Catherine Gigante-Brown

Makeup and I have always had a love/hate relationship: I love it; it hates me.

"Bring over a meal—and leave. Breakfast, lunch or dinner, from soup to nuts. And coffee. Plenty of coffee."

To the tattoo artist, I was a flesh canvas that she could transform into something beautiful.

The Daily News quoted one painted lady as saying, “People come up to us sometimes and say what we do is disgusting,” she said. “But what is disgusting about the female body? They shield their kids sometimes, and I think, ‘Kids come from the female body.’”

I thought cancer was behind me. Until I had a weird pain near my left ovary which lasted for several days. It felt a lot like ovulation...Only, at 56, that train had left the station a long time ago.

In the photograph, my great-grandmother, Margarita Cirigliano, is sitting at a small table on the front porch of the family home in Borough Park, Brooklyn.

Alas, I am the lone female in a house full of men. Only two men, but they take up a lot of space.

The Ultimate Counter Culture Diva

Content Notice: Death

Why do we venerate individuality in adults but condemn it in children?