Tasteful Rude l June 30, 2022
My sexual miseducation took place in California. It often happened at school. I was twelve years old and gluing paper to paper. Collaging. A classmate said that she’d met her boyfriend at the mall. They had sex in the stairwell. Several times The boyfriend was very mature. Seventeen. My classmate said that she was scared
Tasteful Rude l January 21, 2022
About the existence of cats, our father encouraged us to ask, “Why?”
He couldn’t stand them.
Cats annoyed and disgusted him and because of these effects, they also annoyed and disgusted my mother. Rarely did Mom or Dad simply utter gato. Gato always traveled alongside cochino.
Gatos cochinos.
I never asked Dad about his anti-catness. He did once mumble something about cats’ historic ties to the devil, but the comment didn’t explain his unique distaste. His grudge seemed personal, not infernal.
Tasteful Rude l November 11, 2021
In the days leading up to my grandmother’s death, my eyes lingered on her ninety-year-old hands. As a little tomboy, Arcelia’s hands had mesmerized me. I watched them feed cookies to caged parrots. I felt the caresses she offered to dogs, cats, and pigeons. In the kitchen, her mandil darkened as she wiped her wet
Tasteful Rude l October 8, 2021
In “Bad Art Friend,” The New York Times framed a story with a clear pattern of stalking, replete with vexatious litigation, as a quest for justice. The Daily Beast published a story about a fatal stalking case, its headline blaming the victim for her femicide: “Body of Florida Student Found a Week After Spurned Suspect Killed Himself.” Meanwhile, ABC7NY aired footage of
Tasteful Rude l February 11, 2021
Watching Britney Spears shave her head in 2007 made me want to do it too. The bitch looked good bald, better than Demi because she wasn’t doing it for a film role, she was doing it because life, and I recall feeling liberated by proxy as I watched Spears snatch hairdresser Esther Tognozzi’s razor and drag it along her scalp, using it to carve her femininity away, the precise curve of her cranium set free by her own hand. This incident and others appear in Framing Britney Spears, a new documentary by the New York Times. The film casts strong doubt over the legitimacy of the patriarchal legal arrangement under which the megastar has been stuck for the last twelve years. Framing Britney Spears also deepened my desire for Justin Timberlake to eat a bag of dicks.
Tasteful Rude l January 14, 2021
At the risk of sounding like an ungrateful bitch, don’t ever call me “brave” for a) having had a life-threatening trauma forced upon me and b) talking honestly and angrily about it.
I’ve had my fill of the compliment.
Things you can do in lieu of calling a trauma victim “brave”
Tasteful Rude l January 12, 2021
Before Benito Mussolini became Italy’s fascist dictator, he worked as a schoolteacher. I find this bit of trivia about Il Duce telling. Most children have their first encounter with public authoritarianism in a classroom, I certainly did, and I’ve heard it quipped that what white men are to policing, white women are to public education.
Tasteful Rude l December 31, 2020
The internet recently busted yoga instructor Hilary Baldwin for moonlighting as a Thpanish immigrant and upon learning that “Hilaria” wasn’t born in Mallorca but instead in Massachusetts, I decided to skip her recipe for Boston baked beans estilo Madrileño. In a video clip that went viral, “Hilaria” pretends not to know the English word for a vegetable
Tasteful Rude l December 11, 2020
Today I launch my new website Tasteful Rude, as part of the Brickhouse Cooperative, a group of journalists . I’m the editor-in-chief, and one of the writers. Tasteful Rude’s editorial voice eschews politeness in favor of truth-seeking and fun. It is Tasteful Rude’s mission to abide by Edward’s Said’s commandment: “Criticism must think of itself
September 9, 2020
A conversation with the author of The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and GirlsSeptember 9, 2020Mona Eltahawy secured my eternal devotion after I first read her self-described declaration of faith: “Fuck the patriarchy.” I, too, am a member of this faith and I live my faith through guerrilla-style tactics which I execute daily. My favorite
March 21, 2020
Did November 2016 give you the shits too? Did you know that the shits are a symptom of COVID-19? The shits are a sign of the times.