Featured
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Theses on Hating
Hating is underloved. It loses out to the more presentable avidities: desire, eagerness, delight. To be a hater is to be a joyless troll. Or so we’ve been told. But what if we understood hating as an enthusiasm in its own right? Over the summer, Avidly will occasionally transform into Rabidly to see what happens…
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Essays that we, as ladies of early middle age, would like to see written*
“Witty Meeting Comebacks that Indicate Your Displeasure While Concealing the (Professionally Discrediting) Whirling Dervish of Your Rage” “Throwing Money at Problems: A Justification” “Is This Sex Position Degrading or Just Uncomfortable?” “Age-Concealing Procedures: Talking to Someone While Pretending They Haven’t Had One, or, Injectables: Agreeing to Disagree” “Strangely Funny Moments in The House of…
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Come on, compadre. Come on!
There is absolutely nothing about Point Break that is not wonderful. Even the bad parts (there are no bad parts). You can watch this movie with anyone. Your brother. Your boyfriend. Your crappy ex-boyfriend. Your friends (all friends, over twenty years of your life). Your students. Maybe not your mother. But maybe your mother-in-law. The plot…
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Girls Feel Stranger Things, Too
As an eleven-year old-girl growing up in the 1980s, I was sure I was some variety of previously unclassified monster. I had a million words at my command, but still couldn’t make adults understand me. I stared in the mirror wondering if I was pretty and good, and also wondering why I cared. I felt,…
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These Bodies’ Work
I had no plans to watch the gymnastics competition in Rio, but when you keep hearing, she’s the best gymnast in history, you tune in. I am referring, of course, to Simone Biles, the 19-year old virtuoso from Texas, winner of the all-around gold medal and innovator of the most difficult tumbling pass performed by…
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Grieving in Public
It’s been a couple weeks and the news cycle has moved on, but I can’t get Ghazala Khan’s face out of my mind. Her mouth is a shimmering perfection, neither smiling nor frowning. Her frameless glasses magnify her eyes, and her dark eyebrows float above them. Her pink cheeks have no sharp angles. Her blue…
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Satirical Flights
On Monday night, Michelle Obama painted a picture of America’s political foundations that many still try to paper over. “I wake up every day in a house built by slaves,” she described with emotion, offering an insight into the intertwined histories of White supremacy and Black labor, which are both symbolized and made material fact…
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The Top 10 Fag Hags of Henry James: A Definitive Ranking
Henry James numbers among the nineteenth-century’s leading dinner party guests and, not coincidentally, its worst playwrights. Had he been born in the late twentieth century, he would undoubtedly be the most popular recurring gay on The Barefoot Contessa’s cooking show, but instead he had the great misfortune to be born in the dark days of…
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Key Limes: Amy
It’s a complete cliché for a lesbian to claim Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women as a key text in her self-understanding and relationship to the world. After all, who was Jo but our tomboy self, our “behind the mask” self, our struggle against normative femininity? Then, too, it’s a sign of self-misunderstanding to identify with…
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No One Likes Meg
Literally no one’s favorite “little woman” is Meg. This is because Meg is the most womanly of the little women, and no one actually likes women. Meg is mom jeans. Meg is minivans. Meg is Hillary Clinton. Put differently, Meg is the little woman who was most responsible for following the rules, and also the…
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The Thing About Beth
I have read and taught Little Women more times than I can count. I’d be lying if I said that it always surprises me when I read it again. It almost never surprises me. It’s one of the novels I know best, and there is not a line in it that I don’t remember encountering…