| | | X-Files star Gillian Anderson on the agony and the ecstasy of menopause, black women in Brazil fight for civil rights, and more. | | | | | | | | | |  | | | | March 7, 2017 | Letter No. 76 | | | | | | | | | | | | Hey Lennys,
When I took the job as editor in chief of this here publication, I was pretty anxious about my ability to do it and still see enough of my kid. I had been freelance for three years at that point, and it was working for our family: I was making enough money to cover childcare, and my schedule could be fully flexible to accommodate toddler barf and other sundry kid-related interruptions. I was happy. Bored, but happy.
Then I got this gig, and it was a dream — to get to be on the ground floor of something new and to work with a bunch of amazing women every day. But about a month into the job, I remember being so exhausted from the work of building something that didn't previously exist, one night I started to cry. I was deeply panicked about being able to manage this big life shift. My husband took my hand and said, not unkindly, "Honey, you need to sack up."
Meaning: You need to face this new stage head on. That's the loose theme of this week's newsletter. Actress Gillian Anderson, late of X Files and The Fall, is doing just that by embracing THE change, aka menopause. Gillian and Jennifer Nadel, the journalist and co-writer of their book, We: A Manifesto for Women Everywhere, have a frank discussion about the rage and memory loss attached to menopause, but also the newfound freedom it allows.
Then we have a gorgeous piece by frequent Lenny contributor Lauren Bohn and Catherine Osborn about the civil-rights movement in Brazil (certainly a far more important, difficult, dangerous struggle than my coming to terms with a big job). These young, black Brazilian women are rejecting white beauty standards, running for office, making art, and pushing back against police violence. They're pushing for a new stage in their country's history and are truly an inspiration, especially as International Women's Day arrives tomorrow. May they inspire those of us striking with their courage and verve.
Next up, a Q&A with filmmaker Anna Biller, who wrote and directed the feature The Love Witch. Anna conjured an entire brand-new universe out of thin air, as she did everything on the film herself, from the music to the sets that used the color palate of the Thoth tarot-card deck. And then Keah Brown, who wrote so movingly for us about the first time she made her own ponytail, is back, writing about traveling alone for the first time with a disability on Inauguration Day. Finally, we have our monthly existential horoscopes from Melissa Broder. I'm a Pisces, and I'm so excited to be getting some real talk from Melissa in my birthday month: "The freedom to stop compulsively looking outside of yourself for THE THING is a juicy gift."
Because that's where you're going to find the strength to face whatever's next for you and for the world — inside yourself. So sack up with me, people!
xo Jess Grose, Lenny editor in chief | | | | | | | | | | | | The Truth Is Out There (About Menopause) | | | | By Gillian Anderson and Jennifer Nadel | | |
Teenage rebellion, childbirth, shrinks, stress incontinence (which is a thing, apparently?): Actress Gillian Anderson and her best friend, journalist Jennifer Nadel, have experienced it all, and they've talked about it all, too. In their new book, We: A Manifesto for Women Everywhere, Gillian and Jennifer encourage readers to be transparent about their struggles. Here, the two have a conversation revealing the deepest truths about menopause — hot flashes, barely suppressed rage, and memory loss included.
Gillian Anderson: When did you first notice that you were showing signs of menopause or perimenopause?
Jennifer Nadel: I didn't know I was, which is why I'm so glad that we're talking about this. Why didn't anyone tell us, why didn't we know, why didn't someone say, "This is going to hit you like a freight train and affect every aspect of your life?"
For me, it started with really bad anxiety at 52 which kept me awake through the night. I'd never experienced anything like it. My doctor diagnosed it as anxiety, pure and simple. No one even thought to ask whether it could be menopause-related. I didn't add two and two together until I was at a Goldsmiths University convention giving a paper when I found myself drenched in sweat. It was so weird. I thought, I must be ill — I had a sudden fever that had come on from nowhere. It was really embarrassing. It was only subsequently that I realized I'd had my first hot flash. Now that I know what they are, I feel quite proud of my hot flashes. I feel amazed that a body, my body, can generate so much heat. I think I could absolutely keep a city warm.
How did you first find out?
GA: I remember, in California, I think, in my late 20s or early 30s, a naturopath I'd just started seeing looked at my blood work and said, "You're showing signs of early menopause." And I completely ignored her! I didn't know what it was. It certainly wasn't something my doctor had picked up on, and I didn't look into it further.
