Starshine Roshell – Page 9 – Starshine Roshell

Dress Codes Unzipped: Are School Policies Sexist?

Published on June 29, 2016

In a nation locked like longhorns in contentious battles over abortion, immigration, and assault weapons … can anyone really still be bickering over spaghetti straps?

Mais, oui, my friends. The struggle is real.

From Guilford, Connecticut, to Lynchburg, Virginia, to Helena, Montana, junior high and high school dress codes are being criticized — and even reevaluated this summer — as students and parents decry outdated policies as unrealistic, ambiguously enforced, and deeply sexist.

Trying to regulate teen wardrobes is a fool’s errand. Most everyone agrees that students should be clothed; beyond that, it gets tricky. Boys’ dress codes tend toward “Don’t promote drinking, drug use, gangs, violence, or racism,” while girls’ codes imply “Don’t … be sexy”: no short shorts, low-cut tops, bare midriffs, thin-strapped tanks, or exposed bra straps.

Most disturbing is the reason given for the girls’ rules: Their “provocative” clothing is “distracting” to other students in the learning environment.

Maxed Out: Is System Rigged Against Working Moms?

Published on May 31, 2016

I have an ugly secret: For 18 years, I’ve felt like a fraud both at home and at work.
From the moment I became pregnant with my first child, who graduates high school next week, I’ve had the unshakable sensation that I’m faking big chunks of my life, playing the part of a competent and confident mother and professional — but in fact always shortchanging someone their due: arriving late to work after delivering a forgotten lunchbox to school, darting out of a too-long meeting to arrive at the school awards ceremony 30 seconds after they call my kid’s name, emailing with the college counselor when I’m supposed to be watching that IT training, or grinning robotically through my son’s trumpet-lesson story at the dinner table when my mind is on that proposal I need to finish by morning.

A Shrine to Splitsville: The Flotsam of Ill-Fated Flings

Published on May 17, 2016

White opera gloves. Orange underpants. One pair of crutches.
The objects on display are unrelated in almost every way. The only quality they share is heartbreak.
Lock of hair. Shards of glass. Penguin cuff links.
Some are outright funny, some are gut-stabbingly sad, and some border on heebie-jeebie creepy. But no matter their size, condition, or origin, all are fraught with a feeling that’s familiar to most any adult, in any country: the ache of a fizzled affair.

Fur-lined handcuffs. Mercedes hood ornament. Under-knee prosthesis. Yes. That’s right. Prosthesis.

Feeling the Pay Gap — Personally

Published on May 3, 2016

[Yes, we know there are words missing in this column. That’s what it feels like to get stiffed on a regular basis.]
Picture this: You’re 10 years old, and there’s just enough cake left for two delicious. Dad cuts a big piece for your twin brother and a small one for you, hands you your plate and smiles as if. You take the meager slice and say thanks, but you feel. What could his reasoning? Are you not as? Does Dad not? The idea’s absurd, of course, but.
This is the reality of working women throughout the U.S.: a frustrating daily, dollarly injustice that affords them less than what. That falls maddeningly short of what they. That takes them almost to where they deserve to go and then.
Irritating as hell, isn’t?
Welcome to our.

The Sudden Surge of Transgender Teens

Published on April 19, 2016

At a party recently, two of my good friends informed me that their teenagers, formerly a boy and a girl, were newly identifying as a trans girl and a gender-fluid person; once him and her, they were now her and them, respectively. The next day, I met a girl whose best friend had left for spring break as a girl and returned to junior high as a trans boy.
I couldn’t help wondering: Why the sudden surge of transgender teens?

How Trump Can Win Back Women Voters

Published on April 7, 2016

Dear Mr. Trump,
You’re having trouble with women voters, and I just can’t stand it. A man with your confidence, your money, your charisma should be mopping the floor with the weaker sex. You’re a prime-time TV star! You’ve owned casinos, airlines, your own line of vodka. If you didn’t invent suave, then I’m sure you at least went bankrupt trying.

But your worries are over. I’m here to help you win over the broads. Like you, I’m known for speaking the plain truth: no mincing words, no pussyfooting. And I know a bottom-feeder — sorry! — I mean a brilliant leader when I see one, so I’m going to tell you how to get those surly, squawking suffragettes down on their knees begging The Donald to Make America Great Again™. Are you with me, big guy? Let’s do this!

Are All Museums Sex Museums?

Published on March 10, 2016

Tour a museum with a mathematician, and she’ll point out the angles built into the artwork, the proportions of the figures. Tour one with a painter, and she’ll fixate on techniques, brushstrokes, and palettes. No surprise, then, that when I toured the Santa Barbara Museum of Art last week with a feminist studies professor and former bondage museum curator, well, the whole place smacked of sex.
Thought museums were sedate and sterile, did you? Take the arm of Jennifer Tyburczy, assistant UCSB professor and author of the new book Sex Museums: The Politics and Performance of Display, and you’ll discover they’re actually dirty dens of debauchery — in, like, the really good way.

Anything to Avoid Writing This Column

Published on February 25, 2016

Looking back, I probably should have lied. It would have been more cordial. The woman was only making conversation, after all — not looking to meet my demons.
“Do you enjoy writing?” the nice mother asked me at back-to-school night last week as we both folded our overtall, underbendy bodies into the high school English class desks.
“Oh, yes,” I should have replied warmly. “Very much. Of course. More than anything. Who doesn’t?”

The Waiting Is the Hardest Part

Published on February 9, 2016

When my firstborn son was a toddler, I used to wonder if he would become a bouncer someday because he was big for his age — and fixated on doors. Opening them, closing them. Letting some in (the dog), keeping others out (the dad). He’d station himself in a doorway and take charge, wielding his power like Excalibur: You? Yes, by all means, enter. But not your friend. She waits out here with the others … until I say.
It was cute unless you were carrying groceries.
Now the tables have turned. He’s standing at the doorway of more than a dozen universities, waiting to see if he’ll be admitted. We’re staggering around in the three to four aimless months (110+ days!) between applying to colleges and hearing back from said colleges. The kid is handling it just fine — but for me, this limbo is anguish.

Voice to Voice with Sarah Koenig of ‘Serial’

Published on January 27, 2016

If I had to pick five words to explain the astounding appeal of the Serial podcast and its beloved host Sarah Koenig, it would be these, uttered by Koenig earlier this season:
“That’s me, calling the Taliban.”
The most popular podcast of all time, Serial dives deep into a dramatic true story each season, untangling clues and cover-ups almost in real time, week by week. Last season, which was downloaded over 100 million times and earned a Peabody Award, was about the murder of a high school girl whose ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, was convicted of the crime. This season centers on Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. soldier who walked off his Afghanistan base in 2009 and spent five years in a Taliban prison.

Author: Starshine Roshell