Power Issue 2024

lifestyle for THE city

POWER ISSUE

FOR LOVE OR MONEY is it really a choice?

New York City a new reality

Power Women 2024 The List Au Naturel ... literally!

JESSICA CAPSHAW

Moves

‘

21st Century Women’... in progress

... an insight into twenty years of the Moves Power Women Awards and the women who made it possible...

... coming soon to a bookstore near you!

JESSICA CAPSHAW

known for her roles as Jamie Stringer on the ABC legal drama series The Practice, and as Dr. Arizona Robbins on the ABC medical drama Grey’s Anatomy. Jessica’s latest success story is ‘Call It What It Is’ her podcast with Grey’s co-star and bestie Camilla Luddington in which nothing is off limits!

By Domenica Solomon

I purposely remind myself before my chat with actress Jessica Capshaw that the images from her photoshoot look phenomenal. A reassurance before I dive in. In all seriousness, her pictures are beautiful. I can’t help but see the uncanny resemblance between Jessica and her mother, the actress Kate Capshaw. But this is about Jessica and her journey on some of the roles that she’s played, from leaving Grey’s Anatomy to coming back again this year, to her hit podcast with fellow Grey’s star Camilla Luddington, a podcast all about New York City.

Capshaw’s major roles on screen came in the form of longrunning television series: The ABC law practice drama set in Boston, The Practice, which ran from 1997-2004, and the medical drama Grey’s Anatomy, now going on its 20th season. In 2009, Capshaw became a regular on Grey’s in 2009, joining the cast as pediatric surgeon Arizona Robbins, a role she would leave in 2018 only to return again this season. Like Capshaw says, “It’s a long road.”

Capshaw was born in the Midwest, Missouri, which is “a very unique place with unique cultures and customs and being born to two very young parents, who actually were very interested and, hungry for, something different, which is sort of atypical in the Midwest.” Her parents moved to New York City when she was about three years old, and her mother started modeling, and her dad started working on Wall Street as a day trader. It didn’t work out and they divorced a year or two after making the move. Her mom started working in film and television, grabbing a role on the soap opera series The Edge of Night, then a lead role in 1982’s A Little Sex produced by Bruce Paltrow, a longtime family friend and Gwyneth’s father.

. She went wherever her mother’s job took them. Her whole life and the landscape of their lives changed when her mother didIndiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, where she met her husband, director Steven Spielberg. Capshaw was around 6 or 7 when her mother shot that film and met the director where it was “love at first sight, just the most amazing man and incredibly generous human. Why I valued him was because of how he made me feel. And that was just very cherished and very loved and adored.” After filming, they went back to their lives in Los Angeles. Spielberg and Kate Capshaw would marry soon after.

At that point, Capshaw was everywhere, 13 or so different schools before she was 13 and Capshaw was ready to put down stakes and not move around anymore. Los Angeles was it. She entered middle school. Because of the constant moving around so much, she was a shy kid, always right next to my mom, “right behind her skirt. I had far better luck relating to adults than I did children at that point in my life,” says Capshaw. “Because I’d been around adults so much more. So seventh, eighth and ninth grade were very uphill for me. And I didn’t quite fit in and I didn’t quite know socially how to find my people. And it was just hard. It was also a switch to a much more academic school, and it was just hard. All this on top of just being at a time in your life that I think is uniquely and directionally hard.” After high school she went on to Brown University in Rhode Island and after college, she circled back into being the child of two people that were so deeply rooted in story telling, film, television and Hollywood in general. She ended up coming back to Los Angeles and knew that she wanted to be an actress.

Images: Jim Wright

You would think nepotism would be a deterrent in her pursuit of a serious acting career. But Capshaw was hardened by her experiences growing up in showbiz. “I was very adaptable because, again, you’re going back and forth between two homes and life, between this Midwestern world and culture and then this New York City world and culture and then this Los Angeles world and culture,” insists Capshaw. “We always say about our kids, by the way, that when we only had one child, it’s like one kid’s an accessory, a handbag you can just take him and that becomes a different set of luggage that you love to have. But it’s more than that. And so I was very precocious, very pragmatic because I had been in adaptable survivor mode for most of my life. And I was like, this is not going to be a good story if I want to be an actress. I’m the daughter of these people, and if I go out into the world and I completely suck, it’s going to be a really bad story because it’ll be embarrassing because there will be eyes on me. There will be people paying attention. There will be people that are right there for you or against you because of that connection. And I was just very mindful that if I was going to show up, I was going to show up ready and have some kind of assurance or at least a vote of confidence that I actually had talent.”

Neither one of Capshaw’s parents were in the theater so she took a huge interest in that; started studying plays in high school; started doing summer workshops. By sophomore year at college, Capshaw was doing plays and taking acting classes and after college, moved back to Los Angeles and hit the ground running.

“It sounds way too fancy to describe what I felt, all the doors were closed. I knew it could be done. I knew people who did it, but there was no feeling that it was a foregone conclusion that I would have any success, or that anyone would hire me or that I would be any good. None of it. So I did what everybody does, and I struggled to find an agent. I struggled to find a manager. And then you get a good team behind you, and then you just literally go on every single audition. And at the time everybody was trying to get movie jobs and within the first three months, which of course seemed like an eternity to me, I decided that I wasn’t going to get hired in film, like they just weren’t going to hire me. And I said to my agent, I was like, well, there has to be something else. Like, is there something else that I could be doing? Because I have to make money. I have to be able to pay my rent. And they were like, well, you could go out for a [television] pilot. I didn’t even know what that was.

“Pilot season came and I read all the pilots and I went to all the auditions. And by the end of pilot season, I had booked a pilot. And then there I was at 21, on the Warner Brothers lot, making a TV show. Then it was just kind of off to the races, mostly doing comedies. But I didn’t feel like I’d arrived, but I felt like I was doing something that people were watching when I finally got on to The Practice, which was a David Kelley show.”

For now, Capshaw has her hands full with a return to Grey’s Anatomy and a focus on her podcast, Call It What It Is, that she co-hosts with

fellow Grey’s actor, Camilla Luddington, our other Moves Power cover. With Call It What It Is, Capshaw admits she got into the podcast game. She would hear people talking about their favorite podcasts and was originally overwhelmed by how many choices there were and then probably around the pandemic, She had some extra time and started listening to a number of them.

“There was something about doing this that wasn’t working [doing a podcast] alone. So Camila [Luddington] and I went to do this thing together, and we ended up spending like three days together. And so many funny things happened on this trip. And maybe a month and a half after the trip, something reminded me of a very funny thing that had happened. I called her, we were laughing so hard we were crying. My husband said nobody else makes you laugh that hard. It just stuck in my head. And then that was the summer. And then maybe three months later, that’s the podcast.

The theme of Call It What It Is is that you can’t do it alone, based on their conversations and friendship. If you can offer anyone friendship and a connection and feel like they’re part of something. “They’re part of it because they’re calling in, they’re writing in, they’re emailing, they’re DMing. They’re a part of the conversation. Fuck. That’s awesome. And then the name of it really was born of the fact that whether it’s good or bad, Camilla and I are pretty good at making fun of each other. We just say how we feel. So we call it what it is.”

With Grey’s Anatomy, Capshaw felt like she made it. Originally slated for a 3 episode arc in Season 5, she wound up a series regular for 10 years. After leaving the show in 2018, her character has returned this season as a special guest…Season 24. “I do remember feeling instantly that there could be a future. I didn’t know what it was, but I felt instantly that I could stay in this world. In efforts to make this interview replete with my stories of being around women that are in power, I learned so much from the women around me on that set, and I adored the men that I worked with. The women are plus, minus, and neutral. Truly. Because that’s real life, right? It was incredible to have that kind of education at work. And also it was profound to respect and admire so many

women around me. I remember just being in awe of what Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers [producers] did as well, how they manage that world, how they manage that success, what they were able to do with that success with regards to scaling it out and creating other shows, making unprecedented deals with huge companies for huge amounts of money, and being very forthright with their intentions.

“One of the biggest and most powerful shifts was that it became cool to see women supporting women. That’s how I was put together. I came from a single mom and I’ve always had an incredible group of women friends, that’s how I’m wired. Right? Like I’m going to be for women all day long.”

Next up for Capshaw is Miracle on 74th Street, a comedy with an ensemble cast that includes Jill Kargman, Jason Biggs,. Justin Bartha, Christine Taylor and Laura Bell. It has a release date of 2025.

“I got a script that was written by Jill Kargman, and it is just a parody of all things New York and sort of elite and Upper East Side, and it was so funny and made me laugh in so many ways and was sort of absurd. And I just thought, wow, I wonder how she’s even going to do this. And, I just said, yes, absolutely. I will play this, you know, this overarching Upper East Sider.”

With all these projects, Capshaw is used to the hustle and bustle. But surely, balancing motherhood (Capshaw and husband have four children) with work does raise the stress levels just a bit. “On the hardest days, normally I get in my car and I can’t wait to call somebody or listen to music, or listen to a book, or listen to a podcast or whatever. I would get into the car and I would then all of a sudden find myself pulling into my driveway and I would realize that I had listened to nothing. I had called no one, and I had just sat in silence after I had a pretty long drive. It was always when I would park, that I would realize that I didn’t turn on the radio or listen to music or call anyone. So I think I just on the hardest days, I needed to be alone and I needed to be silent and just, like, process, you know?”

We know all too well.

“... how having a free spirit is so important for young people to feel that today there are really no boundaries... ”

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POWER WOMEN 2024

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Anise

by Joseph Erdos photography by Claire Benoist

Down in the French/Spanish border country lies the perfect mediterranean fishing village of Collioure, which in the early part of the 20th century played host to Les Fauvres, The Wild Beasts). Led by Henri Matisse this loose grouping of artists emphasized strong color over the representational values of Impressionism.

Oh and they all

drank a lot of absinthe.

If you’ve been to the Mediterranean, you may have experienced the popularity of pre-dinner drinks called aperitifs. In Provence, no meal can commence without the traditional pastis and water. Not only does it cool you down, it stimulates your appetite. In Greece, a toast is always made with ouzo. In Italy, they start a meal with small sips of sambuca and add a shot to their after-dinner espressos. What ties all these drinks together is they are all flavored with anise. If you remember eating black licorice as a child or if you’ve ever eaten the vegetable fennel, then you know the flavor of anise. It’s slightly medicinal and sweet and the aroma very distinguishable. You don’t have to go to the Mediterranean to enjoy any of these drinks, many of them can be found stocked behind the counters at local bars and restaurants. Unfortunately not everyone knows how to serve them correctly, and many times they’re not often served at all since Americans seem a bit ambivalent about the flavor of anise. There may be hope: the aperitif tradition still has time to take hold in the States. I mean it has been enjoyed in Europe for centuries.

Today the custom of drinking anise aperitifs extends from the Iberian Peninsula all the way to the Middle East and also South America. The tradition of drinking anise dates as far back as Byzantine and Arabic times. To Europe, the spice-trading Arabs brought spices from afar, such as star anise, the dried flower of an evergreen from China. Anise, a leafy herb whose seeds are used as a spice, is Mediterranean in origin. In ancient times anise was chewed after meals as an aid in digestion. Supposedly Italian sambuca was named after the Arab’s ships, which were called sambuqs. The Arabs also brought the knowledge for the distillation process. Eventually all of Europe learned the method for alcohol distilling, which both alchemists and monks perfected, and drinks other than commonplace wine became popular. The anise-flavored spirits such as Greek ouzo, Turkish raki, and Middle Eastern arak emerged from that ancient time, each recipe very similar with just a few variations. The predominant flavor was always anise, used to flavor the alcohol that was distilled from remnants of the winemaking process. Other anise drinks, such as Pernod and sambuca are distilled from star anise itself and other herbs for rounding out the flavor.

Absinthe by another name: Most famous in France is pastis, a star anise liqueur that came about after the 1915 prohibition on absinthe in Europe and the United States. Invented in Switzerland in 1797 and first manufactured by Pernod in France, absinthe was initially touted for its medicinal qualities. But by the 1900s it had become known as a hallucinogenic drink. Countless murders, bouts of insanity, and drunken rages were blamed on the effects of the drink. It quickly became the scapegoat of the temperance movement leading to the ban. The herbal ingredient wormwood containing the chemical thujone was thought to be the culprit that induced visions of the notorious fée verte or green fairy, made famous by marketing posters of the era. Famous artists and writers claimed her as their muse: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Vincent Van Gogh, Oscar Wilde, and Ernest Hemingway all were famous absinthe drinkers. The cocktail that Hemingway drank while living in Paris, Death in the Afternoon, traditionally blends absinthe and champagne, but pastis works just as well. Ricard came out with Pastis in 1932 as a similar but safer alternative to absinthe. At first glance there is no difference between the two drinks in color (both are the same green), but the ingredients differ, as pastis does not include wormwood. People could once again enjoy an absinthelike drink without the purported psychedelic effect. Despite the long ban on absinthe, the drink has slowly come back in style. Today even the United States produces a few brands of absinthe.

