This is Dahlia’s Blog
Dear Perks of Being a Wallflower: Thank You
Yesterday, I saw a movie called The Perks of Being a Wallflower. In typical fashion, I had dragged my heels on seeing it in theaters, because I’m often lazy about that. And it had been on my Netflix queue for a while, but I’d sort of avoided it, because even though...
A Self-Portrait in Stages: The End + Beginnings, Berlin and LA
[As I go through massive change in my life at the moment, I am reminded of those other moments of massive change in my life, when I left NYC for Berlin, and then when I left Berlin for LA. I'm revisiting those changes partly out of nostalgia and partly as a way to...
In Praise of Selfies: Work It, Girl
While I freely admit that the word “selfie” makes me cringe, this article made me cringe even more. According to Erin Gloria Ryan, “Selfies aren't empowering; they're a high tech reflection of the fucked up way society teaches women that their most important quality...
A Self-Portrait in Stages: Part Five, Willkommen in Berlin
[As I go through massive change in my life at the moment, I am reminded of those other moments of massive change in my life, when I left NYC for Berlin, and then when I left Berlin for LA. I'm revisiting those changes partly out of nostalgia and partly as a way to...
Dallas Buyers Club: The FDA, Then and Now — When Did Things Get So Screwed Up?
In many ways, Dallas Buyers Club feels like a period piece. You’ve got the seventies outfits and hairstyles, the classic microfiche research scene, the vintage newspaper headlines, the boxy Cadillacs, and, of course, the early days of the AIDS virus. For all those...
A Self-Portrait in Stages: Part Four, Leaving NYC
[As I go through massive change in my life at the moment, I am reminded of those other moments of massive change in my life, when I left NYC for Berlin, and then when I left Berlin for LA. I'm revisiting those changes partly out of nostalgia and partly as a way to...
Queen of Hearts: A Novel by Dahlia Schweitzer (excerpt)
Have you bought your copy of QUEEN OF HEARTS yet...?I was as mesmerized by the seeming impossibility of the performance as by the action happening in my head. I tried desperately to block it out, embarrassed as if everyone could see it and would know what I was...
A Self-Portrait in Stages: Part Three, In Love with Berlin
Photo from my first tour in Berlin. [As I go through massive change in my life at the moment, I am reminded of those other moments of massive change in my life, when I left NYC for Berlin, and then when I left Berlin for LA. I'm revisiting those changes partly out of...
A Self-Portrait in Stages: Part Two, En Route to Berlin
[As I go through massive change in my life at the moment, I am reminded of those other moments of massive change in my life, when I left NYC for Berlin, and then when I left Berlin for LA. I'm revisiting those changes partly out of nostalgia and partly as a way to...
A Self-Portrait in Stages: Part One, or How I Ended Up in Berlin
New York City, 2001 "Sometimes a pain feels familiar even as it hits you for the first time. Certain conditions seem to speak out of some collective history of pain. You know the experience from others who had had it...joined to the past, to some bloodline of intimate...
Deconstructing Dahlia: The FM Magazine Interview
(Photos by Daisy Rast.)
Haters Gonna Hate
The line at the supermarket register today was long and moving slowly. This gave me ample time to study the covers of all the magazines I never read. According to them, Barbra Streisand is a bitch and James Brolin wants a divorce, Kim is making Khloe feel miserable...
Waiting for Hefner
[Another one from the archives.] Unless you had a VIP ticket, everyone was instructed, via email, to park in a parking garage in Century City. From there, a shuttle would take us to the mansion. I get to the parking garage at 9pm, half an hour after check in began. ...
I Was an LAPD Reject (part four)
The physical test ended up being rescheduled due to a bad storm, some flooding, and a power outage. Which was probably for the best, because it would have been a total waste of time, anyway, since the LAPD rejected me.The way it works is that you get a letter in the...
I Was an LAPD Reject (part three)
I would say that this next step in the process terrified me the most, but it didn’t. After my background investigation meeting, and chatting with the friendly man in the cardigan, I was feeling pretty optimistic about things. I was more curious about the lie detector...
12 Years a Slave, Torture Porn, and the Unfortunate Problem of American Apathy
There’s a term in cinema called the “snuff film.” A snuff film, for those lucky enough not to know, is a film that depicts the actual murder of a person or people for entertainment purposes, erotic or otherwise. The claim to fame of a snuff film is that there are no...
I Was an LAPD Reject (part two)
We ran laps around the track and on the streets around the academy. If you were in the beginner group, you ran approximately two miles on the local streets, plus the endless laps the supervisor would inflict upon us whenever our rows weren't straight enough or someone...
