“Hello, single mother of two kids, here. My taxes went up significantly, meaning that I will not be able to do many of the things that matter to me and my family. But Happy Gaslighting Day to you, too, @GOP,” tweeted Asha Rangappa, a senior lecturer at Yale. The tweet was a reference to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), the sweeping Republican-backed tax plan Trump signed into law in December 2017. With her declaration came a chorus of single mothers who had also experienced an unexpected increase in their annual taxes. One woman responded with “Exactly the same. Single mom of two, huge surge in taxes—like up $10k from what I paid last year. Hello, more consumer debt 2019. Owning the libs by hobbling the middle class. Good times, @GOP.” Another shared, “Single mom of 3 kids making under $60k & I owe for first time ever! #goptaxscam.”
For some mothers, and single mothers in particular, it seems, the increase came as a huge shock. Not just because most hadn’t expected it, but because Donald Trump—with the Republican Party behind him—has promised for months that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act would provide massive tax cuts to Americans nationwide. So much so that Trump tweeted, “The Tax Cuts are so large and so meaningful, and yet the Fake News is working overtime to follow the lead of their friends, the defeated Dems, and only demean. This is truly a case where the results will speak for themselves, starting very soon. Jobs, Jobs, Jobs!”
When Tax Day rolled around, the results did speak for themselves. But not as Trump expected. “Tax time is usually a time of relief for me,” says Elizabeth, a chemist and single mom in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who asked that Glamour not use her last name. “I have always gotten a much-needed refund of $2,000 to $3,000. This has allowed me to pay unpaid medical bills and get my daughter necessary items like new clothes, since she still grows out of everything each season.” But this week Elizabeth discovered she owed money to the government. She had to fork over $168 in federal taxes. She’s quick to point out that $168 is not a lot, in the grand scheme, but given that she expected to get a refund during tax season, it’s a major hit.
Kat Stratford, a structural engineer and mother of one in Richmond, Virginia, had a similar experience. Stratford typically pays approximately $20,000 in taxes each year, but says this year she was required to pay an additional $8,000. Since she’d been budgeting only for her usual $20,000 amount, Stratford was completely blindsided by the increase. To pay the difference she had to dig into funds set aside to take her child on a vacation. While she says she feels fortunate she had to sacrifice only a discretionary trip, many of her other single mom friends paid a greater cost: “One mom was putting repairs off on her car and hoping to use her federal tax refund to assist in the costly repairs. Another routinely used her refund to pay off credit card debt accumulated over the previous holiday season buying gifts for her kids. This friend now not only owes money to the IRS; she will now go into this coming holiday season in residual credit card debt. Without some relief, it will be devastating and crippling to their families.”
So what exactly happened? According to Kelly Phillips Erb, a tax lawyer and founder of Tax Girl, the problem is twofold. First, the TCJA issued changes that directly impact all parents, single or otherwise. One of them is that the TCJA eliminated personal exemptions—the amount of money you’re allowed to deduct for yourself and dependents (which include your children) on your taxes. “Last year the personal exemption amount was $4,050 per dependent,” Erb says. “So, for example, in my family of five, I had $20,000 in personal exemptions last year, and this year I had none.” Instead of personal exemptions, the TCJA offers increased “standard deductions.” “The updated standard deduction rates are $12,000 for individuals, $18,000 for heads of household, and $24,000. While this sounds like you’re getting an even greater deal, in some cases this amounts to less than when you could file with dependents,” she says.
The other issue impacts Americans across the board. “When the TCJA was passed, they issued a number of changes to the tax code, especially in regard to withholding,” Erb explains. “The withholding tables were wrong for the first quarter of 2018, and even when they were fixed, people didn’t know to account for the new withholding amounts. So ultimately, people weren’t putting enough away to pay their taxes.” A new report predicts that more than 30 million Americans will ultimately owe tax money this year, a huge increase from previous years.
“I don’t think most Americans, in their heart, want to be given something,” Ivanka Trump told Fox News’ Steve Hilton in an interview about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal proposal earlier this week. “I’ve spent a lot of time traveling around this country over the last four years. People want to work for what they get.” (In addition to an outline on how to achieve net-zero emissions in the next decade, the Green New Deal proposal would also create millions of new jobs and offer a guaranteed federal job at a livable wage; one recent poll found 71 percent of Americans supported a hike in the federal minimum wage. But OK, Ivanka.)
It’s a rich observation from a woman who has quite literally been given not just “something,” but much, much more wealth and privilege than most Americans will ever see. On Fox, Trump went on: “I think that this idea of a guaranteed minimum is not something most people want. They want the ability to be able to secure a job. They want the ability to live in a country where there’s the potential for upward mobility.”
