Many young women no longer call themselves feminists because the label is either too defined–bra burning hippie lesbians, or not defined enough—the most popular Google search relating to feminism is: “what is feminism,” garnering 1,220,000 hits globally per month.

Notice how numbers compare with searches for “sex” below.

Other women cling to the term, certain that what they fight for and believe in is the quintessential definition of feminism, one they will defend doggedly and woe be it unto those who do things differently and dare to claim the moniker.

Then there are phenomenon a like “Girl Power,” the Spice Girls’ version of “feminism,” which in many ways served to undercut women’s struggles by branding, commodifying and selling them back to society in a packaged from, divorced in many ways from substance.

It’s so pretty and sparkly!

It is doubtful that the Spice Girls provided feminist epiphanies, but I can’t categorically say they didn’t. If their feminist struggle was to make as much money as boy bands, I can sympathize. If their struggle was to get along and respect each others ideas and contributions as a group of women, recent controversy over the “Future of Online Feminism” (#femfuture) report helps me sympathize here too.

The report was issued by Courtney Martin and Vanessa Valenti, women who strive to make a career in feminism. A career in feminism can mean many things, from the terrifying fluff of “girl power” to working at a domestic violence shelter or as an inspired politician. For Martin and Valenti, it means creating media. Martin has authored books and Valenti founded Feministing.com

Much of the recent backlash surrounding Valenti and Martin’s report seems to stem from the fact that they didn’t include all feminist bloggers and from the idea that Valenti and Martin have the gall to think they should get paid for what others term “online activism.”

Brittney Cooper is founder of Crunkfeministcollective.com and a participant in the “Future of Online Feminism” report. Above, she engages with feminists who question the inclusivity of the report.

This critique comes as Jezebel, the for-profit feminist juggernaut rolled out a platform (very similar to Feministing’s) by which users may create their own content and have their own blog as part of Jezebel. But don’t worry, Jezebel says, ‘we’re not trying to make money off of you, just give us all your genius ideas.’ Who needs unpaid internships when we can all write for free for Jezebel for free?

But guess what, Jezebel’s definitely got me beat. Nearly 50 percent of “feminist” articles I come across through friends have the Jezebel brand attached to them. I’m not saying that all the content is original and theirs, but they have found a way (paying people!!) to amplify their influence.

This brings us to some intersectionality of a different kind. Discussion surrounding online feminism is not just about feminism, but also about women’s labor and the creative class, a group of people who add tremendous value to society, but often work without fair compensation. Money is the system we have here, money is how I buy my food. While capitalism is far from perfect and a product of the patriarchy, and while one wouldn’t want a big bank dictating how to run a feminist website, as one of my favorite bloggers (soon to publish a book) says, “bitches gotta eat.”

All those who work–whatever that work may be— should have the option of, or a pathway towards compensation. Content isn’t inherently free. Why should women, many of us already facing glass ceilings and pay disparities, also be told that our words hold no value, when statistics show that we own the Internet?

While the Internet has split open a chorus of voices, those who have time and energy to excercise their freedom of speech without compensation are a privileged few, those who gain traction even fewer.

With the rise of unpaid media internships, where college kids add value to already rich publications in exchange for a leg up, what becomes of the lone blogger who works nights and only finds time to pursue her true passion occasionally? What becomes of the trained writer who is forced to work for companies or publications that rarely focus on feminist issues? Worse yet, what becomes of the public, inhaling corporate dictated “girl power” by the gallon and rape culture by the mile? What happens as “thinspiration” becomes a mainstream word? I am not saying this *will* happen if feminist writers are not compensated, but that it has.

Economic disparities of the great recession have drawn clear lines between the haves and have-nots, and while grassroots online feminism has done something to mitigate the backlash against oppressed people which often occurs during times of economic downturn, think of how much more could have been done with funding. Maybe we can kickstart our way to a place in the sun like Amanda Palmer, but is that really sustainable for everyone? For people with friends who don’t have money to give? As Valenti and Martin write, “An unfunded movement further privileges the privileged.” What a funded movement may accomplish remains to be seen.

