Putting readers to sleep isn't usually an author's goal, but a Swedish behavioral scientist hopes his children's book will do just that.

Carl-Johan Forssen Ehrlin claims the book he wrote will help kids all over the world fall asleep at bedtime.

The book is called The Rabbit Who Wants To Fall Asleep: A New Way Of Getting Children To Sleep, and it's currently the number one bestseller on Amazon. "I can make anyone fall asleep," the front cover states.

The 26-page book follows Roger the Rabbit, who tries to go to sleep with the help of his mom, the Heavy-Eyed Owl, Uncle Yawn and the Sleep Snail. The critters give him advice like "think slowly, breath slowly and calm, slow and calm" and "let your whole body be heavy, so heavy it feels like it falls... just like a leaf, that falls down, slowly down, down ..."

With lines like that, it's not surprising that The Rabbit Who Wants To Fall Asleep is described as a "hypnotic" bedtime story. The Amazon description calls the book "a quick and guaranteed way to help your child relax in the evening or during a nap." Ehrlin himself told the Daily Express that his book is "the verbal equivalent of rocking your child to sleep," adding that it "[helps] the child focus on relaxation and become part of the story."

Parents have shared their own glowing reviews on Amazon. One top review notes that if you follow the book's instructions regarding vocal intonations and speed while reading it aloud, the bedtime story can be extremely effective. "The rabbit who wants to fall asleep is a fantastic example of hypnotic language in storytelling," adds another reviewer. 

"I am amazed!" a parent under the username Tired Mom of 5 wrote. "We battle sleep every night with my now 2-year-old. We got to page three and he was out!!! It really works!!!" This review is just one of dozens of similar responses from parents.

Still, others weren't quite so enthusiastic. "Didn't work for us!" wrote Clare Harper. "Our 2 year old still wide awake -- disappointed though I was probably gullible in the first place thinking it would." Mom Lisa James said that her little boy "just rolled about the bed totally uninterested in the story after a couple of pages!"

Beyond parent reviews, the author claims on the book's Facebook page that psychologists recommend The Rabbit Who Wants To Fall Asleep to parents of young children. Ehrlin himself studied psychology for six years and teaches courses about communication, body language and media training at the University of Jönköping in Sweden.

Kelly Glazer Baron, an assistant professor of neurology who focuses on circadian rhythms and sleep at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, told The Huffington Post that she thinks the book is a great idea. "Having a relaxing and consistent bedtime routine is probably the most important thing for toddler/preschooler sleep," she said adding, "I love that this book uses words that make sense to kids to help explain how to relax and fall asleep. It's a skill that all kids and grown-ups need to have and it doesn't come naturally for everyone."

Given that bedtime struggles can be a common part of everyday parenting, it's not surprising that this book has received such an overwhelming response from parents. To all the legions of sleep-deprived moms and dads out there, the message is, apparently, simple: All it takes to get your kid to sleep is a cute bunny with hypnotic powers.  

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University of Florida offers an online master's program in arts education. For short, they call it UF Art Ed. And for those who are too lazy to deal with uppercase letters -- #ufarted. 

Let the third grader in you erupt into giggles and begin making fart noises with your armpit. 

In today's edition of very serious and very classy breaking art world news, #ufarted! It's one of those small but mighty miracles, like that hidden arrow in the FedEx logo, but way less subtle and involving farts. 

Oh, you're too mature to crack a smile at #ufarted? Unfortunately for you, it only gets funnier over time. 

#ufarted.

#ufarted.

#ufarted.

#ufarted.

#ufarted.

#ufarted.

#ufarted.

Did you smile? DO YOU EVEN HAVE A SOUL? OR A BUTTHOLE?

First of all, I'd like to clarify that I have nothing but love for UF Art Ed in all its abbreviated and unabbreviated forms. It's only that the art world so rarely gets a chance to bond over the universal good that is a fart joke, and this is that moment!

Right here, right now! #UFARTED!

So can we please overcome our differences once and for all, and band together to bring attention to this accidentally flatulent abbreviation, thus making arts education at large go viral for even a single day?! 

Good art and a good laugh are two causes worth fighting for. Going forth, I will use the #ufarted hashtag with honor and pride. Because I love accessible online education for art therapy, arts education, museum studies and graphic design. And I love #farts.

We reached out to UF Art Ed for comment and have yet to hear back. 

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The memoir about binge drinking, hazing and cocaine use at a Dartmouth College fraternity might become a movie. 

Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy, by Andrew Lohse, details a life as a brother of Sigma Alpha Epsilon at Dartmouth. Lohse became nationally-known when he went public in 2012 about alleged hazing and drug use taking place in his SAE chapter, following it up in 2014 with a memoir about his experience.

The Abrams Artist Agency, which represents Lohse, announced on Friday that Marty Adelstein of Tomorrow ITV Studios had acquired the film and television rights to Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy, and it would likely be adapted for screen soon. 

Deadline first reported the deal.

Tomorrow ITV Studios is relatively new, and is a scripted studio under the umbrella of ITV Studios US Group, according to Deadline. Its first major project was about the Charles Manson murders, "Aquarius," starring David Duchovny, and aired this summer on NBC. "Hell's Kitchen," "#RichKids Of Beverly Hills" and "Barmageddon" are among ITV Studios' reality TV programs.