It was a comical, if tragic picture: Trump after all has a guaranteed job (working for her father’s real estate empire and in his White House) and a rather maximum wage (she and her husband Jared Kushner have made at least $82 million in outside income as they serve in the White House). What qualifies her to speculate about what Americans in desperate financial situations with which she has zero experience do and do not want?
I know just how rose-colored her vision must be. Early in my own career, I had an obvious leg up. My mother is a famous writer, and so when I decided to write, too, I began miles ahead of the usual start line. I sold my first novel at 19 for way more than I would have if my mother weren’t Erica Jong. I knew better than to believe that talent alone got me to where I am now. Nepotism is deeply unfair, and anyone who says otherwise is blinded by their own delusions.
Someone who did not benefit from nepotism? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who wasted no time and minced no words in her response to Trump on Twitter. During her now-famous primary campaign, she wore actual holes into her shoes as she and her staff knocked on 120,000 doors. The contrast could not be starker: Ivanka Trump has worn glass Manolo Blahniks since birth, but somehow convinced herself she pulled each up with (custom, probably) bootstraps. Ocasio-Cortez was so determined to walk in her constituents’ shoes—to understand their needs and dreams—that she shredded her own.
Unlike Trump, AOC wasn’t gifted a cushy job in her father’s real estate business. Before she was elected, she worked as a waitress and a bartender. One has to imagine that the woman who knocked on all those doors and worked late shifts might know a little more about what the average American wants than the daughter of real estate impresario who married the heir to another real estate fortune does.
Wealth can insulate a person from the real world, but alas no rich person has figured out how to make it fend off negative press. In Vanity Fair, Bess Levin wrote, “Ivanka Trump comes from a long line of assholes who confuse inheriting money with hard work.” In the Daily Beast, Erin Gloria Ryan wrote, “Ivanka, like her father and siblings, was born on third base and thinks she invented baseball.” The critiques were written, retweeted, and amplified far and wide.
Rachel Brosnahan is hungry. “I usually have Nutella in my purse,” she says, after taking her seat at Boxwood, a restaurant nestled in the London West Hollywood Hotel. “I had Smarties in there too. I took all the condiments from the hotel in France when we were shooting Maisel—all the honeys and jams. I really love condiments.”
Maisel, of course, is The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, the Amazon original series for which Brosnahan, 27, took home the 2018 Golden Globe for Best Actress in a TV Series—Musical or Comedy.
“I can already see the headline of this story,” she says. “‘My Love Affair With Condiments.’”
For the past few weeks, Brosnahan—a Milwaukee native—has been in Paris shooting the second season of Maisel, a show that’s been called “a love letter to stand-up comedy, female empowerment, and New York City,” by The Hollywood Reporter and about which New York magazine asked “Can We Talk About How Charming The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Is?” The unofficial consensus among critics and fans is that the show—much like Mad Men and Good Girls Revolt—can be added to the canon of period pieces that possess an uncanny resonance.
The series, written by Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, follows Miriam ‘Midge’ Maisel, a full-skirted domestic 1958 Jewish princess from the Upper West Side for whom perfection—or at least its patina—is a nonnegotiable. Midge waits until her husband falls asleep to remove her makeup and sets her alarm for dawn to reapply before he wakes up; she uses measuring tape to meticulously track and jot down the size of her ankles, calves, and thighs; and she finally—finally—gets the rabbi to come to her Yom Kippur breakfast, a worthy accomplishment for any good Jewish housewife.
By the end of the pilot, things take a turn: Midge’s mousy husband, Joel, leaves her for his secretary, but instead of getting a desk job or finding a richer husband, Midge semi-accidentally starts to test her voice at open mics nights in East Village underground comedy clubs, a fruitless passion of her husband’s. But she is good. Really good.
It’s a testament to Brosnahan that most people who watch Maisel assume she’s done stand-up or that it’s ignited an interest in doing so—she nails the loose-canon countenance that comes with amateur open mics and, later, the all-business confidence of holding an audience captive.
“The truth is no and no,” she says when I ask if she has experience with stand-up or aspirations toward it. “It’s a slightly different technical skill set—one that I’ve never really worked on and one that doesn’t always come naturally to me.”
“I’ve lost many jobs because people would say, ‘We really liked her, but she’s just not funny.’”
Based on Brosnahan’s past roles—namely as call girl Rachel Posner in House of Cards—for which she received an Emmy nomination as Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series—and the wife of a scientist developing the atomic bomb in short-lived WGN America drama Manhattan, even Sherman-Palladino wasn’t sure she’d be the right person to play Midge, a character whose primary motivation is to prove to everyone around her that a housewife can be funny.