Maybe we can just be “weekend feminists” with day jobs managing other websites or driving taxis, but when writing about feminist issues is what we want to do for a living, why shouldn’t we be able to?

*This article was made possible by the generous sponsorship of jury duty.

Then, Beyoncé’s song “All the Single Ladies” came on and I looked around at my unmarried friends and down at my own ring-less hand. What if I never get married? Not to a man, not to a woman, not to anyone? Marriage equality is great and liberating and what should happen, but does marriage as an institution discriminate against those among us who, in larger numbers than ever, may never “seal the deal”?
According to study upon study, trends are not in favor of marriage. There are more single mothers every year, more divorces and more couples who never partake in nuptial bliss. Studies also show that people who do get married are doing so later in life.

When you are used to living independently for most of your life, it is hard to adapt and put all of your trust and finances into one big pot and hope for the best, even if you are in love. Before marriage, we are taught and expected to be fiercely independent and self-reliant, how can the rules change in an instant? When you say “I do,” you don’t suddenly become at one with your partner by the magic vested in a shared tax form. In a culture where “pre-nup” rolls off the tongue as if it’s as American as “hamburger,” and where newlyweds may be children of divorced parents, the whole institution is taken, like a burger, with many grains of salt.

This brings us to the current discussion in the US Supreme Court, the ridiculous “Defense of Marriage Act.” Through this law, our government decided to define “marriage,” a license that entitles people to 1,138 federal rights, as being between one man and one woman. Rather than lament the injustice as it pertains to the usual suspects, I would like to inform you that married people have 1,138 federal rights that you, my single friend may not. In addition to having these rights, married and coupled individuals of all sexual orientations often have the benefits of shared rent and living costs, shared child care and someone awesome in their lives and beds. Hey Jealousy.

Don’t married couples feel a little bit guilty when they are saving money on food and rent and enjoy extra benefits like tax breaks on top of it? It’s like ‘congrats, you got a promotion, this means you will be paying fewer taxes!’ I knew one couple who got married on New Years Eve, gaining one whole tax year of bliss and everyone’s New Years plans.

While some of the rights and benefits of marriage (such as being legal parent to your same-sex spouses’ child without adoption) may not be pertinent to single people, other rights would be pretty awesome to have. Imagine being able to leave your social security check to your best friend without having to marry him or her. Imagine being able to obtain citizenship for your neighbor. Why is marriage the only defining social relationship with a non-relative that is afforded seemingly omnipotent legal standing?

Reverence for the category of “marriage” has almost singlehandedly sparked the revival of the religious right, as if it were the City on a Hill of human relationships. “Marriage worship” on both sides of the fight promotes the idea that single people are just waiting to meet the right person or are alternatively, just alone in the world. Hillary Clinton’s cheesy oft quoted statement “it takes a village” doesn’t seem to jibe with our strict legal notions of the family unit, where “traditional” marriage serves as an outmoded centerpiece. Most people I know go their own way when it comes to relationships.

*I do not know this couple.

I know one couple who have had a walking marriage for decades: he walks to her apartment and she walks to his and they sleep in one place or the other or separately. They both have careers and no children.

I know another man and woman who have a baby boy and have chosen to be domestic partners only for his sake. It turns out listing both parents’ names on a birth certificate gives each of them parental rights and allows him access to their health insurance etc. Marriage is not just an emotional choice or an eventual reality, even for people who do fall in love, stick together and procreate.

I know a gay couple who have been together for decades, and now that marriage is legal in New York, they decided to finally make it official.

I know my parents, who were married for 25 years with two kids before they divorced, both deciding to never marry again. My father has a girlfriend who is herself a divorcee with grown children.

I have known my best friends for more than half my life, and we have lived within 10 miles of each other for most of that time. I knew them long before they met their current partners and their anniversaries will never catch up to our friendship. I know their parents, I know my “nephew,” who is my friend’s child, but my nephew nonetheless. Though I am not married, these relationships are no less important to me and no less vital to society. They are equal. The true value of human relationships can’t in good faith be legislated or categorized or placed into a single hierarchical system that is one size fits all.

