“But They Were Nice… So Why Did I Hate Dance Class?” On Being Fat and Feeling Safe October 3, 2018 by Gillian Brown 3 Comments Ever since I was in senior high school, I wanted to learn how to dance. I’d done a bit of dancing as a kid, but it was not until I was about eighteen that I got truly bitten by the dancing bug. And while many of the other things I was obsessed with back then have failed to keep my interest, my enthusiasm for dancing has never wavered. I think that, more than anything, … [Read more...]
From Brandy and Ballet to Black Studies: How I Arrived at Black Feminism July 15, 2018 by Kristin Denise Rowe Leave a Comment As a child, Brandy Rayana Norwood — simply known as “Brandy” to most people — was my favorite entertainer. I saw bits of myself in her, and in her headstrong, smart, but sometimes overzealous TV character counterpart, Moesha Mitchell. Brandy was everything a young girl is raised to want to be: beautiful, an actress, a singer, and a model. She was even Cinderella, for crying … [Read more...]
How A “Special” Dance Class Helped Me Find My Beauty July 15, 2018 by Cara Liebowitz Leave a Comment Confession time: even though I shout disability pride and loving your body from the rooftops to anyone who cares to listen, I still have a certain amount of hatred for my legs. I have cerebral palsy, which means my legs have a particular golf-club-like quality to them. Long, rigid legs end in an ankle that doesn’t really move and a foot that resembles a plank of wood. My toes … [Read more...]