And then two years ago — that's twenty years later! — it was eight in the morning and I remember throwing my coat down on the floor in front of at least two of my children, and saying out loud, "This day sucks!" The day hadn't even started, but there was something about my inability to handle anything that morning that alerted me to the fact that something was up. And as the day went on, I kept having to excuse myself from meetings and go into the bathroom to cry.
It was at the point that I felt like my life was falling apart around me that I started to ask what could be going on internally, and friends suggested it might be hormonal. I went to a menopause specialist who informed me that my levels of estrogen, testosterone, and progesterone were incredibly low. I then went to my gynecologist to get a second opinion. They said that I was perfectly fine based on the blood tests and that I absolutely wasn't in perimenopause. One of the challenges we've found is that different doctors run different tests and look at different aspects of how the hormones present. Look at how many specialists I have seen about this. I'm incredibly privileged to be able to do so. But finding answers shouldn't depend on having the means to consult numerous experts — it's something every woman has a right to have with an informed practitioner.
JN: Can you explain what perimenopause is?
GA: Perimenopause, as I understand it, is a period of time that can last anywhere from a few years to even a decade before one's period actually stops, before one actually goes into menopause proper. What happens is, over time our levels of estrogen start to deplete, and as a result we develop symptoms like anxiety, depression, mood swings, hot flashes, night sweats, fatigue, and find it harder and harder to cope with the normal routines of our lives.
JN: Memory loss was a huge one for me. I thought that I was getting dementia. I would just go into my brain to try and pull a few facts off the shelf. I'd be halfway through a sentence and I simply couldn't find them. And when that happens on a regular basis, it can get scary. You can stop wanting to engage in an argument or put your point across because you might forget what it is halfway through. I found myself becoming silent. I was losing my voice through fear of not being able to deliver in the way that I'd taken for granted all my life. Now I make myself speak, and if I forget or can't locate the stats to back up my point, I tell the truth: "Sorry, it's my menopause brain." And when I own it out loud, the fear gets less, and I find other women start admitting it too.
GA: I was used to being able to balance a lot of things, and all of a sudden I felt like I could handle nothing. I felt completely overwhelmed. When I talked to the menopause specialist, she said that she often gets phone calls from female CEOs screaming down the phone, "I need help now! I am losing my mind!"
And that's completely right. I felt like somebody else had taken over my brain.
JN: There's also this weird shame. There's almost a conspiracy of silence around it because obviously being menopausal isn't quite the same as being hot and young and nubile and sexy. To say out loud "I'm menopausal" feels like saying "I have lost my femaleness," which obviously isn't true, but as a result so few of us are really openly talking about it. We're both in the same book group, and the moment we discovered that everyone else in the group was also going through it, it was just heaven. Whenever women of a certain age gather together, it's not men or careers they want to talk about, it's menopause.
GA: I was recently with a group of mothers. Different age bracket, late 30s to early to mid-40s. So many of them didn't know what I was talking about when I said perimenopause, had never heard of it. Did not know that it was coming, had so many questions. Some of the women, when I described my symptoms, were having the same symptoms, but nobody in their lives had suggested that it might be related to their hormones.
When Angelina Jolie made the very, very courageous decision to have both her breasts and her ovaries removed because of genetically being at risk for breast and ovarian cancer, many of the comments (aside from admiration for her decision to go public with a very private matter) were around the concern that it might throw her into early menopause. Then she became vocal about being in menopause and pushed back against the narrative that aging is bad. It's a step that more of us in the public eye need to take in order to shake the shame around it.
JN: It's kind of weird. I talk to older women who have been through it, and they can barely remember the details. It's a bit like childbirth. They're like, "Oh, yeah, I did that." They can't remember or give you the details, and yet when you're in it, every single moment of it is so tricky. It's not just the physical symptoms, the loss of memory, the loss of emotional perspective, or that feeling of having lost your emotional shock absorbers; it's also a feeling of loss. When my period started to stop, suddenly I'm thinking, Oh my god, I don't want you to go away. I don't want you to stop. I still have a box of Tampax in my bathroom. I know that I'm not going to bleed again, but I just can't bear to let go of what's defined my life as a woman until this point. I know that I will come out the other side and barely be able to remember these details. But I just have to say, when you're in it, you are really in it.
