Ha, true. I just get very defensive of my own hair, which is very curly, and kind of stands up straight when it’s short (but omg do I love having short hair). I am fully aware that these experiences have none of the same weight that they do for black women, but I have had sooo many people touch my hair without asking,…

Um, all for using a term better than “Jew-fro,” but can you not refer to Jewish hair as “unkempt”? “Unkempt” sounds like “if you don’t straighten your hair, it’s wrong.”

Yo, is that last question serious? You mean the country that managed to colonize a large chunk of Africa? You mean the country responsible for Haiti’s problems b/c they deigned to fight their colonizers? That France?

1. The preferred term is locks, not dreads.

Honestly, I’ve always done just fine with a wooden bedpost and a pocketknife.

Great. All the past relationships I have that are worth obsessing over predate Facebook. Thanks for nothing, technology.

I don’t think the book is problematic. I think it is a very smart book written about problematic characters who live in a problematic culture- but I don’t think the book itself is problematic. I think it is sometimes misread, but I think more generally what has happened is that most people think they remember the book…

True. I knew about Americans not getting a lot of vacations. As a European, travelling can be quite cheap. There are low-cost companies and in less than two hours by plane/train/bus, I’m in a different country. It’s much cheaper faster for us to travel than it is for you guys. Also more vacations and no passport…

This would have been beneficial had the author instead focused on the prohibitive issues Americans face with international travel. As an American who freelances and loves to travel to other countries, I’ll be the first to defend Americans without passports. Full-time workers here have far fewer vacation days than most…

I don’t think anyone has ever celebrated a white person’s corn rows, ever (minus the one white person who is wearing them and whatever lady on the beach in Barbados that sold him/her on the idea).

Thank you for this. I enjoy traveling leisurely but I’m sick of the narrative that you’re only interesting and exciting if you travel extensively. My greatest joy and excitement comes from my career, which tends to keep me in one place, but still feels like an exploration.

“Affordable” is such a relative term, I hate when people throw it around.

I was at a party where a woman had just returned from India and said “It was inspiring because they’re poor, but they’re so joyous in their poverty.” I didn’t slap her but I wanted to.

Here’s a tip: If you are in your 20’s and are SO JEALOUS (obligatory *eyeroll* from said child) that I get to travel as widely and frequently as I do, remember that I never had the luxury or privilege until I was well into my 40’s, established in a career with plenty of PTO and a generous bonus program. I fucking…

Yeah, I have some friends for whom traveling is a lifestyle. They don't put down roots. They don't have money. They just scrape together their pennies and work their way around the planet. Not sure what they will do when they get old, but that's not really my business. :P Anyways, if that's your whole life, I can't…

Reading this article and others, plus all the comments have brought me out of lurker land for the first time. I was 14 in 1972 and I was raped. I didn’t realize I was raped because at that time, people considered rape to only be when someone jumps out of the bushes and attacks you. I was a virgin, had kissed one guy,…

Name-dropping and place-dropping just isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, according to what my friend Vince Vaughn told me when I ran into him in Barcelona.

I was at a wedding many years ago - we were friends of groom who grew up with my husband in a really rural, very poor area. The bride was from a well-off family, had gone to two Ivy League schools, and all of her friends where from that world. They all spent a lot of time and money traveling and loved talking about…

what the heck is going on here