“I had a casting director [in Los Angeles who] called me up and said, ‘I know there’s literally nothing on this girl’s resum´e that will tell you she can do the part, but I feel like it’s Rachel,’” Sherman-Palladino says. “You look at her [work], and it’s either drama or half the time she’s being tied to a post or thrown in a box or shoved in the back of a van. All very dramatic.”
Brosnahan agrees. “I’m laughing [at the fact that] I’m now an award-winning comedic actress,” she says. “Like, that feels absurd! I spent most of my life being told I wasn’t funny. I’ve lost many jobs because people would say, ‘We really liked her, but she’s just not funny.’”
Still, Brosnahan didn’t take that feedback personally. “It happened enough times that there was a pattern,” she explains. “I thought, Maybe I should listen to it. Now I’ve realized you can continue to learn things, even when you’ve formed a really solid sense of self.”
Her Maisel costar Alex Borstein, who plays Midge’s tough-as-nails manager at the comedy club, views Brosnahan’s background in drama as an asset. “She’s honest and vulnerable, and that’s what I think it takes to be a really good comedic presence,” Borstein says. “She’s got a tough sensibility—and some darkness in her. Having sarcasm and having that dark comedic sense usually comes from being an underdog or having some pain. It’s a muscle.”
Sherman-Palladino wanted whoever played Midge to be “infinitely watchable,” someone “you weren’t going to get tired of staring at after, like, five minutes.” Plus, she had to be the kind of actress who could click with the very specific rhythm and rat-a-tat pattern of Sherman-Palladino’s dialogue—a stylistic signature of all her scripts. To that end, every woman who came in to audition was required to deliver three key scenes from the pilot: the speech Midge gives at her wedding, the breakup with her husband, and the character’s first stand-up set.
Brosnahan nailed all three. “A lot of really talented, wonderful actresses came in for it—great girls that I hope to work with someday,” Sherman-Palladino says. “But Rachel…she knew these scenes inside and out. By the time she walked out the door, we were like, ‘Well, that’s our girl.’”
Dinnertime. Brosnahan zeroes in on the cheeseburger and, instead of the restaurant’s house-made chips, asks for fries. She’s especially excited to see her favorite ketchup—Sir Kensington’s—is provided. “They had a truck where you could sample their condiments outside of the Frances Valentine offices in New York,” she says. (Frances Valentine is an accessories brand designed by Kate Spade, Brosnahan’s aunt.) “I have a love affair [with Sir Kensington’s ], if I’m being honest.”
Over the course of our meal, Brosnahan’s culinary passion comes up several times. She tells me about her trips with Michael Zegen, who plays Midge’s ex-husband Joel, to an “oyster ramen cocktail bar” in Manhattan’s Hamilton Heights and the time she learned how to make artichoke pizza with Rachael Ray. Her best friend, Karlee Fomalont, cites the Dave & Buster’s and Shake Shack in Times Square as go-to spots for them when I later ask her about Brosnahan.
But there’s one story, about an encounter earlier this year, that makes Brosnahan “infuriated.” She was at an influencer event for Maisel, held at a Los Angeles Jewish deli, and helping herself to fries and latkes when a man came up to her and asked, “Are you sure you want to eat that? Don’t you have a dress to fit into?”
“It wasn’t the first comment this guy had made,” Brosnahan says. “He kept asking about my personal life and my relationship status, but in a really aggressive way—as if that was the only thing of value about me. He said things like, ‘You must have a man.’” Brosnahan reminded him that the event was about her work on Maisel, not her private life, but he continued to push. The comment about her body was the breaking point. “I was shoveling a latke in my face—and very thrilled about it, mind you—when he made the food comment,” she explains. “I said, ‘I am sure I want to eat that. I love latkes! Do you want one?’ I was trying to keep it light, but I would have loved to have had a great Amy Sherman-Palladino—style clapback. It’s only in hindsight that you think of these things.”
Brosnahan had the man booted from the event. “The guy was a jackass. It was so gross, particularly in a room centered around this show. It’s sad that this behavior still exists.”
During the past few months, Brosnahan has become acutely aware that her life—the one before the hit show, before the awards, before burgers with reporters in hotels—is different. She doesn’t feel famous, but there are times, like the latke incident, when she knows she’s under scrutiny. People know how to say her last name now. Doors are opening with opportunities. Living in New York allows her to still have some anonymity, but even that’s changing.
