by Aviv Rau and Calliope Wong As teenage girls and former consumers of alternative and feminist publications and blogs circulating the Internet today, we’ve noticed a disappointing trend of girls with pale skin, knobby knees, thigh gaps, and pastel hair being featured almost exclusively. In fact, the trends are so exclusive that they’ve turned us…
by Alice Wilder Mulaney Every single review of Fox’s Mulaney that I have read starts with the reviewer insisting that they really, really want to like the show. I say this because I want you to know that I know what I’m about to say is cliche: I want to like Mulaney. The main character…
by Maya Brown If you’re getting fed up with all the new TV shows starting this month that are as sexist and stereotypical as ever (more on this tomorrow!), maybe it’s time to take it back to some classics. Here is a list to help you out with my top 5 shows to watch on…
by Cori Fulcher I wanted to like Selfie. I liked the main actors and I like My Fair Lady. For a moment, I thought it was going to be a musical, and that made me very excited. The trailer made me cringe, but I brushed it off. Karen Gillan was playing a mean girl! John…
by Maya Brown Welcome to SPARK’s TV week! Fall means a whole new slew of TV shows and the return of some favorites. This week we’re going to do a roundup of what’s new, what’s bad, what’s coming back, and what we think is worth watching. Why? Because a lot of us have a lot…
by Calliope Wong I’m Calliope, pre-med English major at the University of Connecticut Honors Program. I’m also 5’8” and the daughter of Chinese immigrants from very different backgrounds, my mother from mainland Nanjing, my father from the once-British-colony Hong Kong. Looking at me, most people’s reaction is probably that I’m an awkward-turtle Nerd™—true!—and I make…
by Anya Josephs Thanks to SPARK’s generous friends at the Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Media, I was able to join SPARK Executive Director Dana Edell and Program Coordinator Melissa Campbell at the 2nd Global Symposium on Gender in the Media. This afternoon-long conversation featured speeches by Geena Davis and Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the Executive-Director…
by Celeste Montaño The increasingly-familiar sight of a white woman twerking and objectifying black women is back on your screens, this time brought to you by Taylor Swift. On August 18, Swift released a new music video for the single “Shake It Off” to coincide with the announcement of her “first official pop album.” As…