How purists enjoy it:

Traditionally anise drinks are diluted with the addition of very cold water and served in either a highball or old-fashioned glass with or without ice. With the addition of water, the drink turns from clear to milky or in the case of pastis, from green to pale yellow due to the compound anethole, which is found in the essential oil of anise and anise-like plants (fennel, star anise, and licorice). In Greece, ouzo is drunk with water, ice, or neat in a shot glass, but the drink is never shot back, it is always sipped and savored slowly. In Italy, the liqueur sambuca is poured into small cordial or shot glasses. There is a custom of dropping three roasted coffee beans into the glass. When the drink is finished, the coffee beans are chewed to intensify the anise flavor. Sometimes the liqueur is set aflame to increase its flavor and allow for inhalation of the rising vapors.

ibrtJIM WRIGHT is an internationally recognized photographer who has shot hundreds of magazine covers, including the likes of Rolling Stone, GQ, People, Town & Country and InStyle. A smattering of celebrities and pop icons Jim has photographed include Beyoncé, Jon Bon Jovi, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Costner, Sheryl Crow, Claire Danes, Scarlett Johannson, Michelle Obama, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis.

tTRAVIS KEYES captures cinematic moments from film sets to nightclubs. Based in NYC, he specializes in portraits, corporate branding, and celebrity. As President of American Photographic Artists and an Adobe Lightroom Advisory Board member, Harlowe Light Ambassador and Sony advocate, his work reflects a journey marked by art, dedication, and community.

ILONA LIEBERMAN is a New York Citybased visual storyteller committed to crafting impactful content that promotes social engagement. As a native New Yorker and mother of two, her passion for photography inspired her journey into arts education. Ilona holds an MFA from Parsons and a certificate in Educational School Building Leadership from the New York Institute of Technology.

ALISON HERNON is a celebrity & fashion stylist based in New York City. She started her career at Interview, InStyle and Vanity Fair as a fashion stylist assistant. Alison has styled for celebrities such as Kat Graham, Rachel Brosnahan, Maria Sharapova, the entire cast of Pose, Penn Badgley, Rose McGowan, Neil Patrick Harris, Veronica Webb and many more. She also has styled for magazines such as Vogue, Elle, Esquire, Schon, L’Officiel AU, L’Officiel Baltic, Glamour, New York Moves Genlux and more. Alison is also a member of the Wardrobe Union, Local 829 since 2016.

rROMANA LAI, founder of Romana New York, is a renowned makeup artist with over 20 years of experience. Her company specializes in hairstyling and makeup services for events, championing women’s empowerment and diversity. Known for her ‘secondskin’ technique, she has worked with celebrities, business leaders, and top fashion houses at New York Fashion Week.

FRANK ROCCO is a New York City fashion photographer shooting professionally for over twenty years. His specialities include beauty, portraits and figure photography. He is an active member of the New York City photography community and served as the president of the New York Chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers for over five years before serving two three-year terms on the national board of directors. He currently curates the Weekend Reading for ASMP and is one of three artists in a collaboration known as Terminal Art Works.

IG: frankrocco

MARINA MICANOVIC With nearly 18 years in the makeup and beauty industry and 15 in fashion design and styling, Marina brings creativity and expertise to every project. From weddings to dance stages, my passion for beauty shines through, elevating my work to a high level of confidence and skill.

SPENCER HEYFRON is a photographer. English. Hilarious. Arsenal supporter. David Bowie. NYC. Dog. Kids. Creative Director. Sleepy. Traveling. Only Child. Nina Simone. Medium format. Hasselblad. Triumph rider. Fix it man. Bond Villain. Bearded. Sweet smelling. Hard-working .... ish

THE BEAUTY OF PINOT

A Binge Too Far

After recovering from a prolonged bout of longCovid and the resulting easing up of doctor imposed restrictions, I’ve had to accept the fact that I, once again, must become a functioning member of society. I have to actually leave the house and socialize with other human beings. This inherently implies that I must change out of the sweatpants and oversized t-shirt that I have been wearing for as long as I can remember. When I walk over to my closet, I am reminded of the debt (Have you seen my statement???) that I put myself in during the earliest stages of my confinement and the inevitable online shopping phase (binge!). You would think that seeing piles and piles of pristine new clothes in exciting new styles and colors (with tags still on them) in your closet would be an exciting experience, but in my case it is quite unfortunate. Unfortunate? UNFORTUNATE?? NO!! It’s an absolute f***ing self imposed disaster. NONE OF THEM FIT. All I can say is that the midnight orders on Seamless and the attempts to become an at-home superstar chef have taken a toll on my pant size.

Patty. librarian, Chelsea

In A Fit Of Pique...

I have recently found out that there is a deficiency in my character. This was news to me. All this time I thought that maturation, respect, and controlling our emotions was key, now people change the tune and tell me to let my emotions rule a bit? Fight a little? I do fight, everyday, just in a mature, respectful manner. I respect others enough to let them be alone with their emotions, generally through silence. This does not give you

“... If children are conditioned to appreciate knowledge and are instilled with a sense of fiscal responsibility at a young age, maybe they won’t have to deal with the same nonsense their parents are dealing with now. And maybe, just maybe, if they can get good grades, get into good schools, and get great jobs, they’ll be financially capable of dealing with this nonsense if and when it creeps up behind them... “

license to ask me five times if I understand. I am not stupid, I understand, I am controlling myself and also formulating a respectful answer to your irrationality. I will now explain this a bit. I used to do residential counseling for mentally ill individuals, specifically the high intensive care, 24 hour watch houses, and calmness was key. Basically, if you are rude or irrational, I view you as one of my clients who is having a manic episode. But I have more respect for the people with true problems, at least they are getting help.

Laurie. teacher, Bayside

how about those Mets...shuh

An entire industry and culture of humiliation and revulsion are predicated on the notion of menstruation “monsters,” turning women from rational, compassionate human beings into bipolar she-devils that smell funky.

A recent tampon run to Duane Reade nearly caused me to lose it. The “sanitary and female supplies” are never located on the main level, but always nestled between baby diapers and adult incontinence devices. Though I understand that Pull-Ups, plastic-lined panties, and Playtex are all worn or inserted in the same general region, having your period is very different from peeing yourself; indeed, it involves entirely separate organs. To be perfectly honest, it would make far more sense to stock Durex condoms next to the Depends—at least men ejaculate and eliminate from the same organ. And my ire only starts there. The preponderance of douches, scented tampons, and feminine wipes constitute a fraction of the cottage industry that tells women that when they menstruate (and the latest niche even in between menstruation), they are filthy and odious. The worst part of this is that were I to complain, I would almost immediately be dismissed as a hormonally- crazed harpy.

Calling “Code Red” because “Aunt Flo’s in town” and you’re “riding the crimson wave?” Well, that’s fine...we’re not complaining that it’s “that time of the month” and time for the old “rebooting of the ovarian operating system.” While the feminist in me (and by feminist, I mean one who fights for gender parity) balks at the notion that menstruation impairs my judgment or morphs me into some crazed Gorgon, I cannot believe that we cannot make the space for an understand-

ing of menstruation and women’s reproductive systems that encompasses both nature and nurture. I’d be a hell of a lot happier if we didn’t use stupid euphemisms to refer to shedding the uterine lining, if men didn’t pretend like even sealed, packaged boxes of Tampax were radioactive, if someone didn’t quip that it must be “her time of the month,” every time a woman makes an aggressive comment, and, of course, if healthy men with good teeth, deep voices, and strong jaw lines were offering to fertilize me.

‘Auntie Flo’, woman, Purgatory

Vote For Me and I’ll Set You Free

“My friends”, the potential education ‘reform’ policies need a serious revamp. With all this talk about the economic gap between the lower, middle, and upper classes being way too, well, gaping, it’s about time that we focus on where this problem stems from. Today’s generation of children and teens have had to watch their parents struggle with the economic crisis, their houses foreclosing, unemployment, and the increasing cost of healthcare and… college. So how are these kids ever going to afford the lifestyle their parents worked so hard for? It starts with education. If children are conditioned to appreciate knowledge and are instilled with a sense of fiscal responsibility at a young age, maybe they won’t have to deal with the same nonsense their parents are dealing with now. And maybe, just maybe, if they can get good grades, get into good schools, and get great jobs, they’ll be financially capable of dealing with this nonsense if and when it creeps up behind them.

Pedro, journo, NoHo

Wee Oui? Non, None !!!

People have got to stop urinating on my street. And no, I’m not talking about home- less people and I’m not talking about drunk college kids either. I’m talking about normal people like you or me, people who, in their proper state of

“... Why would you think that your desire to spawn obviously means that I must have the same want? Let me tell you – just because I have lady parts capable does not mean I want them to be put to use for it... ”

mind, have made the decision to step up against a building, zip down their flies, and urinate in public. And I live on the Upper East Side. What’s worse, just the other day I saw a mother stop her car, remove her little boy, and instruct him to piss on the side of my building. In broad daylight. And he DID. Look, we’ve all had those moments where we have to pee so badly that our teeth hurt. But we live in New York City. It’s not like it’s 5 miles until the next rest stop. There’s a Starbuck’s on a corner. There’s a restaurant across the street. Hell, my building has a lobby bathroom for Christ’s sake, use it, I wouldn’t mind. I don’t think I’m asking for too much. Let your puppies pee freely, just do me a favor and curb yourselves. Thanks.

Esther, risk analyst, Upper East Side.

Get Plastered !

Here’s the thing, I am not going give my real name and end my days of nookie prematurely and permanently (and anyway I’m sure I speak for so many members of the male gender) but what is it with unashamedly putting shovel-loads of shit on your female faces, in full view, on the subway journey every morning: Creams and powders and pencils and liquids; patted and powdered, smoothed, rubbed and rouged. Guys, Lord knows we know you don’t really have perfect peachy skin with blushed cheeks and full, round red lips, but it only needs for last night’s obvious excesses to be touched up not a basement-up revitalization. Have confidence in yourselves for goodness sake and some faith in the male sex because believe me your score goes down with each layer you lather on as we sit and watch just what it takes to make you oven-ready for the office.

Barry, Sales, Queens

‘kay, I am single. I am 27. I am not planning on marrying because I don’t even have a boyfriend, and to be honest a boyfriend is not high on my list of priorities. And I am NOT planning on children. Ever. I don’t need them. I don’t want them. I don’t see them fitting into my life now, or 5 years in the future, or frankly ever. And yet everyone I’ve said this to? ‘Oh, you’ll change your mind.’ ‘You’ll feel differently when you’re older/before long.’ ‘It’s different when they’re yours.’ ‘But WHY?’ ‘How can you not want children?’ ‘Don’t you owe it to your parents?’ All of you get the fuck out. It’s none of your business why I don’t want to have children, and it’s absolutely none of your business where my decision stands with my parents. Why would you think that your desire to spawn obviously means that I must have the same want? Let me tell you – just because I have lady parts capable does not mean I want them to be put to use for it. And how dare you talk down to me like a child is obviously the end-all destiny of my life and imply that I’m being selfish not to give in? Being barely able to keep myself in a tiny ass apartment, there is no sound financial reason to have a child and get us both kicked out of it. Keep your fantasized, fetishized delusion of the wonders of children to yourself – I want no part of it.

Jess, PR, Clinton

Home Sweet Home

There is something so painful and somber about seeing someone else buying your favorite “saved” Zillow home. Getting that email update that my saved home had been sold just pulls at my heartstrings. And I know that I shouldn’t feel this way because it was never mine to keep, but I can’t help but to feel this sorrow. My perfect dream home is now gone. A place that I envisioned cooking meals, relaxing in that open floor plan with the original restored antique wide pine floors, and simply spending my cherished time in that spectacular countryside manor. Just vanished from my reach. I knew everything about this home and felt as if it were already mine. The way that it was situated at the end of a private road on 13 acres, allowing absolute privacy while also being just a short drive to in town amenities and local commutes. I even learned about the HOA fees and nearby schools, all for nothing. I don’t even know what an HOA fee is or even have kids that I would be

sending to these schools but I invested everything in myself to this home.

I am going through all the stages of grief right now, the first one being denial. After getting that email, I could not believe my eyes. I had to personally go to Zillow.com and search through my account’s saved home to see if it was true. And then I saw that simple four letter word on the listing; SOLD. I thought something must have been wrong. This house had been on the market for over 400 days. I thought there must have been something off, resulting in no one purchasing it. However, my assumptions were wrong and the forsaken day had come. And there were a million reasons why this home would never be mine. For starters it was millions of dollars. Currently I am a college student with no money and no plans on living alone anytime soon. Second, this home was in the middle of nowhere in Vermont…. And don’t get me wrong I love Vermont but I would never want to permanently live there. To me, it is more of a weekend getaway in my mind. Some nice nature hikes, outdoorsy activities, and maybe have some maple syrup. But New York City is my home and I can’t just change my pace of life and slow it down to live in the Green Mountain State. However, the fact that it could not be mine made me irate.