GA: How wonderful would it be if we could get to a place where we are able to have these conversations openly and without shame. Admit, freely, that this is what's going on. So we don't feel like we're going mad or insane or alone in any of the symptoms we are having. That our partners are informed and prepared so they don't participate in the cycle of shame and can support us when we need it. That our medical practitioners are better equipped to test properly and advise and refer if necessary. Perimenopause and menopause should be treated as the rites of passage that they are. If not celebrated, then at least accepted and acknowledged and honored.
JN: And not to judge it, because in all these moments, there is such an opportunity to judge or feel judged. Too old, past it, over the hill, all these horrible words that we have and expressions society has for women who are at or beyond this point in their lives and are not really complimentary. Phrases that can make us feel that if we're not fertile, we're sub-female. And we are so not. With this stage comes wisdom and a whole new era of sexiness where we are free and sorted and don't have to worry about birth control. So, yeah, it's up to all of us, really, to have the conversation out loud, so that we start to change the way we think about it and talk about it.
Gillian Anderson is an award-winning film, television, and theater actor and a producer, writer, and activist. She currently lives in London with her daughter and two sons. Jennifer Nadel is an award-winning broadcast journalist, qualified attorney, writer, and activist. American-born, she lives in London with her three sons. | | | | | | | | | | | | Tombamento | | | | By Lauren Bohn and Catherine Osborn | | |
There's a slang word in Brazilian Portuguese that has come to describe the fierce style and unapologetic verve of a new generation of black Brazilians: tombamento. It comes from the lyrics of black Brazilian rapper Karol Conká and refers to a combination of winning, dazzling, and honoring history. Or, in Beyoncé parlance: slaying. And tombamento describes the young dancer whose graceful stomps and fiery twists made a university event hall vibrate with pride in September on Rio de Janeiro's wealthy south side. Twenty years ago, it would have been unthinkable for a ceremonial Afro-Brazilian dance routine to pack a main room with black Brazilians at the prestigious Catholic University of Rio, a historically white institution.
Now, it was accompanied by endless hollers of "Queen!"
The performance was part of the launch of the university's first black newspaper, run by a group of mostly women who call themselves the Black Cloud collective. "It's time to recognize and carry with us the contributions of black Brazilian knowledge," said twenty-year-old journalism student Gabriele Roza as she presented the inaugural issue, calling for the inclusion of more black scholars in university curricula. "We can and we will tell our stories."
Brazil is the country with the largest black population outside of Africa; ten times more enslaved Africans were brought here than to the United States. But prejudice led many Brazilians of color to avoid identifying as black. A 1976 census famously listed 136 terms Brazilians used to describe themselves, including such hues as "coffee" and "cinnamon." "Whitening" of black families through interracial marriage was praised by elites, visible in an iconic Brazilian painting of a joyful black mother delivering a lighter child. And the benefits of lightness were real. Due to poor public education, prejudice, and a lack of financial access in neighborhoods far from jobs and opportunities, black Brazilians lagged behind whites in almost every statistic. They still do: Their average income is less than two-thirds of their white counterparts'.
"I didn't consider myself black until a few years ago," says 25-year-old Luana Fonseca of the Black Cloud collective, snapping selfies with friends. "I'd straighten my hair and try to fit in, because otherwise, you feel like you won't succeed."
As far back as the beginning of the 20th century — just after Brazil abolished slavery — this hesitance to claim blackness was something Brazil's black activists fought against. In those days, too, black newspapers were a tool; they publicized initiatives nationwide to build black pride while also naming and shaming the inequalities along the color line. These papers covered the rise of the iconic carnival band Ilê Aiyê in Salvador, quick to remind Brazilians that the national rhythm samba was born from African drumming and dance styles. They gave roots to black activist collectives that bubbled before the start of Brazil's dictatorship in the 1960s, such as a national political network for black Brazilians and an influential Rio theater group that dealt with themes of racism. But those groups' work was dramatically suppressed by a 20-year military regime that specifically targeted black leaders.
Now, says twenty-year-old documentary producer Mayara Donaria, "We're trying to pack years of civil rights into a short span. It's all squished together."
O Globo's Flávia Oliveira, one of the country's few black columnists at a major newspaper, says the forward motion of the current moment is possible because black activists were protagonists in ending Brazil's dictatorship, drafting a new constitution, and founding the leftist Worker's Party, which ruled for thirteen years. During that time, race-based affirmative action was implemented for public colleges and public jobs, and basic social-welfare programs were codified benefitting poor heads of households — mostly black women.