“I didn’t realize how much I was used to and valued utter anonymity,” she says. “Not that I need to be polished, but now I wouldn’t probably go to the grocery store in Midtown with zit cream on my face.” She laughs, because she’s done it before. Recently, during a breakout, Brosnahan put some “pink stuff” on her acne and went to her local dog park. “I thought, I’m not going to see anyone I know,” she says. Of course, as soon as she got there somebody asked, “Are you….?” Brosnahan panicked and said no.
“I don’t know why I was embarrassed. People have zits, and they put shit on them. But I was mortified. I felt so uncomfortable being a perfectly normal human being,” she says. “Why are we embarrassed when that happens? Everyone does that, whether in private or in public. I get mad when I get embarrassed about stuff like that.”
It was Miley Cyrus, funnily enough, who shared a similar story with Brosnahan at a press event that reminded her to keep things in perspective. “I hope I don’t butcher her words, but when she had a zit and wanted to put pink cream on it, she did, regardless of where she was. She felt it was important to show her young and impressionable audience that it was OK, and there’s nothing shameful about it. I found that really inspiring.”
Brosnahan has found one way to make this whole fame thing work for her: by bringing awareness to her passion projects, organizations like Global Citizen and Covenant House. “There’s a responsibility that comes with this increased platform,” she says. “None of us should be silent right now, but we also need to listen.”
When asked how she’d describe herself, Brosnahan chooses words like curious,ambitious, and open. It’s surprising, given that questions about her romantic life are off-limits. “I like to keep my private life private,” she says, without hesitation. “Maybe that will change, I don’t know, but I am blessed with a really rich personal life, so it feels important for my sanity to keep it separate.”
She didn’t expect to be so guarded—“I never would have considered myself that way”—but the more attention she got, the more she realized she was deeply uncomfortable sharing that side of herself.
“I’ve worked really hard to get here, but I’m also really lucky. Nothing happens without some stars aligning.”
Fomalont also describes Brosnahan as open, though only with the people she’s close to. “It’s a balance I respect so much,” she says. “Because the impulse is to overshare, but then you lose the things that keep you grounded. She’s able to stay grounded and rooted because of the personal stuff she keeps tied to her heart, but she is engaged. It’s a delicate dance.”
Part of it is that Brosnahan likes disappearing into characters, and it can be hard for an audience to separate the art from the artist. “The most exciting thing that anyone ever says to me about The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is that they didn’t realize that it was the same actress from House of Cards,” she says. “To me, that’s all I want.”
When the waitress approaches, asking if we’d like to see a dessert menu, Brosnahan is ready: “Yeah, of course.” The chocolate fondue—with fruit and a macaroon and ice-cream sandwich—stands out. (“If nothing else, the presentation alone is probably amazing. These guys really know how to throw a party.”)
While we wait, conversation turns to the Golden Globes and the moment Carol Burnett and Jennifer Aniston presented Brosnahan with her Best Actress award. “Annie was one of my favorite movies ever,” she says. “So [when I saw Burnett], I died. I’m pretty sure I went blank as I approached the stage.” As for Aniston, Brosnahan hadn’t watched Friends until two years ago. Now she’s seen every episode. “I love Ross so much! And Monica. I really enjoy the Geller siblings. I feel like I related to them the most because of their anxiety.”
That anxiety, Brosnahan says, never entirely goes away—even after winning a Golden Globe. “When we were shooting Maisel in Paris, I thought, I’ve got this. Then I got up there and was just as nervous as I was during the first season, equally horrified every single second. I was like, Shit, it never goes away.”
When dessert arrives, the spread looks like something Midge herself would have prepared for a dinner party. Each piece of fruit and cake is divided into perfect squares, like a delicious chess board. Before we ruin the illusion, I ask one last thing: “Much like the presentation of our meal, have the last six months been as amazing as it looks from my perspective?”
“There’s an element of fantasy—the fantasy of what this life looks like,” Brosnahan says. “I feel like I have one foot on either side of the fence, you know? I’m in a position where things are cool, but it’s all new. I still feel like a super-normal human being. I’ve worked really hard to get here, but I’m also really lucky. Nothing happens without some stars aligning.”
Hair by Ted Gibson at the Visionaries Agency. Manicure by Yukie Miyakawa at Kate Ryan Inc. Set design by Alex Brannian at Art Department. Makeup by Lisa Aharon for Chanel.
I have recently started seeing a new man. And I have a terrible gag reflex. Like it’s honestly terrible. I gag every single time he goes too deep, and I don’t really love the taste of semen. Between the depth and worrying about the taste, I get so tense. All I want to do is finish the job without looking like an idiot. Is it all in my head, or is there a way to fix this issue?
