Greetings from Boston where it is very windy and cold.

Ashley Judd takes on online violence toward women and it is not a moment too soon. It gets old, you know?

All praise to Ja Rule.

In a book review for The Atlantic, Leslie Jamison writes about memoir and the shifting boundaries of disclosure.

We live in an era of endless self-exposure: we parade our babies on Facebook, flaunt our witticisms on Twitter, turn our pancake brunches into still lifes on Instagram. At this point, the indignant backlash has become as familiar as the exposure itself: We parade our babies on Facebook! We flaunt our witticisms on Twitter! We spare no sepia filter for our syrup!

Now that amateur autobiography and its detractors are everywhere, autobiographical writers are increasingly invested in defining and defending the value of their work. How can it escape the gravitational pull of solipsism? For a growing number of essayists, memoirists, and other wielders of the unwieldy “I,”confessional has become an unwelcome label—an implicit accusation of excessive self-absorption, of writing not just about oneself but for oneself.

 

Alexander Chee writes about the power of drag.

H A I R

The year is 1990. The place is San Francisco, the Castro. It is Halloween night. I am in my friend John’s bathroom, alone in front of the mirror, wearing a black turtleneck and leggings. My face glows back at me from the light of twelve 100-watt bulbs.

In high school I learned to do makeup for theater. I did fake mustaches and eyelashes then, bruises, wounds, tattoos. I remember always being tempted then to do what I have just done now, and always stopping, always thinking I would do it later.

This is that day.

My face, in the makeup I have just applied, is a success. My high cheekbones, large slanting eyes, wide mouth, small chin, and rounded jaw have been restrung in base, powder, eyeliner, lipstick, eyebrow pencil. With these tools I have built another face on top of my own, unrecognizable, and yet I am already adjusting to it; somehow I have always known how to put this face together. My hands do not shake, but move with the slow assurance of routine.

Here are some french fry recommendations for NYC because french fries are delicious.

Over at The Guardian, Ashley Ford wrote about bisexuality and how even if she is in a relationship with a man, she is still very much queer.

A family member asked me last week why I continue to identify as queer, even though I’m a woman who is in a long-term relationship with a man: “Give me one good reason why you have to call yourself ‘queer.’” She added that I could save myself a lot of trouble if I wore my opposite-sex relationship more openly, like some kind of hetero-veil to block bigots. I explained that I’d signed a contract with some very shady people, and that it said that I would have to publicly identify this way for a certain number of years and, if I said who, they’d have me killed.

An interview between Ice Cube and The Believer? Why yes.

Have you ever wondered how marbles are made? What a time to be alive.

There were several news-related links I was going to share but the news this week has been dismal and it was simply too much to wrap my mind around.

I love this Vine very much. Happy Friday, friends.