Then comes the anger, bargaining, and depression. All these feelings rush in, it starts to become overwhelming. I become angry. Angry at myself for not putting an offer on the house when I had the chance. Angry that someone else took advantage of this opportunity that I could not. I begin to bargain. I was thinking maybe the buyers will put the home back up for sale in a couple years and then I can buy it off of them. Maybe there would be some problems with the house that would force them to move out. Or perhaps I could go right now to the house and offer them even more money for the house, an offer that they could not refuse. I would have done anything for this house.

These two stages of anger and bargaining sort of came as one. But the depression was the worst stage of them all. Thinking about all that could have been in that house. The memories that could have been made, the laughs that were destined to be had, all the missed opportunities and possibilities begin to haunt me. Not that me, a college student with a withering bank account, could afford this 3 million dollar estate, but there was a little hope in me seeing the continuous price cuts. And I know that I won’t even remember this house in 10 years when I am exactly searching for a home, but this was the perfect home. One that was just my style of interior design, no need for any renovations or remodeling. It was a forever home that gave me room to grow when I would start a family. And I have yet to reach the final stage of grief. I do not know when I will reach the stage of acceptance… but I hope it is sometime soon.

email:

bitch@newyorkmoves.com snailmail:

For Love

I am the go-to resource for endless marriage jokes among my friends and family. Bets are placed over cocktails and family get-togethers. My mother prays that I “smarten up” with my dating choices and give more thought about the future. “I don’t want my daughter marrying a bum.” Yes, yes, loved ones. Whatever. Say what you will, but love is all I need. Despite the terrible things that corrupt our world and make us question the overall goodness of humanity, I am a firm believer that life is fueled by love, and once you’ve found it, nothing else should really matter. Passion over paychecks, it’s as simple as that. Why are people so…scared?

Maybe it’s just my foolishly romantic mind, but I don’t care if the man at the end of the aisle is a greasy-haired, part-time landscaper who sings modern versions of Puccini at the local dive bar for a free beer. Because despite the terrible things that corrupt our world, and the things that make us question the overall goodness of humanity, I am a firm believer that life is fueled by a pretty little thing called love. And honestly, nothing else should matter. Say what you will, but my knight in shining armor is somewhere out there, and I refuse to marry anyone who doesn’t take my stubbornly romanticized breath away.

Call me foolish. Remind me that life isn’t cheap. Today’s world runs on money, not love. Bills have to be paid and families have to be supported, and if there are no funds, rough times lay ahead. I know! I know all of this. But in a society where our fates are decided by corporate acquisitions, must circumstance also mean that our very survival depends on the merging of assets? I’m talking about marriage, folks, and my question to you is: Where has all the love gone?

You’ve undoubtedly seen the stereotypes. The poor beauty marries the rich beast and the young stud hangs off the arm of an old-money hag with her old-money bank account – prime examples of fiscal-based marriages are everywhere. Although no one can point at any individual and call him or her a gold-digger (because who are we to judge, after all?), plenty of marriages are

more than a bit questionable. I mean, age is just a number, and love knows no boundaries, but come on: what happened to passion, lust and I-can’t-stand-to-be-away-from-you?

There’s nothing wrong with thinking ahead, and I’d be lying if I said that I don’t care if my spouse will be able to support at the least half of our marriage. It is a partnership, after all, so both ends should do their part to make the relationship work. But the right kind of love is timeless, so what’s the need to spontaneously sprint down that aisle when your economic welfare looks grim?

If you find yourself staring at a man who has just put a huge diamond on your finger and you find yourself thinking, we’ll… he’s not a bad man, it could be fun.. Immediately take the ring off, place it on the counter and remember, you have to have sex with that. And ask yourself, when the hell you become so materialistic?

Money may buy nice things and make life a little (who am I kidding, a lot) easier, but it won’t make a marriage work in the ways it’s supposed to. It’s selfish, above all, and makes for a fragile and superficial existence. There’s no debate about it. If money is the root of all evil, how can one assume that true happiness can actually be obtained from it? The capitalistic love is a love of luxury and freedom – freedom to spend, freedom of space, freedom of luxury – and families are constantly being divided and torn apart because of such arrangements, because, well, a materialistic substitute for love doesn’t work. The love for money replaces the love within a relationship. And sooner or later, it’s bound to fall apart. And of it doesn’t, you certainly will.

So with numbers showing anywhere from 50 to 60 percent of marriages ending in divorce, one has to think, where did they all go wrong? Is it lack of money or lack

of love? Surely, if you don’t have a solid basis for a relationship, the butterflies and the passion of wanting to spend the rest of your life with someone, it simply can’t work. Just because you want to vomit by just thinking about making love to him (eek), doesn’t mean he does. So, in a country where a large number of people are walking down the aisle for the wrong reasons, it definitely shows. Before you become just another number, remember that old saying, “Money can’t buy love.” Before young girls understand the concepts of a ‘career’ or ‘fiscal responsibility’, fairy tale ideals of ‘weddings’ and ‘marriage’ are drilled into their heads. Right around the time she’s wobbling around in her mom’s shoes and sloppily putting on her makeup, society is brainwashing her to believe it is of the utmost importance that she marries young and marries well. Fantastical stories of knights in shining armor get girls caught up with the idea of marriage and marrying for money. My question, of course, is why the fucking hell shouldn’t they be? Marrying for money is the smartest thing a woman can do. Reality must really suck for all those homeless and broke daydreamers who were, blinded by a love-struck light.

The divorce rate has been and continues to steadily rise, and some of us have seen the household effects firsthand. Just about fifty percent of all marriages end in divorce, and financial complications are the number one reason couples file for separation. Sad as it may seem, a strong financial foundation is imperative as the backbone of marriage. It’s the driving force that keeps a marriage stable and capable of succeeding long term. Forget about the ancient ‘dowry’ and ‘marriage settlement’ nonsense, what about tax breaks and joint economic liability? Marrying for money isn’t the ‘cheap convenience’ whimsical naysayers label it to be. It’s a decision far more thought-out than a marriage for love or overwhelming feelings. This isn’t solely an economical choice, but a public statement that you won’t settle for anything less.

After all, you’re an intelligent woman, right? And intelligent women are constantly fighting to mold and create the lifestyle they ultimately want. Career-driven and goal-oriented women are like regimented machines, damn it; they won’t even let marriage stop them. So before making the dive into a marital ebb and flow, these women diligently contemplate the eligibility of their potential spouse. Is he financially stable? Is he responsible? Does he limit his spending habits accordingly? Because those are the traits that are long lasting. Those are the habits that remain consistent, whether or not he tells you he loves you and whether or not he still makes your stomach flutter, does not. A lifetime commitment is worth initially asking a few difficult questions. And with an increasing number of women taking charge of their finances and lifestyles, it doesn’t hurt to ask yourself whether or not you want to be a part of this heightening demographic.

And of course, I’m paying respect to Herbert Spencer’s phrase “survival of the fittest” when I say marriage for money is comparable to the survival of the financially fit. The more you make, the more you can bargain for, and consequently the more suited you become to be paired with someone of your financial stature. So suck it up lovebirds, because money certainly matters. And in times like these, how could anyone refute that?

Here’s a rhythm you can make love to: the financial crisis. That’s right, the affectionate sway of your sentiments under the sheets won’t come close to subsidizing your mortgage. Gazing eyes and grazing limbs won’t put your kids through college and long-lost love won’t pay for your daily coffee from Guy & Gallard. The lack of sufficient capital has affected all levels of the economic food chain, and the smarter people are marrying into an attempt at financial security. It’s incredibly unintelligent, albeit plain stupid, to disregard the value of real, tangible money in quasi-desperate times and situations like these. There are no buts, baby. Our lifestyles are expensive. We’re picky, prim and spoiled. And love doesn’t pay the oil, electric or credit card bills.

Realistically, time tempers our initial understanding of what love and marriage really are. Women who marry young are surprised, later on, that they can’t handle what marriage really is- not the eternal effervescence of an ‘undying happiness’, but an agreement between two people to respect each other’s thoughts, opinions, bodies and properties. The financial dependability of both parties makes the transition into merging finances a smoother process, and it also secures a constant for the relationship in the long run. As we grow from giggly girls to promis- ing adolescents to cynical middle-aged wom- en, the reality of adequate financing will be a critical part of our lives. Without adequate income we won’t have those Prada’s, YSL’s or Jimmy Choos. And maybe we could get by on love without money, but love without shoes? No fucking way.

Or Money

Each week on our planet, humans are given 168 hours of life. Let’s generously grant that the average American spends eight hours per day asleep – a cumulative total of 56 hours per week. Let’s also generously grant that at least five days out of the week, the same average American spends eight hours per day working, ideally allocating 40 hours per week to activities that secure an income, though in our current times this number seems too often far smaller or far greater. But if we’re only concerned with averages, out of the 168 hours available for our hearts to pulse and our lungs to breathe, we spend 96 of them either unconscious or obliged to work. Out of the available minutes we have, it is the leftover minority that we are granted to spend actually living our lives.

Now, take one of those minutes to consider what this actually means.

We work in order to fill the rest of our time on this planet, awake, asleep, or otherwise. We work to keep a roof over our heads, to pay for vacations, to buy electronics, to get an education. We work so that we can pay for a car, for a Metrocard, for a gym membership. For those uninsured among us, we work so that we can buy medicine. Work pays for sneakers and jeans and t-shirts, dinners out with friends or with spouses or with ourselves. It pays for movies and music and cable. Work pays for the beds we sleep in, for the percale sheets we wrap ourselves in, and for the pillows on which we rest our tired, overworked heads. In other words, we work to fund the hours we spend not working. These hours are an agglomeration of needs that must be met and desires that we yearn to fulfill, obligations and pleasures woven together across a scant 72 hours.

Being alive certainly entails balancing these two polarities: the things we must do and the things we want to do. The scale is dramatically tilted to the “musts” in our lives, but this may, in fact, open up the possibility that the times we can fill with the “wants” shine brighter in a field of gray obligation. Or, is it the case that the time we have for our wants – the time we have to really live – is being rapidly consumed by our work-lives and the constraints of our still ever-shrinking billfolds?

Brooklyn Industries, a clothing company founded by two self-proclaimed artists in 1998, plasters the following slogan in the store fronts of their retail shops across Manhattan and Brooklyn: “Live. Work. Create.” The first time I recall seeing the slogan was during the New York Gay Pride Parade in 2009, on the corner of Christopher and Hudson. “Living,” had been code amongst my group of friends – at the time mostly gay men and their female friends who resided in Hell’s Kitchen – for all manner of debauchery, generally taking place at night and under the influence of assorted shades of brown liquor. But “living” could also be a compliment, or an accolade. When I got into

graduate school a friend might have snapped his fingers and proclaim, “Live!” And so living was something that incorporated a broad spectrum of semi-destructive and constructive behaviors. Seeing our little gayborhood slang incorporated into a corporate slogan was thus amusing on a day that, truth be told, saw much living indeed.

But Brooklyn Industries’ catchy slogan says more than “have good times,” and little of it has to do with the handbags and polo shirts that they sell. The three imperatives – live, work, create – function in tandem. Life does not happen irrespective of work, nor creation, irrespective of one’s life. The way to exist, to fill the one hundred and 68 hours of life bound within a week, is to let the three imperatives mingle with one another rather than impede the advancement of any one area of our lives.

This is idealism at its peak. In reality, many of us find ourselves underemployed, in jobs that do us no real service when it comes to improving our quality of life. Perhaps, for some of us, time at work functions as time to create. These lucky few who feel a sense of personal satisfaction with their jobs, such as the teacher who takes great fulfillment from watching a few students blossom under her instruction, or the farmer who takes pride in the fruits yielded by his land, or the graphic artist who finds her style suited for any number of websites, ad campaigns, or print media. Those people are out there, and they are fortunate.

Then there are the rest of us. We who are employed in purposefully flexible jobs like the service industry or retail, so we can attend to living/creating when the time comes to audition or publish, the time when creating and working can fuse together. Work, for most people in this category, is only what it is: labor. It is work that provides financial gain without the opportunity for that work to concurrently foster any living or creating. It is work that provides shelter and, ideally, enough money to get as far away from that work as possible on our days off. For those of us that fall squarely into this category, the schism between our day jobs and our lives can be vast enough to seem virtually insurmountable. These jobs are the kind that relegate life to the 72 hours per week that it can be lived.

Across the board, though, work itself – enjoyed or not – seems to occupy more and more of our consciousness and, in turn, infringes more and more upon our time to live and/or create. As the Great Recession threatens to return, as the news networks proclaim the ever-present specter of voracious unemployment, as we hear about pennies being pinched and wallets being locked, we collectively cling to our jobs with greater fervor. We devote time to more hours, as restaurant patrons decrease in number and curtail their generosity with gratuities. We take on more responsibilities in offices as the staff around us is scaled back. And all the while, the threat persists that

these jobs – whatever they may be – are more and more tenuous as the days go by. The time and will to have a life, and the spaces in which we can meaningfully create, begin to evaporate. The 72 hours of free time begin to erode as we give in to the exhaustion fostered by larger burdens, stress, and fear. It is precisely in such times, though, that the meaning acquired by life, by living, becomes more important and necessary than ever.

