Christine Stoddard

[CN: mention of intimate partner violence] Patsy Cline sang with such a beautiful range of emotion because she had experienced so many ups and downs in her own life.

For years, my white father called my mother’s beauty an “exotic” beauty. When I started to come into my own, he began calling me “exotic,” too. It wasn’t until high school that I began to understand why this word bothered me. Though my father meant it as a compliment, the word “othered” my mother, younger sisters, and me.

The moon sauntered out from a curtain of clouds, whispering, “All things must end.”

Some people think that the size and budget of your wedding reflect how much love you and your partner have for each other: The bigger the wedding, the bigger the love. On the other hand, my father likes to joke, “The bigger the wedding, the bigger the divorce.”

In art school, conversations about the merits of polyamory thrived, but hearing anyone express a genuine desire to get married almost never happened. It was almost taboo. The implication was, how could you want something so traditional? So suburban and unimaginative?

I cringe when Kim Kardashian opens her pouty lips because I know the onslaught of vocal fry

Looking back at childhood photos now is bittersweet. In the moment the camera caught, I'm always smiling, but I wasn't always a happy child. I was fat-shamed almost daily.

Immigrants are pushed out of their home countries due to social, political, or economic forces beyond their control — poverty, genocide, wartime.... I doubt many Salvadorans of my mother's generation fled El Salvador to go “find themselves.”

Drag queens, like Lady Bunny, teach outsiders to embrace ourselves and to embrace others. That means doing more than demonstrating tolerance.

Before I became a haunted house performer, I thought having my face touched was one of the creepiest things imaginable. But it wasn't the eerie set music or the beheaded baby dolls that changed my definition of scary. It was what went on in the green room.