Hazlitt

Mayukh Sen looks back at Barbra Streisand’s career as an actress, director and producer — shedding light on the sexist double standards in Hollywood that have led to her being portrayed as “difficult” for the kinds of demands and expectations her male counterparts are never called into question for.

When Buffy Sainte-Marie had her first child in 1976, she woke up in the hospital next to a basket of formula. As a Native American, she came from a culture in which best-feeling had been discouraged and even prohibited. So she decided to take the issue into her workplace, breastfeeding her son on an episode of Sesame Street.

For people who grew on the early dial-up internet, AOL Instant Messenger offered a safe place to refine their identities as they moved toward their grown-up selves. By the time AIM ended, most users could live all its best parts in real life.

Navneet Alang weaves together the story of an ex, his Sikh-Canadian family’s Christmas traditions, and the history of Punjab together to explain why baby names can mean so much, even if they’re just hypothetical.

They wanted a baby, she wanted to carry it for them—for a fee. It’s a common transaction but illegal in Canada, and the system here leaves both parties vulnerable.

Retracing the career of Jim Steinman, the songwriter responsible for some of the most operatic hits of the past 40 years.

Besides motel rooms and swank LA mansions, where does hardcore porn get filmed? For the last ten years, in this San Francisco basement. Here’s a very NSFW portrait of Kink.com’s final week.

In an effort to help her eight-year-old daughter see herself — an Asian American girl — in popular culture, Nicole Chung takes her to see Desdemona Chiang’s race-conscious production of The Winter’s Tale at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Rafe Bartholomew tells the story of his father — Geoffrey Bartholomew — who felt that his addiction to alcohol and his bartending job at famed McSorley’s in New York City had prevented him from achieving the dream of becoming a writer. Bartholomew quit the booze, but not the bar and wrote a self-published manuscript of poetry: The McSorley Poems: Voices from New York City’s Oldest Pub. In this poignant story of ambition, regrets, fathers, and sons, Rafe recounts how Bartholomew found his voice by mining the humanity of the “Unsorted Regulars, Misfits, Liars, Heroes & Psychos” who frequented the bar.

In this installment of Mouthful — a monthly column at Hazlitt about the author’s relationship with food, ten years into recovery from anorexia and bulimia — Sarah Gerard examines failure. She recounts failing a stranger, a failed project, and her failed marriage and considers how these experiences have affected her outlook on life and her ongoing recovery.