Even in these tough-times, in New York City we have the luxury of summers filled with free events – at Lincoln Center, in Central Park, in Prospect Park, along the Hudson River piers and elsewhere. And while events, free or not, do not constitute a life, they do play an important part in providing markers for us to measure our lives by: we had fun at an event, we hated an event, remember that time that it rained all night while Deerhunter played at Pier 54? The ability to do, to have done something, anything, different from labor affords us the opportunity to be alive by creating memories for ourselves. This is how simple the command plastered across so many Brooklyn Industries’ windows can be; creation is as simple as living. The two can and should be one in the same.

But when this scenario is considered in its practice, it becomes a lesson in civics. All of the free events in NYC are put on by corporations, like Time Warner Cable, or by the municipality, in which case organizations work with the city to provide free concerts or performances and the like. So in one sense, those of us strapped for time or cash rely on a company or on the city to which we pay taxes to provide entertainment during our free time. Fine enough, perhaps, but during this time of economic strife, the tenor of political life is squarely positioned against local, state, and federal governments spending money to enrich the lives of their citizens. As the budgets of all three entities are scaled back out of necessity or political pressure, this leaves us to hope that our corporations – what with their histories of beneficence and all – will find it in their hearts to sponsor and subsidize our cash-strapped lives in the age of rampant corporate irresponsibility and greed. Imagine if we needed to rely on BP or Enron or Lehman Brothers to provide the only economically feasible means for recreation in our lives. Just imagine.

All of this is not to say that recreation is the only fount of life, and thus creation, that supplies humanity with meaning. Life happens, too, in the small and quiet moments we share with our families and with ourselves. It happens when you just walk down a street and see a gargoyle that you never noticed before protruding from a building. It happens when a tourist asks you for directions. It happens when you get lost in Brooklyn, or get turned around by the diagonals of the West Village. This kind of living will hopefully always be around and be appreciated. It is the louder moments – the benchmarks, the journeys, the run -

THE GULAG

by Kyle Valenta Toads

Why should I let the toad work Squat on my life?

Can’t I use my wit as a pitchfork And drive the brute off?

Six days of the week it soils With its sickening poison –Just for paying a few bills! That’s out of proportion.

Lots of folk live on their wits: Lecturers, lispers, Losers, loblolly-men, louts –They don’t end as paupers;

Lots of folk live up lanes With fires in a bucket, Eat windfalls and tinned sardines –They seem to like it.

Their nippers have got bare feet, Their unspeakable wives Are skinny as whippets – and yet No one actually starves.

Ah, were I courageous enough To shout, Stuff your pension! But I know, all too well, that’s the stuff That dreams are made on:

For something sufficiently toad-like Squats in me, too; Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck, And cold as snow,

And will never allow me to blarney

My way of getting The fame and the girl and the money

All at one sitting.

I don’t say, one bodies the other

One’s spiritual truth; But I do say it’s hard to lose either, When you have both.

Philip Larkin

the thinness cult

Cicero once said, “In a disordered mind, as in a disordered body, soundness of health is impossible.” I think most women would agree that, at one time or another, they have felt sufficiently nonplussed with the figure in the mirror. We go to the gym, work up a sweat and watch our carbs, but at the end of the day, what we see rarely comes close to resembling the image we want. I, for one, have never gone by a store window, caught a glance at my reflection and thought, “You know, I really should try modeling.” Maybe one day, if I ever mistake my reflection for that of an 8 year-old boy, I’ll rethink my future on the catwalk.

Body image is as much of a fashion trend as the clothing we wish we could fit into. We all remember the obscenity of the heroine chic craze in the 90’s, and I think it’s fair to say that we let it go on for far to long before voicing our collective disgust. It’s amazing to think that we could sit back and watch Kate Moss – who looked like she’d been awake for a month on a desert island with no food or sleep – and think, boy I need to get me some of that perfume! Yet we played along, and suddenly we weren’t hot unless we looked like we did an eight ball of coke and chased it with a few snorts of smack. It was a look I myself never adopted (I was too busy eating) but there it was – the ideal woman. She was far from full-figured, but you got the feeling she’d actually been to a grocery store in her lifetime. However, it’s become increasingly obvious that someone out there wants everyone to think they need to lose weight. Not everyone – women. It would be nice to kid ourselves and equate thin with healthy, but few of us can be as thin as Nicole Richie and maintain a pulse. Yet, once she hit waif weight, there she was on the cover of magazines for all of us to hang on our refrigerator as “incentive” not to open it.

Growing up, I was lucky to have parents who constantly told me I was perfect the way I was. I never thought for two seconds that I was supposed to look any other way than how I already looked. Yet, decades later, that self-assurance is long gone. Growing up in a different era is all it would take to change the way we feel in our

own skin. A walk around the museum shows that I might not have cared about a couple of extra pounds, as the curvy full-figured women were the only ones worth their weight in marble. Imagine a sculpture of Lara Flynn Boyle next to the full-figured Bather by Allegrain. It’s the difference between skipping the midnight snack and ending my evenings with Ben and Jerry.

During the Victorian era, artwork served as the Cosmo of the day, and the images pictured plump, fleshy, and full-figured bodies. A look into Georges Seurat’s painting “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte”, it’s obvious I would not be suffering Scarlett Johansson fever the way I do now. To think that I might be bustling the back of my rear to make it look ten times bigger than it already is and suffocating myself with a corset is unfathomable, but no different than lying on my bed and saying a prayer before I zip my tapered jeans.

Women didn’t know how good they had it when the voluptuous Marilyn Monroe redefined the female figure. They needed to rebuild the curves that were once bound and restrained while flapping the Charleston in the 20’s. Sure they forced themselves into girdles and wore bras that made their boobs look like Madonna’s on the Blond Ambition tour, but there is no doubt it beats the skinny grip that has taken hold since the arrival of Twiggy, who weighed in at prepubescent figures.

Should I blame Hollywood for making me think that thinner is better, fashion designers for making their clothes in a size zero, or McDonald’s for making their fries so tasty? Could Nichole Richie and Calvin Klein really be to blame for what Cicero calls my “distorted mind”? The fact is that the women on TV don’t even look like the women they are in real life, so why should you try to look like what they can’t even accomplish? While you shouldn’t go stuffing yourself until your button goes flying across the room in an insurance nightmare, do take everything in moderation. But if you think you need to be a certain body weight to be beautiful, then a beautiful mind is a concept that might just be lost on you.

Michael Urie

By LilyFaulkener images by Chelsea Gehr

When I begin our conversation with actor Michael Urie, the talk quickly shifts to… dancing? No wonder we started talking about dancing. I had just seen the Ugly Betty alum in the Broadway musical Once Upon a Mattress opposite theater staple, two-time Tony Award-winning Sutton Foster. I was talking about how much energy I was sensing [in his performance], the energy coming from an athletic place Urie did not know he possessed until his sister pointed it out after seeing one of his productions.

“I didn’t ever think of it as athletic until my athlete sister came to see me in something years ago,” the Texas native Urie claims. “This is when I was still in school. We did this big restoration comedy, and in it I had a sword fight, and I had this huge, funny scene where I was hiding under a bed from my mistress’s husband and jumping over hedges and flipping and running and she was like, ‘It’s athletic, what you’re doing.’ I’d never thought of it that way, but it really is. It’s really quite athletic. And as much attention as I have to put on, being mentally ready to go out and do a show, eight times a week, it’s way more important that I am physically ready because my brain will catch up.”

The Juilliard-trained Urie’s committed to the craft and it shows in his preparation: go to the gym every show-day; stretches; pretty substantial vocal warm up and then a physical and vocal cool down at the end of the night, which is kind of new for the 44-year-old Urie.

That commitment to the craft of acting is what Urie specializes in…and it shows. In addition to Once Upon a Mattress, he will star in Goodrich, opposite Michael Keaton and Mila Kunis, out this October.

But he’s not feeling typecast having played predominately mean, bitchy characters.

“There’s Goodrich, Once Upon a Mattress roles that you kind of align with the character and who you are. It’s interesting. I think for a long time I was cast [on TV] in these sorts of mean characters, bitchy kind of characters. On Ugly Betty, I was this bitchy guy [a role that would garner Urie a Ewwy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series in 2009]. And then I had a great recurring role on Younger with Sutton [Foster]. And now I’m playing a bunch of nice guys. I think maybe we’ve kind of gotten past—certainly with gay characters—like, gay characters don’t have to be mean anymore.”

With Once Upon a Mattress thriving on Broadway, and for Urie, the reason for seeing a live performance is a real unifier: it’s about people wanting to go into a room with others and experience the same joy together. “Coming on the heels of the isolation and division of the Trump Covid [period], being a comedy about grief and a comedy about mental health was really important. We are talking about mental health more now than we were five years ago.

“Goodrich, this sweet gem of a movie, starring Michael Keaton, is very nostalgic. And I think it’s about us reconnecting with our families, in a positive way, even if there have been rocky times. I feel like projects and characters come to the surface when we as a society need them. These projects especially feel like they are a product of their time.”

In speaking of a product of their time, artificial intelligence (AI) has a way of impacting performances. Productions don’t need to go to the locations and do the shoots. Part of the parcel is people having morals and scruples, what’s the right thing to do here. “CGI has gone through so many phases and we as an audience are able to see it now. I mean, yes, sometimes we get fooled by CGI, but it’s just a new technology.”

For now, Urie’s just happy with his current projects. He’s excited for people to see the new season of Shrinking on Apple TV starring Harrison Ford [delayed from the actors and writers strike last year; season 2 came out October 16]. “I don’t like it when there’s too much time between seasons as a viewer. So I want us to get back before anyone forgets about us. The new season is really about forgiveness.

“And it’s a show, like I said before, about mental health. And we’re in a moment as a society where we’re talking about mental health more than we probably ever have. Certainly as a whole talking about it, as something that everybody has to deal with and, and working with Harrison [Ford], he’s playing a character that is, I think, pretty close to him, in a lot of ways.

“He’s been in comedies. I’ve seen him in comedies, we’ve all seen him in comedies. But to do this, to do this role where he gets to really embrace a character that’s dealing with Parkinson’s… In this era of his life, [he] still cares, [he’s] still passionate, and still wants to be the best. Still wants to be his best. I shouldn’t say the best. Still want to be his best version. Be a perfectionist and love the work. He comes off as cranky in interviews and stuff and he loves playing that card.”

Urie is super-excited for his character in Shrinking. An adult. For Urie, even though it’s a comedy, it feels like his first big boy job, his first really grown up show, dealing with adult themes, situations and problems. He didn’t expect or necessarily think that it would ever happen for him. And now he gets to go toeto-toe with people like Jason Segel and Harrison Ford.

In Goodrich, Urie plays a guy whose husband leaves him with their kid. “These are characters that exist in the world, and their problem is not their queerness. And that is a nice, refreshing change,” laments Urie. “I didn’t have any problem playing all those characters for all those years. That was important then and still is important for lots of people to see those kinds of stories told. But this new wave of playing queer characters that have problems that are not their queerness is exciting and refreshing and fantastic. This is just life. It’s not a different life. It’s what everybody’s life is, a journey of all the differences that go on.”

It’s this intense pride (pun intended) that bleeds out of Urie’s work, even off-stage. He’s the co-founder of Pride Plays, a queer theater festival that runs during Pride Week in New York City that gives opportunities to queer theater artists that might not be getting them otherwise. And it has been extremely rewarding personally.

HMU: Chelsea Gehr

Styling: Michael Fusco

HAIRY PIE

For all of the fuss and attention paid to deodorized and sanitized parts these days, hairy and smelly and messy and downright dirty is the only way to go for some. Au naturel was never better.

by L. J. Moore

Maybe it started with porn. But then again, I know better. I’ve seen those Playboys from 1974; bear-chested men with their arms wrapped around busty and bush-coiffed women. But if it didn’t start with porn, it has made it there. Watch any hot-andsexy movie made in the last ten years and you’ll find tantalizing fantasies of bright-lighted skin, every pore showing. You know what I’m talking about.

Where’s the hair?

And it’s in the mainstream media too. We’ve heard the sitcom cracks about men’s hairy backs, or the Sex and the City shits and giggles about bikini waxes. Somewhere after blow-jobs and Bill Clinton, our country took a collective oath: Body Hair is Bad. Body Hair is Funny. Body Hair is Shameful. Your body hair has to go.

Of course, in the midst of any trend, there are hold-outs. The ever-hairy West Coast firmly rebelled during these past years of body baldness. Healthful hairy men and women have been happily walking the streets of San Francisco, California and Portland, Oregon. The men have even stopped shaving their faces. Women’s legs – God forbid – are as free and natural as the day they first won a three-legged race. And underneath those unisex thrift-store t-shirts and sleeve tattoos, you’re likely to fine a tuft of soft fur, right in the precious armpit, deodorant (or au naturale salt deodorizer) and all.

