feel good, though it is a surge that feels necessary to live, in that moment. But there's the problem of being paralyzed, unwilling or unable to move, while your whole body insists on motion.
Kaitlyn Greenidge is Lenny's contributing writer and the author of We Love You, Charlie Freeman. | | | | | | | | | | | | The Road to Rio | | | | By Avery Stone | | |
I have a confession to make. Even though I now write about sports, when I was a kid in Providence, Rhode Island — a city brimming with rabid Boston sports fans — I did not care much about professional sports. But I participated in tons of athletic activities, from horseback riding to hockey. When my family members cursed at the television as the Celtics lost a buzzer-beater, I would just observe, sometimes feigning enthusiasm, but ultimately I was detached.
That is, until I discovered the Olympics. We lived near Brown University, and my parents recruited some of the school's women's ice-hockey players to babysit my little brother and me at times. When the 2002 Winter Olympics rolled around, our sitters invited us to a local bar to watch the United States play Canada. As we arrived, I realized the players had split up to watch the game in two separate rooms: Americans in one, Canadians in another. Someone explained to me it was so things wouldn't get too heated. These women were close friends, but it didn't matter — nothing would come between them and their countries. This fascinated me.
Those babysitters influenced me. Throughout my teens, I played ice hockey, and I eventually played in college. As the years passed, the players on the US National Team shifted from my role models to my peers. I watched them, some of whom were my former teammates, sacrifice years of their lives for a spot on that coveted Olympic roster. During the Sochi 2014 Games, my college teammates and I skipped class to huddle around our television and watch the team lose the gold-medal game to Canada in overtime. As the Americans received their silver medals, their faces hardened and streaked with tears, I realized the sting of losing — and conversely, the joy of winning — while representing your country is unlike any other.
I still struggle with the way the United States tends to idealize its athletic heroes as pillars of moral character. But I also maintain that when it comes to the Olympics, there's a real reason we're always drawn back into the drama, the stakes, and the personal stories. And this summer, even amid a swirl of concerns around the Zika virus and water quality in Brazil, the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games will be no exception. As we approach the start of the Games, three American Olympians and hopefuls stuck out to me: Becky Sauerbrunn (soccer), Allyson Felix (track and field), and Ibtihaj Muhammad (fencing), so I set out to talk to them for Lenny.
Sauerbrunn, a captain of the US national women's soccer team, hopes to lead her team to a historic gold. If the USWNT wins, they'll be the first team to clinch back-to-back World Cup and Olympic titles, which feels especially significant given that in March, five of the team's stars (including Sauerbrunn) filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission accusing the US Soccer Federation of wage discrimination. (In June, a federal judge ruled that the terms of the players' existing collective-bargaining agreement (CBA) with the US Soccer Federation are still valid until the CBA expires in December. Though this ruling is separate from the wage-discrimination lawsuit, the CBA includes a no-strike provision — so, essentially, the players cannot go on strike before Rio.)
Felix aims to be historic in a different way. At the London games, the 30-year-old won a gold in the 200m. But in Rio, thanks to a schedule change, she'll be able to compete in the 200m and the 400m. If she wins both, she'll be the first woman to do so since France's Marie-José Peréc pulled it off at the 1996 Atlanta Games.
And as for Muhammad, the 30-year-old first-time Olympian has already made history by qualifying. She's set to become the first American athlete to compete at the Olympics wearing a hijab (head scarf), which feels especially resonant in light of Donald Trump's anti-Muslim comments during the 2016 presidential race.
I spoke to these three women about what drives them, how they deal with immense pressure, and the challenges they face as some of the world's best athletes.
BECKY SAUERBRUNN, WOMEN'S SOCCER
Avery Stone: What is your team's mentality going into Rio?
Becky Sauerbrunn: In the women's-soccer world, no one has won the World Cup and then followed it up the next year with an Olympic gold. That's the thing we're keeping in the back of our minds, just to give us that added motivation. We want to win everything. We do feel pressure going into Rio, but it's pressure that we welcome. I think we work better under that pressure.
