“I’m not getting married at 23.”
Hearing this, my perpetually obedient sister looked to our mother, awaiting her response. The kitchen, a historically feminine domain, was no place to make such declarative statements, but I didn’t care. I have always known what I wanted out of life, and it didn’t include getting hitched before I obtained my medical degree. But as my mother calmly shut down that conversation, I realized we would never agree on the role of women in modern society. So within this concoction of differing perspectives lies my belief that women deserve equality, but men are not entirely to blame for societal inequities. While recognizing the dualities of feminism and toxic masculinity, I pen this love letter to those of us who are in the middle.…
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(Contains major spoilers for the finale of Big Little Lies)
Let’s talk about Audrey.
Specifically, let’s talk about the quartet of riotous, righteous Audreys who come to the defense of their fellow embattled, battered Audrey in the finale of Big Little Lies.
I just re-‐watched the climactic scene on the back terrace, and upon second viewing, it is so much more. A fight plays out at the top of those treacherous stairs, during which all the Audreys—those quintessential, classic icons of delicate femininity—are transformed into a shield, a battalion protecting one of their own against a cruel, unjust patriarchy.
Who are the Audreys? On the surface, they are characters attending a themed “Elvis and Audrey” costume party. But why these five Audreys? My lovely sister is an acclaimed costume designer, J.R.…
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“Mere, pere, și bretele,” went the old Romanian joke, which loses all its rhyming wordplay in English: “apples, pears, and suspenders.” This was my first exposure to the indignities of female body image, and it came not, as you might imagine, from my mother, but from my dad. A recognized world-class curmudgeon, my father never even tried to reign in his colorful expressions to shelter the budding sensibilities of his daughter and only child. He would repeat this joke with glee, ignoring my mother’s frowns; I would giggle blithely.
If you haven’t realized already, the joke refers to the physical state of a woman’s breasts through life: in her youth, firm apples standing proud on her chest; in her middle age, pears tugged by gravity earthwards; and finally, in late life, suspenders that have entirely given up their shape and the fight with gravity.…
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Sarah-Jean Krahn is the Managing Editor of feminist writing journal S/tick and holds an MA in Cultural Studies and Critical Theory from McMaster University. Her writing appears in various anthologies and journals, including Berkeley Poetry Review and Feminist Studies, and she was recently nominated for a Pushcart.
Please describe your website and your duties as editor/writer.
I like to think of S/tick as an ever-growing creative collaborative community of feminist writers and artists. In keeping with our mission to publish things that are difficult to say or hard to find a home for, we strive to share as many feminist voices as possible by currently publishing 50%+ of the submissions we receive. To some degree, S/tick snags the poems and stories that have been relegated to an eternal time-out, castigated as too complain-y, too feminist, too real.…
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