As more and more celebrities feel comfortable coming out to the public, people have had to find new and different ways to make their discomfort around it more acceptable. Rather than outwardly saying they do not want their favorite celebrities to end up being queer, they simply believe that it…

As someone who spent their middle school years scrolling on Tumblr, I am no stranger to the aesthetic of the “Sad Girl.” In 2011–2012, the Sad Girl ruled Tumblr. The Sad Girl was a waif-like figure with bad taste in men who spent most of her time either dwelling on…

Taylor Swift’s album Speak Now has long been thought of by fans as a whimsical fairytale. From the cover, showing her spinning in a sparkly ball gown, to the track “Enchanted,” a song that sounds straight out of Cinderella, the initial perception makes sense. But, when really listening to Speak…

The morning after the Uvalde shooting, I was driving into school wondering which parts of the evacuation plan to remind students of. Should I let them know the best hiding spots, in case a student planning to act out their own violence is in the room? How intense should I…

Throughout history, men have depended on women to tell on each other and keep each other in line. I think often of the young women who set off and kept the Salem witch trials going, probably knowing that their claims were entirely fictitious yet holding to them anyway. By the…

Whenever something invents a genre or revitalizes an existing genre, it is lumped in with the lower-quality copycats that come after it. In the early 2010s, when dystopian fiction was everywhere in the Young Adult section, The Hunger Games was often spoken of and complained about in the same breath…

The day before Midnights, Taylor Swift’s tenth album, was set to release, news of a leak spread through social media. Quickly, the consensus between both fans and casual listeners alike seemed to be that the 70’s rock album the aesthetic promised was not going to come. Instead, what was released…

Women from Emily Bronte to Taylor Swift have lamented about the loss of the wildness of their childhood. In a society with rigid beliefs about gender and its presentation, girlhood is the last time in a woman’s life that she is not seen as a capital-w Woman and is allowed…

Abbott Elementary is the first show that has ever made me cry in its pilot episode. And for being a comedy, that is an even more difficult feat to accomplish. In the pilot episode of Abbott Elementary, the show introduces Janine Teagues, a second year teacher at an underfunded school…