Starshine Roshell

Feeling the Pay Gap — Personally

Published by Starshine Roshell on May 3, 2016

[Yes, we know there are words missing in this column. That’s what it feels like to get stiffed on a regular basis.]

Picture this: You’re 10 years old, and there’s just enough cake left for two delicious. Dad cuts a big piece for your twin brother and a small one for you, hands you your plate and smiles as if. You take the meager slice and say thanks, but you feel. What could his reasoning? Are you not as? Does Dad not? The idea’s absurd, of course, but.

This is the reality of working women throughout the U.S.: a frustrating daily, dollarly injustice that affords them less than what. That falls maddeningly short of what they. That takes them almost to where they deserve to go and then.

Irritating as hell, isn’t?

Welcome to our.

The Sudden Surge of Transgender Teens

Published by Starshine Roshell on April 19, 2016

At a party recently, two of my good friends informed me that their teenagers, formerly a boy and a girl, were newly identifying as a trans girl and a gender-fluid person; once him and her, they were now her and them, respectively. The next day, I met a girl whose best friend had left for spring break as a girl and returned to junior high as a trans boy.

I couldn’t help wondering: Why the sudden surge of transgender teens?

How Trump Can Win Back Women Voters

Published by Starshine Roshell on April 7, 2016

Dear Mr. Trump,

You’re having trouble with women voters, and I just can’t stand it. A man with your confidence, your money, your charisma should be mopping the floor with the weaker sex. You’re a prime-time TV star! You’ve owned casinos, airlines, your own line of vodka. If you didn’t invent suave, then I’m sure you at least went bankrupt trying.

But your worries are over. I’m here to help you win over the broads. Like you, I’m known for speaking the plain truth: no mincing words, no pussyfooting. And I know a bottom-feeder — sorry! — I mean a brilliant leader when I see one, so I’m going to tell you how to get those surly, squawking suffragettes down on their knees begging The Donald to Make America Great Again™. Are you with me, big guy? Let’s do this!

Are All Museums Sex Museums?

Published by Starshine Roshell on March 10, 2016

Tour a museum with a mathematician, and she’ll point out the angles built into the artwork, the proportions of the figures. Tour one with a painter, and she’ll fixate on techniques, brushstrokes, and palettes. No surprise, then, that when I toured the Santa Barbara Museum of Art last week with a feminist studies professor and former bondage museum curator, well, the whole place smacked of sex.

Thought museums were sedate and sterile, did you? Take the arm of Jennifer Tyburczy, assistant UCSB professor and author of the new book Sex Museums: The Politics and Performance of Display, and you’ll discover they’re actually dirty dens of debauchery — in, like, the really good way.

Anything to Avoid Writing This Column

Published by Starshine Roshell on February 25, 2016

Looking back, I probably should have lied. It would have been more cordial. The woman was only making conversation, after all — not looking to meet my demons.

“Do you enjoy writing?” the nice mother asked me at back-to-school night last week as we both folded our overtall, underbendy bodies into the high school English class desks.

“Oh, yes,” I should have replied warmly. “Very much. Of course. More than anything. Who doesn’t?”

The Waiting Is the Hardest Part

Published by Starshine Roshell on February 9, 2016

When my firstborn son was a toddler, I used to wonder if he would become a bouncer someday because he was big for his age — and fixated on doors. Opening them, closing them. Letting some in (the dog), keeping others out (the dad). He’d station himself in a doorway and take charge, wielding his power like Excalibur: You? Yes, by all means, enter. But not your friend. She waits out here with the others … until I say.

It was cute unless you were carrying groceries.

Now the tables have turned. He’s standing at the doorway of more than a dozen universities, waiting to see if he’ll be admitted. We’re staggering around in the three to four aimless months (110+ days!) between applying to colleges and hearing back from said colleges. The kid is handling it just fine — but for me, this limbo is anguish.

Voice to Voice with Sarah Koenig of ‘Serial’

Published by Starshine Roshell on January 27, 2016

If I had to pick five words to explain the astounding appeal of the Serial podcast and its beloved host Sarah Koenig, it would be these, uttered by Koenig earlier this season:

“That’s me, calling the Taliban.”

The most popular podcast of all time, Serial dives deep into a dramatic true story each season, untangling clues and cover-ups almost in real time, week by week. Last season, which was downloaded over 100 million times and earned a Peabody Award, was about the murder of a high school girl whose ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, was convicted of the crime. This season centers on Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. soldier who walked off his Afghanistan base in 2009 and spent five years in a Taliban prison.

Eff, Yeah! Swearing Finally Has Its Day

Published by Starshine Roshell on January 14, 2016

It’s a damn good time to be a four-letter word in America. Last week, before President Obama revealed his softer side during a speech on gun control, he let his sailory side rip during an episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee with Jerry Seinfeld.

“I curse,” Obama said when asked how he blows off steam. “Bad stuff or stupid stuff is happening constantly every day. So you have to be able to just make fun of a lot of that. … That’s when cursing is really valuable.”

You heard it here first, my friends: The expletive is on the bleeping rise, and I’m not just talking about my 10-year-old bellowing along with “S.O.B.,” the popular new throwback ditty by alternative radio darlings Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats. No, I’m talking about widespread institutional clemency on cussing.

Alert! This Won’t Depress You

Published by Starshine Roshell on December 24, 2015

I know, you guys; it’s bad out there. Just blowfish-ugly in every direction. Terrorism and police brutality. Rising sea levels and E. coli outbreaks. The words “President Trump.”

Here in our dusty California hometown, we can’t get the skies to rain — and yet we’re drowning in bad news. We skulk away from headlines, afraid to learn of yet another calamity. The other day, I attended a holiday parade and quietly wondered if the van on the street corner, the one whimsically arrayed in holiday lights, might just be packed with explosives.

But enough. Refusing to hand over my seasonal smiles to dread, I begged my fantastic friends for some reasons to feel hopeful about humankind — just a few tiny toeholds to help me clamber up on top of the Awful for some much-needed perspective. They delivered, as fantastic friends do. And I’m regifting their 20 gems to you. Happy holidays.

Few Smiles in ‘I Smile Back’

Published by Starshine Roshell on November 17, 2015

It’s the kind of performance you’re dying to see — but can’t bring yourself to watch.

Comedian Sarah Silverman takes a dramatic-as-a-heart-attack turn as a wealthy suburban mom devastated by anxiety and addiction in the new feel-bad movie of the season, I Smile Back.

The role’s got Oscar nod written all over it: See the actress grind on a teddy bear, sleep with strangers, snort cocaine off a bathroom floor, lie right to the face of her saintly husband — and ache with excruciating, visceral love for her still-perfect children. Silverman is 100 percent committed and compelling as Laney, the Shakespearean-tragedy-of-a-mommy so terrified of being abandoned by the people she loves that she systematically, almost willfully, destroys any reason for them to stay.

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