Emma, 22, Indiana
Hi Emma,
Let me start off by saying that being able to deep-throat is not synonymous with a great blow job. First, let him know you want to control the depth. Despite what porn might have you think, the bulk of the nerve endings are actually in the tip of the penis. Using your hands to create friction on the shaft can stimulate the parts your mouth can’t reach.
However, I totally understand why you want to be able to go deep. The good news is you can definitely train your throat and fix that pesky gag reflex. Here a few ways to get you blowing like a pro:
Get Off First:
When attempting to give a killer blow job, it’s totally natural for you to tense up, especially if all you’re worried about is how it’s going to taste at the end. Try loosening up, and have an orgasm (or two) first. Once you’ve gotten off, you’ll be much more relaxed and will really want to return the favor, considering your partner has done his job well.
Train Your Throat:
You can actually train yourself to deep throat, but it’s going to take some time to get your gag reflex under control. Start off by using a clean finger and placing it towards the back of your throat until you’re at the point that usually makes you gag. Relax your throat and breathe through your nose, holding for 10 seconds, and then pulling back.
Do this a few times, then start to go deeper—you’ll notice your gag reflex becoming less sensitive. If you have a dildo or phallic vibrator, you can start to practice with that as well as you get more comfortable. It may take awhile, but eventually, your throat will be ready for more.
Add a Little Topping:
As far as the taste of semen goes, there isn’t much that can be done about that. There are certain fruits and foods your partner can eat that have been said to make semen sweeter, but not sweet enough to not taste like, well, semen.
While this may not completely mask the taste, using some of System JO’s Gelato line can definitely help. They have flavors like hazelnut espresso and tiramisu that actually taste amazing enough to put on ice cream. Add a little dab to his member during oral sex and when he gets close to climax, add a little more. And if you have to spit on the floor, hey, no one’s judging.
With a little bit of patience, practice, and relaxed throat muscles, your sensitive gag reflex will be a thing of the past.
In the Guardian article, which was published on Friday, former technical specialist Qichen Zhang; a black female former specialist who spoke out under anonymity; and former engineer Lashmi Parthasarthy shared their harrowing accounts of racial and gender discrimination at the tech giant. All three were in the minority at Google: the company is predominantly white and male, at 56 percent and 69 percent respectively, according to its website.
“I didn’t see a lot of women, especially Asian women, black women or other women of color in the executive ranks,” Zhang told the Guardian.
One pivotal moment Zhang recalled during her one year at Google was a conversation with a white male colleague. “He said, ‘It must’ve been really easy for you to get your job because you’re an Asian woman, and people assume you’re good at math,'” Zhang, a Harvard graduate, said. “It was absolutely stunning. I remember me just emotionally shutting down.”
Zhang ultimately chose to left in 2014 after more incidents that left her feeling isolated—and like there was no future for her at the company. “It’s just these little daily aggressions that really add up over time,” she said. “Having a lack of people who look like you in general is demoralizing.”
“People had this broad concept of ‘racism doesn’t exist at Google and sexism doesn’t exist at Google,'” she added*. “Just because your officemates aren’t saying racial slurs out loud doesn’t mean they’re not racist.”
The former specialist, who is black and asked to remain anonymous, experienced similar moments of discrimination. She told the Guardian that she was frequently asked for her ID on campus when coworkers weren’t; that she overheard racist jokes; and that she was negatively judged for trying to be an advocate for people of color, despite Google’s official interest in the positive PR that diversity initiatives bring to the company.
“They didn’t like the way you’re prioritizing diversity, because that’s not your role,” she said about the company. Like Zhang, she left the company for the sake of her mental health, adding that “there were times I cried at my desk.”
Zhang and the anonymous specialist quit due to their experiences with racism at work—but gender-based discrimination was a factor in another woman leaving her job. Parthasarthy, a former solutions engineer, left was because she lacked a supportive female mentor and manager. Comparing Google to a boys club, she said “it’s difficult for women to see paths for themselves at Google in tech.”
Responding in the Guardian article to these women’s experiences, Google’s director of global diversity and inclusion, Yolanda Mangolini, told the newspaper that she’s “always disappointed” hearing these stories. “We know that it’s not just about recruiting a diverse workforce. It’s about creating an environment where they want to stay.” She added: “Change takes time.”
Of course, racism and sexism are hardly limited to Google, and these experiences—as indicative of a larger problem as they might be—belong to these individual women. But when Google regularly tops the lists of best places to work, and when complimentary articles are devoted to recreating its “great” workplace culture, hearing stories like should prompt Google and other tech companies to do some deep soul-searching—and take swift, effective action.
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