While I may marry eventually, so I can reap the unfair benefits of marriage (because I always love a good government deal), I would forsake my own selfish interest to see the Supreme Court overthrow the entire institution of marriage, seeing it as the unfair, restrictive and presumptuous system it is. I would like to watch marriage equality supporters and opponents realize that not everyone will or wants to get married, and that regardless, we do all deserve equal rights. In my fantasy, equality supporters would get equal rights, and since marriage would no longer be a legal category, opponents could do whatever they wanted. I would like to watch both sides realize that marriage is a label, family is a construction made in many different ways, and love is better and more rewarding than any tax benefit.

Since that’s not likely to happen, three cheers for marriage equality.

Just remember, when and if the time comes, instead of having a wedding to celebrate your union, throw a party for all your single friends (with your tax benefit?) and shower them and the world around you with the love you have found. Maybe make a toast at the party and be really cheezy and quote Hillary Clinton and say: “It takes a village.” Supreme Court has just ruled that you MUST do that.

My friend’s wedding in upstate New York and many members of my “village.”

Ashley Arbaugh, film still from “Girl Model,” Nadya Vall, above.

The documentary follows a former model and current modeling scout, Ashley Arbaugh, as she promises success and money to poor teen girls from small-town Siberia. Filmmakers, David Rodon and Ashley Sabin contrast Arbaugh’s own story of being a miserable young model in Tokyo with the work she currently does, recruiting girls to embark on a similar (if not much less lucrative) journey.

After surveying a room full of young Siberian girls in bikinis, Arbaugh picks several to travel to Tokyo, a place hungry for “fresh faces.” She works with Tigran Khachatrian, a man who thinks the best way to keep young models in line is to take them on a trip to the morgue to see an autopsy. Arbaugh is beholden to Khachatrian, but seems uncomfortable as he tells the filmmakers that his work now is devoting his life to saving young girls as some sort of penance for killing many men at war. By now it is clear this business is at least on the outskirts of unsavory.

However, perhaps the strangest aspect of this film is that Arbaugh (who may appear most culpable due to her own experience as a young model), was the one who approached the filmmakers suggesting a documentary about the industry.

I have scoured the Internet for recent interviews with Arbaugh but none can be found, leading me to assume that she caught a lot of flack for participating in the film, likely from those in her industry and from critics on the outside, who may have felt she should not be in business profiting from the exploitation (or near exploitation) of young girls.

However, without Arbaugh’s access, the film would never have been made. She knowingly implicates herself which is not an easy thing to do, and for that I applaud her. She admits to hating the business but being “addicted” to the lifestyle it provides, though she lives a self-described vapid life. In her bathroom she has photos she takes secretly of models under tables, a mess of legs and torsos and feet, hands clasped, body parts that may or may not fit together. As she puts them together trying to make sense of the unidentifiable bodies before her, she appears somewhat unstable. At another point in the film, she says that she has had to forgo her own sense of aesthetics to provide what the market wants, but she’s spent so long searching for the “right” girls for the market that she has come to agree that the most beautiful and ideal form is that of a very young skinny doe-eyed girl.

Like the girls separated from their families in Siberia, it seems Arbaugh’s perspective was taken and twisted by modeling as well. She has two naked baby dolls, bought when she purchased her Connecticut home at 23. She explains that since she had a house, she decided she should also have a family, the logic of a girl at play.

One of the girls Arbaugh scouts, Nadya Vall, seems miserable as Arbaugh was in Tokyo many years ago. Eventually she goes home in debt and it looks like she will never participate in the modeling business again, yet like Arbaugh, she continues to model.

Who is responsible for her exploitation then? What made her return?

The system Arbaugh is participating in is not right or nice or fair, and Arbaugh seems aware that the role she plays is at times reprehensible. If there were anything more Arbaugh could do to change the system from within than suggest and allow this documentary, I am not sure what that might be. However, the problem is bigger than Arbaugh, as older model Rachel Blais points out in the film. Society hungers for youth and beauty, and fashion is at once in command and surrendering to prevailing taste.

As for the models, how can one blame them? Once you have seen a world of beauty and fantasy and learned that your body may be your only way in, can you really look for other options?

Stream entire documentary on PBS through April 23

Watch Girl Model on PBS. See more from POV.

