Category Archives: Pop Culture

Things I believed in when I was 12 — but no longer do

Writing a feminist column, I got the occasional irate reader. Most of them are nitpicky and miss the point, while others are straight up incomprehensible. Up until this point, my favourite one was a rambling, angsty Facebook message from a first-year male, white, university student from Calgary, who said there should be men’s studies if [...]
Also posted in Feminism, Negativity | Tagged , | Leave a comment

My childhood best friend, the Cantopop superstar

From left: Mom and me, Ellen, Jamie, circa 1994? You’d think the title of this post is an exaggeration, but I’m not lying. Her name is Ellen Joyce Loo. See? She even has a Wikipedia page. When I was nine, we were three — Jamie, Ellen and me. We shared one of those best friend necklace sets [...]
Also posted in China, Friends | 2 Comments

More on hockey: Whither our golden girls when Games are over?

‘Cause I’m beating this horse good and dead before I move onto another topic to rage about, I wrote about hockey again, this time for my Metro column: Both our hockey teams struck Olympic gold in Vancouver. The next day, hockey fever raged on for the NHL. But whither the women after the podium is packed [...]
Also posted in Canada, Feminism, Strange Anthropology | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Okay, so not quite fulfilling my New Year’s resolution to blog once a week

At least not here. But I did, for This Magazine last week, on how hockey is, in its modern incarnation, an elitist and un-Canadian sport. Saying as much is apparently is a kind of controversial thing to do while the nation is stoking its Olympics-fuelled sense of patriotic pride and the men’s Team Canada hockey [...]
Also posted in Canada, Strange Anthropology | Tagged , | Leave a comment

The Dragon Lady

Ah, Wikipedia. It always seems to be the night I’m scrambling to finish some other writing that I come across a subject that grips me, sending me down a rabbit hole of Googling and complete focus derailment. Which is how I came to learn about Anna May Wong, a second-generation Chinese-American actress with Taishan roots. She [...]
Also posted in Feminism, Politics | Tagged , , | 3 Comments