Tag: little girl
Two Diverging Approaches to Social Justice
“The problem with this dilemma you pose is that it takes a great deal of ‘wisdom’ to know when to apply either approach,” one reader argues.
Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Last week, I asked what you
How Humanism Can Save the World
One evening not long ago, I was doomscrolling on social media, wading through the detritus of our present moment: Videos of terrorists in Israel decapitating a man with a garden hoe. A clip of Donald Trump being cruel and narcissistic. Footage of mobs physically assaulting some lone stranger they disagree with, pummeling him as he lies prone on the ground.
These are all products of the rising tide of dehumanization that has swept across the world. The famous dates
The Kamala Harris Problem – The Atlantic
This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.
On a Thursday morning in April, I met with Vice President Kamala Harris at Number One Observatory Circle, the Victorian mansion that, for the past two and a half years, she and the second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, have called home. She can be a striking presence when
Barbie Understands Mother-Daughter Relationships – The Atlantic
When I was a little girl, I played with Barbie for the most basic reason you can imagine: She was so pretty. The cute outfits, the shiny blond hair, and all the fun she would have going around, looking like that. When I went to see the Barbie movie years later, as a grown woman, I had no doubt that the film was going to tackle the obvious issues related to how Barbie is seen: the impact that her
Greta Gerwig’s Lessons From Barbie Land
This article contains spoilers for the film Barbie.
As soon as I asked a question about Ken, my call with Greta Gerwig dropped. When the writer-director of Barbie returned, she had no idea what happened. I suggested that of course merely mentioning Ken—the pining and overlooked doll played by Ryan Gosling—would cause a failure of some sort. Gerwig agreed. “The world was like, I don’t care,” she joked.
But the world cares very much about the movie he’s
Too Wild to Love – The Atlantic
This article was originally published by Texas Highways.
Like most everything concerning Texas, leaving the place is too vast a thing to comprehend all at once. I was standing at my kitchen window in New England the day I finally realized I had left the state, some dozen years after my departure. My mother had called to say she and my father had packed their things, pulled up stakes in Fort Worth, and set out for their new home
13 Reader Views on Dysfunction
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Last week, I asked readers to opine on the dysfunction that they see in the world, or to spotlight something that works well, even though, as John Gall writes in The Systems Bible, we owe sympathy to “anyone who
The Atlantic Presents: Shorter Stories
In a lecture written shortly before his death, the Italian writer Italo Calvino extolled the virtues of lightness in literature. After decades of writing stories, novels, and essays, he had reached a realization: “My method has more often than not involved the subtraction of weight.” Life is heavy, and the writerly task of conveying its truths can be equally weighty. Calvino has chosen not to represent the world in all its overwhelming detail, arguing that the task often inhibits the … Read more
‘Under the Banner of Heaven’ Is a Failure of Representation
Give this to Under the Banner of Heaven, the buzzy true-crime miniseries that recently concluded its run on FX and Hulu: It wastes little time in getting to the point. Minutes into the first episode, Detective Jeb Pyre is interviewing Allen Lafferty in a Utah jail cell. Allen’s wife and daughter have just been brutally murdered by fundamentalist Mormon zealots, and in his grief and anger he unloads on the well-meaning Latter-day Saint detective.
“If you really still believe
Dad Rage and the Modern Father’s Identity Crisis
For dads, 2015 was a clarifying year. A glorifying year. Fatherly.com—a website described in The New York Times as a father-focused mashup of Vice and BuzzFeed—came online in April with a plan to serve men at the most “blindly inquisitive and acquisitive moment of their lives.” Celebrities were getting in on daddy culture, too. Ashton Kutcher pushed his audience of millions to agitate for diaper-changing stations in men’s rooms. Jimmy Fallon came out with a best-selling, father-forward picture