Skin, Bones, and Success: The Ballet Culture and Unrealistic Body Weight Expectations

Growing up, I was a ballet dancer. From the age of three years old until I graduated from high school, I would spend countless hours every week in my local studio perfecting my pirouettes and plies. My summers were spent completing intensive ballet programs with companies in Austin, Houston, and New York and the audition …

The “Queen Sacrifice”: It’s Just Business

Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit enraptured millions when it was released in late 2020. The show, named after a well-known chess opening move, follows the life of Beth Harmon, an orphaned chess prodigy. Though utterly brilliant and able to quickly rise through the ranks of the elite chess players, she finds herself constantly embattled by drug …

Care Ethics and Patriarchy: The Importance (and Burden) of Caregiving

Theories of morality have been at the forefront of humanity’s philosophical discourses for millennia. Throughout our history, we have developed a significant number of theories aimed at determining what is right and wrong, and how one should live with respect to that morality. While many of these theories were developed and discussed hundreds of years …

Menstrual Hygiene Equity in U.S. Women’s Prisons and Jails

Menstrual equity, or the understanding that to have an equitable society everyone who menstruates should have access to quality hygiene products that are safe and affordable, has been seriously overlooked. In the US, approximately two-thirds of low-income women struggle to afford menstrual products.[1] This issue could be partially addressed through the removal of the sales …

Waist Trainers and The Controversial Revival of the Corset

Beauty practices around the world rise and fall as time goes, each one meaning something different for women. The fall of corsets led to girdles, and then to Spanx; now, "waist trainers" are being promoted by popular celebrities across social media, leading to a revival of the corset in mainstream fashion under a different name.      …

The Forgotten Crisis: Rural American Women, Domestic Violence, and Murder

Country life is often romanticized as a serene and bucolic lifestyle, an embodiment of the American dream, but for many women in rural areas, this dream is a living nightmare. Every day in the United States, about three women will be murdered by an intimate partner[1] and countless women will experience domestic violence. Being from …

Can War Language Rhetoric During COVID-19 Help Elevate Women?

2020 is (finally) in our rearview mirror. As we prepare resolutions for the New Year, we might be reflecting on the “unprecedented times'' of the year past. Dominating the landscape of 2020 chaos was, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic. The coronavirus devastated economies at all levels, impacting individual family decisions as well as national policy, …

Writing a Woman: The Minefield of Breaking Down Gendered Stereotypes in Media

Women have been featured in entertainment media for centuries. When it comes to storytelling, I would be hard-pressed to find a story that didn’t feature women in some way.  However, in an age where representation is critical in the fight for equality, the problem does not lie in the amount of representation, but in the …

The First, But Not the Last: Kamala Harris is Breaking the Glass Ceiling

The first woman. The first Black woman. The first Asian woman. Every single person to hold the office of Vice President of the United States of America has been a white male—until now. On January 20th, 2021, Kamala Harris will shatter this glass ceiling by becoming the first African-American and Asian-American woman to step into …

Making a List and Checking it Twice: Tips for Managing Women’s Holiday Stress

I was recently watching one of my favorite holiday movies, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” and I was struck by a scene that I had overlooked in years past. In this scene Betty Lou Who cries out from the top of her roof while stringing her elaborate Christmas lights, “I can feel it Lou. This …