But she says there's still work to be done. "I think it's important to never stop telling each other how incredible we are, and boosting self-esteem," Oliveira said. "But it's also time to move from activism around cultural politics to activism around electoral politics."
In August, Brazil's first female president was impeached on charges that she illegally hid a budget deficit. She was replaced by a center-right leader who installed an all-white, all-male cabinet and has moved toward conservative reforms like budget cuts for health and education while increasing salaries for highly paid public officials, such as judges.
A glimmer of hope for black activists nationwide came in September when 37-year-old Marielle Franco, a black single mother who grew up in the favela of Maré, was elected to Rio's city council — one of the first black women in its history. She was one of several black councilwomen elected nationwide who ran explicitly black feminist campaigns. Her campaign logo featured a silhouette of her Afro, and the slogan was the African phrase "Ubuntu," which she translates as "I am because we are."
"I am from these streets," said Marielle, walking the trash-strewn alleys of a favela on Rio's north side. Residents waved to her from their narrow doorways. "We can't encourage the people to rise up if they don't see people like me in power … you can't be it if you can't see it."
On a Friday morning in Rio's gray low-income outskirt of Bangu — so far from the city center it's surrounded only by shrubby hills and a maximum-security prison — Tainá Almeida, Suzane Santos, and Jessyca Liris arrived at a local public high school on a mission. The farther you go outside of Rio, the darker the people's skin. And the more narrow one's rights.
Almeida, Santos, and Liris are part of a three-year-old collective called Black Power Girls that gives workshops on black empowerment in public schools as part of a half-day, monthly arts and humanities program. All the women in the collective have recently gone natural with their hair, resisting popular whitening methods of straightening.
"I'm going to talk about feeling my hair all the way to the root," Almeida said as several students in the audience nodded along. "Thinking about it makes me think of my ancestors. That means thinking back to who came before me, and I'm not talking about slaves. I have a story far before that."
Almeida spoke of being one of the only black students in her private high school and recalled childhood memories of scanning toy-store aisles for black dolls. She was never successful. "It took me a while to get to a point where I could wear [my hair] like this," Almeida said, patting her small Afro. "Until four years ago, I was trying to change myself."
Larissa Silverio, a sixteen-year-old student, was particularly moved by the talk. "I've been called a monkey before," she said, looking down at her imitation-Converse sneakers. "You get a feeling that you don't belong here."
In September, the Black Power Girls hosted their annual fair in Rio's Port Zone. The neighborhood, pockmarked by construction, is a visible reminder of where black history falls on the government's priority list: the road leading to a slave-cemetery-turned-museum was promised to be repaved for tourist access by the time of the Olympics in August, but it remains dug up and unpassable. The city government instead directed visitors — and funding — to the new, $55 million neofuturistic Museum of Tomorrow, which city officials pointed out was finished on time due to private backing partners.
"At our most basic level, we want people to love themselves and follow the dreams that they want," said activist Karina Vieira as black entrepreneurs hovered over stands selling jewelry and necklaces made from capoeira rope, (capoeira is a Brazilian martial art with African roots). "But there's another part of taking up your black identity. It's realizing that we are under attack."
In 2015, Brazil's brutal epidemic of gun violence killed over 58,000 people — mostly black. This racial disparity is due in part to the fact that the country's war on drugs is centered in poorer, blacker neighborhoods, and exacerbated by a mass incarceration system that now holds the world's fourth-largest number of prisoners. Half of those killed in Brazil each year are between the ages of 15 and 29, according to a study from the Latin American Faculty of the Social Sciences (FLACSO); of those, 77 percent are black, leading some activists to refer to a "genocide" of black youth in Brazil. The police killed a staggering fraction of those people: they were responsible for 20 percent of murders in the city of Rio in 2015. An Amnesty International study of the 220 police killings in Rio in 2011 found that three years later, only one resulted in formal charges.
"From the moment a black woman gives birth, it's a struggle for survival," said Ana Paula Oliveira, whose 17-year-old son, Jonathan, was killed in 2014 when a policeman fired into a crowded street in the poor neighborhood of Manguinhos. He was on his way home from delivering a cake to his grandmother.
