In this braided essay, Jazmine Hughes contemplates her resistance to both learning to swim and coming out, and the empowerment each experience offers her when she finally surrenders to them.
sexuality
Posted inNonfiction
Infatuation
Deena ElGenaidi considers the ways in which adoring Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine from afar in her teens and early 20s provided a safe outlet for expressing desire.
Posted inBooks, History, Nonfiction, Story, Unapologetic Women
A Minor Figure
While searching for photographs that depict black young women and girls living free in the second and third generations born after slavery, Saidiya Hartman finds a disturbing image.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
A Woman In Love Is a Woman Alone
On the profound loneliness of female desire in Lisa Taddeo’s “Three Women.”
Posted inNonfiction
The Shames of Men
An anthropologist on a return visit to a remote village in Papua New Guinea learns that all the village’s young men are terribly wounded.
Posted inNonfiction
‘Brokenness and Holiness Really Go Together’: Darcey Steinke on Menopause
Darcey Steinke says that most menopause memoirs “end with this come-to-Jesus moment of, ‘Then I accepted hormones.’ I’m not against it, but … I wanted to hear what it’s like for other women.”
Posted inStory
The Erotic Thriller’s Little Death
What/If references the celebrated steamy genre of the 80s and 90s, but lacks its guts. Why can’t any of the new neo-noirs go all the way?
Posted inEditor's Pick
Barely There
In this personal essay, Jennifer Baker considers the ways in which hair removal rituals, begun in her tween years, have helped her achieve body acceptance and connect with her own desire.
Posted inCurrent Events, Feature, Story
Faith and Reproductive Justice Are Not in Opposition
Black women face outsized threats if Roe v. Wade is overturned.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Story
To Be Clean
A tender relationship with a fellow exotic dancer shows Natassja Schiel how to love her sister, a recovering addict.