An Ode to Love
A really talented artist died today. I didn't know Carlos Batts well, but he and his wife, April Flores, were so in love and just exuded so much sweetness, that I've been sad all day thinking about him and about her. I've been single for a long time, but watching the...
On Miley, Disney, Elton and the Lost Art of Creativity
Will Rogers once said, ""Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don't have for something they don't need." Advertising is the art of persuading you to buy -- and then buy some more.But if it was that simple, Miley's album would have sold...
I Was An LAPD Reject (part one)
I wanted to be a spy when I grew up, until my mother told me that girls don't play with guns. Then I decided I would be Lady Diana, instead.But the fascination with cops and criminality didn't stop. It just grew latent, relegated to fiction and television shows, and...
Mother Misfit and the Absence of Sex (Appeal)
In honor of her upcoming album, and the, um, eye-catching new cover art for her collaboration with R. Kelly, I've pulled this piece out of the archives:Recently, the Council of Fashion Designers of America gave their Fashion Icon Award to Lady Gaga. This award has...
Honesty in Dating, R.I.P.
In my Critical Thinking class, I routinely assign an essay about Herman Rosenblat. (For those who haven’t heard about him, he wrote the book Angel at the Fence, which he claimed was a true story about his experiences during the Holocaust but which turned out to be...
Why I Love Mindy Kaling
I'll be honest. I didn't actively seek out Mindy Kaling. Hulu kept suggesting that I watch The Mindy Project after episodes of New Girl finished, so I finally agreed. I watched one, and then I decided to go back to the beginning because I'm OCD like that. I watched...
Why Gravity Falls Flat
That Hollywood is a boy’s club is so self-evident, I have zero interest in repeating the common arguments or restating the common evidence. If you have any doubt about the lack of roles for women in front of the camera or behind it, just google it. It’s not new...
Interview with Steven Klein: On Art, Madonna, and Identity
[I did this interview with Steven Klein in Berlin, in 2005. It feels particularly relevant now, in light of his recent work with Madonna, so I thought I'd repost it.] The photographer Steven Klein So what do a photographer and a writer, who, in their own ways,...
Slut-Shaming: The Gift that Keeps on Giving
I’ve received several responses to one of my recent blog posts that accuse me of slut-shaming. I’ve received enough of these responses that I feel the need to clarify a couple things. In the 1960s, media theorist Marshall McLuhan became famous for the phrase "the...
Rethinking Miley
“I never meant to start a war. I just wanted you to let me in.” Miley Cyrus, “Wrecking Ball” I keep telling myself that the conversation with Miley is over (didn’t she reach media saturation weeks ago?), but I can’t stop. I just watched her performance on Saturday...
On “Real” Men
There has been a conversation on my Twitter feed about my use of the phrase "real men" in my "keeping sex complicated" post. I'd like to post what my friend Sean Patrick Sullivan had to say on the issue, as he says it better than me: When one refers to a real man or...
Keeping Sex Complicated
Dating sucks everywhere, but it sucks harder in LA, and it sucks more now than ever. A few months ago, before meeting someone for the very first time, as we were texting to confirm plans, he asked if I enjoyed giving blow jobs. When I didn't want to answer, he called...
“You Don’t Have to Take Everything Off to be Beautiful.”
This Sunday, I will be moderating the Sex Panel at the West Hollywood Book Fair. There are several authors on the panel, and their books are as varied as they are. One book is an autobiography of a woman’s experience in the world of hardcore porn, another is the...
On Hitchcock, Giving Up, and Being an Artist
I meant to watch Veep this weekend, but instead I watched Hitchcock because it showed up on the screen first. The movie, as a whole, wasn’t very good, and the lack of respect for factual accuracy made me mad, but something, in particular, made a very strong impression...
Introducing the Queen (of Hearts)
Three days after I submitted Another Kind of Monster to the publisher for copyediting, I began my first “proper” novel. This book, more than anything I have ever written, holds a special place in my heart. Since Lovergirl is told in diary format, Queen of Hearts feels...
Another Kind of Monster is Born
Even though I quit writing fiction, I didn’t stop writing entirely. Instead, I switched back to the short form, only this time to essays and articles rather than short stories. I wrote about art, film, celebrity, sexuality, and identity--topics that didn't really fit...
On Me, Writing, and Lovergirl
Lovergirl was the first book I ever wrote. When I first started it, writing a book felt like a daunting task, and it was probably for the best that the project was originally limited to an essay…but then that essay simply got longer and longer, broader and broader in...