Jade writes lyric essays, expository pieces, and long-form literary journalism.

Her writing seeks to explore and deconstruct femininity, whiteness, and Americana. She usually attempts to do so by discussing reproductive justice, women in music, and the digital age. She also regularly publishes a popular Substack newsletter, Jade Fax, here.

Looking to commission me, or see pitches of mine in your inbox? Reach out at she@jadehurley.world!

Brat Red, Brat Blue, Brat Me, Brat You

The “brat” is a woman who tells her friends what’s wrong. The “brat” backslides into seeing her ex again, and again, and again. The “brat” glamorizes anorexia, club drugs, cigarettes, tiny tops, and most things a high school PTA would gawk at. The “brat” makes defining yourself as a “slut” cool, desirable, and edgy. The “brat” shakes up the post-pandemic social order so powerfully because the “brat” is, first, a contrarian.

August 2024 | If Not Now (INN03)| Read

Slow-Boil, Medium-High Heat

I am just as old as the century. It’s between 30 and 50 that I’d like to have a family. I’d like a home like the ones that make perfect kindling for a California brush fire. I’d like to ask the legislators that value (white) motherhood so much: Do I deserve to carry a pregnancy without concern for natural disasters? Extreme heat? Clean air and water? Does my child deserve to grow up among indigenous plants, animals, a Sun with kind rays? 

December 2024 | Jade Fax | Read

Why I Write About Whiteness

As a writer, as a feminist, as a pophead, and as a woman, I believe I have the responsibility to paint the full picture of the brand I’m critiquing when I share it with you. Womanhood is not exclusive to white womanhood. To discuss her as a woman without discussing her background—including her race and ethnicity—is only one piece of the puzzle.

I want to complete a bit more than that.

January 2025 | Jade Fax | Read

Who’s Afraid of San Francisco?

Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump are not only marking Harris as a San Francisco Radical to hurt her campaign or her political credibility. They mark her as such in order to place her outside of Americanness, making her fundamentally unfit to lead The Heartland, the Real America, the True Patriots… Whatever you want to call the Manifest-Destiny-pilled imagination of American identity and authenticity. The San Francisco Radical is oppositional to the state. Perhaps she’s even an enemy.

November 2024 | Jade Fax | Read

Where Do You Guys Keep Your Tights?

I know the young women in this room like I know a sister.

I wonder how many Friday and Saturday nights they spent in a studio, training. I wonder what they gave up to continually enter this world, with all its strict rules, conventions, artistry, and camaraderie. I wonder whose voices swirl in their heads every time they walk down the street with hunched shoulders.

October 2024 | Jade Fax | Read

Your Fave is Selling a Pedophilic Fantasy

I’m going to allow you to read the title of this essay, take a deep breath, then join me in the discourse.

Ardent defenders of white, blonde popstars: You can do this.

August 2024 | Jade Fax | See in New York Times

Yellowjackets: Welcome to the Wilderness

Who are human beings away from the influence of social order? What do we believe, and who do we become, when we’re alone?

Lord of the Flies, at the end of the book, gives us two, cut-and-dry options: the civilized, reasonable republican, Ralph, or the violent, savage dictator, Jack. These characters were built that way, not made. It was Golding’s Island which allowed the boys’ true nature to be revealed, but it is Lyle & Nickerson’s Wilderness where no girl is, or ever has been, safe—from the Wilderness, from each other, and from themselves.

February 2025 | Jade Fax | Read

Women of the Pomegranate

As emergency contraception, Long Acting Reversible Contraception, and most hormonal birth control methods are increasingly labeled “abortifacients” by anti-abortion extremists, it’s clear that parts of the United States are on, literally, the same witch-hunt as their ancestors. Attempts to make this nation a “Christian state”are eerily reminiscent of what befell the women of ancient Europe and Asia, making their experiences vital for American organizers to learn from.

Women of the Pomegranate have long been carers for their communities, but the intrinsic knowledge of women from the Mediterranean and Southwest Asia have been warped by history.

August 2024 | Jade Fax | Read

Older writing:

  • “People are losing their jobs, struggling on picket lines, and drowning in medical and student debt. 2023's economic downturn has hit all of us hard, but we're forced to continue to ask our community to fund health care that should be free. We're all hurting, but we're still showing up to take care of each other."”

    — “What the F*ck Happened? A Year (and a half!) in Abortion Access in D.C.“ (DC Abortion Fund, 2023)

  • "Mutual aid networks cannot simply be passive band-aids for capitalism; we are the intentional tool of revolutionaries. We are meant to be a pool from which organizers can drink, but if we remain silent on that which we organize for—dignity, autonomy, safety, and a life of one’s choosing—we join the very systems we claim to oppose."

    — “Reproductive Justice Includes Palestinian Liberation” (DC Abortion Fund, 2023.)

  • "The Kamila Valieva story from this Olympic Winter Games is complicated, and not necessarily a woman-on-woman rivalry like the scandals of the past. The rivalry we see here is much bigger: It’s those who cheat vs. those who don’t, it’s Russia vs. the United States, it’s Black athletes vs. white. Sports are political, and Kamila’s time in Beijing is no different. She is a young girl from an “enemy country” upon whom we can place our ingrained misogyny and Russophobia without consequence. We can excuse hating a child while ignoring the adults—largely men—who orchestrated a reason to hate her."

    — “What Our Cultural Obsession With Figure Skating Scandals Says About Us (It’s Not Great!)” (National Women’s Law Center, 2022)

  • "The weaponization of womanhood in response to rightful critique is something we can see throughout feminist history and the present-day movement. From agents of colonial violence like Margaret Thatcher to occasionally politically misguided celebrities like Taylor Swift, white women with class privilege have long been known to invoke the need for “women supporting women” when critiqued for furthering oppressive systems. Feminism shouldn’t be boiled down to “women support women, no matter what;” it’s a political movement with the goal of liberation from patriarchy! To get there, we have to accept that a woman can be bad without then seeing all women as inherently bad. "

    — “What Hulu’s The Dropout Can Teach Us About the Pitfalls of Girlboss Feminism” (National Women’s Law Center, 2022)

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