Holiday Black

I had a Diva Cup stuck inside me for a long fucking time. Let me begin: The day after my birthday, I dragged my hungover ass to the park where I taught an outdoor pre-school class. My state of dehydration had me looking for lemon-lime Gatorade like Tom Hanks was looking for Wilson in Castaway. I was bleary, but noticed a strange, dull pain in my lower back as my canvas sneakers grazed the freshly cut grass. As I set up for class, I remember the distinct sensation of mysterious wet globules dropping into my cotton Wonder Woman panties. I knew it couldn’t be my period, because I’d just wrapped that up. Before I had time to think to myself, “What the hell is wrong with me?” I was surrounded by a semi-circle of toddlers and their wholesome Park Slope mothers. It was time for us to sing a song. “Little bird, little bird, fly to my meadow,” I sang, with equal parts haze and feigned delight. I watched the messy three year old faces smile, teeth askew as I struggled to continue. I felt another em

Grimes Slams Sexism In The Music Industry In New Interview BY HOLIDAY BLACK IN MUSIC Grimes has seen many shifts in her short career over the past few years. From the Montreal Noise Scene to Jay Z’s artist management company, Roc Nation, the artist has been around the tinsel-towny block of electro-pop. Grimes is not shy about calling out power imbalances across gender—her Tumblr is semi-infamous for blasting sexism and her transparent use of social media has garnered a significant following. “Women feel pressured to act like strippers, and it’s okay to make rape threats but it’s not okay to say you’re a feminist,” she writes. In a recent interview with The New Yorker, Grimes described how the music industry’s ambient sexism exists not only in the production process but translates to ownership and consumer’s understanding of creative control. Her recent signing with Jay-Z’s production company is a gesture at the collapsing boundary between "indie" and "mainstream" success, but Grimes’ evolutio