In October, I wrote an article about Amanda Todd, a Canadian teen who was so severely cyber-bullied that she committed suicide. Now, in a strange turn of events, I am being threatened in her name.

Someone claiming to be from the hacker group “Anonymous” sent an email recently, demanding I remove images created by Todd’s bullies from the piece. My intention in using these images was to condemn bullying by showing the horrors Todd experienced, so you can imagine my surprise on Sunday when I received this:

From: Anonymous <Redacted@redacted.com>

Message Body:

Whether or not this person is a hacker, and whether or not I should be “expecting” Anonymous on my site, outside my home, or for dinner is unclear. Seven days have passed, and though I feel safer now than I did yesterday, I still have no idea what to expect. However, regardless of the legitimacy of this threat, the email raises a number of ethical questions.

Am I being bullied by this alleged Anonymous, or am I the bully?

In the days since receiving it, this email has been pretty much all I think about. I have contacted my web host and searched the Twitterverse, trying to uncover my harasser to no avail. I have scoured the Internet for related hashtags and learned more about #Anonymous than intended, as I sit here contemplating my decision and its potential outcomes.

While I feel the use of images portraying the horrors of cyber-bullying is legitimate in the context of critical discussion, am I contributing to the problem by displaying them? Since Todd herself spoke out so publicly against her bullies through the YouTube video she made shortly before she hung herself, I imagine she would have wanted the discussion surrounding bullying and the Internet to continue, and discussion includes documentation.

I’m reminded of a recent article published in the Jewish Daily Forward in which a journalist writes of her hesitation to print graphic quotes from Veronique Pozner, a mother who chose to view the body of her son Noah, a student murdered at Sandy Hook elementary school. She told the reporter:

Pozner had nothing to gain by describing her son’s corpse; his murderer was already dead. She wanted only to shed light on the issue of gun violence.

The mother of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy who was beaten and shot to death in a racially based attack, changed history in 1955 when she decided to hold an open casket funeral for him and allow photographs of his body.

But I am not Amanda Todd’s mother, and since the images are part of a vicious meme that contributed to her death, one might say they are not the aftermath of a tragedy, but its manifestation. One friend of mine said that if Todd’s mother was behind the email, I had better take the images down. Another suggested fear-based capitulation and silence. A third person argued that repeating the meme in any form was lending it credence and that I was dumb not to see the hacker’s point.

A meme is like an echo. It’s a game of telephone. A meme births its own annihilation, as repetition and alteration gives way to meaninglessness and it becomes nothing more than a guttural sound, a blip, a sputter. A meme is what you make of it.

So, rather than removing the images, I decided to alter them.

On the Internet, where an image presented may be easily and instantly removed from its context and replicated endlessly, presenting it unaltered may be akin to presenting it without commentary at all. However, altering an image is hardly standard journalistic practice; journalism seeks to be objective and truthful. Journalists fight so that images will not be suppressed. But the memes that haunted Amanda Todd are part of a bigger story and alteration has now hopefully become part of its unfolding.

From a psychological perspective, the most insensitive memes might be viewed as ways in which society reclaims a tragic event and re-write it as comedy. Certain things are so tragic or violent that they defy explanation and all we can do is laugh to keep from crying. But all the theory and comedic nuance in the world doesn’t do much to help a bullied child, just like discussion of the email threat I received doesn’t make it any less disturbing. Showing the email to friends and colleagues and writing this article has in many ways made the threat more alive and present. It lives inside my head perhaps in the same way Todd’s tormentors lived inside hers, and like Todd, I am seeking solace and support online—the place where all my trouble began in the first place.

Ironically, if anyone believes that perpetrators of hate and bullying should be outed and their ways exposed, it would seem to be Anonymous. The entity was recently credited with releasing shocking footage in the Steubenville Ohio sex crime case. In the video, a college student is deriding and mocking the girl at the center of the case who, after drinking and becoming unconscious, was carried around to various football parties and sexually abused.

While my goal in using images created by Amanda Todd’s bullies (and my goal in writing this article) is not to allow the public to locate the bullies and exact retribution, like those who released the Steubenville video, I aim to shed light on a cruel situation. Both the images I used and the Steubenville video show the power of the Internet to inflict psychic pain in an instant. In the Steubenville sex crime case, tweets and images of the victim were posted on Twitter before she was even conscious to see them.

