It is heartwarming to see an aunt and niece duo working together to co-write a book for women across the country to read. Except when it is Suzanne Venker and Phyllis Schlafly’s new polemic, The Flipside of Feminism. Then it is less heartwarming and more vomit inducing. The subtitle, What Conservative Women Know, and Men Can’t Say, gives you an idea of the kind of tone Venker and Schlafly adopt in their prose. A somewhat conspiracy-theorist attitude, they call out “the feminist elite” (wait, we have...

Coming up this June 16th, Best Coast and Those Darlins will be playing a Planned Parenthood of New York City Action Fund benefit! Now only are we big fans of both bands over here at BUST, this is a cause that has been and stays near and dear our hearts. Personally, when my insurance decided not to cover birth control unless for medical reasons (versus my “crazy and wild” sex life), Planned Parenthood was there to provide birth control I could afford. That’s just one...

The first time I saw a screening of the new Judd Apatow/Kristin Wiig vehicle Bridesmaids, I felt like I was watching an experimental film. I'm not talking Maya Deren or Chantal Ackerman, of course. But the fact is, Bridesmaids is an experiment, intended to answer the question: what would happen if Judd Apatow made a movie for women? What would happen if the guy who's built a career on making movies that examine the adult/adolescent male psyche—its  beliefs, sexual desires, sense of humor, and nameless...

Growing up I was shy and awkward. Okay, maybe I’m still a little shy and awkward but my point is that I didn’t always have the confidence to stand up for myself. But a major source of confidence and esteem building for me came from my involvement in Girl Guides (the Canadian version of Girl Scouts). Taking that lesson to heart, two amazing young ladies in Girl Scouts are standing up for what they believe in. Ann Arbor’s Rhiannon Tomtishen and Madison Vorva were working on...

  Today is a day to celebrate Mexican heritage, and pride. So when you're swigging down tequila and Tecate remember what you're imbibing for! Take for example, a woman I greatly admire, Frida Kahlo. This senorita had it going on. She was a radical woman, who's amazing self portraits touched on deeply personal experiences. Frida painted about her marriage, her miscarriages, her painful surgeries and health problems. Her work is celebrated by feminists for its uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form. Frida has been described as "One...

Whenever a movie with a girl protagonist comes out, I try to see it. Usually, I get excited that it might be good/actually about an adolescent girl, and come home pissed off, or, at best underwhelmed. In the past few years, it has become almost a trend to have little girls as the unlikely focus of a film (Note the tagline in the poster above: "Young. Sweet. Innocent. Deadly.") Sometimes the young girl's innocence serves as a foil to her crazy, violent surroundings a la...

DocuClub presents Tecapi Kin: Young Lakota, a political and emotional coming-of-age film by Marion Lipschutz and Rose Rosenblatt. The film takes the audience to the small town of South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation. It is there that Sunny Clifford, her twin sister Serena and their neighbor Brandon discover the principles of women’s rights when Cecelia Fire Thunder, their tribal president, defies a South Dakota ban on abortion with a threat to build a clinic on the sovereign territory of the reservation. When this stand gives Fire Thunder’s...

A new study from The London School of Economics and Political Science claims that plus-size models will increase obesity in the United States and Europe. Authors, Dr. Davide Dagone and Dr. Laura Savorelli, write that, “Given that people are on average overweight, we conclude (that using larger models) may foster the obesity epidemic.” In a weird way, I understand where their logic came from. Yes, Obesity is a problem in the U.S. and if plus-size becomes the normal standard of beauty, anything over becomes more “ok”...

  Are you a slut? What do you think constitutes a woman as such? Is it what she wears? Is it how she carries herself? Does it justify rape? The fact of the matter is, nothing justifies rape. Nothing justifies excuses for sexual assault. Nothing justifies blame to be placed on those who are victimized. In Toronto, back in January a “slut march” was held in reaction to comments made by a Toronto Police Department officer in regards to student safety.    The officer stated that "women should...

  Since its earliest models dating all the way back to 1880’s the history of the vibrator is one steeped in controversial issues and uncomfortable conversations. Where women were shunned for wanting to embrace their female sexuality and freely talking about sex is frowned upon. The American public is beginning to usher in a new age of sexual liberation even greater than that of the sixties. Once upon a time, vibrators and other sex toys were only sold and possibly even talked about in dimly...