But the rest of us have been shaving, waxing, plucking, and electrolysizing our hair away, or at least feeling like we should.

How many times have I heard my girlfriends complain about the in-grown hairs and unsightly red bumps, not to mention the excruciating pain, of their monthly maintenance to makeit-bare-down-there? How strange was it to get a gorgeous man back to my bedroom, lips locked, lights out, only to rip off his shirt and hear him apologize, meekly, “I’m hairy,” as though I needed to be warned?

Enough already! Enough with the shame and the razor bumps and the nasty smelling depilatory creams and the bikinis that simply do not cover a reasonable triangle of space! Enough with asking grown women to be as bare as pre-pubescent little girls and grown men to be as wax smooth as surfboards! We are apes. We are humans. And when we grow up, guess what? We get hairy.

I begin to wonder if this fear of body hair is just the most recent incarnation of our country’s great flirtation with the sexis-bad obsession our Puritan founders happily bequeathed to their descendants. (Of course, their babies came from storks, not dirty, smelly, hairy humping.) If so, that’s too bad. Because adolescence and sex in America do not have to be fraught and awkward bedfellows. Before my budding breasts, before my period, sprouts of brown pubic hair were my first indication that I would someday be a bleeding, buxom, va-va-voom woman, and they were the first bits of me that I learned to really love. Not in the way that a baby discovers his feet and thinks that I-have-not-existed-til-now. I mean self-love. I mean onanism. I mean falling asleep at night, gently stroking that soft new hair right betwixt my legs.

I learned to think it was bad, of course. We all did. I learned to think I should shave it, remove it, pretend like it wasn’t there. There was that boyfriend, freshman year of college, who said he liked how soft the vagina could be without its downy covering. I couldn’t do it for long. We didn’t last. And then, there were the men whose chests I touched, whose skin I felt, who

had shaved themselves – their nipples bare, that nest, now gone, above their penises. They even shaved their balls.

But I was also lucky. I learned about sex and sexiness and how adults are hairy and messy and how that is the whole point. When I finished college I went off, alone, to Europe. That part isn’t interesting. It’s an old story, the kind withmuseums and sunrises and hostels and new friends. But one night at the end of my trip, after six weeks on my own, I went to the beach. In Italy. After I had drunk a liter of wine.

My waiter came with me.

He didn’t speak much English, but that was okay, and I didn’t speak much Italian, but that didn’t seem to matter either. He had a little bit of a paunch and kept smiling at me like he couldn’t believe I’d invited him along (a series of gestures and stuttered bilingualism). Some deep fear of STDs and a hint that he had once been in the Italian Navy kept me from jumping right down to business, but he was okay with that. He wanted to touch me. I wanted him to touch me. And so that’s where we started.

Where we ended up was on a reclining beach chair, him on his knees, his darling mouth buried in the fully-grown-out tangle of my very wild nethers. In between our collective moaning, he stopped periodically, careless of my hairy bits, and muttered to himself, “Bella, bella, bella, bella…”.

Beautiful.

Fuck yeah.

I’m tired of being ashamed of being a woman who has hair. Or, to be more accurate, I’m simply not ashamed, and I’m tired of being ashamed for not being ashamed. I have pubic hair, damn it. I trim it, so that it doesn’t get tangled in the elastic of my niceties, but it is there. I even let the semi-dark hair on my stomach (oh yes, women can have happy trails too) grow out now and then. I shave my armpits, and when I get a random hair on my nipple, I pluck it, because I like my breasts round and smooth. My legs? Depends on the season. Shaving in winter can be such a hazard. I’m not talking about the end of all grooming. What I’m talking about is the end of madness. The end of hair fear.

None of my lovers have complained. In fact, post-coital and exhausted, one even leaned into me, stroking the follicles that I have. “You’re real,” he said. Real.

Let’s be real, my friends! Real, hairy, animalistic, hump-loving adults. Let’s throw off our shame, and keep our natural adornment. Let’s be hairy.

Back in the bedroom with my gorgeous man, the one who had warned me, the one who had gone from beast to meek in three seconds flat, I discovered he hadn’t been lying. His chest was covered in wiry man-hair, and his back even had a soft down. It was more hair than I was expecting, but it wasn’t a turn-off. I ran my fingers down his back and along his sides, where I could feel the hair so often lampooned in stand-up comedy and sitcom slapstick. It was new to me. You know, it is nice to discover something new, now and then. I called it his “angel wings.”

He was relieved.

Fuck yeah.

Dream On...

WHAT MAKES THAT DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THOSE PEOPLE WHO COME TO NEW YORK AND THOSE WHO JUST WISH FOR IT? IT’S THE ACCUMULATION OF THAT X-FACTOR THAT GIVES OUR CITY THE BUZZ.

By JEANINE PLANT

Photography by MARSHALL MCDONALD

New York’s mythology is so deep in our collective unconscious it rivals Odysseus’ ten-year journey. Think of the New York rags-to-riches lore: Madonna landed in Times Square with nothing more than a suitcase and thirty-five bucks. Recall its muse-like quality to filmmakers: the urban landscape forever immortalized in the celluloid beauty of Woody Allen films. Consider a city that provided endless fodder for the comedies that never stop airing in syndication: Seinfeld, Friends, and, of course, the glamorous, if vacuous, Sex and The City.

These oft-repeated tales of upward mobility perpetuate the allure of this city, even though both natives and newcomers know that it is often more hype than reality. Nevertheless, that allure is why we come in the first place. More than anything else, New York offers possibilities. We have the possibility, however slim, to make it big like Madonna; to enjoy the beauty and romance of the 59th Street Bridge on a bench near the East River; or to revel in pointless party hopping which doesn’t seem pointless at all when you’re embroiled in this anything-goes, everyone’s-fabulous, mecca.

The manifestations of New York’s mythology are ubiquitous, and speak to a deep human yearning to “make good.” Yet the world is full of people who acknowledge the superior opportunities offered here but choose to stay away, or who daydream of moving here but never make it. What makes the people who packed up and left different from those who think New York is cool, but stay put in the provinces?

The taxing realities of living in New York are well known: most of us cannot afford the luxurious lifestyle belied in the TV shows. Instead, we live in cramped apartments with roaches, rats, and, now, horrifically, bedbugs. Sky-high rents preclude saving. Most commute by subway, where the rushhour crowds can make one dizzy from heat and body smells, Yet the streets are no more refreshing, so congested are they with traffic that often the exhaust fumes make those organic aromas of the subway seem like a breath of fresh air. And on the career front, there is always someone, maybe even thousands of them, more skilled, driven, and

unscrupulous than you. The competition in the job market is daunting and debilitating.

For many people, the idea of enduring these (and these are only a few) hardships, withers their enthusiasm, and makes their big-time dreams fade. In other cities, one doesn’t need to be a millionaire to live in an apartment bigger than a Rubik’s Cube, or even to own a house. Other cities have fewer cars and cleaner air, and public transportation that makes a commute, dare I say, pleasant. There are also fewer people vying for the same job. In short, it is a lot easier to achieve many of the basic needs, so elusive in New York, elsewhere.

So, given that a lot of the cache of New York is based on hype, and that many of life’s very real necessities require so much more struggle to achieve here than elsewhere, why do people come here, and why then do they stay?

I’d say that it is both the hype and the struggle that attracts people and keeps them here. The idea of New York, even inasmuch as it is merely an idea, is so powerful and seductive that people choose it over the bland realities of humbler towns. For many, the mere phenomenon of feeling they are at the center of the universe more than makes up for the deprivations and sacrifices the city demands. And as an idea, New York transcends America, managing in its mythology to retain the best of what America is—opportunities, the fast pace, the excitement—while eschewing the worst of it—the religious zealotry, the prudery, the conservatism.

New York was an idea we glommed onto while we sat in our parent’s spacious ranch in an uncomplicated suburban province plotting our escape. We gave over to the romance of Madonna’s rags-to-riches story: what a brave soul! And we allowed ourselves to be seduced by the impossible glamour of Sex and the City, the melancholy yet funny Manhattan. These imaginings became a challenge we presented ourselves. And the dreamer in us — or the seeker, the go-getter, the self-starter — took up this call to arms. We promised ourselves: I will come, damn it, I will see, and I will conquer.

Daniel Mays

So Much More Than A Fisherman’s Friend...

By Moonah Ellison

Images by Lee Strickland

“... I love the work that respects the audience, and allows them to be drawn into the storytelling and formulate their own opinions. That’s always the way. If you can leave a film or a TV show and you’re fiercely locked in a hot debate with your friends or family that have just sat through and watched it. And two people have got two different meanings from it and that’s always the great thing, because that’s what life’s about, isn’t it?... ”

Not one minute into my conversation with actor Daniel Mays and I find myself giving him an open invitation to stay with me in the Hudson Valley whenever he returns to New York. You’re welcome to come and stay. I guess you say stuff like that after hearing someone has only been to New York just once…for a long weekend.

But for now, Mays is in East Finchley, north London, currently in the middle of a house extension. Builders in and out of his house for three months. Mays and family were debating whether to move a bit further out of London, but decided to stay because it’s a great area. Kids get older. They like the city (his son just t=urned 19; his daughter is 11).

Being that one of my favorite guilty pleasure films is The Bank Job (the 2008 heist film starring Jason Statham, Saffron Burrows, and yes, Mays), I was hyped to interview the BAFTA-nominated actor.

“Oh, you and every London taxi driver it seems,” laughs Mays, who attended the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts,[1] before becoming a student at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). “I get into a black cab in London, they would all go, ‘Oh my God, it’s you out of The Bank Job.’ I’d be like, ‘Don’t worry, I’m back from the dead.’ They didn’t sandblast my foot off. It’s a gruesome death in that movie, isn’t it?”

He’s a recognizable face for sure. Think Pearl Harbor (2001), Rehab (2005), Shifty, Red Riding (2008), Made in Dagenham, Ashes to Ashes (2010), Outcasts (2011), Mrs Biggs, Byzantium (2012), Line of Duty, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Des and White Lines (2020). In addition to a BAFTA nomination for the BBC Two TV series Line of Duty in 2017, Mays was nominated this year for a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his performance in Guys and Dolls at the Bridge Theatre.

Mays is versatile, meaning, there’s no role he won’t commit to playing. He takes every role with a fresh look. “I’m a classic person in that I don’t rest on our laurels. I try not to look back on the films that I’ve been in, and so put my feet up and

“... No more Mr Nice Guy?... ”

`Hey, you lookin’ at me.. ”

say, ‘God, I’ve done so much work,’ because I feel like the exposition of acting and where it can take you, you’re always learning, and there’s always a character around the corner that you’ve never played before.

“Not long back I worked with the brilliant Michael Douglas on the Apple series Franklin. And that was to kind of explore that, put that costume on you, shoot out there in Paris for six months. And I love the endeavor of investigating characters and bringing different periods to life. Yeah.

“I love the work that allows the audience, gives them a semblance of intelligence, allows them to be drawn into the storytelling and formulate their own opinions. That’s always the way. If you can leave a film or a TV show and you’re fiercely locked in a hot debate with your friends or family that have just sat through and watched it. And two people have got two different meanings from it and that’s always the great thing, because that’s what life’s about, isn’t it?”

Coming up for Mays is A Thousand Blows opposite Moves profile Stephen Graham. (Hint. Graham is a very good mate of Mays and even introduced him to his now wife.) It’s a British boxing drama scheduled to land on Disney+ in 2025 and is written by Stephen Knight, the man behind Peaky Blinders. He’s done the first couple of scripts and it’s all set in Victorian London. It’s about two Jamaican boys that come over and enter the world of bare knuckle boxing.

“I play a character called William Punch Louis. I mean, these characters existed. He’s the big ringmaster in the middle of these boxing bouts. And what’s great about it, there’s this vaudevillian quality to this character. So, I happened to be playing Nathan Detroit (Guys and Dolls) at the same time. So I was playing in Guys and Dolls in the evening, crazily shooting A Thousand Blows in the day.

“But both those characters are very outwardly going and a lot of Nathan Detroit, I think, bled into A Thousand Blows. But Stephen did say to me, ‘Go and give them the old razzle dazzle,

Danny.’ And I said that’s all you’ve got to tell me. So I did a lot of improvisation with the crowd. There was a brilliant group of extras in around the boxing ring and the set. The set to this day is the best set I’ve ever acted on. It’s an amazingly realized show. And I can only say that I watched the first two episodes and I was just desperate to continue watching it. The characters are brilliantly drawn and it just really packs a huge emotional punch in and out of the ring.”

Like every creative person, artificial intelligence is always weighing heavy on the profession. Mays just can’t understand how any human would want to watch something computer-based over something real. ME: Right.

