women | The Smart Set

The Women of the Gulag

Arvind Dilawar — Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:00:10 +0000

In 1951, Susanna Pechuro was a 17-year-old student, living at home with her family in Moscow. Three years earlier, she had met Boris Slutsky, who was only slightly older than Pechuro but already living on his own in a communal apartment. Pechuro regarded Slutsky as an “orthodox and militant Marxist,” but it’s easy to tell that she was also in […]

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Narrative Reproduction

Jane Rosenberg LaForge — Thu, 20 Feb 2020 12:30:30 +0000

Once upon a time, there was an alligator who wanted to be a purse. He got his wish, but he was still hungry. He opened his mouth and the department store worker stuffed tissue in his mouth. This was a story I wrote, and my now late aunt borrowed, for a class she was taking […]

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All the Faithful Ladies

Kelsey Osgood — Thu, 26 Sep 2019 11:30:21 +0000

One of the earliest known examples of a women-only society comes from the Greek myth of the Amazons, the group of fierce female warriors described by various Greek and Latin historians as “killers of men,” “those who fight like men,” or “those who loathe all men.” In one telling, Amazons only left their home region of Themiscyra to have sex with a nearby all-male tribe called the Gargareans; they copulated to […]

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#MeSomething

Ellen Carr — Thu, 30 May 2019 11:30:00 +0000

Asheville winter submerges us, weeks of unseasonable cold expanding January into multiples of its actual duration. My beer-loving colleague — let’s refer to him as “Jim” — is in town for a client meeting he celebrated as an excuse to visit my peak-brewery town, weather be damned. His old friend, whom we shall call Kurt […]

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Unseemly

Lorraine York — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 14:09:05 +0000

Literature cannot be the business of a women’s life & it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure she will have for it, even as an accomplishment & a recreation. To those duties you have not yet been called, and when you are, you will be […]

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Lost Time

Melinda Lewis — Fri, 11 Jan 2019 12:30:43 +0000

During an undergraduate English seminar, our professor got frank with us about her multiple miscarriages. It wasn’t completely out of sorts — the seminar was centered around the body and we had spent a lot of time with the concept of madness as elucidated by Elaine Showalter in The Female Malady. After more than 10 […]

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At the Crossroads

Melinda Lewis — Thu, 20 Sep 2018 11:30:20 +0000

Within the past few years I have succumbed to a period of feminist ennui. It’s not that I no longer think the principles of equality are no longer important, but it seems as if the word and movement, “feminism,” has lost meaning. It has been co-opted, lazily applied, and devalued. I’ve become frustrated by so-called […]

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When Being Bad Does Good

Melinda Lewis — Mon, 16 Jul 2018 13:58:59 +0000

Shannon Downey is a craftivist, community organizer, and as of June, a commencement speaker. She was recruited by Drexel University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Inquiry to deliver the commencement address for their Custom Designed Major. Her speech was firm but funny, honest in the “what is yet to come,” and encouraging in regard to their potential […]

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The Danger in Devotion

Kesia Alexandra — Thu, 26 Apr 2018 11:30:53 +0000

A few months back, a story broke about R&B singer R. Kelly’s alleged cult. There was, of course, an immediate divide between those who supported the singer and those who believed his career should have ended decades ago due to similar accusations. The situation reminded many of Taz’s Angels, an alleged escort service/prostitution group out […]

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Not a Bad Man at All

Vic Sizemore — Thu, 22 Mar 2018 11:30:46 +0000

In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault scandal, on October 16, 2017, a movement swept across social media: women posting “#metoo” to acknowledge the pervasive nature of sexual harassment, assault, and rape. The movement has maintained momentum, along with the “time’s up” movement, in which women are stepping forward to point the finger […]

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