ludmila leiva

When I first saw the now-infamous photos of Kellyanne Conway—sitting back on her heels on a couch, staring at her phone—while at a White House meeting with leaders of historically black universities, I was furious. I wondered: Would she have behaved this way if the leaders had been white?
Conway's flippant posture is more than just sloppy decorum; it is a striking metaphor for the indifference many whites have exhibited throughout American history in regard to racial inequality. But now, afte...

Let’s be real: for many people, going to the gym is not an enjoyable experience. Whether it’s huddles of men with shiny, bulging muscles or the unshakeable feeling that your body is on display — the fluorescent lighting never helps with this — gyms can make a lot of people feel unwelcome. But, for some, the thought of entering these spaces can be utterly terrorizing.
Everybody is a new gym in Los Angeles that, as the name suggests, aims to extinguish the notion that gyms aren’t for all bodies...

We asked researchers and students about the pop culture stereotype of all-girls schools being hotbeds for lesbian sex.

One humid afternoon in early August, a woman named Paulette Leaphart was walking through the streets of the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans. Leaphart passed a parked black Suburban and, seeing there were people inside, stopped to make conversation, quickly learning they were filmmakers. “I think someone should make a movie about me,” Leaphart said, lifting off her shirt to reveal two double mastectomy scars stitched across her chest. “I’m going to walk 1,000 miles to the White House, bare-che...

Inside a second-floor Gowanus studio space, an anniversary party hums late into the night. DJs spin jazz throwbacks as clusters of people sip wine and snap photos with analog Minoltas. Among them is Rachel Jun. Dressed head to toe in black; she floats effortlessly through the crowds. Passing a wall of black and white darkroom prints, she stops to join a photo booth portrait. “This is really great,” she says between sips of seltzer.
Last February, Jun first opened the doors of Gowanus Darkroom...

If you were one of the kids who came straight home after school to turn on your TV, drink Nesquik, while away an entire afternoon flipping between MTV and Cartoon Network, this one is for you. In the late 90s—a time when the music industry was still ruled by pop princesses and boy bands—MTV began incorporating acts like Moby, Fatboy Slim, The Chemical Brothers, and other electronic music artists.

On September 23rd, 2015 I packed my favorite books and sweaters into a faded suitcase and left home. I had no job, no apartment, and absolutely no idea what I was doing.
After graduating college — I studied political science and gender studies — I spent a couple of years in the nonprofit sector. Though I had always loved to write, it took a backseat to grassroots activism for years. But, after some time in the nonprofit world, I felt a familiar itch and decided to spend my savings on a backpa...

Recently, while working at a coffee shop in my Brooklyn neighborhood, my thoughts wandered to a café on the opposite side of the continent: I pictured giant, snow-tipped mountains towering above metallic buildings, the crisp citrus scent of pine mingling with the Pacific Ocean air… Though to many, Brooklyn can seem like the epicenter of the literary world—and it’s hard to deny the romantic lure of a city as iconic as New York—I still can’t help think back to the places I used to call home.
To...

When I first read The Cut's "The Ambition Collision" by Lisa Miller— an alarmingly candid wakeup call for millennial career women— I was sitting at a coffee shop in Brooklyn.
Miller begins, "What is this midlife crisis among the 30-year-olds I know?" and goes on to parallel our current career dissatisfaction with the malaise of women in generations past, who were sidelined by "the bullshit promises of domestic happiness, manufactured by culture to make female containment look good."
Miller su...