I’ve been backsliding y’all. I mean really backsliding. I act like I forgot how feminism saved me, way back when. The way it taught me how to listen more closely to the music that moved me.  The way it stopped me from saying things like “I don’t really hang out with girls because they’re too catty” and appreciate sisterhood.  The way it showed me the intersections of my black face, my gendered body, and my poor status.  The way it beautifully awakened my consciousness. I forgot about my feminist rebirth. In the beginning, my new born-again identity caused me to …Read more »

Dolls and doll-play have been a long-standing point of entry into discussions about the social construction of race and gender. My mother and grandmother certainly invested in all of the latest doll trends of the 1980s when I was a child—I had Cabbage Patch, Kid Sister (though he’d deny it, my cousin Chad had a My Buddy doll and lots of masculine “action figures”),  Black Barbie, anatomically correct newborn twins,  and the coveted Betsey Wetsey, which peed all over my bestfriend Amanda’s bedspread at a sleepover. In my Intro to Women’s Studies classes, pointing to the gendered implications of toy choice—i.e. …Read more »

This morning, 12,000 fans, some of whom had camped out since Wednesday, showed up to watch Chris Brown perform tracks from his latest album F.A.M.E. (Fans Are My Everything) on The Today Show’s Summer Concert Series. The multi-racial crowd was filled with young women in their late teens and early twenties, but by far, from a cursory look at my television screen, most of the screaming cohort appeared to be young women of color. Yes, this is troubling. And yes, I know it troubles many of you that we continue to talk about C. Breezy over here at the CFC. …Read more »

Dominique Strauss-Kahn made some more headlines this week – and so did the woman who has accused him of rape. Much has been said about him and about her already. Reporters have noted his aspirations to become the socialist candidate for the French Presidency and others have reported on the character of the housekeeper at the Sofitel who has accused DSK of assaulting her, which has changed over the course of the investigation. Many have also cast aspersions on the legitimacy of the case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK). The majority of these aspersions are based on attacking the credibility of …Read more »