Sarah Hepola
Articles tagged ‘pop culture’

November 28, 2021

Why I’m Doing a Podcast on the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders

For most of my life, they were just images to worship or disdain or ignore -- but they're one of the great and complicated stories to come out of my city

I grew up watching women’s bodies. I think it started on movie screens, but it moved to television and locker rooms and swimming pools. I watched their suntanned shoulders in halter tops, I studied the parting waves of their tumbling hair, and I wondered if my body would ever have that kind of magic. There . . . Read More

May 1, 2021

How Deep Is Your Love

On musical wonderlands, being the last two people on earth, and listening to the same song

The first night we spent in each other’s company, I slid into the passenger seat of his car and flipped through the songs on his stereo. He had one of those screens that was probably standard, but I’d never seen it before, having spent the past six years in the backseat of yellow cabs during . . . Read More

April 24, 2021

Nostalgia in the key of metal

A story about lost art, lost loves, and the consumer cycle on constant rotation

The young woman jangling keys to the dressing room is wearing an Iron Maiden shirt. Three items drape over my right arm, all of them designed for her demographic, but that shirt is straight out of mine. My older brother used to listen to Iron Maiden, a blunt counter-point to my Whitney Houston, and the . . . Read More