“I personally I don’t know about you, but the whole notion of sitting down, watching a computer generated performance to me feels internally, there’s just something dead. The beauty of acting is it comes from a place of human connection. Someone has learned their craft, they’ve learned the lines, they’ve interpreted the role. And, I mean, I’m always drawn to those wonderful actors, the likes of Daniel Day-Lewis and the Deniros and the Denzel Washingtons, all those people who, as a young actor starting out, the Gary Oldmans. You’re just amazed at how versatile these people are. That’s the beauty of acting and that’s the mystique of it. And that’s the thing that keeps bringing us back time and time again. Something that’s computer generated I just, I can’t emotionally attach myself to that.”

I keep flashing back to our panel discussion with Aasif Mandvi talking about AI, and we were talking to a specialist company that it is kind of structured in the security and safety of AI, and they were saying how it’s going to be the corporations that realize the money that this is going to either take or, the money it’s going to stop making for them. So they [corporations] are the ones that are going to give it growth or they’re going to stunt the growth of it. Because they have control, and the top companies are going to control the monopoly in the industry.

But the safeguards that SAG have put in place. Guidelines of protection, which is a wonderful thing. “AI is a juggernaut that’s not going to stop. And I feel like there will be maybe two industries. There’ll be the traditional way of doing it, and there’ll be something which is AI and its own thing. I mean, I used an example of that crowd that I was working with on A Thousand Blows. Now, if you kind of recreate it, that group of people during AI then that interaction between me and them would never have existed.”

Mays is not letting AI disrupt his future projects. There’s a murder mystery show called Moonflower Murders, which is on PBS at the moment in the U.S.. It’s a sequel to Magpie Murders. The premise of Moonflower is that one actor is playing two characters in two different time frames. Mays is playing two policemen in it. He just wrapped up The Thursday Murder Club, based on the book by BBC game show host and British TV presenter, Richard Osman. The star-studded cast includes Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, and is being produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment.

“It’s all set in old age. Pensioners, a kind of retirement home. And they are real. And every Thursday they congregate and try to crack cold cases of unsolved murders. And then, lo and behold, a real murder takes place right on their doorstep and they try to solve the crime itself. And they, in turn, step on a lot of people’s toes.”

For now, Mays is grateful, humbled for living and breathing in the profession of acting for a living. A dream come true. He’s played a lot of angry young men, a lot of London “characters” like The Bank Job. But for Mays, if a part is brilliantly written and is nuanced and three dimensional, those elements of someone being good and bad, those lines are always blurred.

“The greatest characters are always kind of like a walking, talking contradiction. Do you know what I mean?”

Yes. Yes we do.

“...

But I mean, I’ve done a lot of obviously contemporary young men on the edge, you know what I mean? But now, I’m the middle man on the edge. I am getting older. I still think I’m 21... ”

M A T H E W K

I N A N D E R S O N profile

ACTOR, COACH, SCREENWRITER, PRODUCER

(AND

OUR OUR VOTE FOR THE NEXT JAMES BOND!)

BY SUE HARPER

I’m chatting with actor Matthew Kevin Anderson from his home in Vancouver. He spent time in Los Angeles and lived in Los Angeles for years. But his parents are getting older and he prefers where his family is. Home. Canada. “Vancouver is a beautiful city,” gushes Anderson. “It'd be hard to find somewhere that I would rather be than here.”

Here. The here and now. For Anderson’s journey to the present—a starring role as The Stranger in the new Halle Berry thriller Never Let Go in theaters now—has been full of twists and turns with what seems like, well, forever. “I moved around to a lot of different schools when I was younger for a bunch of random reasons. We lived in Indonesia for a couple of years, and then I couldn't get back into my other school. So when we came back, I had to go to another school. So every two years or so I was changing schools and it's like all new social environments,” states Anderson. “And I definitely think that started taking a lot of my attention and interest. I just really became interested in people and social dynamics and adjusting and fitting in and, and sort of, learning about new environments. School and academics just never interested him. He was always into drawing and would take as many arts classes as he could in school. After high school, Anderson was trying to figure out what he was going to do.

“My sister went to Kit's [Kitsilano Theatre Company in Vancouver], which is where Ryan Reynolds went. So I remember sitting at home one day watching television with my sister, and my sister was like, ‘Oh, that guy goes to my school.’ And that was the first time that I connected that you could not just do plays at the theater in your school, but you can actually go into the little box and do that thing in there. And that's something that people around us were able to do. And so when I graduated from high school, I was kind of floating around and figuring out how I could get into the industry. Vancouver really started to blow up as sort of “Hollywood North” and you were seeing film sets everywhere. So I went to a film school up here, and that's kind of how I started my journey.”

Anderson is jacked up for Never Let Go. And who could blame him. The film has horror chops The film’s director, Alexandre Aja, also directed the films The Hills Have Eyes (2006), Mirrors (2008), Piranha 3D (2010), Horns (2013) and Crawl (2019); Dan Levine produced Arrival (2016) and The Boogeyman (2023); Shawn Levy is an executive producer of Stranger Things. Never Let Go follows a mother

and her twin sons who are tormented by an evil spirit for years. When one of the boys starts questioning the existence of the spirit, a fight for survival ensues. Halle Berry plays the mother.

“Halle Berry was great,” says Anderson. “And the two kids that are in this movie really do an amazing job and have very challenging roles. Sometimes you forget when you watch movies, you forget what these kids sort of have to go through, right? It’s just really amazing to see what kids that age who are, like, anywhere between eight and 10 or 10 and 12 somewhere in there, what they can do and how hard they work and how intelligent and intuitive they are, and how good at listening they are and how present they can be. Yeah. It was a real pleasure. And, I'm excited to see how the movie turns out.”

But the turning out part is something every actor dreads but somehow, some way, it all works out. The process might be messy, but everyone involved on set finds a way to get it done. “It's always a bit of a crazy, chaotic mess, especially in film…sometimes you're just like, ‘How are we going to pull this off?’ I feel like every production, especially when I'm involved on the producing side, when you're coming up to the last three days of pre-production before you start shooting and you're like, we're never going to get this done like this is never going to happen. And then by sheer will you make it happen. That's what's so amazing about film, because all these people are involved and everybody sort of rallies together and pushes the boulder over the hill.”

Although Anderson has his acting to fall back on, there are other sides of him that want to create. Especially during Covid and the actor’s strike. Anderson had a time to reflect on his career and pursue something he’d been itching to do: writing. At some point you hopefully get to a place where you want more control. Want to create. Want to have more say in the direction of your career. And Anderson did just that.

“Covid was a pivot and I started writing. I've always sort of written and produced stuff, but I've definitely been taking a step back from acting. With the strike last year and then this year sort of recovering from the strike, I set in motion a lot of things during that strike time because we were all sitting around twiddling our thumbs. So I started a bunch of writing projects that I'm now getting past the development phase and I’m talking to producers about stuff, and that's really exciting.

And I feel almost more like a writer this year than I do an actor. I think people want to take more control, and I definitely wanted to take more control. I'm excited about getting these projects off the ground. And, I'd like to do some more directing. I've done some shorts and music videos, but I think doing a feature would be really exciting. So I have a lot on my plate; I have a lot of boulders that I'm pushing up.

“I'm working on a Western horror which has a really dark edge to it and has a big indigenous component to it. And another is a psychological horror similar to Never Let Go, And then I’m developing a show concept that's more relationship-driven and relationship-based. It’s inspired by a lot of things that are just happening around me in life and something that I would like to make in Canada because everything we shoot up here is supposed to be in the States. And I think it would be really exciting to shoot Vancouver for Vancouver and make something that showcases this city in a way that I and you don't see very often.”

In today’s society, a social media presence would seem like a must. For Anderson, it’s just not something he’s all that into even though he is always conscious of trying to be present in a moment. You won’t find him filming a concert on his phone. “I never understood that. All these people are filming concerts on their phone. What are you going to do with that? Are you going to watch your shit phone footage later? Just enjoy it while you're there. That's really what it comes down to is enjoy the moment while you're in it. And I think that's almost like becoming a lost art. Everybody wants to capture everything and get the photos and stuff. And I know there are people who do it really well and do it effortlessly and are able to do that thing and be present and still do all that stuff. I find I get in the moment and I'm thinking about it, and then I'll leave and my phone never left my pocket.”

While Never Let Go continues to get praise, Anderson just finished a project with Billy Zane.

“He's got this presence in the industry. It's so odd and I'm so curious, sort of like how that happened. And he's obviously very aware of it, talk about an artist. He's painting. He's always creating. He's always doing stuff. His energy was great. He was so creative and really fun and exciting to work with on set and always keeping me on my toes and always shaking stuff up and trying new things and nothing was ever stale and the energy was just so kinetic.”

"... Just enjoy it while you're there... what it really comes down to is to enjoy the moment while you're in it. And I think that's almost like becoming a lost art... "

POWER WOMENGala

Moves Power Women 2024

Helen Maxine Reddy was an Australian singer, actress, televi sion host, and activist. And a very determined woman. Truly a Power Woman. Arriving in NewYork from Melbourne with a three year old daughter, $200 in cash, and the promise of a TV audition onBandBox that didn’t materialize, she decided to stay, tough it out and try for success. And boy was she successful! After years of setbacks she eventually got her first Billboard number one with the feminist anthem “I Am Woman” which still hails as the feminist rallying cry today.

Reddy attributed the impetus for writing the song and her early awareness of the women’s movement to expatriate Australian pioneer feminist Lillian Roxon. Reddy is quoted as saying that she was looking for songs which reflected the positive self-image she had gained from the women’s movement but could not find any, so “I realised that the song I was looking for didn’t exist, and I was going to have to write it myself.”

The song sparked a career that included countless record and film industry awards, numerous number one hits and nearly twenty Gold Records. A Star indeed... with real guts.

https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=ZrVLL7soS1U

AWARDS DINNERGala

Moves Power Women 2024

Jessica Capshaw | Cover and Host

Isabella Espinosa | Founder and Creative Director, BAOBAB Swim

Jane Hamilton Nielsen | Chief Operating Officer, Ralph Lauren

Sarah Lee | Chief Executive Officer, Think Dutchess

Tory Brangham | Chief Commerce Officer, Dotdash Meredith

Tarana Burke | #MeToo Founder and Activist

Aviva Roumani | Chief Corporate Development Officer, LionTree

Paula Silver | SVP, Corporate Communications/Corporate Citizenship, DTE Energy

Amiee Bayer-Thomas | Chief Store Operations Officer, Ulta Beauty

Paula Santilli | Chief Executive Officer, PepsiCo LATAM

Katherine Post Calvert | Chief Marketing Officer, PagerDuty

Lt. Gen.

DeAnna M. Burt | Lieutenant General, Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Operations, Cyber, and Nuclear, United States Space Force

Beth Potter | President and CEO, Tourism Industry Association of Canada

Cindy Eckert | CEO, Sprout Pharmaceuticals and The Pink Ceiling

Ann Janssen | Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer, EOG Resources

Morgan Radford | NBC News Anchor

Elise Hart Kipness | Best-selling Author

TORY BRANGHAM

Chief Commerce Officer, Dotdash Meredith

ISABELLA ESPINOSA

Founder and Creative Director, BAOBAB Swim

JANE HAMILTON NIELSEN

Chief Operating Officer, Ralph Lauren

“... Women on boards have an obligation to mentor, influence, recommend, and pull more women into the boardroom... ”

TARANA BURKE

#MeToo Founder and Activist

“... We are constantly in struggle. We are pushingconstantly back. We are constantlyfighting, and we’re constantly raising our voices... ”

SVP,

Corporate Communications/ Corporate Citizenship and DTE Foundation PAULA SILVER

“... As a society it would be amazing to have EVERYONE conform to a standard of morality... ”

AMIEE BAYER-THOMAS

Chief Store Operations Officer, Ulta Beauty

Chief

Executive Officer, PepsiCo LATAM PAULA SANTILLI

“... Education is a cornerstone of a civilized society as it empowers individuals and fosters innovation... ”

GEN. M.BURT

Lieutenant General, Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Operations, Cyber, and Nuclear, United States Space Force

“...To fully empower women and achieve gender institutingequality, equal pay for equal work across our society is the foundation... ”

BETH POTTER

President and CEO, Tourism Industry Association of Canada

“... We must implement policies that support women in the workplace and create environments where their contributions are recognized and rewarded fairly... ”

CINDY ECKERT

CEO, Sprout Pharmaceuticals and The Pink Ceiling

“... I have an unconventional idea for how women fix the pay gap: worry less about the percentage raise in salary and more about taking a piece of the value you create... ”

ANN JANSSEN

Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer, EOG Resources

“... I don’t think

Chief Corporate Development Officer, LionTree LLC AVIVA ROUMANI

“ ... if you allow women basic equal rights and access to education, healthcare, and to safety, opportunitiesthefor the next generation are exponentially greater...“

“... We need more companies to recognize the financial and cultural benefits of diverse leadership, and as consumers, we each have a role to play in increasing the accountability of those companies that haven’t caught up with these modern principles of success... ”

MORGAN RADFORD

“... I think a real power woman is someone who is in touch with her own intrinsic, inalienable value and worth and has the ability to bring it out in other people... ”

Ulta Beauty is proud to congratulate Amiee Bayer-Thomas and all of the 2024 Power Women honorees.

