I’m on a mission to love myself: So I stripped down and tried Boudoir.

By Kelcie McKenney, Photos by Tayanna Harris
This story was originally published in The Pitch.

It’s a Tuesday morning, and I’m naked in front of three strangers.

I’m changing into my first set of lingerie at Tayanna Harris’s Good Bodies photo studio for my first boudoir session. You know, that photo trend where you strip down to your knickers and pose seductively in an effort to feel good about yourself and your body.

“Oh, I love that,” Harris says as I’m draped over a chair, my legs kicked above me.

“Honestly, you look like this devious housewife who might kill her husband and get away with it,” says Katie Camlin, Harris’s photo assistant, who is showing off our shoot on social media today.

It was all I needed for a confidence boost: This faux-housewife was feeling herself.

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Is shapewear anti-feminist? Can feminists afford to be exclusionary on beauty products?

By Hannah Strader

Venus Libido is one of my absolute favorite Instagram accounts. It’s sex-positive, detailed cartoons of women in everyday, not-so-pretty situations convey the reality of how difficult it can be for women to exist in this “picture-perfect” world.

But one of the account’s recent posts divided women in a way I have never seen before by posing the question, “Is shapewear anti-feminist?”

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Poet Jen Harris’s new book Unconfirmed Certainties is about heartbreak, growth, and telling your truth⁠—even if that means saying “fuck you” to cheating fiancées.

Bad Ass Babes: Jen Harris

By Kelcie McKenney

Jen Harris outside her Kansas City home
Photo by Justina Kellner

Poet Jen Harris is unapologetic about telling her truth, and she wants readers of her new book Unconfirmed Certainties to feel the same. 

The Kansas City poet and spoken word artist has earned her place at the center of KC’s poetry scene: She has both a Drugstore and Charlotte Street residency under her belt, gave a TED talk called “Spoken Word Poetry Saved My Life,” had a guest spot on season three of Queer Eye, founded the Kansas City Poetry Slam (aptly named because she “believes in SEO ratings”), and published two books, with her third to be released on Sunday. Harris isn’t stopping any time soon.

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Bad Ass Babe Amy Shoemaker: Queer. Artist. Pastor.

By Rebekah Lodos

By Justina Kellner

Dancer, artist, spiritual coach, wife, pastor—the list of roles Amy Shoemaker moves in seems endless. A Kansas City native, she got her degree in theater from Drake University and attended seminary at Pacific School of Religion, Berekely, before making her home in San Francisco for 10 years. There, she worked odd jobs in tech, established a spiritual direction practice and met her wife, Carly. But her dream was always to be an artistic minister; a Christian leader who incorporates movement, dance, and improvisation into spiritual formation. She found that opportunity last year at Broadway Church, one of only 20 (out of 2,000) Kansas City churches that are affirming of queer leadership. She and Carly have been here for almost three years.

We spoke with Shoemaker about her journey, her worship, and what it’s like being a queer, female pastor in Kansas:

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Is Your Child Texting About Reproductive Rights?

By Trevan McGee

With the recent abortion bans in Alabama, Georgia, Ohio, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, Utah, and Missouri — y’know, the cool states everyone loves to visit — reproductive rights have become a popular topic of discussion, spanning generations, genders, and ethnicities. Reproductive rights are trending harder than Keanu Reeves and for all the wrong reasons, but what do the kids think? Here’s a quick guide to help decipher what your kids are saying about reproductive rights:

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