Esperanza Spalding

I have spent a lot of time thinking about the silliness of "True Love Waits"-style campaigns, but it never really occurred to me to think about how a child who has been raped might experience these shaming "abstinence-only" discourses. That is to say, this would be particularly cruel, painful, and potentially traumatic for such a child.

Potentially even worse than teen purity rallies, I think, are the "purity balls."

Consider the opening line of this local news video: "Would you pledge your virginity to your father?"

Esperanza Spalding has been flying just under the radar for years now, especially for those who don't follow jazz pop news (it's not all about Norah Jones, people!), but recently experienced something of a breakout in her February performance on the PBS program Austin City Limits. The day after her performance, Spalding, became the second most-popular search term on Google and millions of PBS viewers were (I assume) smitten.