C ONGR AT UL AT ION S PAULA SILVER

Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications and DTE Foundation

Congratulations Paula on your 2024 Moves Power Women award. We thank you for your leadership at DTE Energy and your inspiration for the next generation of young women in our company.

Moves Power Women Honoree 2024

EOG Resources is pleased to celebrate our esteemed colleague and friend

Ann Janssen

I s a b e l l a E s p i n o s a

Congratulations to all the 2024 Moves Power Women award winners!

Proudly celebrating PagerDuty CMO KATHERINE CALVERT

and all the incredible women leaders – across our business and beyond – who are shaping a new future of inclusion, innovation and excellence.

Congratulations, Jane. You’re an inspiration in and outside of our Company.

With love, The Ralph Lauren Team

RALPH LAUREN

Congratulations

Tourism Industry Association of Canada

Beth Potter

a look at the...

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Alex Karim

By

Bill Smyth images by David Bailey

“... ‘What’s that on your head?’ I go Strength & Honor [hat]. She goes, ‘Where’s that from?’ It’s from Gladiator . ‘Who made Gladiator?’ I go, Ridley Scott. She goes, ‘Yeah, funny that you should be wearing his hat when you’re going to be working with him.’ I zoned out, it was a moment of madness... ”

I wish actor Alexander Karim a Happy Friday. Not that it’s a holiday or anything, just because it’s, well, the weekend and it’s 9PM. I tell him his publicist should’ve made him have a glass of wine for our call. I first marveled over his photo shoot, images that were taken in his native Sweden, Stockholm to put a pin on the shoot locale. Alexander Karim, the Idris Elba of Sweden. “I mean being the Idris Elba of anywhere would be a great honor. He’s one of my true idols. He’s fantastic.”

Karim’s resume is strong on the acting side but he’s also a producer, a director. He has his own company. (There’s so many layers.) His family were a family of movie lovers, and storytellers. Growing up in a family from anywhere in the African continent—Uganda to be exact—it’s the same in a lot of Asian countries and all over the world: these cultures have a rich tradition of storytelling. His family emigrated to Sweden, moving from a fairly rough neighborhood in Uganda to a very swank sort of neighborhood in Sweden. “The swankiest of them all. And, and this was in the 80s because she wanted us to go to the best schools and so on and so forth. The elevator went straight into the apartment. It has a beautiful view of Hamlet’s Castle in Elsinore in Denmark. It is absolutely beautiful. She still lives there, and it’s a stunning apartment.”

But for Karim, movies were instilled in him at a young age. His mother would come home from work and she would watch movies. That’s where they all bonded. Bonded around those movies, and it was everything for Karim. From the classics like Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments, to greats like Zoltan and House of Dracula. Karim and his siblings would just talk about movies and always talk in movie quotes…Tell it to the judge again… Great, Scott!... “We talk in movie quotes to this day,” laughs Karim.

Karim’s journey began when he was first put in front of the camera at a very young age. His brother is a director but originally started doing special effects makeup and they needed a model so Karim became his model. He also modeled for his brother’s still photography and when he went to the States to study film, Karim moved after them to the States to study acting right after high school. That’s where it started. “I would say the reason for my sort of spreading myself all over every part of the industry is, is partly out of necessity. It start-

ed off as a necessity, where you move, you go from drama school, where you’re playing Richard the Third and Hamlet, Marcello and all the greats, you know, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. And then all of a sudden, you’re out in the real world and, and you’re doing a Taco Bell commercial, and that’s sort of the Holy Grail as well. That’s when you’ve succeeded is when you get the Taco Bell commercial.” So he started writing and started studying literature and writing and screenwriting and he did that for years. Writing parts for himself and have his brothers direct.

The screenwriting has paid off and Karim’s passion for writing is evident. In 2019, Karim published his first book, novel Den extraordinära berättelsen om Jonas Paulssons plötsliga död, followed by a children’s book called Modigast i världen, which he cowrote with his wife, Malin Karim. Karim and best-selling author Camilla Läckberg released an audiobook in 2021 based on their co-written script Glacier. The story has also been adapted into a film starring Karim and Lena Endre and directed by Baker Karim.

Karim has broken out in Swedish cinema and television, but not necessarily in the United States yet. He starred in a show Tyrant on FX for three seasons (2014-2016). His character grew into sort of the biggest antagonist in the storyline. But at the same time, he was pounding away at the keyboard, trying to learn more and more about screenwriting. Flashback seven years prior to Tyrant, Karim was at a screenwriting conference and the director, Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull), had a workshop in Copenhagen and he was there just taking it all in and writing stuff. Somebody at the conference asked Schrader what he was working on and he saida story about a CIA agent who gets hit with dementia and starts forgetting his old cases, and who also has a nemesis out there he had a run in with 20 years ago who cut his ear off, and they had this big run in…”Cut to seven years later, I’m on hiatus from Tyrant and I get this script. Someone seeing me on Tyrant play Ihab Rashid—terrorist and freedom fighter—and my agent goes, we need to audition and they need it by tomorrow. This is Christmas day. And I was like, come on, it’s Christmas! It’s Paul Schrader. Nicolas Cage is playing the FBI agent, and they want me to audition for the terrorist. And I was like, what? And I start reading, and I realize it’s that script he talked about sev-

en years earlier. So I did everything in my power to get it.” The film is Dying of the Light and was released in 2014.

Fast forward to present day and Karim will next appear as Ravi in the Ridley Scott-helmed Gladiator II, the epic sequel to the 2000 Best Picture Oscar-winner, Gladiator, starring Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix. “I’ve seen several films with my agent that I’ve been in, and I’ve never seen her this excited. She was yelling with excitement. And she’s from Finland. They don’t yell with excitement. She was thrilled. It was absolutely amazing.”

Months and months prior to even hearing anything about it [Gladiator II]. Karim’s agent had him send her a self-tape which was submitted to Ridley Scott’s team. Three months later, his agent called for him to do a zoom and told him it is for Gladiator II. He prepared like never before.

“I’m on Zoom. They go cool. It’s Monday today. Ridley’s going to take a look at this on Wednesday, and we’ll get back to you. And I sat for days. There’s a few ways this could go. I put my “I Like Film Quotes” hat on. I knew that if I got an email, that would be bad, because, you know, if it’s a phone call, that could be good. That could be because he’s seen it. He likes it. He’ll get back to you. But if I get a FaceTime, they want to see my reaction to something. A “Strength & Honor” hat. So that’s a good one. So I’m waiting. And finally I get the FaceTime call and they’re like, ‘What’s that on your head?’ I go Strength & Honor [hat]. She goes, ‘Where’s that from?’ It’s from Gladiator. ‘Who made Gladiator?’ I go, Ridley Scott. She goes, ‘Yeah, funny that you should be wearing his hat when you’re going to be working with him.’ I zoned out, it was a moment of madness. And then I wore the hat the first time I met Ridley as well. Because I love that fucking nice hat. I love it, love it.”

With all the hoopla surrounding Gladiator II, Karim has his head down while grinding away at other opportunities. Right now he’s developing a thriller for Netflix; shot a film over this past summer, a Swedish film; and now he’s shooting another Swedish film. “Nothing really that’s super interesting for an international audience, I guess,” insists Karim.

Maybe not now but soon enough you’ll be internationally known. Now go get some wine. You definitely deserve it.

“ ... “ We talk in movie quotes to this day...”

1. What was the journey to becoming a renowned psychiatrist like? What obstacles did you have to overcome?

Becoming a psychiatrist was a deeply personal journey for me. I was diagnosed with ADHD as a child but I didn’t really know or understand what ADHD was until I was deep into medical school. As a result, so much of my professional path felt like I was navigating my own neurodivergence while helping others. ADHD wasn’t widely discussed or understood when I was younger, especially in women, so I often felt out of place or overwhelmed by the traditional systems of learning and working. I had to develop strategies that worked for me. There were times when I questioned my abilities, but I always kept in mind that I wanted to help others who felt similarly misunderstood. Balancing my condition with the demands of medical school, residency, and eventually in private practice was challenging, but it also gave me unique insights into the struggles my patients face.

2. What inspired you to write your book, Self Care for People with ADHD?

Writing Self Care for People with ADHD was a natural extension of the work I was already doing. I realized there was a huge gap in the conversation about what self-care looks like for people with ADHD. Traditional advice around productivity and well-being didn’t always apply, and I wanted to offer practical, evidence-based tips for those who feel overwhelmed by mainstream approaches. My personal experience, combined with what I saw in my patients, made me realize how important it is to simplify self-care for people with ADHD. I wanted to create a resource that made people feel seen and gave them actionable tools they could use right away.

3. Being a point of guidance for so many people, how do you practice your own self-care? Specifically balancing your life, your career, and being a mother?

Honestly, it’s not easy. I’m still learning to balance everything. Self-care for me looks different from day to day—it might be carving out time for exercise, setting strict boundaries around work hours, or letting myself step away from social media when I need to recharge. Being a mother has taught me a lot about flexibility and grace. Some days, balance feels impossible, but I’ve learned to give myself permission to not have it all figured out. Prioritizing what matters most—whether it’s my kids, my patients, or my own mental health—helps me navigate those demands without burning out.

6. Does psychiatry take on a new importance in the digital age? What new mental challenges exist for those growing up and living surrounded by social media, technology, and so much stimulation in general?

Absolutely. Psychiatry has become even more critical in this digital age. Technology, while incredibly useful, has also brought about new challenges—constant stimulation, social comparison, and the addictive nature of social media are huge stressors, especially for people with ADHD. The speed and intensity of information overload can exacerbate anxiety, depression, and attention issues. I often see patients who struggle to disconnect or who feel constantly “on,” which is mentally exhausting. The key now is helping people find a healthy balance between benefiting from technology and protecting their mental health.

7. Do you feel there is any challenge specific to women, and especially mothers, in the area of psychiatry?

Definitely. Women, especially mothers, often face unique pressures when it comes to mental health. There’s still a lot of societal expectation placed on women to “do it all,” and many women are juggling work, home, and caregiving roles, often at the expense of their own well-being. For mothers with ADHD, this pressure can feel overwhelming, as they navigate their own symptoms while managing their family’s needs. Hormonal shifts—during pregnancy, postpartum, or menopause—can also significantly impact ADHD symptoms, making treatment more complex. There’s a real need for more support and understanding around these issues.

8. What do you wish more people knew about ADHD? What do you wish more people knew about therapy?

I wish more people understood that ADHD isn’t just about being distracted or hyperactive—it’s a condition that affects many areas of life, from relationships to emotional regulation to time management. It’s also a spectrum, meaning everyone experiences it differently. When it comes to therapy, I wish people knew that it’s not about “fixing” yourself. Therapy is about LEARNING more about who you are, why you react the way you do, and finding healthier ways to cope. It’s a tool for growth and understanding, and there’s no shame in seeking help.

9. What are your biggest inspirations?

My biggest inspirations come from my patients, honestly. Seeing people work through their challenges, even when they feel overwhelmed, motivates me to keep going. I’m also inspired by the broader ADHD community (especially online!)—people sharing their stories, advocating for themselves, and pushing for more awareness and understanding. On a personal level, my family is a huge inspiration. My parents have always shown me why it’s important to show up fully and authentically, and that pushes me to continue to strive to be better.

Sasha Hamdani

Dr. Sasha Hamdani (@ThePsychDoctorMD) is a board-certified psychiatrist, author, and entrepreneur who has leveraged social media to thoughtfully impact important discussions in the health community. Throughout the years she garnered over 25M+ views, turning her platform into a safe space for discussion about mental health issues.

image by David Bailey

FASHION DIWALI

diwali is the hindu festival of lights, with variations celebrated in other indian religions. it symbolises the spiritual “victory of light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance”.diwali is celebrated during the hindu lunisolar months of ashvin (according to the amanta tradition) and kartika—between around mid-september and mid-november.

Its origins can be traced back to ancient India, with roots in various religious and cultural contexts. One prevalent narrative revolves around the return of Lord Rama, an incarnation of the god Vishnu, to his kingdom of Ayodhya after defeating the demon king Ravana. The people of Ayodhya lit oil lamps to welcome him, symbolizing the victory of light over darkness and good over evil.

anya bulchandani

image by james weber

“... I had no words to describe anything that was going on or even think about what was my existence at age six. But I just knew that when I was singing, I felt like something was being relieved. That’s when I knew I loved to sing ... ”

Classically trained since she was just thirteen years old, Stanford sophomore Anya Bulchandani, who is studying Mathematical Computational Sciences with a Minor in Vocal Performance, has always had a passion for singing that has never, ever wavered.