AS: Who is the most significant person you've met leading up to the Olympics?
BS: We meet fewer people because we don't live in the [Olympic] village with the other athletes. But in doing appearances leading up to Rio, I've met other Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls, and Paralympic sprinter Richard Browne Jr. comes to mind. Talking with him and hearing about his drive and his dream, it's hard not to be inspired and motivated and moved by someone who faced adversity and said, "I'm making the most of my chances and I'm running away with it."
AS: Are there athletes who push you to be a better player?
BS: I could name any of my teammates! But also, I look at someone like Serena Williams, who's so elite and powerful in her sport. Or Ronda Rousey, who took a hit in losing to Holly Holm but is fighting to come back. That takes a lot of resilience, especially when she was thought to be unbeatable. I'm really looking forward to seeing her return.
AS: Given concerns around water safety and the Zika virus, how do you feel about your health in Rio?
BS: It's an absolute concern. Our health is the number-one priority. But I have faith that the International Olympic Committee will do what they can to make sure that everything is good by the time the Olympics start. I'm kind of taking it day by day and learning as much as I can.
ALLYSON FELIX, TRACK AND FIELD
Avery Stone: Leading up to the Olympics, what does a normal training day look like for you?
Allyson Felix: I train for around five hours each day. I'll spend three hours on the track, warming up and doing a tempo workout or a speed workout. Then I'll head to the gym and I'll spend another two hours there, doing Olympic lifts, plyometrics, body-weight exercises.
AS: When you tore your hamstring at the 2013 World Championships, you said it was the low point of your career. Mentally, what helped you overcome your injury?
AF: Whenever you have an injury, you start to have doubts about if you can get back to where you were, or if you can be better than where you were. Right after my injury happened, I was so disappointed. I felt like things weren't coming together. Just getting into the rehab, all the doctor's appointments — it was a bit overwhelming. What really helped me was surrounding myself with people like my family, my coach Bob Kersee, and others who believed in me. I kept my eyes on the big picture: I knew that recovery wasn't going to happen overnight, but as long as I was willing to work as hard as I could, I'd be able to fight back.
AS: What are some challenges female Olympians face that male Olympians do not?
AF: As a female athlete, you're always fighting to be on a level playing field with your male counterparts. But I believe the Olympics are great for young girls; they get to be exposed to so many different sports and to these really strong women. It's an opportunity to showcase what we do, which is something that men get the opportunity to do on a pretty regular basis.
IBTIHAJ MUHAMMAD, FENCING
Avery Stone: You've already made history by qualifying for Rio — you'll be the first US Muslim woman to compete wearing a hijab. What does this mean to you?
Ibtihaj Muhammad: It's important to me that youth everywhere, no matter their race, religion, or gender, know that anything is possible with perseverance.
AS: What are you most looking forward to about competing in Rio?
IM: I'm most looking forward to the Opening Ceremonies, the moment when I'll officially feel like an Olympian. I'm also excited to be on Team Visa Rio 2016. Qualifying for the Olympics was a dream come true, but to have such a prestigious sponsor recognize my achievements and the importance of diversity when representing Team USA to the world means a lot to me.
AS: How did you become involved in fencing?
IM: As a Muslim youth, though I played a variety of sports growing up in New Jersey, my parents were in search of a sport for me to play where I could be fully covered and not have to modify the uniform. Fencing provided a unique opportunity where I could fulfill my desire to participate in sport, wear the same uniform as my teammates, and adhere to the tenets of my faith to cover my body.
AS: What is the most difficult part of balancing your faith with your high-level athleticism? What's the most rewarding part?
