Robin McKinley wrote an adaptation of that fairytale (‘Deerskin’), complete with father/daughter rape scene. It sometimes turns up in the children’s section of my local Barnes and Noble, and I wince every time I see it.

Yeah, I have REAL PROBLEMS with Jill Stein’s plan to eliminate all student loan debt. Setting aside the question of how we’d pay for it (which is a pretty huge thing to set aside), I don’t like any plan that offers such grossly lopsided benefits. If you willfully borrowed $100K to pay for all of your school expenses,…

Yeah, I find this comparison mystifying. Megan Rapinoe is a 31-year-old athlete from a marginalized sport who has just come off a long-term injury. Her salary and endorsements are undoubtedly a small fraction of what Kapernick earns, and her future prospects are limited. Why on earth would that make her decision to…

Try Kiehl’s Ultra Facial Moisturizer with SPF 30. It’s expensive, but you can get a sample to try first. Also, be careful to get the stuff with sunscreen, because their stuff without SPF looks EXACTLY THE SAME, and that is way too much money to waste.

Yeah, this entire exchange is like when my kid tells me he has a sore throat, the night before a test I KNOW he hasn’t studied for. Both he (and Trump) are painfully obviously laying the groundwork for trying to weasel out of school/the national debates in the immediate future. The difference, of course, is my kid is…

I thought of Tadashi Shoji, too. Mostly because the only reason I even know his NAME is because of the dresses he designed for Octavia Spencer. Seriously, what a missed opportunity for the designers who turned her down: Leslie Jones is eye-catching, taking part it what will hopefully be a massively successful movie,…

I don’t know what Texas’s college admissions packets look like, but I’ve helped high school students in Washington with many a college-application essay. Many schools here have a section in their applications that says “Describe an experience in your life during which you experienced hardship or discrimination.” This…

I give to one charity per day between Christmas and New Year’s. Last year it ranged from the Malala Fund to Engineers Without Borders. I mention this because if you want to write these donations off on your taxes, it’s useful to have all of the related emails/receipts/bank transactions happen at once... at least, if…

It can be disturbingly easy to self-segregate based on geography. I grew up in Lacey, a small but highly diverse city in Washington State, where my high school was less than 30% Caucasian. My friend who went to high school in Olympia (which is maybe 10 minutes away) had literally THREE minority students in her…

Uh, I don’t think this is a very accurate description of any of Jane Austen’s characters. Kitty and Lydia might have stupid goals (read: chasing after unsuitable men), but they have ‘em. Mary is a plain girl who has attempted to distinguish herself through a pedantic obsession with virtue and accomplishment—people…

Yeah, but I hope she LISTENS to her critics, rather than just crossing off another item on her “Look how electable I am!” to-do list. I absolutely believe that Hillary has dealt with decades of vitriolic sexism, but I worry that her need to ignore the crazies has meant that she tunes out quite a bit of justifiable,…

That was actually my biggest concern about Obama in 2008—that people were expecting him to do SO MUCH. (I spent that entire election cycle grumpily telling people: “Um, he’s not Santa.”) I’m reluctant to get over-excited about Bernie in this election due to the same concerns: could he actually deliver on his promises?…

That episode of MST3K is my son’s favorite episode... of any show. Ever.

I managed to hold back until I was deposited in an emergency room waiting area. Which actually worked in my favor: they were overcrowded, but when you start throwing up like an off-brand Linda Blair you get placed into a quiet, private room a LOT faster.

I have benign positional vertigo, and the first time I had an attack my family ended up calling for an ambulance (none of us knew what was happening). The medic who showed up was wearing cologne. I had to ask him—as politely as possible—to move away, because I was already fighting a losing battle against vomiting like…

Yeah, I hate games that end in PKs. I know they have to end games somehow, but I find myself wishing (for the sake of my own stress level) that open play could just go on for however long it takes. Like Quidditch!

That was legitimately the most stressful soccer game (as a US fan) I have ever watched in my life. And I’m the kind of fan who has to pace nervously while watching the last 10 minutes of even non-essential matches.

My aunt runs a nonprofit that benefits underprivileged schoolkids. She gets massive donations of L. Ron Hubbard books every year—presumably because Scientologists are required to spread the word of L. Ron as far as possible. The books are unreadable (and totally, 100% unsuitable for a kids’ book drive), but they would…

Well, thanks to my mother (who keeps track of various Scientology lawsuits as part of the world’s weirdest hobby), I now know that L. Ron Hubbard denied his second marriage ever existed, so at least Miscavige would be in the Scientology version of good company:

I’d prefer they be postage-stamp-free, too, but to be fair: you have your ballot for WEEKS. Usually, you’re near a drop-off site at some point during that time.