Lindy West | |
---|---|
Born | Seattle, Washington, United States | March 9, 1982
Education | Occidental College |
Occupation(s) | Writer, comedian, activist |
Notable work | Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman |
Spouse | Ahamefule J. Oluo (m. 2015) |
Website | lindywest |
Lindy West (born March 9, 1982) is an American writer, comedian and activist. She is the author of the essay collection Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times . The topics she writes about include feminism, popular culture, and the fat acceptance movement. [1] [2] [3] [4]
In 2009, West began working as the film editor for Seattle's alternative weekly newspaper, The Stranger . [2] In 2011, she moved to Los Angeles, but continued to write for The Stranger until September 2012. [2] [5] [6]
She was a staff writer for Jezebel [7] [8] where she wrote on racism, sexism, and fat shaming. [3] [9] West's work has been published in The Daily Telegraph , [10] GQ , [11] the New York Daily News , [12] Vulture.com, [13] Deadspin, Cracked.com, [14] MSNBC [15] and The Guardian . [2] [16] Describing West's often-comedic approach to serious issues, Dayna Tortorici wrote in The New York Times that West:
has changed more minds this way than you could count. One of the most distinctive voices advancing feminist politics through humor, West is behind a handful of popular pieces — "How to Make a Rape Joke" on Jezebel, "Hello, I Am Fat" on The Stranger’s blog, "Ask Not for Whom the Bell Trolls; It Trolls for Thee" on "This American Life" — that have helped shift mainstream attitudes about body image, comedy and online harassment over the past several years. Culture molds who we are, West argues, but it’s ours to remold in turn. [17]
In 2013, West won the Women's Media Center Social Media Award, which was presented by Jane Fonda in New York City. [18] Accepting the award, West said, "I hear a lot these days about the lazy, aimless 'millennials' – about how all we want to do is sit around twerking our iPods and Tweedling our Kardashians – and I also hear people asking, 'Where is the next generation of the social justice movement? Where are all the young feminists and womanists and activists?' Dude, they're on the internet." [18] [19]
On September 19, 2015, West co-founded Shout Your Abortion, a social media campaign on Twitter where people share their abortion experiences online without "sadness, shame or regret" for the purpose of "destigmatization, normalization, and putting an end to shame". The social media campaign was initiated in response to efforts by the United States House of Representatives to defund Planned Parenthood following the Planned Parenthood 2015 undercover videos controversy. [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25]
In 2016, West won The Stranger's Genius Award in Literature for her book Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman. [26] [27]
On July 1, 2017, West became a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, after having written two op-ed columns for the Times in 2016. [1] She wrote a weekly column on feminism and popular culture. [1]
On March 15, 2019, Shrill, the television series adaptation of West's memoir starring Aidy Bryant, premiered on Hulu. West was an executive producer and writer for the show, which ran for three seasons. [28]
West's second essay collection, The Witches Are Coming, was published on November 5, 2019, by Hachette Book Group.
In October 2020, Hachette Books released West's book Shit, Actually: The Definitive, 100% Objective Guide to Modern Cinema. [29]
Originally from Seattle, Washington, West is the daughter of Ingrid, who is a nurse, and Paul West, who was a musician. [30] She attended Occidental College in Los Angeles, California. [2] [31] In 2024, Occidental awarded West an honorary doctorate. [32]
On July 11, 2015, West married musician and writer Ahamefule J. Oluo, younger brother of Seattle writer Ijeoma Oluo. [33] [34] [35] [36]
In 2022, West and Oluo revealed that they are polyamorous. [37]
Daniel Keenan Savage is an American author, media pundit, journalist, and LGBT community activist. He writes Savage Love, an internationally syndicated relationship and sex advice column. In 2010, Savage and his husband, Terry Miller, began the It Gets Better Project to help prevent suicide among LGBT youth. He has also worked as a theater director, sometimes credited as Keenan Hollahan.
The Stranger is an alternative biweekly newspaper in Seattle, Washington, U.S. The paper's principal competitor is The Seattle Weekly, owned by Sound Publishing, Inc. It has a progressive orientation.
Portland Mercury is an alternative bi-weekly newspaper and media company founded in 2000 in Portland, Oregon. It has a sibling publication in Seattle, Washington, called The Stranger.
Jezebel is a US-based website featuring news and cultural commentary geared towards women. It was launched in 2007 by Gawker Media under the editorship of Anna Holmes as a feminist counterpoint to traditional women's magazines.
Kevin Daniel Williamson is an American political commentator. He is the national correspondent for The Dispatch. Previously, he was the roving correspondent for National Review.