IM: The most difficult part is training and competing while observing the holy month of Ramadan, which involves fasting. The most rewarding part of being a Muslim athlete is my faith in God paired with my faith in myself. I approach every match with positivity and the belief that I can beat anyone on any given day. And in the face of defeat, I am able to learn from my mistakes and work on my weaknesses to prepare for next time.
These interviews have been condensed and edited. To read a longer version of this story, click here.
Avery Stone is a writer and reporter living in New York City. | | | | | | | | | | | | Truly Taming The Shrew | | | | By Melanie Dunea | | | |
| (All Photos: Melanie Dunea) |
While the all-female Ghostbusters cast caused some people to throw temper tantrums earlier this summer, an all-female performance of Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew" was happening in Central Park as part of the Public Theater's free Shakespeare in the Park shows — and I had the opportunity to hang out with some of the cast. Backstage, there was a familiar energy, the same energy I felt while attending my all-girl high school. I talked to the actors while they were getting ready, and it was like spending a few hours with the family of your best friend — feeling immediately welcome and as if you never want to leave. I could go on and on, but instead we have these beautiful photographs by Melanie Dunea that perfectly capture the magic backstage and a few quotes from the women I spoke to about their experiences doing the play. I hope you enjoy. —Laia
"This production is inventive and irreverent in, I think, all the right kind of ways. It's a great play, and because we're all women, we're sort of taking the mickey out of men, but we're slightly taking the mickey out of women too. If you can poke fun at yourselves, sometimes you can learn more than if you had had a serious conversation, because it's funny and it gives you license to be worse, especially playing Petruchio, who's, well, the biggest dick in the whole play. It's really fulfilling, if you're a woman, to play the most macho guy in the world, because it's just such a laugh." —Janet McTeer (Petruchio)
"I want to do the female version of A Clockwork Orange. Just unapologetic, gorgeous brutality. Why can't we do that? I want to do that." —Gayle Rankin (Bianca)
"There was a point where I stopped going into auditions for Shakespeare because they were being done "straight," but the fact that this is an all-female cast and I'm able to play a man is the best thing about it. First of all, how often do you get to seriously play a man and not be poking fun, but really going for it?" —Stacy Sergeant (Grumio)
"It is the most loving, caretaking group. I've been surrounded by misogyny for my entire career. In the rehearsal process, I was so aware of it — for 33 years I've been surrounded by male comics, who are, as you know, the most misogynistic men, I think, in the business. Here, we really are a family." —Judy Gold (Gremio)
"Nobody does The Taming of the Shrew anymore because it's the hardest play to not be a dick about." —Rosa Gilmore (Lucentio)
"We can be more violent in this production. I don't think a male actor could do the things that Janet [who plays Petruchio] can and get away with it. I think it would make people just a little too uncomfortable." —Jackie Sanders (Servant)
"I guess in the past, Shrew has always just been about Kate and Petruchio to me, and that's all that mattered, but in this production, because it's all women, somehow the other parts rise and amplify. There's a lot of other things going on that matter that didn't seem so important before." —Candy Buckley (Vincentio)
"It's so liberating to do this, because gender is so often exaggerated in theater. I've had many roles where I've had high heels and panty hose, a corset, fake eyelashes. My breathing is constricted and restrained and shaped by those things, which is necessary if you're doing a show like that, but just to step onstage and take a breath and be flat on my feet and just walk normally … I don't think people understand how rare it is." —Leenya Rideout (Widow)
"Doing this production, I have learned that I am not so outdoorsy. That is what I have learned about myself. I am not one with bugs and raccoons and rain as much as maybe some other people are. I like air-conditioning. I like being indoors and looking at pretty things." —Donna Lynne Champlin (Hortensio)
"Doing this production, I learned how to speak up more and to fight for things that I want to do creatively. That I should not apologize or keep quiet, but voice how I feel about something." —Teresa Avia Lim (Biondello)
Melanie Dunea is the author and photographer of five books, including the My Last Supper series. Melanie shoots food, travel, and portraits for advertising, entertainment, corporate, and music companies worldwide and is based in New York City. Follow Melanie @mylastsupper on Instagram and Twitter. | | | | | | | | | | | | August Lennyscopes | | | | By Melissa Broder | | |
LEO
(July 23 to August 22)
If you're going to beat yourself up, don't beat yourself up for beating yourself up. Somewhere in the chain of beatings, there has to be a letting go. How do you let go? It's not casual. It's actively saying "QUIET," and saying it again and again. Letting go is work, but it's ultimately less tiring than the voices themselves. Happy birthday.