MOVES: What was the motivation where you felt that you wanted to perform, or you wanted to be an opera singer? Every child has that one moment right at the beginning where they’re like, oh, this is great. What was that moment for you?

ANYA BULCHANDANI: I would say [first hearing] music in general. When I was about six or seven, I would just spend all day walking around singing to myself, and I felt like that was the most effective way that I could express anything I was feeling at such a young age without knowing what that was like. I had no words to describe anything that was going on or like no words to even think about what was my existence at age six. But I just knew that when I was singing, I felt like something was being relieved.

So that’s when I knew I loved to sing. And then when I knew that I love to sing opera was a little bit later in life, probably around 13/14, when I had started learning that technique. I was able to get that same emotional gratification and that catharsis of, like, a stream just flowing out of me, and in a way that nothing else like that I could really relieve in such a manner. But opera technique is also very cerebral. And so in a way, I felt really intellectually stimulated because I had to think really, really hard. I could somehow feel the music that I was performing, while also thinking about how I was performing it. And that satisfied every single part of me. Time completely disappeared in those moments, because every part of myself and my consciousness was so present and engaged, in this one thing I was doing.

MOVES:: It’s a pretty comprehensive answer. And it [music] obviously has captured you, in your heart and soul. You touched on and said that, music—the moment you would listen to music, you found it so cathartic, almost as if you’d come home is what I’m guessing.

AB: That’s when I would sing, it wasn’t just listening to music. It was always singing, that’s what I was trying to qualify.

MOVES: Do you perform any instruments at all?

AB: I played piano and violin when I was younger, but those never stuck. I wish I was better at

piano now, but it felt like a block between me and performing music. Whereas when I sang, it didn’t matter how good I–like, maybe it sounded awful, but I could do it. Whereas if I can’t play piano, I’m stuck.

MOVES: I sense there was this whole ownership that was taking place, that it was your space, you owned it and once you knew you loved it, was that something personal to you? Did you find that it was easy to share at a young age, the space that you love so much?

AB: Yeah. I’ve always shared the fact that I sing with my whole life because I started so young, and I loved it so young and I was like, pretty good when I was nine, so the fact that I sang is always a big part of who I am, and I always love to share that with people because it is so much of myself. But the opera I was recently told I don’t share with people as much… I don’t know any other classical singers my own age. and so that always felt like this is something reserved for me, this is not something I talk about a lot because I also don’t often perform it. I’ve performed in one opera and that was in Greece [at Thessaloniki Concert Hall in Dido and Aeneas].

MOVES: You’ve touched on there that it was something personal, and you didn’t feel you need to share it.

AB: I’ve never been a huge social media user. I don’t feel the need to give more of myself to people than I want to. I think it gives me a lot of power to intentionally reserve some things for myself. As you said, in an age where it is really difficult to acquire privacy and to let anything be reserved for the self, the fact that I can have this huge part of my life still be mine and not give that to other people gives me a lot of power and I like that.

MOVES: So take me into your personal space on the opera side. How much training do you feel you need to put in and how much time do you vest?

AB: I cannot just sing and try to make it work at that moment. It is a very, very technical skill which I have not anywhere near perfected. Every single time I’ve performed a piece of classical music, I practice it for a minimum of one month with my voice teacher, just to make sure that I’ve at least been able to nail this specific piece of music, and to make sure that I can do it any time I need to.

MOVES: Who would be your top two people [opera singers]? And why?

AB: Specific musicians. Jessye Norman is my personal icon. Pavarotti is amazing. And then there’s a Russian soprano who I listen to with my dad all the time, Anna Netrebko. She’s brilliant.

MOVES: So where do you see yourself with this artist side of you in the future?

AB: I will always sing, if I ever stop my parents will probably shoot me I think, because they will know I’m not making wise decisions for myself. In the future, I don’t think it’s going to be any type of career of sorts, or I don’t think I will ever do it professionally. I definitely don’t want to do it professionally, because I think taking a hobby and making it a profession kind of ruins the sanctity of a hobby. I always want it to be just for me. I’m in an acapella group at school right now. That’s very fun, but I want to do more with it because I think I underestimate how much I love to sing.

MOVES: If there’s any advice you’d give any young person that was either thinking about music from somebody who is young, in that space, what would it be?

AB: Do it because you love it. I’ve seen a handful of people pursue an art, such as music, especially classical music, as a way to get ahead. And like, getting into college is the easiest example. And I think any art form you should not just be doing for that reason, obviously, but I think very specifically with classical music, it’s so technical and it’s so easy to say, ‘I’ve done this right, and I’ve done this wrong,’ that doing it out of anything but love, I think, is a really dangerous game.

I never really related to the idea of a passion, just because I think that that word gets thrown around very lightly—it’s a lot deeper than just finding the activity. I love singing, it is one of the deepest forms of catharsis. But also, when I connect to my own voice in that manner, I feel the presence of being—when I was 10 and singing in my choir, and how good it felt then, and the woman who taught me to sing.

So for anyone, the advice I would give to somebody struggling to find that escape is, it’s not about the activity, it’s about how you feel doing it. I’ve recently started running more. I don’t love it, but if I sit in that moment and I think this is my time to be present, this is my time for myself, then I do, and then I feel very relieved.

“... Of course we liberals answer yes and no to any question because there are always at least two sides to an argument. Nothing is ever a simple white hat/black hat choice... ”

Say it with Flowers? ... Yeh Right

You need to get over this ‘non-date’ dating. I’m not looking to hang out with you. If I was looking to hang out with you, I’d have made friends with you at somebody’s party, or at some mutual activity. I’m not looking to meet your par- ents on the first date, but I’m also DEFINITELY not looking to join a bunch of your friends at some pub you’ve made yourselves regulars at. I’m trying to figure out if you’re someone worth dating, not watch you and the guys make asses of yourselves in front of a football game on a bar TV. I don’t care if we go to dinner and a movie, but I’m NOT going to put up with a last minute text in some sort of guy code trying to trivialize what should be the start of a relationship into beer with the buds. I don’t care if you don’t like talking on the phone; you’re not 10. Pick up the damn phone and ask. Me. Out. Make a day out of it - we can walk up and down the same street twenty-five times just talking, it’s fine! But make it a date! Because if you want to date me, you have to put some effort into it or you’re never going to be worth my time. And you sure as hell aren’t getting laid. Isla, secretary, Upper East Side

“This has Never happened to me before”

Politics: the tendency for women’s issues to be debated by and decided by men. You wouldn’t get a roundtable of only female doctors to discuss the future of erectile disfunction medication, so why do men get to decide about birth control?

Furthermore, why is there no discussion about the ethics/morality of erectile disfunction medication, when the concept of paid birth control is being equated with “paying women to have sex.” This shows just how far we still have to go for equality in this country.

Mary, therapist, Mountain Glen

“Each individual woman’s body demands to be accepted on its own terms.” Glria Steinem

“real” women in the media: We often gripe about the lack of “real” looking women in the media: we see size 0 models when the average woman is a size 14. Then there is the trend of plus size models, seen both as empowering role models and oversexualized examples of why it’s “ok to be fat.” However, in the “real” world, time and time again, we see that men and women alike universally find women that are somewhere in the middle (size 5-10) the most attractive -curvy, athletic, average sized--neither super skinny or plus-sized. Yet this size, which makes up a huge portion of young women, is virtually non-existent in media and fashion. Why must we choose one: fat or skinny? Why isn’t there any representation of those in the middle, especially when it’s seen as such a healthy, attractive image for so many?

Female bosses: I usually HATE when women say they can’t work with other women, or prefer male friends - it reinforces a stereotype that women are difficult, catty, and generally inferior to men. However, in my 8 year professional career, I have had almost exclusively female bosses and I have seen some worrying trends; due to competition and the fact that women have to be better, harder, tougher, and more competitive than their male counterparts to succeed, female bosses tend to be less encouraging and mentoring and instead see you as a potential threat. I’d like to discuss this without being to anti-woman, and maybe offer some hopeful hints for how to fix this issue.

Prof. Dawkins’ Gerinoil Works Wonders

Being tolerant of intolerance is undermining the justice that is inherent in the word itself.  That is to say, the ‘politically correct’ position that respecting others’ beliefs is always the proper vantage point from which to view things needs to be dismantled due to this perspective contributing to the greatest atrocities of the postmodern era.  Let’s take a specific issue—the denial of equal rights for homosexuals in the United States.  To a rational person, this is a civil rights issue and the endorsement of anti-gay sentiment undercuts the fraternity amongst humankind at its core; considering our gay brothers and sisters as lesser beings based on what they are is an evil that can only be justified by an irrational source.  So in America, what is the main source of this bigotry?  A book that is found in each hotel room and preached from bully pulpits every Sunday: The Holy Bible.  Now, that is not to say that many people would not have bias against homosexuality regardless of what is written in this antiquated text (it seems the least aware among us take issue with anything different from themselves), but the notion that we are supposed to be respectful of someone else’s beliefs regardless of the amount of intellectual effort put into them provides a platform for which they can be asserted as equally valid as a more rational position.  It would take another essay to expose all of the blatant hypocrisies of using the Bible to justify one’s antigay propositions (both legislatively and morally): the Old Testament supports wicked ideas such as slavery and genocide which I would assume most Christians would not claim to support.  Regardless, the truth of the matter is that rationality and intellectual discourse are contagious; if I explain to you why I believe something, you will helplessly agree with me if my reasons are good enough and your mind values prudence.  Acting as though beliefs that are not based in rationality, but in other concepts such as faith, should be treated with as much respect is dangerous and one of the main reasons humanity continually refuses to grow up.

Richie, skeptic, NYC

“... Magic, madness, heaven, sin... ” (Swifties Unite!!)

Talk’s Cheap! ... We Should Do More Of It!

Now in my twenties, I have had my fair share of political debates. Deeming who is in the right, who is absolutely without a doubt in the wrong, arguing why it even matters until you’re blue in the face, and concluding how it all fits together for a greater purpose of good (because that’s what we are suppose to do, right?). I will admit…being from a political slam-packed generation (referring mostly to everything that has happened since 9/11 and its’ rippling effect throughout our world) it becomes hard to draw a line between what is worth debating and what seems to only make things more blurry leading to a different discussion altogether. It’s a lingering question that is constantly spa rked in the air amongst us, what really matters? In its’ simplicity it evokes the complexities of our globalized world. Pete, procrastinator, Never Never Land

Me Me Me Me Me Me Me

America is a nation of instant gratification. We want answers, money, remedies, fame, success and we want it now. Right now. We make decisions in order to achieve things immediately and we disregard the process we chose to get there. When people make decisions, they think in the short term. How do I get what I want the fastest? How do I get it now? Very rarely do they think of the damage that is done in making decisions with such a short deadline. So, we want things quickly, that’s fine, but at what cost? Would you risk you getting wrinkles for whiter teeth? How about cancer for less cramping during ‘that time of the month’? That is what some people are doing by going tanning in tanning beds, and the worst part? Some doctors are prescribing it to patients.

Now, I would argue that Taylor Swift is one of the greatest song-writers and story-tellers of this time. However, this is not a well known fact because people won’t be honest and admit it. And I hate this “oh I don’t like Taylor Swift” because really these people usually secretly enjoy at least some of her music but they have a little internalized misogyny. The media has constantly been portraying her as this girl who hops from one boyfriend to another and just writes corny breakup songs. But they forget that male singers and artists are doing the same exact thing yet no one says a word. While not only producing 6 albums with stadium tours and countless awards, Swift released 2 brand new albums that she wrote and recorded throughout quarantine. Her albums Folklore and Evermore were recordbreaking releases that hold the Guinness World Record for the biggest opening day for an album by a female artist on Spotify and topped the latest Billboard album chart. Truly, no other artist is doing it like Taylor Swift. She has done country, pop, alternative, and now folk music, constantly changing and growing her sound. Long story short (Taylor Swift song reference), get excited! Bettany, college sophomore, Upstate NY

It’s Complicated

Do liberals live in a dream world, detached from reality? Yes and no. Do we see the world through rose colored spectacles? Yes and no. Do situations and people always have to be viewed from a positive rather than negative point of view? Yes and no. In the very unlikely circumstance that any MAGA supporters are reading this (unlikely because first this is not their type of read and secondly this sentence is already way too long to hold their interest), they would be nodding their heads and laughing out loud. Of course we liberals answer yes and no to any question because there are always at least two sides to an argument. Nothing is ever a simple white hat/black hat choice. And liberals can not only see tthe truth in that but on many occasions can actually see - but obviously not agree with - the other side’s point of view. (Which ironically - and paradoxically - is often cemented in place for the opposition by their inability to see the existance of another, conflicting view). So as the adults in the room we must keep patiently explaining the complexities of any given situation and the dangers of succumbing to simplistic and erroneous arguments, however bombastically they are delivered. If might is ever considered to be right instead of merely seeming effective to the knuckle-draggers then we are indeed heading in the wrong direction; back to the cave from whence we came.

Rich, immigrant & 1st time voter, NYC

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