What do H&M, Zara, Primark, Topshop, and Forever 21 all have in common? Flashy advertisements and constant sales, sure. The latest fashions, of course. Cheap clothes, most definitely. But behind all the carefully curated racks of polyester-blended fabric lurks an industry that is hardly in style. These stores are major suppliers of fast fashion. Fast […]
Archives for October 2017
The Weinstein Scandal Is A Turning Point for Hollywood
Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein has produced films that appeal to every audience. From Pulp Fiction to Shakespeare in Love, Good Will Hunting to The Artist, Weinstein has helped create some of the most emotional, interesting, and powerful movies of this generation. Indeed, Weinstein has reportedly been thanked in Oscars acceptance speeches as many times as […]
Signing Off to Find @Me
“Now you’ve got to remember that YOU are the deal,” Patti Stanger preached (read: screeched) in my ear as I walked down Boylston Avenue on one of my many Sunday trips to Trader Joe’s. Living alone in Boston for the summer, podcasts had become my source of entertainment for those moments of boredom spent waiting […]
Burmese Rohingya Can’t Stay But Can’t Leave
Since late August, the Burmese government and its military forces have carried out a variety of coordinated attacks involving arson, rape, murder, and other abuses against the Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic minority who live predominantly in Myanmar’s western Rakhine State. The majority Buddhist nation views the more than one million Rohingyan men, women, and children […]
The Laziness of Typing #MeToo
#MeToo: two words, five letters. So what? This last week it has been impossible to scroll through Facebook newsfeeds, in particular, and not come across this hashtag or phrase time and time again. In the wake of the disgusting revelations about Harvey Weinstein and other prominent male figures using their positions of power to sexually […]
Mourning the Soul-Sucking of San Francisco
“Get to San Francisco,” Jack Kerouac wrote. “Get to San Francisco in defiance of your geography, your ancestry and the lonely change rattling sad excuses in your pocket.” For him, and for the generations after him, San Francisco was something mythic and untouched. A bohemian haven by the Pacific for artists and creators, a place […]
What Hulu Gets Wrong About “The Handmaid’s Tale”
In our first glimpse of June as a Handmaid—as Offred—she is sitting on the window-sill of a stark, sunlit room, wearing the distinctive red habit of the new class of women to which she belongs. Her eyes are closed, her hands are folded on her lap, and she is still. “My name is Offred. I […]
The Jones Act, Hurricane Maria, and the Politics of Disaster Relief
In the mid-seventeenth century, the English government began restricting colonial trade to England and mandating that English trade be carried out only in English vessels through the introduction of a law known as the Navigation Act of 1651. Less than one hundred years later, the Sons of Liberty destroyed an entire shipment of tea in […]
Baseball Has More Home Runs Than Ever—And Is Better For It
The Major League Baseball (MLB) playoffs are in full swing, which means we get a full dose of meaningless baseballisms. Pitching wins championships! Bunt the runner over! Grumble grumble CLUTCH grumble FUNDAMENTALS grumble grumble. For more than a century, these dictums have outlined the way to win important baseball games; a “smart” team will string […]
The Constitutional Crisis in Spain
The images circulating from Cataluña today are unnervingly reminiscent of another era. Not since the dissolution of Francisco Franco’s fascist state in the 1970s has Spain looked like this. Following orders from the central Spanish government in Madrid, hundreds of members of the Guardia Civil and Policía Nacional, helmeted and dressed in black riot gear, […]