While it would be a better world if the Internet was purged of cyber-bullying, the people who should be held accountable are those responsible for it, not the journalists who report on its existence. Though it might be argued that sites that shed light on cyber-bullies also benefit from them in some way, since they create a fraction of our content, that is the same as saying the New York Times benefits directly from bombings and war– while possibly true, it borders on ridiculous.

Obviously Amanda Todd’s death is first and foremost a tragedy, not a lesson, but if I allow the horrors she experienced (contained in the images I published) to be forgotten or whitewashed by the Internet’s self-cleaning mechanism of deletion and new traffic flow, am I really helping? Further, if I adhere completely to my blackmailer’s demands, am I participating in censorship and fear-based limits on free speech?

In receiving my “Anonymous” email I was forced to come to terms with the dangers of the Internet. Late at night, I received a phone call from a 000000000 number. There was no message, but was it them? My site got shut down briefly last week and I was up panicking, was it them? I am experiencing a certain type of paranoia that only the Internet can engender, where every glitch has a meaning, where I both anticipate and fear being known. As if Facebook could suddenly look back at me and see me at home in my underwear. As if I will suddenly be unmasked and targeted specifically in a public space.

Like many Internet denizens, members of Anonymous pride themselves on lurking in the shadows. They don masks in public, in an act that conveys both fear and power: they are unknown so they are frightening, but they are masked so they must be afraid too. They are at once a product of the Internet and of our collective imagination, representing all the invisible justice and terror lurking out there in the world.

While many of the actions of Anonymous seem noble, if this is indeed an act on its behalf, it is far from noble. If it is not an affiliated act and rather a perversion of its goals, it shows how easy it is to pretend and frighten just with a simple email. I am reminded of how terrified Amanda Todd must have felt when she found out she had an Internet stalker: someone unknown, lurking in the shadows who, in many ways, we should all be “expecting.”

This email threat is in and of itself a good argument for enhanced Internet policing, which is, oddly, what this alleged Anonymous member wants for our site. However, the entity Anonymous seems to be against censorship, based upon its love of hacking and incredible use of free speech. It is therefore odd that someone would claim to be part of Anonymous in order to threaten a website that is ostensibly on its side.

Perhaps all this means is that when vigilante justice is exacted, it can turn into just as narrow-minded a regime as it sought to overthrow. Perhaps this means that one individual decided to do something impulsive and it shouldn’t be taken seriously, but more likely it means that in order to have real discussions online, we must all become more technologically sophisticated. We must think critically about the ways in which the Internet is different from the printed page and learn how to play with its strengths and weaknesses: “the medium is the message.” We must try to understand the consequences of our online actions, regardless of our intentions and must gain the technical skills to level the playing field to fight back against those seeking to limit free discourse, whoever they may be. In the words of Josh Kopstein and protesters everywhere: It is no longer OK not to know how the Internet works.

This article first appear on Alternet

This is why when NPR decided to feature artist Julia Kozerski’s weight loss photos, “Changing Room,” as part of “The Picture Show”- a feature on their blog aimed at showcasing photographers, we were a bit skeptical.

With fat showing up in our Facebook feeds in the form of this video where a news anchor attacks her critics, and after reading the esteemed Lindy West’s take on obesity and her takedown of Dan Savage (and his rebuttal), it may seem that there is little to add to an already big conversation.

Films like the horrendous “Shallow Hal,”  wherein a man starts to see women for their inner beauty (manifested of course in the form of thin and blonde Gwyneth Paltrow) epitomize the national psyche as far as beauty is concerned.

In many ways, the photographs of Kozerski that NPR chose to showcase just reyify the American weight loss story. Her interview with NPR largely focuses on her weight loss rather than her artistic practice. Through NPR’s populist lens, Kozerski’s appears to be the tale of an exceptional fat person who manages to live up to her full potential as evidenced by her eventual thinness. While the weight loss itself is exceptional — the pictures show a woman loosing a tremendous amount of weight (160 pounds) over the period of a year–the interviewer sums up her weight loss as if it was relatively simple:

As for how she lost the weight? She stopped eating junk food, started walking and biking daily, counted calories, and weighed and measured her food portions. (You can see a BodyBugg armband in many of the photos.)

