By Paige Smith Orloff
ACCORDING TO THE Harvard Business Review, more women are managing, in their words, to actually “have it all.” Maybe I missed the memo, but I thought we had all agreed to agree that having it all is actually impossible. Here’s why.
From the category archives:
Race and Feminism
By Anastasia Smith
EW, WHY DOES Sex and the City keep betraying their awesome roots by making horrible movies that involve living happily ever after whilst traveling to foreign lands? (Did you see the first movie? Will you see this one?) Despite its annoyingly shameless focus on consumerism, I used to love watching the show. In the early seasons especially, the writing was fresh and funny–the female friendships, complex and compelling. But with this new movie coming out, I’ve been inspired to do some critical thinking (and reading) on the show’s ever-controversial relationship to feminism. Here goes–and I’d love if you’d weigh in with your own thoughts after reading mine.
ON APRIL SIXTH, 1916, suffragists Nell Richardson and Alice Burke left New York to drum up support for voting rights for women. Accompanied by their kitten name Saxon, they drove west to California as a moving symbol of women’s rights (above). Come join our Sister Marion in celebration.
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W HAT GOT ME STARTED LOOKING AT GEISHA PHOTOS, I do not know, but I suppose that all this sister talk on TSP has me seeing sisterhoods everywhere. When I first discovered the breathtaking vintage-photo collection of Rob Oechsle, or Okinawa_Soba as he is called on Flickr, including many images of geisha, I knew that without question the women depicted were a sisterhood: “the solidarity of women based on shared conditions, experiences, or concerns,” as defined by Merriam-Webster. Yes, the geisha definitely qualify on all fronts. See a geisha slideshow in vintage photos.
WE ARE SAD TO LEARN OF THE DEATH OF LUCILLE CLIFTON, an American treasure, a prolific poet and author, and a recipient of just about every major poetry award or fellowship we can think of. Some months back TSP’s Sister Paige posted Clifton’s poem “sisters,” saying it “just made me want to cry, dance and sing.” Let’s cry, dance and sing today for the loss of Clifton, 73, by reading it aloud: [click to continue…]
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SISTER ANASTASIA HAS BEEN DIGGING THROUGH the vintage advertising hall of shame again; proceed at your own risk.
W E LOVE IT WHEN readers, unprompted, send emails or leave comments about the ways they’re celebrating sisterhood, of any stripe, in their own lives. The communication we got from reader Laela last week was particularly exciting, as it combined three things we absolutely love: cinema, sisterhood, and doing something for women in need. Find out how here from Sister Paige.
SISTER PAIGE DISCOVERED THIS POEM by Lucille Clifton, on a recent afternoon spent soaking in literature procrastinating at the incredible Academy of American Poets website, poetry.org. It’s a poem that makes Paige want to cry, laugh and sing. Read it now and join in her emotion.
ONE OF SISTER ANASTASIA’S FAVORITE comediennes of all time, Sarah Haskins, sheds some light on the advertising industry’s obsession with your lady friends, in this rerun episode of “Target Women.” Classic.
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EARLIER THIS SUMMER, Sister Anastasia was quite disappointed to hear many young women call in to the morning show on her local NPR station saying they didn’t call themselves feminists simply because they hated the word “feminism.” It made them uncomfortable. If she could find those women, she’d show them this lovely graphic representation of a Kate Nash quotation…click to see the whole beautiful thing.
By Paige Smith Orloff
http://www.vimeo.com/4789307UNTIL A FEW YEARS AGO, I’d never heard of Gertrude Berg, and I suspect I’ve got company in my ignorance. Aviva Kempner’s new documentary, Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg, aims to restore Gertrude Berg to her rightful fame; after all, Berg created and starred in the first character-driven situation comedy on American television, The Goldbergs. [click to continue…]
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I DON’T KNOW WHAT BROUGHT ME TO RENT Brick Lane, the story of Nazneen, a Bangladeshi girl separated from her sister and sent to London to face an arranged marriage with a man twice her age, and to face years of longing for her sibling. I cannot recommend it more highly, but to be clear, it was not some sad tale of loss and more loss, but full of surprises. Like these: [click to continue…]
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Lindsay Keating-Moore's Feminist Montage Dress
P UTTING TOGETHER LAST week’s musing on the Brontë sisters, I stumbled upon the work of Minneapolis artist Lindsay Keating-Moore, who hand-cuts stencil portraits of famous feminists and uses the stencils to decorate recycled T-shirts and dresses, even buttons. The portraits are strong and gorgeous, the clothing fantastic, and the footprint enviable: about as green as you can get. Have a look, in a slideshow: [click to continue…]
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First time here? Here's the idea: TSP is a network of blogs about the many facets of the word sister, and the concept of sisterhood. A sisterhood of sister blogs, you could say. Whatever sister means to you, from identical twin to sister-in-law (or in-friendship or in-feminism), we’ll make room to listen in about it or express it on TSP. Like the slogan up top says, “Don’t you have something to say to your sister?” We've got galleries of art and literature by and about sisters, and a Sisterpedia of sisterly trivia...but now we're getting ahead of ourselves. The quick study: 
As the suffix of its name suggests, 
No surprise, really, that sisterhood, often life’s longest relationship and always one of its most important, has been the Muse for so much creative self-expression by women, and also by men. 
