First and foremost, I consider myself a storyteller. And I'm endlessly fascinated with people, with what they do and why... and how they feel about it. Which means I'm interested in romance fiction. I was drawn to it, as both a reader and a writer, a...
It's kind of a mysterious process, but something will catch my attention, and I'll make a note about it. I may even write a few pages about it, and then I'll put it aside, but I'll sort of keep it in mind. Then as time goes on, other things will gath...
As children, we looked up to our maids and our nannies, who were playing in some ways the role of our mothers. They were paid to be nice to us, to look after us, teach us things and take time out of their day to be with us. As a child you think of th...
We exist in this weirdly schizo culture, where sex is everywhere in the media, and yet, at the same time, you don't sit down and have a conversation about what you did in bed last night with your friends. Despite the ubiquity of sex, it's still a tab...
When I found out I had to take off my shirt in 'Teen' movie, I panicked and hit the gym. I was like, 'It's going to be on film, documented, for my children to see. I can't be 140 pounds. I need to put on a little bit of muscle.'
There's a theory about fame: the moment it strikes, it arrests development. Michael Jackson remained suspended in childhood, enjoying sleepovers and funfairs; Winona Ryder, an errant teen who dabbled in shoplifting and experimented with pills; George...
Sheryl Yoast: In Virginia, high school football is a way of life, it's bigger than Christmas day. My daddy coached in Alexandria, he worked so hard my momma left him, but I stayed with coach, he needed me on that field.
Ironically, it is when we identify with our spirits rather than our bodies that we are most powerful on the material plane. Our overidentification with the world does not give us power within the world so much as it diminishes our power here. It make...
Mehmet Ertegun died in 1944. President Roosevelt sent his body back to Turkey on the U.S.S. Missouri. Mehmet Ertegun and President Roosevelt had had a cordial relationship, and, indeed, Mehmet Ertegun may have helped insure that Turkey did not ally i...
I don't feel there's a difference between the real world and the fairy-tale world. They contain psychological truths and, I guess, projections of what the culture that tells them thinks about various things: men, women, aging, dying - the most basic ...
I grew up in southwestern Virginia. I was born in South Carolina, but only because my parents had a vacation cabin or something there on the beach. I was like a summer baby. But I did grow up in the South. I grew up in serious, serious Appalachia, in...
People ask me a lot, 'Well, can you be pro-life and be feminist? Can you be conservative and be feminist?' And I think that, yeah, maybe personally you can be those things. But I think if you're advocating for legislation, or if you're fighting to li...
I grew up in Long Island City. When I was growing up, my parents owned a women's clothing store in Queens. It was for older women. I got my bras there, until I realized I didn't want those huge, taupe bras. Everything was beige, with massive amounts ...
There have been women who stumbled across Feministing randomly, through a bizarre Google search or something, and had no idea what feminism was. They thought it was something older women do, or bought into the hairy bra-burning man-hating stereotype ...
I have never been more proud of the United States than I am this year. We have elected an African-American president. We have the stellar Michelle Obama setting the standard for American women. I simply cannot say it enough: look how far we've come.
In 2004, Kucinich was the only presidential candidate who warned that a war in Iraq would be completely disastrous. I remember how mocked he was when he predicted hand-to-hand combat in Baghdad. I remember Candy Crowley, and other reporters as well, ...
Art is a sense of magic.
I have no one style.
I have such an image of a mafioso.
That was something. As opposed to nothing.
The hippy movement was a failure.