Oliveira and many other mothers of victims have joined growing mobilizations nationwide that try to reverse the toll of Brazil's urban violence. Although 36 million Brazilians have risen out of extreme poverty in the past thirteen years and violence fell at the beginning of this period, homicides are on the rise again, and their racial disparity is worsening. Between 2002 and 2012, the FLACSO study found, the homicide rate for young white Brazilians dropped 32.3 percent and the homicide rate for young black Brazilians rose 32.4 percent.
"This will continue until we address the structural forces behind the problem," says Vieira, who is working on a master's degree in public policy. "Instead, the figure of the drug trafficker is villainized as the source of all evil, as narratives in the Brazilian media would have us believe."
Yasmin Thayná, a 23-year-old film director, has become well-known for challenging media stereotypes around race. Already an icon among Rio's black intellectuals, she was born in a working-class family on the city's northern periphery. Her film, KBELA, about embracing her black identity through transitioning to natural hair, packed a downtown theater at its 2015 premiere, becoming one of young black Rio's biggest cultural events of the year. The film starts with aesthetics, but stands for more, says Thayná, whose political commentary is widely followed online. All of her columns are republished in Geledés, Brazil's biggest news portal for black women.
Her November 28 column for the site Nexo discussed a bloody police operation in Rio's City of God favela that left seven residents shot dead.
"I believe that tomorrow is going to be better than today," she wrote. For that to happen, "it depends on all of us."
Lauren Bohn is the GroundTruth Project's Middle East correspondent, based in Istanbul. Catherine Osborn is GroundTruth's reporting fellow, based in Rio. Reporting for this story involved eating a lot of this and drinking lots of these. | | | | | | | | | | | | "I'm a freak, I'm a witch … I'm just a female." | | | | By Ellen Freeman | | |
I saw filmmaker Anna Biller's movie The Love Witch during an ice storm — but inside the theater, I was transported to the trippy, rainbow-prism world of Elaine, a spell-bindingly seductive witch with an abusive past. She uses potions and "sex magick" to attract men, but when she gets lust and obsession instead of the true love she craves, the results are lethal.
Biller is fetishistic about aesthetic. She shot both her 2007 cult film Viva (an exploration of the sexual revolution's dark side, in which Biller also starred) and The Love Witch on 35-mm. film, using antique three-point lighting techniques that re-create the Technicolor look of classic cinema. She has ten credits in total on The Love Witch, including writer, director, producer, editor, and art director. She painted the art on Elaine's walls, hand-hooked a pentagram rug, and spent every night after dinner learning calligraphy to make an authentic-looking spell book. She also attended pagan rituals for witchcraft research, sewed an entire cast's worth of Renaissance outfits for a solstice faire scene, wrote original songs, and constructed elaborate color-coordinated sets in the palette of the Thoth tarot-card deck.
The Love Witch has the kind of New Age soundtrack I'd want to listen to while bottling a potion made out of a used tampon, riding a white horse, or strip-teasing for my interior decorator's husband (all things that Elaine does, while dressed up in an enviable wardrobe of psychedelic '60s/'70s outfits, a nipple-length black wig, and matching cat-eye makeup). I was so under the film's vintage spell that I started to imagine that the issues of misogyny it deals with were from a bygone era, but contemporary objects like cell phones and modern cars serve as jarring reminders that Biller's feminist subtext is deceptively current. I talked to Biller about witchcraft, objectification, and representing the female world onscreen.
Ellen Freeman: I've noticed a growing interest in the occult happening in parallel to this surge of girl power. Do you see witchcraft as a means of female empowerment?
AB: I do. The way religions are used is dependent on the concerns of the era; in the '60s, I think a lot of witchcraft was about people exploring nudity, sexuality, the demonic, the beyond … for exploitation of drugs, and for getting outside of Christianity. I think today, all of witchcraft is very aligned with New Age concepts about inner healing, meditating. People are getting into it for completely different reasons, like female empowerment, women finding their power as goddesses. Elaine says, "Witchcraft saved my life," so that's how she feels. One thing I noticed in the rituals I went to is that some of the people seemed very enlightened, but other people seemed really lost and debased. They were trying to find themselves.
EF: That's how Elaine's character comes to it, too.
AB: She's desperate. In this movie, witchcraft is not entirely positive, because it hasn't really given her back her life back at all. She's using it in the wrong way.
EF: Her body is the actual altar in the rituals, so she becomes this object of worship. That happens in your film Viva, too; the heroine is "set free" from her boring suburban marriage by the swinging sexual revolution and ultimately becomes a sexual object of worship for men. But that doesn't lead to either of those characters' happiness.
