From First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign to NBC’s controversial hit show The Biggest Loser, Americans are flooded with messages about the obesity epidemic in this country and what it means for our long-term health.  But there’s been a lot less talk about how being overweight or obese affects individuals who are trying to […]

In a belated celebration of Valentine’s Day, I want to tell a love story. But don’t worry, this won’t get mawkish. This is a story of modern love, of commercial love, of a four-letter (sometimes, three-letter) slogan (“love” or “LUV”) perverted to discriminatory ends. (This also an aviation tale, and if you haven’t read my […]

Last week, the New York Times asked a provocative question: Do activist investors target female CEOs?  Its article by that name considered whether the increased scrutiny that female CEOs attract, from stakeholders inside and outside the organizations they lead, can be attributed to their gender.  The article gestured at a phenomenon receiving significant attention in […]

Getting my pilot’s license was one of the greatest experiences of my life. There’s nothing like the thrill of your first solo flight or nailing the landing in a tough cross wind.  Yet aviation remains a male-dominated hobby, and, more importantly, a male-dominated career.  And it’s been that way for some time.  Why? My flight […]

Earlier this week, news broke that Jeb Bush’s recently-hired Chief Technology Officer, Ethan Czahor, had been purging his Twitter account. What was he trying to delete? Around forty-five sexist, homophobic, and otherwise offensive tweets. Buzzfeed has a good sampling of the deleted tweets, but I’ve pasted two below for your reading pleasure: “When I burp […]

Mother Jones recently published a profile by Mariah Blake on the “Men’s Rights Movement” and the man at the center of the movement, Warren Farrell.  As Blake details in her article, Farrell claimed his place at the center of the Men’s Rights Movement after publishing The Myth of Male Power: Why Men Are the Disposable […]

Angela Ames, a Nationwide Insurance worker in Iowa, returned to work in July 2010, after her eight-week maternity leave, and found that she had no place to pump breast milk.  She was told that there was a three-day waiting period to process her paperwork in order to use the lactation room and was given the […]

The summer after my senior year of high school, I volunteered for my local NPR station—my assignment was to do a piece on the water quality of Lake Erie (it’s absolutely fine… maybe stick to the pool).  I traveled around town collecting sound, conducting interviews; I was thrilled to use the editing equipment to put […]

This Sunday we will watch advertisements. We will see ads from an Official Pizza Sponsor (Papa John’s); an Official Dip Sponsor (Sabra Humus), an Official Chip and Dip Sponsor (Tostitos), and of course, an Official Beer Sponsor (Anheuser Busch). But among the gimmicks and cameos filling million-dollar ad slots, at least one ad will grab […]

Think fast: Can you name three pictures in which the actor Jeremy Renner has appeared? I ask this question because: (1) I wonder if I am uniquely out-of-step with pop culture; and (2) Renner is at the center of a growing conversation about Hollywood’s gendered pay gap. Due to the recent Sony leaks, we learned […]