The first, and possibly most influential photo is in the series NPR chose to display is of  the overweight Kozerski in her wedding dress. The narrative that can be inserted here is that a man has agreed to marry this overweight woman, so then she proceeds to lose a ton of weight- perhaps rewarding him for his faith in her as a fat person. Upon looking at the complete body of work on Kozerski’s website it is apparent that the photographic series “Changing Room” is by far the least visually interesting or emotionally powerful of her otherwise significant collection. NPR also curiously chose to exclude photos of Kozerski crying which are also part of the “Changing Room” series–visually homogenizing and streamlining the weight loss process.

Kozerski’s other series “Half” shows her naked post weight loss, her skin hanging off her loosely in a photo titled “Ruins.” In another photo, she is in bed naked with her average sized boyfriend and she is crying. In these photos we understand weight loss as what is actually is: a loss.

Ruins by Juila Kozerski http://juliakozerski.com/half

Absolution by Juila Kozerski http://juliakozerski.com/half

Lovers Embrace by Julia Kozerski http://juliakozerski.com/half

Kozerski: “Even though these images were taken years ago, when I look back at them, I become extremely emotional. I can still remember the experience presented in each image. I recall the thrills of trying on smaller sizes and the satisfaction of feeling more attractive, even sexy. More so, I remember the devastation of not recognizing the person reflected back to me in the mirror.”

When a person is forced to identify with a marginalized or belittled group of people–our nation’s obese–and becomes part of a new liberated social group, it is only natural that feelings of guilt may ensue. Dressed in a variety of clothes in her “Changing Room” photos, Kozerski presents as an average bodied individual, but upon seeing her naked with her husband, we realize she has a different story than most people who wear her jeans. In a photo entitled “Absolution,” she is looking up and crying. One wonders what she is absolved of; Is it the burden of obesity, or is it the sin of forsaking her previous identity? In these photos, we see that in our society, having a relationship with fat is having a relationship with pain. Fat IS a feeling.

The article is raw and uncensored and exposes her fears of and for her teenage son, who has upon occasion threatened to kill her while wielding a knife.

Long’s viral post has sparked controversy, as many outlets (including feminist blog Jezebel) believe gun control is the issue, not mental illness.

Everyone’s so busy trying to figure out exactly what was wrong with Adam Lanza — and that’s a discussion to have at some point — but right now we really need to stay focused on gun control,

Writes Laura Beck in her article, “That Woman is Not Adam Lanza’s Mother, and She’s Distracting us From the Real Issue”

That Woman.

Considering the recent shootings were perpetrated by an adult man, the media has had a lot to say about that woman, known as “Mom.” That woman, who in Nancy Lanza’s case, was gunned down by her son. That woman, who in Karen Kay’s case, was bludgeoned to death by her son. That woman, who in Long’s case, admits to being scared for the day when she can’t control her boy.

In death, Nancy Lanza seems to be getting her share of the blame:

Now, the secrets [Nancy] Lanza kept are at the center of the questions that envelop this New England town, grieving over the slaughter unleashed by her 20-year-old son Adam, who investigators say killed his mother Friday with one of her own guns before murdering 26 children and teachers at a nearby school. [AP article]

In some ways, this hearkens back to the 1950s “refrigerator mother” theory, in which moms with mentally ill children were thought to have been cold and withholding, thus unknowingly causing the illness.

Meanwhile, Long is getting reamed for writing about her son by mothers who say she has no right to share his story with the public. Basically, if you are a mom with a mentally ill child, you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. If you love your child too much to say anything, you are negligent, but if you cry out for help, you are incompetent and disrespectful of your child’s privacy. Thanks, double bind.

Obviously, the much bigger issue is that Liza Long is not Adam Lanza’s mom. The similarity begins and ends with the having of mentally ill sons. That’s all we know, and it’s dangerous to assume more than that. We can’t lump all people with mental illness together into one big “crazy” pot, it stigmatizes the ill and disconnects us, as a society, from their humanity.