AB: That's right. It has to do with the desire gap, whose desire is being privileged. [Elaine and Viva] have a sexual fantasy of being worshipped as goddesses, but when it actually happens, it's not the same as their self-worship. It doesn't contain any human respect. There's no real love there. Objectification precludes love, right? When you're an object, you don't have a consciousness. When you love yourself, you have a consciousness attached to that, and it's an actual sense of preserving yourself. That's not the same as somebody taking away that consciousness and just worshipping a body. That's actually demonic.
EF: Viva and The Love Witch both have a strong feminist subtext, and I'm interested to know what your feminist education looked like.
AB: I read a lot of feminist theory. I read a lot of psychology books as well. But I had an epiphany when I was still in school that had to do with creating work from the place of being a woman, on purpose. From the place of trying to create a female consciousness on the screen, in movies that were for women, but that weren't necessarily didactic or political on the surface; that were made for women's visual pleasure. I made it a project to do that in my life, and it wasn't until I came up with that project that making movies made sense to me, or making art in general. I suddenly knew exactly how I was going to make work from then on, and I've stayed on that path.
I realized that the majority of movies are made for men. The reason I like classic cinema so much is that so many of these movies were written by women and for women. Some people might find it retrogressive that I'm making films that are more like those Old Hollywood pictures, but it's because I thought those pictures were better: they were better written; they had better characters (both male and female); they had more humanity in them. It's not really that I'm trying to copy them. It's more that I can learn a lot more from those kinds of scripts. But in terms of creating a feminist cinema, years ago I started to say to myself, "What do I really like to watch on the screen? What kinds of images actually produce pleasure for me, rather than anxiety?"
EF: How do you try to create visual pleasure for women in your films?
AB: Through interior decorating. It's a statement that, rather than featuring weapons and guns, cars, objects of war and destruction, I'm obsessively featuring lace doilies, tea sets, handbags, false eyelashes, ashtrays, curtains, pillows, domestic things. It's not that I'm trying to say that women are domestic, but it's a way of creating a world of objects that feel female. I want to put the stuff that really excites me on the screen, so maybe it excites me to put a beautiful woman on the screen and have her wear beautiful makeup and have her look fantastic. You know, great stockings, great lingerie, great shoes, great handbag. When I'm making films, I'm trying to go more with an emotional current, a gut feeling, an intuition about what feels safe, right, and pleasurable, and what feels unsafe, ugly, and threatening.
EF: There's a real conflict in Viva and The Love Witch between being a sexy woman and being empowered by that, or being devoured by society for that. In Viva, your body was onscreen in, I imagine, some pretty vulnerable ways. How did that experience inform The Love Witch?
AB: For one thing, it ruined film acting for me, that's for sure. I was so objectified in such ugly ways that it just took away all my fun in doing it.
What ended up happening was not just that I was objectified. It was that I wasn't even really seen as a filmmaker, because the power of a woman doing a sexual performance onscreen is so strong for men that they're unable to look at her as a creator of meaning. I learned something even more radical in doing The Love Witch, which is that even if you're not on the screen, a lot of men are unable to see women as creators of meaning. That was even harsher in some ways, to realize that I'm often still not given credit for understanding what I'm doing. Maybe that's partly the reason I make so much [of the film myself] — so that people understand that I'm actually a constructor of meaning in a very complete way, so that's not confused with someone who's just an object.
The Love Witch is all about objectification. It's about a woman's life having been destroyed by being objectified.
EF: Going forward, do you feel more inclined to make films for the art house milieu, or a mainstream audience?
AB: I'm going to keep moving toward the mainstream. I think the more people you can reach, the better. Not all men, but some men, are resistant to what I'm doing. Some men actually really like it, and they're learning a little bit about what it's like to be a woman. And that's incredible, that you could teach a man that through just watching a movie? One thing that's satisfying for me is, I'm trying to teach my old boyfriends just a little bit. There was this kind of brutal misunderstanding that was always happening, with this weird feeling that they were human, I was subhuman. I was always wrong. I'm a freak. I'm a witch. I'm crazy. That's why it didn't work out, because I'm a crazy witch from hell. Really, I'm just a female. Elaine is a crazy witch from hell, but she's also just a woman, a very ordinary woman.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Ellen Freeman lives in Portland and has written for Refinery29, Roads & Kingdoms, Mental Floss, Racked, the Matador Network, and more. | | | | | | | | | | | | Every Day It's a Roller Coaster | | | | By Keah Brown | | | |
I love roller coasters. I love the way my body jumps into panic mode, my heart racing and adrenaline pumping just before the big drop comes. On January 20, 2017, I learned that something similar happens when I am on an airplane: the adrenaline pulsates through my veins as the plane speeds down the runway. That's the day I stepped into my local airport and geared up to fly by myself for the first time, to California from Lockport, New York, for the San Diego State University Writer's Conference.
