Over at The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik has written a rather unhinged meditation on the prospects for gun control — on the “moral work” of pushing new gun laws, and presumably the moral complacency of those who fail to see a way to make them happen. Gopnik’s essay is prompted by the suit a number of the Newtown families recently […]
Divisiveness Is the Only Constant in America’s Gun-Control Debate Read More
Sometimes I count the ways in which I am blessed, and one of them is that I get to wear jeans and a T-shirt to the office. I’m a writer, not a member of Congress, so the bar is low — anything better than fleece and I’m dressing for success. Still, I settled on my work uniform for the same
Powerful Women and Their ‘Uniforms’: What I’ve Learned Read More
One of the funniest items to wash up on the shores of my social-media beaches over the last week was the case of Bridget and her hostile Christmas cards. “Bridget,” one of four sisters, used to appear regularly on her parents’ traditional holiday card — well into adulthood. But then, according to the accounts I read, her siblings got married,
The Season for Social-Media Self-Loathing Read More
“We hold ourselves back in ways both big and small, by lacking self-confidence, by not raising our hands, and by pulling back when we should be leaning in.” So wrote Sheryl Sandberg in the book that has become an odd combination of girl-power mantra and explanation (even justification) for why there are still so few women at the highest echelons
Stop Blaming Women for Holding Themselves Back at Work Read More
For a precious, fleeting period in my adulthood, I had a walk-in closet. This was during what I think of as my Mary Tyler Moore years, a decade in which I was single and had a good job, which afforded me a roomy rental apartment in a great neighborhood. This apartment had antique-pine floorboards and a fireplace; the bedroom
How I Broke Up With My Clothes (and My Walk-in Closet) Read More
Like you, I suppose, I never gave My Little Pony very much thought, except to note it as a species of annoying plastic object that flows into our apartment with an invisible tide and then gets stuck there and never flows out. Assorted Little Ponies have found their way into the storage bins in our daughter’s room, and threads of
How My Little Pony Became a Cult for Grown Men and Preteen Girls Alike Read More
Brittany Maynard was just 29 on November 1, the day she took the prescription medicine that ended her life and cut short what promised to be an ugly battle with brain cancer. In the weeks leading up to that date, she had become an advocate for the right to suicide in the face of terminal illness — making videos explaining
Brittany Maynard and the Cult of the Ideal Death Read More
“This is really a man’s play,” observes Bishop Gene Robinson during the intermission of Kinky Boots. We are standing outside the Al Hirschfeld Theatre, and the bishop, natty in a bow tie, is smoking a Marlboro Light and slurping diet soda from a giant plastic souvenir cup. Yesterday, as we walked the High Line and then through Chelsea before settling,
262 Minutes With Gene Robinson, The First Openly Gay Bishop Read More
It’s hard to be the mother of a daughter, and just as hard to be the daughter of a mother — as every woman on the planet can attest. You want your daughter to be like you but not like you, and when she does (or doesn’t) meet your expectations of what an exactly-like-you-but-somehow-much-different-and-better version might be, it’s enraging.
If They Can Do It, So Can We: The Joy of Watching Gilmore Girls With My Daughter Read More
Futurist, pharma tycoon, satellite entrepreneur, philosopher. Martine Rothblatt, the highest-paid female executive in America, was born male. But that is far from the thing that defines her. Just ask her wife. Then ask the robot version of her wife. Only about 5 percent of the companies in the Fortune 500 are run by women; double the sample size, and the
The Trans-Everything CEO Read More