Earlier this month Disney stores pulled sexist Avengers girls’ T-shirts with slogans like “I need a hero” and “I only kiss heroes” off the shelves. The boys’ shirts reading, “Be a hero” remained. These old clichés were quickly called out on the internet. The message to boys that they need to be tough, the notion that […] More »

The poems in Mannequin Rising, Roy Miki’s fifth poetry collection, are interspersed with the author’s photomontages, many of which contain storefront mannequins superimposed with images of pedestrians in the street. The mannequins can be taken as metaphorical commentary on the human figures in the frames; static and passive, “standing there at / attention all day”—as […] More »

The United States’ decision to invade Afghanistan soon after 9/11 was misguided for many reasons, but one was purely practical: Al Qaeda is a stateless, decentralized network scattered across the globe. The spectral, international scope of the problem was no secret—so why wage a conventional war on one country? It was as if an outmoded […] More »

If we all hate consumerism, how come we can’t stop shopping? More »