One of the opening scenes in Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó's new film White God is every child's worst nightmare: a pack of 250 wild dogs, jowls quivering and spit flying, tear-ass after a young girl frantically pedaling her bicycle down an empty street. The moment is a perfect symbol for the film itself: beautiful, frightening, and more than a little surreal.
Read MoreIs Gender-Neutral Clothing the Future of Fashion?
In London last week, Selfridges, the British department store, opened Agender, a three-story pop-up shop devoted to gender-neutral clothing. Billed as “a fashion exploration of the masculine, the feminine and the interplay—or the blur—found in between” and featuring more than 40 brands, Agender is an unprecedented investment by a major retailer in the idea of androgyny. But is it simply a seasonal marketing gimmick? Or does it represent a new element of the fashion industry’s future?
Read MoreThe Failure of Male Societies: Author Andrew Smith Tackles Monsters and Sex
eleven is where Smith's books begin. In Grasshopper Jungle, an Iowa teenager's joyful sexual confusion plays out against an apocalyptic backdrop of man-made super insects that hatch from the bodies of the boys who beat him up. In Smith's new novel, The Alex Crow, a young Syrian refugee finds himself the newly adopted son of a deranged (though well-intentioned) scientist who works on reanimating dead species for the US government to use as living spies. Then the kid goes to summer camp. Smith's books are like that: zany without being whimsical, of-this-world without being limited by its conventions.
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Photo by Rachel Stern - http://www.msrachelstern.com/
Queen Sabrina, Flawless Mother
I quickly discovered two things. First, that Flawless was alive and kicking it on 72nd Street, right off Central Park, where she'd been since the late sixties. And second, that she wended through the last fifty years of American history like a queer Forrest Gump, touching Edie Sedgwick and William Burroughs, Bobby Kennedy and Jackie O., L.A. in the 70s, Paris in the 80s, and New York always and forever. It wasn't she who needed the archive, I realized, but rather, we who needed an archive devoted to her: the poor Jewish kid from "coal dust South Philly" whose legacy was as important as it was invisible.
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How Auntie Mame changed my life
My grandma loved me as much as anyone ever has or will, but she was raised in rural, religious Ireland, a country so theocratic that she had no birth certificate, just baptismal records. I was her kin, but when I caught her worried glances in the mirror, I knew she was trying to understand the thing that neither of us could say.
Read MoreCan Gay Students Survive at a Christian College?
Last week, however, Erskine and its two gay volleyball players bounced back into the news. On Feb. 20, Erskine issued a “Statement on Human Sexuality” that read, in part: “Sexual relations…between persons of the same sex are spoken of in scripture as sin and contrary to the will of the Creator.” The statement ended ominously: “Members of the Erskine community are expected to follow the teachings of scripture concerning matters of human sexuality and institutional decisions will be made in light of this position.
Read MoreHow LGBT Youths Survive the Streets
A groundbreaking report released Tuesday documents the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youths in New York City’s commercial sex trade. It delivers a portrait of youth sex work that’s more complicated than the popular narrative of “girls working under pimps.”
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Not Here to Make Friends: How 'Survivor' Invented the Reality Show Villain
From The Apprentice's Omarosa to Big Brother's Evil Dick, reality TV loves a villain. In fact, the reality villain is now so common it's easy to forget there was a time before this trope took over our televisions. But much like Project Runway taught us about "silhouettes" and Top Chef gave us "flavor profiles," Survivor showed us how to recognize "the villain."
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