What makes NPR reporters’ names so particularly mellifluous? There’s that pleasing alliteration — Allison Aubrey, Louisa Lim, Carl Kassell, Susan Stamberg. And it’s hard to match those mouth-filling double-barrelled names. Think Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, Chana Joffe-Walt, Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, Dina Temple-Raston, Charlayne Hunter-Gault. According to one study, women in the arts and entertainment are more likely to keep their names; the authors hypothesized that their maiden names had already become “akin to a ‘brand’.
I’m not married and I don’t have a ‘brand,’ but I’m posting this because a) It’s true, NPR reporters have the best names; b) ‘Double-barrelled’ is such a great term for it, so much better than ‘hyphenated.’
From here on out you may refer to me as a ‘double-barreller.’
Women in any position of power or outspokenness, people are just uncomfortable with it, men and women alike. It just freaks them the fuck out. I may sound like a megalomaniac, but I feel like I’m equipped to become a great, memorable comedian, if I keep working my ass off and staying at the pace I’m at, and I feel a responsibility to do that because of the women who have done it before me, and the ones who need to do it after me.
Four blocks
1. A man is heading in my direction, weaving slightly. I can’t make out his features. He’s wearing a parka, hood up. The street is dark and quiet. He weaves closer. I can hear him mumbling to himself but I can’t make out any words. “Move quickly,” I tell myself, but not soon enough, and he has me cornered, my back against a utility pole, his body blocking my way. Maybe I should be scared, but instead I’m angry. I am about to push past him and then I see he is reaching one hand into his jacket. I stop being angry and start being scared. He pulls out a piece of hard candy in a green foil wrapper. “Take a piece of candy,” he says. I don’t make eye contact. I don’t say anything. He waves the candy under my nose. I keep my gaze cast down but I sidestep him, continue on my way, only faster.
2. A man crosses the street toward me. I see him out of the corner of my eye. He’s tall, young, strong-looking, carrying a black plastic bag. He’s wearing a parka, too. We all are. It’s winter. I can feel myself tensing, and hoping. Maybe he’s getting into one of the cars parked along the curb. Maybe he’s detouring up the silent residential street I just passed. “Hey pretty baby,” he hisses. “Hey pretty. Hey. You’re gorgeous. What’s wrong with you? It’s a compliment.” I am wearing my thick winter jacket that comes down to my knees, my floppy knit hat, jeans, flat boots. This would make me laugh, if it were funny. He follows me for the rest of the block, getting a little too close, hissing and making kissing sounds. I am lucky: there is a restaurant on the corner, full of light and people. I stop and pretend to read the menu, and some people walk past, and he disappears.
3. A little girl, maybe five, comes careering around a corner. She is wearing a long pink coat and mittens and a pink backpack with a large fabric daisy attached to it. She laughs like this: “Ahh haha hahahahaha hahahahaha haha HA!” Her mother is trudging a few paces behind, weary, a grocery bag and an oversized purse in her arms. The little girl nearly runs smack into me. She looks up at me and grins. She knows her mother can’t stop her, and neither can I. She takes off down the block, hopping and dodging.
4. I think about instinct and how we interpret it, how much is nature and how much is nurture, or environment. My nature is not to look down or away. My nature is never to run. My instinct tells me to fight, to dig in, to make the other person blink first. It takes a tremendous amount of willpower to refrain from flipping the bird and unleashing a string of profanities. Willpower, actually, doesn’t even work. It is only the knowledge that the man might have a violent streak, or a knife, or worse yet a gun, that restrains me. I think about this and these words, willpower and restraint, and why they apply to me in the first place. I am just walking. I am so caught up in these thoughts that I don’t notice the man in the doorway until I am upon him; I have been unconsciously sticking close to the buildings. I see his face under his hooded jacket. I see him notice me. There is no one else in sight. My body does that thing where it feels like I have dry ice in my veins instead of blood. In an instant, I am more animal than human. He knows, I think, panicking. He knows he caught me. The man smiles and inclines his chin, a casual how-do, pedestrian. I rearrange my face so it looks less stricken. How-do, man in doorway. Me? Oh, I’m fine. You just startled me, that’s all. You just took me by surprise.
When asked where she predicts women will go in comedy this year, she replied, “Wherever they want.
This is a very rare lead role in cinema. Women, I find, we’re defined a lot by men and thus defined by our gender, who we are through our relationship with men, be it as a victim or a love relationship. The idea that this is a woman who defines herself by her work and by her brain and doesn’t try to sleep with her superiors, that to me is really inspiring.
True story: one time I was in Saskatchewan and I went to a library and photocopied a picture of Camille Paglia and then had it silkscreened on a shirt.
It just seemed like the right thing to do at the time.
[Claire McCaskill] “had a confidence and was very much more sort of ladylike” in 2006 campaign.
Missouri Republican U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin - Bloomberg (via brooklynmutt)
Maybe Todd Akin’s feet are coated in delicious barbecue sauce and that is why he cannot stop sticking them in his mouth.
On women’s biological defenses
If a bank is being robbed, women can secrete a substance that simultaneously alerts police and scrambles the vault combinations.
If a cab driver refuses to go to Brooklyn, women can secrete a substance that causes his tires to deflate.
If a kitten is stuck in a tree, women can secrete a substance that forms a wide, soft net.
If you have a bad hangover, women can secrete a substance that goes to the deli and buys aspirin, Gatorade and an egg-and-cheese sandwich.
If the GPS breaks, women can secrete a substance that identifies the exit you need.
If a representative to the United States Congress is a clueless dipshit, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.
