Melissa Lafsky

Miserable holidays are one of the last true American clichés. Scenes of dour relatives hunched around a dining table, wolfing down helpings of cornbread-stuffed resentment and gravy-topped bile -- this anti-Rockwellian scene has become the new cultural tableau, to the point where it's almost expected that a holiday meal arrives...

Ah divorce. For those who've been through it, the memory is like a rare strain of bacteria living in your gut -- most of the time, you feel fine, but whenever you eat slightly old cheese, it flares into a dysenteric mess. Consider your child's wedding a jumbo serving of...

There's something unique about common experiences. On a planet packed with billions of people, each living encapsulated inside his/her own head, the idea of an experience that we all share is pretty mind-blowing.

Granted, not all of these shared undertakings are positive. In fact, many of them involve feeling...

Isn't it great having parents? For your entire life you get these adoring, devoted followers who exist purely to shower you with adoration, approve of everything you do, and ensure your time on this planet is a luxurious romp filled with roses and chocolate-covered puppies.

HAHAHAHA. Yeah, mine aren't like...

There's a huge overuse of the word "crazy" in our culture. "My crazy ex-boyfriend, don't even get me started," or "my mother is twelve kinds of crazy" or "that girl I've been dating? Turns out she's batsh*t crazy." We toss the word around like a frisbee on Labor Day.

The best thing I've ever read on the Internet is this. And the best line is when the author, a confirmed bachelor, says of his married friends: "I doubt many of them would actually choose to trade places with me. Although they may miss the thrill of...

Once you decide to have a wedding, there are many, many things to read: etiquette guides, Dos and Don'ts, planning checklists, vendor guides, "inspiration boards," disaster stories, angry bridesmaid rants ("wench made me wear PURPLE SHOES!"), even socio-political screeds about the cultural irrelevance of the whole thing. All of...

Disclosure! I will begin by stating that, at the age 31, I currently have no children. Which, in and of itself, will be a driver for many parents to click the "BACK" button on their browsers while muttering that I have nothing resembling a f*king clue about this topic. Click...

I can't stand Eli Roth. Everyone on the Internet has a strong opinion about him one way or the other, and the only difference between the two sides is that one is utterly fucking wrong. There are legions of horror fans who like him. There are oozy corners of the...

I've made no secret of my feelings for Lori Gottlieb. Ever since my response to her "Settle for Him Girls" piece two years ago, I've strapped on the view that her Atlantic article-cum-book-cum-potential-chick flick is nothing more than the fallout of a woman unhappy with her life choices,...

This year, on Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, the Huffington Post headlined with a powerful and inspiring quote from the reverend himself: "Life's Most Persistent And Urgent Question Is: What Are You Doing For Others?" It isn't a hypothetical question or a platitude -- it's a mandate for assuming a...

This review originally appeared on The Awl.

I don't have to tell you that Antichrist sucks. Plenty of highbrow places like the New York Times and Slate have already done so, their writers leaping to slather disdain on this latest morsel of art-horror crap. Oh, it's so distasteful!...

We're comfortable with moral relativism in this country -- or, at least, we love us a good "sinned and redeemed" narrative. And, for the most part, we realize that there are few lives on which we can slap a "Good" or "Evil" label and expect it to be accurate.

Apparently, Megan Fox is stupid. I wouldn't know personally -- I've never seen her do an IQ test or crash a Mensa meeting. But oodles of news articles are more than happy to tell me how skull-crushingly dense she is. "She may be a movie beauty, but is Megan...

I'm hardly the only woman/human/advocate of sanity that's losing sleep over Sarah Palin. For the past week and a half, I've jerked awake every night between 3 and 4 AM, spitting with rage over the possibility that Alaska's biggest celebrity could hold one (or two! Cancer's a bitch)...

Last week, I heard a panel of women speak in a Lower East Side bar. They each had three things in common: They were magazine-cover gorgeous, had enough combined graduate degrees to create a new department at M.I.T., and every one of them had sold her eggs.

The...

Last week, I had a forced identity crisis. As it did for plenty of other women/writers/people who consume far too much media, Emily Gould's infamous cover story and the resulting maelstrom sat in my thoughts, roiling and churning until the inside of my head looked like something envisioned...

A few months ago, I woke up feeling peaceful for the first time in months. I'm 29, I had just closed on my first apartment, and I was leaving a five-year relationship that had become a stew pot of lies, resentment, and anger. While scores of

There's been plenty written about the ever-vigilant blogosphere's effects on the coming election. Now the Washington Post examines a new twist to blogger/candidate relations: the aggressive push by bloggers for a direct say in Internet-related policymaking. The key issue at stake, as Post staff writer Charles Babington...

The Los Angeles Times has stirred up controversy with an op-ed provacatively titled, "Was 9/11 really that bad? The attacks were a horrible act of mass murder, but history says we're overreacting." The piece, written by Johns Hopkins history professor and New Republic contributing editor David Bell, is a...