Amber A’Lee Frost

Welcome to The Baffler’s agony corner, YOUR SORRY ASS, where Amber A’Lee Frost dispenses bossy, judgmental advice on how to live your life fairly, kindly, and with good humor. Send us your rants and pleas, please: yoursorryass@thebaffler.com.  Dear Your Sorry Ass, Like a ...

It can be difficult to balance what you can live with and what you can live on. It usually takes experimentation, trial and error. That’s a luxury most people don't have these precarious days, but creativity helps, and you have a good sense of what will grind your psyche into ...

You've touched on a curious new phenomenon I've been observing: I have recently noticed that more often than not, modern, culturally progressive young people no longer shamefully confess to me their perversions. It's sad, really—I live for prurient gossip, and there's no ...

I am a twenty-one-year-old cisgendered, heterosexual woman, and I am not hot. I don't mean that I am ugly, but I also don't just need a makeover, and I don't have low self-esteem; I just mean that I am not hot. A little fat, bad skin, a bit of a weak chin—that sort of thing. ...

Conventional wisdom holds that “kitchen table activism” with kith and kin is somehow easier than talking to strangers, but I’ve never found that to be true. In my experience, people—especially conservative people—are more likely to accept disagreement from a stranger ...

We tell ourselves that our circumstances are our own fault because we find it more reassuring to believe that we are to blame for our woes as opposed to, say, capitalism or basic misfortune. The sociopolitical or existential threat of a world beyond our control is far more ...

This guy is deep down the right-libertarian rabbit hole, but he's also unsure enough that sometimes I think I could lead him down the right path. All I want to do is get him to channel that conspiratorial, paranoid energy into something resembling socialism, so that when he ...

“Say it to my face” may sound righteous and brave, but the smug boors who shout that slogan the loudest are often the ones least prepared to listen. If you try to tell this person how her tokenism makes you feel, it could mean a lot of work for you. Do you really have time ...