VIRGO
(August 23 to September 22)
I'm not going to tell you to love yourself or accept yourself, because what even is that? It's another seemingly impossible goal for a goal-oriented person in a goal-oriented culture. All I'm going to say is when you catch yourself loving yourself, let yourself keep going. It's safe.
LIBRA
(September 23 to October 22)
If you think you can be anything other than human, you're wrong. If you think you have to be anything other than human, you're wrong. If anyone is expecting you to be anything other than human, they're wrong. If you're expecting anyone to be anything other than human, you're wrong.
SCORPIO
(October 23 to November 21)
You're in touch with death. Face it, you're deathy. Sometimes it seems weird that no one else is as affected by all the little deaths: the end of an evening, the end of an era, Sunday nights. Make this month your day of the dead. Find one death a day and revel in it rather than running from the feelings it produces. Anticipate an even better life on the other side.
SAGITTARIUS
(November 22 to December 21)
Let me remind you that you contain 1,000 selves. The world will ask you to reduce this number to between one and eight, but that does not negate the 1,000. This is why it feels like your insides are bumping up against you sometimes. Don't believe anyone when they say you are asking too much to even consider a ninth.
CAPRICORN
(December 22 to January 19)
Whose shame is it, the world's or yours? Where did it come from, your family or your soul? What is an actual obligation and what just feels like one? When night comes, it's your head on the pillow and no one else's.
AQUARIUS
(January 20 to February 18)
I have no advice for you, only my own experiences that I can see more clearly reflected back when I look at you. I have only stories and suggestions. Being human, you are probably the same way. Remember that when you give advice this month.
PISCES
(February 19 to March 20)
Just a gentle reminder that no one knows what they're doing, and the ones who seem convinced that they have it all figured out probably know the least. Remember that this month when you compare your feelings of doubt to their apparent confidence. You're probably better off than they are.
ARIES
(March 21 to April 19)
Sometimes we are hungrier for more than the world can provide for us, and that is OK. The trick is to recognize that this is what is going on. I'm not going to tell you to seek a spiritual solution for your existential hunger, because that sounds lofty and you don't want to hear it. But if you feel annoyed with the world this month for not being enough, you should know there is another untapped world inside you too.
TAURUS
(April 20 to May 20)
You can't please all the people all the time, and thank God you can't, because it would be exhausting to try. I think you've finally learned that. But what you might forget is that even the people you please most of the time cannot be pleased all the time. And if you find yourself this month displeasing the people you usually please, it's not you being "bad" or "wrong." It's just human nature doing its thing.
GEMINI
(May 21 to June 20)
We often read our horoscopes to be told that the uphill climb is officially over. But do astrologers know any more than any other human being? I know I don't. Life may always be an uphill climb, but you know how to dance sideways. You don't need me to give you permission to do it.
CANCER
(June 21 to July 22)
Now is the time for you to finally make a move — the change you've been craving for a while. But a move doesn't have to be a physical, geographic change or a massive overhaul. When we do that we usually end up just taking the thing that's bothering us with us. Think in terms of micro-movements, as those are the most lasting changes and ultimately have the most impact. Is there something small you've been thinking of trying or giving up? Do that.
Melissa Broder is the author of four collections of poems, including Last Sext (Tin House 2016), as well as So Sad Today, a book of essays from Grand Central. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The email newsletter where there's no such thing as too much information.
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