When it was time to board, I hugged and kissed my mother goodbye with a promise to see her three nights later when I would arrive home. I took a deep breath and sighed in relief as I stepped on the plane and saw that there were no in-flight televisions. As a journalist, it is my job to stay informed, but as a black disabled woman, I needed a reprieve from the nearly 24-hour news coverage of the inauguration; I needed to believe, if only for a moment, that this was not happening.
Being black in America is often exhausting already –– we have to worry about being stopped and frisked, about being killed by police with no consequences –– and couple that with being a person with a disability who is pitied and invisible at the same time. The coverage of the inauguration felt like another celebration of our mistreatment, as the president has insinuated that black people are living in hell, and has promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which affects millions of disabled people.
My reprieve ended as soon as I landed in Chicago for my layover and connecting flight. First, the plane dropped its passengers off on the far side of the airport, leaving me to trek across massive O'Hare to find my new gate. My right leg from hip to ankle was already aching from sitting so long, and it only got worse as I walked. I passed an airport employee who was driving a cart, but he refused to stop because he wasn't "going my way."
Even worse, there were TVs everywhere playing the full inauguration coverage, and it was only 8 a.m. "What will he say?" "What will he wear?" Waiting for him to arrive became like watching a bizarre royal wedding, each journalist more excited than the last, and all I kept thinking is, None of this is normal, and none of this is OK.
On my flight from Chicago to San Diego, I sat next to a man who was watching the inauguration. Without meaning to, I caught a glimpse of the man who spent his entire campaign and the months that followed offending and threatening anyone who didn't look like him, agree with him, or share his sexual orientation or physical ability. After rolling my eyes and turning up my iPod as high as it would go, I decided that I was going to resist for the next four years in any way that I knew how.
First, I was going to find joy on this trip wherever I could, whenever I could. There was no use in spending the trip of a lifetime being scared, anxious, and closing in on myself.
I kept that first promise: I found joy in attending sessions that featured tips on how to turn your book into a screenplay, a talk with New York Times best-selling author Marjorie Hart, a wine-and-cheese night, a few wonderful but terribly acted Lifetime movies, lunch with my best friend, In-N-Out, my first Uber ride, and Game Night in a Can. I met people who wrote or were writing the books I couldn't wait to read, people who were resisting in their own way by putting the art out into the world that they wanted to see.
I was nervous about being in California by myself for the first time and trying to navigate the conference, but I was lucky enough to have Jennifer Pooley, a former HarperCollins editor whom I met through Twitter, help me find the halls where the talks were taking place and introduce me to other writers and publishing types. I was also fortunate enough to stay at the hotel that the conference was in, so when I needed to rest, I went back to my room to recoup.
When the conference was over and I woke up the next day packed and ready to go back home, I hit a few travel snags. There were a few flight delays, one cancellation, and a change of airline, but again, Jennifer swept in and saved the day. She helped me secure another flight on a different airline, transportation from gate to gate at each stop so I didn't have to worry about any aching legs, and a firm but calm demeanor while speaking to the airport employees to make sure I got home safely.
At the time, I was worried that I would never get home, but now, I understand that the delays were indicative of the roadblocks to come in these next four years for those of us who will resist everything this current president stands for. The battle won't be easy; it will be long and hard-won. I proudly and without pause take a stand against the man who threatens every aspect of my identity with his team of like-minded people and their push to create policy and law that will do more harm than good. I will be vocal and triumphant in the face of tyranny. I will not be silenced. As a journalist, I will cover the truth and speak it often. Though my body could not handle attending the women's marches that took place during my trip to San Diego, I will continue to promote and champion all efforts to say no and resist.
My final act of resistance will be to continue doing the things that scare me: continuing to travel, continuing to dream, and continuing to live. I will not cower; I will laugh in their faces and hold my loved ones close.
