What Do Formerly Incarcerated Women Think About Orange Is the New Black?

The Cut’s Kat Stoeffel thought to ask a few of them:

Orange Is the New Black walks the tightrope of making incarcerated life accessible to outsiders — through the touristic, writerly lens of Piper — without condescending to demographically representative insiders. When a fictional prison guard loses track during daily “count time” and must begin his prisoner head count anew, the women from Fortune Society groaned in unison. Another correctional officer’s salty “Good luck with that” — that being Piper’s non-incarcerated fiancé, Larry — was met with head shakes and one loud “too true.” The scene that got the loudest laughs was one that revealed the versatility of maxi pads, which the show’s prisoners use as an all-purpose cleaning supply and, in one case, makeshift shower shoes.

[The Cut]