Writes Beck, who also objected to the public nature of Long’s post, which included a photo of her son.

But, at what point does the story of a mentally ill family member become your own? And does hiding the stories of people with mental problems do anything but stigmatize? Further, if something happens in the future and Long stayed quiet about her son like Nancy Lanza allegedly did, we all know who would get blamed:

That Woman.

Sarah Kendzior, a writer for The Atlantic and numerous other publications has gone after Long, examining her blog “Anarchist Soccer Mom” for signs of instability.

Long has written a series of vindictive and cruel posts about her children in which she fantasizes about beating them, locking them up and giving them away

Kendzior writes, citing numerous passages which she believes show Long as an unfit mother. Long’s blogs posts are off the cuff, falling in the style of Ayalet Waldman’s “Bad Mother” genre (Waldman is writer whom many may remember as the first to openly admit to loving her husband more than her children on “Oprah,” prompting the audience to boo her).

Waldman’s style has been embraced as writers like Sandra Tsing Loh have used the “Bad Mother” quasi-confession to allow for their own imperfections to spew forth like tongue-in-cheek volcanoes.

While we have been able to accept the often humorous confessions of self-proclaimed “Bad Moms” assisted by our latent love of irony and our natural comfort with female self-effacement (often peppered into the genre), the combination of Long’s “Bad Mom” style and her serious post about her son’s mental problems was too much for many people to bear. The idea that Long could be a multi-dimensional human being is still out of step with our conception of motherhood. The fact that she could joke and be authentic was apparently mind blowing to Kendzior, proving perhaps that the “Bad Mother” trope is not as hackneyed as we thought. It is as if motherhood is the last bastion of authenticity and the last torchbearer of the “Cult of Domesticity,”–which fyi is the farthest thing from authentic (if there is even such a thing as authentic blah blah post modern blah).

Mothers are not people, they are mothers, they belong exclusively to children and any form of self-possession is forbidden. Meanwhile, the child to whom they belong is the possession of the world, and everyone has the right the duty to tell a mother how to best bring up her offspring.

Some people have written that I must have criticized Long because I am not a parent. In fact, it is precisely because I am a parent that I wrote what I did,

Kendzior wrote, before she and Long made peace (like all good moms do) and published a joint letter of solidarity in support of the mentally ill.

After this tragedy, everyone has tried to pull rank–mothers, teachers, gun control advocates, students, people who are mentally ill, people who know the mentally ill or work with them, gun owners– everyone is a self-appointed expert based upon this or that facet of identity. We are looking for someone or something to blame, thinking about what we would have done differently if we were Adam Lanza’s mother. But the bottom line is that woman, that ideal mother, that person who would have known exactly what to do in Nancy Lanza’s situation does not exist. If your child is mentally ill, you will never be an ideal mother, not to the world, not to your child and not to anyone.

Nancy Lanza.

Liza Long.

Early school photo of Adam Lanza, above.

If you or someone you know struggles with mental illness, NAMI may be able to help. Visit http://www.nami.org/

When I learned Amanda Palmer was looking to find musicians to play shows with her sans monetary compensation, at first I was horrified. My pet peeve in life is the ubiquity of the unpaid internship, and upon learning that Palmer had been given $1 million after a recent Kickstarter campaign, it seemed that surely, she had the money. Even if she spent the entirety of her fortune, she certainly could have earned more if she didn’t give her CD away to people like me who have given her nothing (except this article).

However, what the debate surrounding Palmer’s actions fails to address is the real issue at hand–something that actually has nothing to do with Amanda Palmer, and everything to do with the way we as a society envision and “value” art. We live in a society where time is money and the ineffable, rather than being sublime, is considered worthless. But, how do you place a value on a beautiful sunset or the sound of a bluebird? How many times have you been charged for a child’s smile? And, how do you measure the impact and value of someone’s music on your own life? I realize it is a bit far-fetched to compare Amanda Palmer to a sunset, but just stay with me for a moment.