American author Dan Savage has written six books, op-ed pieces in The New York Times, and an advice column on sexual issues in The Stranger. A graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Savage began contributing a column, Savage Love, to The Stranger from its inception in 1991. By 1998 his column had a readership of four million. He was Associate Editor at the newspaper from 1991 to 2001, when he became its editor-in-chief, later becoming its editorial director in 2007.
Natasha Vargas-Cooper is an American journalist and author. Her writing has been published in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, GQ, Spin, The Atlantic Monthly, the New Statesman, Good magazine, Bookforum, BlackBook, New York magazine, and Los Angeles magazine. Her writing has also been featured on websites such as The Awl, the Huffington Post, E! Online, The Daily Beast, and Salon.
Aidan Mackenzy Bryant is an American actress and comedian. Bryant is most notable for being a cast member on the NBC late-night sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live for ten seasons, joining the show for its 38th season in 2012, and leaving at the end of its 47th season in 2022. For her work on the series she was nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards, including two nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series.
Hipster racism is engaging in behaviors typically regarded as racist and defending them as being performed ironically or satirically. Rachel Dubrofsky and Megan W. Wood have described it as being supposedly "too hip and self-aware to actually mean the racist stuff one expresses". This might include wearing blackface and other performances of stereotyped African Americans, use of the word nigger, and appropriating cultural dress. Talia Meer argues that hipster racism is rooted in what she calls "hipster exceptionalism", meaning "the idea that something ordinarily offensive or prejudiced is miraculously transformed into something clever, funny and socially relevant, by the assertion that said ordinarily offensive thing is ironic or satirical." As Leslie A. Hahner and Scott J. Varda described it, "those participating in acts of hipster racism understand those acts as racist when practiced by others, but rationalize their own racist performances through a presumed exceptionalism."
Elite Daily is an American online news platform founded by David Arabov, Jonathon Francis, and Gerard Adams. The site describes its target audience as millennials. In addition to general news and trending topics, the site offers feature stories and listicles covering politics, social justice, sex and dating, women's issues, and sports. Its slogan is "The Voice of Generation Y".
Ahamefule J. Oluo is an American musician, trumpeter, composer, stand-up comedian, and writer. He was the first artist-in-residence at Town Hall Seattle.
Jill Nicole Filipovic is an American author and attorney.
#ShoutYourAbortion is a pro-abortion social media campaign where people share their abortion experiences online without "sadness, shame or regret" for the purpose of "destigmatization, normalization, and putting an end to shame." Tens of thousands of people worldwide have shared their abortion experiences online using the hashtag #ShoutYourAbortion. The Shout Your Abortion campaign was started on September 19, 2015, by American activists Lindy West, Amelia Bonow, and Kimberly Morrison, in response to efforts by the United States House of Representatives to defund Planned Parenthood following the Planned Parenthood 2015 undercover videos controversy. The hashtag has received both positive and negative attention within social media and the mainstream media.
Franchesca Leigh Ramsey, also known as Chescaleigh, is an American comedian, activist, television and YouTube personality, and actress, who has appeared on MTV and MSNBC. She gained media fame quickly after her YouTube commentary on racial issues went viral, and she built a career as a writer, producer, and performer based on her unintended activism, being thrust into a role as an advisor or coach on social issues.
Ijeoma Oluo is an American writer. She is the author of So You Want to Talk About Race and has written for The Guardian,Jezebel, The Stranger, Medium, and The Establishment, where she was also an editor-at-large.
Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman is a 2016 non-fiction book by American writer Lindy West. Favorably reviewed, Shrill was optioned as a television series, which premiered on Hulu in March 2019, starring Aidy Bryant.
Samantha McKiver Irby is an American comedian, essayist, blogger, and television writer. She is the creator and author of the blog bitches gotta eat, where she writes humorous observations about her own life and modern society more broadly. Her books We Are Never Meeting in Real Life and Wow, No Thank You. were both New York Times best-sellers. She is a recipient of the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for bisexual nonfiction.
Shrill is an American comedy television series developed by Aidy Bryant, Alexandra Rushfield, and Lindy West, based on West's book Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman. The series premiered on March 15, 2019, on Hulu, and stars Bryant in the lead role.
The You Know Me movement is a 2019 movement by abortion rights advocates in the United States to fight abortion stigma. A similar campaign and movement from 2015 is called #ShoutYourAbortion.
Amelia Bonow is an American abortion rights activist, and co-creator of the social media campaign #ShoutYourAbortion, along with fellow activists Lindy West and Kimberly Morrison. She is the Founding Director of #ShoutYourAbortion. Bonow's writing has appeared in The New Republic, The Huffington Post, The New York Daily News, and Salon, among others.
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