I love roller coasters. I love the way the wheels clunk up the track just before the big drop, the small wait just before you plummet down into the unknown. That's what the next four years of America will be. I don't believe in saying that we will all be OK, because the truth is many of us won't survive. However, if there is anything that I know about the people that I love and the people reading this, it is that we will be damned if we go down without a fight. On January 20, 2017, as America swore in a racist, misogynistic demagogue, I flew from east to west, refusing to spend one more moment letting fear dictate how I live my life and how I will fight for it.
Keah Brown reads a lot of books, writes a lot of things, and watches far too much TV. Her work has appeared in Teen Vogue, Literary Hub, Catapult, and ESPNW, among other publications. Follow her on Twitter: @Keah_Maria. | | | | | | | | | | | | March Horoscopes | | | | By Melissa Broder | | |
PISCES
(February 19 to March 20)
Each month, I like to remind one of the signs that truly no one has any more idea of what the fuck is going on here on earth than they do. This month, your birthday month, I'm telling it to you, Pisces, because the freedom to stop compulsively looking outside of yourself for THE THING is a juicy gift.
ARIES
(March 21 to April 19)
THERE but for the grace of God go you, boo. Another way to say this is, if you spot it, you got it. Another way to say this is, judge not lest ye be judged. Another way to say this is, maybe try taking a break from gossiping this month — and if you find that you can't, take a look at what you find so interesting about the person you're talking shit about.
TAURUS
(April 20 to May 20)
In order to help another person, they have to be ready to be helped. I know it's tempting when you think you have the answer for someone else's problems (and maybe you actually do), but until they are ready to receive, it's no answer at all.
GEMINI
(May 21 to June 20)
One thing that's crazy is you can't get permanent emotional security from another human being. Another thing that's crazy is no other human being can rely on you for permanent emotional security. Mourn the illusion that you ever could, and then maybe move on to the things we can actually give and get from each other.
CANCER
(June 21 to July 22)
In the musical Hair (my fav), there is a song called "Easy to Be Hard" in which a character named Sheila questions another character, Berger, for his ability to care about "the bleeding crowd," strangers and social injustice, while being unkind to "a needing friend." Remember this month that kindness to those close to us can be equally as noble as fighting the big fight.
LEO
(July 23 to August 22)
If you've been trying to decide whether you are or are not a particular thing, my advice is to stop using your mind to do it. You don't have to grip every thought that comes in and cross-examine it. What you need, in order to find your answer, is an open mind with the air blowing through it, so that the answer can just gently land.
VIRGO
(August 23 to September 22)
Do you ever feel really sexy when you're at home and then you go out and suddenly feel like you are totally butt? You haven't gotten uglier. You're comparing and despairing. I'm not saying don't do this, because comparison seems to be a human trait. But you should know that that's what's going on and that it's an illusion, because pretty much everyone you compare yourself to feels less than someone else.
LIBRA
(September 23 to October 22)
Have you ever reached a place that you thought was the end of your life, and, having no choice, you were forced to surrender … only to realize this was actually the beginning? If you haven't, it's good shit. I highly recommend it! And if you have, maybe you can try surrendering something else without needing a disaster to do it.
SCORPIO
(October 23 to November 21)
In the prayer of Saint Francis, there's a line that it is better "to understand than to be understood." I'm not a Catholic, but I know that this is one of the few ways to get over being completely annoyed at multiple members of humanity. I may never understand fully why others feel the way they do — politically, culturally, socially — but an attempt to understand other viewpoints may actually be less crazy-making than trying to make someone else comprehend what they will never comprehend.
SAGITTARIUS
(November 22 to December 21)
A gentle reminder this month that forgiveness is not for the person we are forgiving but a tool to free ourselves from the pain of having to hold on to a resentment. If something feels heavy as fuck right now, consider being open to at least the possibility of forgiveness.
CAPRICORN
(December 22 to January 19)
The bad news is that you are going to die, and the good news is that you are going to die — not now (don't worry, this isn't that kind of horoscope) but at some point. Much of our work is learning to live with that knowledge in a way that benefits our lives. If you haven't already, this month would be a good time to begin doing that work.
AQUARIUS
(January 20 to February 18)
Sometimes, when we're feeling particularly insecure or vulnerable, it's easy to forget that other humans are grappling with the same essential things. None of us is immune to financial insecurity, romantic insecurity, emotional insecurity, or fears around ambition. We don't all go through the same things at the same times, but the human experience comes for all of us at some point, like it or not.
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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