When Amanda Palmer wrote her first song, I’m guessing that she didn’t sit down and think about how much it was worth. I am guessing that something–let’s call it a muse–struck her and she felt so compelled that she couldn’t help herself. That’s exactly how I, a writer, came to write this article. It would be nice if someone eventually paid me for it, but what matters right now is that I feel an unrelenting NEED to write this.

Should we send Palmer a check each time we listen to one of her songs or think of her fondly? Some might argue that yes, we should.  But, maybe one of her songs means more to you than the others, so do you pay more for “Melody Dean”? How much is this debate she has engaged in worth? $200? How much for my opinion on it?  We live in a society where doing something for free inherently means that someone is trying to take advantage of you, especially if the person you are doing it for has more money or success than you do. In the case of unpaid internships, where one works in the hopes of eventually being hired, and the company benefits from unpaid labor, the system is obviously unfair. Saying that it is an individual’s choice to take an internship doesn’t cut it.

However, creating art often requires a type of personal generosity and commitment that is not present in other forms of “work.” In return, artists are rewarded with fans who would do anything for them. I once gave Tori Amos a wooden box that was hand carved in India. Just saying. I wish we lived in a society where children were paid to learn how to play the piano or to take ballet lessons, but sadly, that’s not the case.

It is not that Palmer is cheap (she has agreed to pay her musicians), she’s just different. Different because she can afford to be, and different because she is inherently gifted and has been recognized for those gifts. Different because she decided long ago not to play for money alone, and somehow, that worked out for her. Her path is not one that will suit everyone, but in today’s economy, the best and the brightest among us should learn from Palmer’s example and do our own things with all our hearts, and perhaps, eventually have an empire–or at least a small business–where we can afford to pay some other talented souls to live up to their full potentials. While it’s nice that Palmer is sharing her monetary wealth with other musicians and giving things away to her fans, she is not required to. She has shared other things with us–from her candor to her drive to continue making music, to her twitter feed (thanks for the RT in advance).

The problem Palmer brought to light is that we, as Americans, do not have a financial system in place to support artists, yet we believe access to art is the right of every individual. As we continue to spend time in economic turmoil, this attitude has wreaked havoc on the creative class who can no longer afford to exist in this country.

In other countries, the “crowdsourcing” that Palmer often does for housing or food is done by the government. Her backing band might be easily paid by a grant. In some places, art is able to exist outside the chokehold of raw unrestrained capitalism. I know an EU citizen who has been touring Europe for the past several years in what might be described as luxury unheard of for unknown American bands, and, as a result, her band has become somewhat popular without the same effort required to sustain such a project in the United States. Her band was a project that she was allowed to try, not something that she had to sacrifice her life for. In America, we have decided that making art is a priveledge, not a right. Music education is severely lacking, journalism is collapsing and only the incredibly rich can afford to call themselves visual artists. The only solution we seem to have for these problems seems to be capitalism, capitalism and more capitalism. We write articles that will get hits online regardless of factual accuracy, make music that can be played on top-40 radio stations and create TV shows that will get high ratings. Or, we let a few very rich creative types gamble their fortunes on something new.

As a country, we are anti-elitist, but some might argue that our capitalist take on pop-culture is a type of elitism in and of itself.

With this sad state of affairs, it’s not surprising that those of us desperate for change look to our idols– women like Amanda Palmer, who have stood up to capitalist forces at Occupy Wall Street– for the solution to these problems in the form of cold hard cash.

But Palmer lives in a different world, some might argue a better world–more inline with Ancient Greek conceptions of art. (1) For Palmer, the ineffable experience of creating music is what matters most. She measures her time in happiness, which works in the alternate reality she is lucky enough to live in:

you see, with this tour, i originally fantasized that we’d write super-easy-to-learn parts, and then musician volunteers – of varying backgrounds and skill level – would join us to play them, in every city, Palmer wrote.

as an experiment, as the concept behind the grand theft orchestra. we are the media. we are the orchestra. it sounded like a really FUN way of doing a tour, and so far, it really has been.

this has been the onstage checklist since i first started touring, and it’ll probably never change: is everyone on stage happy – both the salaried musicians and the volunteers? does everyone feel welcome? appreciated? respected? is everyone enjoying themselves? and most importantly: does everybody have a drink????