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In the narrative of drag history and queer performance, the legacy of Wigstock is major.

The legendary, once annual New York City festival started as a new practice in exploring queer community culture and performance and ultimately grew into a force that gained international accolade and resulted in a feature length-film. 

Wigstock, organized by drag icon Lady Bunny and Scott Lifshutz, ran for over 20 years in the '80s, '90s and early 2000s, attracting over 30,000 drag enthusiasts at its height.

When Bunny and Lifshutz announced the end of the festival in the early 2000s, many of us assumed that we would never have the chance to see most of these beloved performers together again. That all changed when the pair announced the "Wigstock Tea Sea Cruise" earlier this year -- essentially recreating the spirit of Wigstock on a boat as it sailed around Manhattan's harbor.

The Aug. 16 event brought out performers and drag entuasiasts from all along the queer spectrum and across generational lines, with those in attendance including Michael Musto, Linda Simpson, Sister Dimension, House of Bushwig, Flotilla Debarge, Sugar Pie Coco, Cazwell and Sweetie -- just to name a few.

Check out some photos from the event below courtesy of Santiago Felipe.

We can't wait for the next one, Bunny!

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Our best furry friends age and grow, but that doesn't make them any less lovely.

Massachusetts photographer Amanda Jones has captured dogs' timeless charm in a poignant photo series. 

In her new book "Dog Years: Faithful Friends, Then And Now," Jones features the portraits of 30 dogs as puppies alongside the portraits of their older canine selves. The photos also come with stories from the pooches' humans. The photographer told The Huffington Post that through her project, she wanted show the personality and magnificence that the pooches developed as they aged. 

"I'm hoping to share the beauty of the dogs ... the beauty of their lives, and how much they give to us," Jones told HuffPost. "They have this beautiful life-span [and] I wanted to show how glorious a creature they are."

Jones began the project about two years ago following the death of her dachshund, Lily, and started the series as an ode to the beloved pooch. It was then that she tracked down past clients and their respective canines who she had photographed in years past. 

While the dogs showed marks and signs of lives full of experiences, Jones notes in her book's introduction that not everything went through a transformation. 

"One thing that remains constant is the love people and dogs have for each other. That does not change, no matter how many dog years go by."

To learn more about the dogs, check out the book "Dog Years: Faithful Friends, Then And Now," here.

To see more of Amanda Jones' work, visit her Facebook page.  

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Marvel Comics has revamped Devil Dinosaur, a classic 1978 comic, and replaced the main character "Moon Boy" with a cooler-than-cool black teenage girl.

These days the main character in the comic, Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, is Lunella Lafayette, a young woman with mysterious alien DNA and powers that are still yet to be determined in a modern-day New York City.

"The Marvel Universe is at its best when it reflects the world outside your window -- and that world looks different in 2015 than it did in 1963," Axel Alonso, Editor in Chief at Marvel, told the Huffington Post. (In 1963 being, Marvel debuted some of its legendary titles such as Amazing Spider-Man, Uncanny X-men, and the now mega-superhero media franchise of The Avengers.)

Indeed, as cultural definitions of what a superhero can or should look like are changing, new and more diverse characters are becoming a trend in Marvel's litany of superheroes. There's Miles Morales, the new black-Hispanic Spider-Man and Kamala Kahn, a Pakastani-American Muslim tween who's taken on the mantle of Ms. Marvel -- a title once held by the very white and very blonde Carol Danvers. Recently, Michael B. Jordan stepped into the role of the Human Torch, and now there's even a female Thor. 

"The cultural impact can be seen at comic book stores, conventions and movie theater lines around the world," Alonso said. "The Marvel Universe fan base has never been more diverse than it is now. And it's going to get more and more diverse in coming years."

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College starts soon, and the best way to blend right into your college is to speak its language fluently.

Many of us here at The Huffington Post miss college like crazy, so we compiled a list of the weirdest, quirkiest slang we used when we were in college. 

Here's an quick list of words and phrases you might need to know before going back to school:

• Sev: 7-11 convenience stores (Temple University)


• Establish: show up to a party with a large group and set the tone for the event (Vanderbilt University)


• Normies: what athletes called non-athletes (Northwestern University)


• Grub crawl: the customary feasting ritual after the bars closed (Northeastern University)


• Swemming: spending time at the Swem Library (College of William and Mary)


• Juxtapose: a go-to word to sound intelligent in a critique when you weren't actually paying attention (Rhode Island School of Design)


• Getting a Hot Chick: getting a greasy sandwich at the local deli (Georgetown University)


• NARP: "non-athletic regular person," or students who were not on an athletic team at school (Dartmouth College)


• Caking: staying up late on the phone with one's significant other (University of Georgia)


• GDI: "goddamn independent," or students who aren't a part of Greek life (University of Missouri and elsewhere) Can also be pronounced "Geed," or referred to as "goddamn irrelevant" (at University of Virginia).


• Kevin: someone who didn't have a Facebook account (New York University)


• Gut: an easy class (Yale University)


• Turkey: a male student who was not part of a frat (Colgate University)


• Kick rocks: a turn of phrase meaning, "Get lost, shut up, go away." (Georgia State University)


• "The boobs": Two semi-small hills in the middle of the campus (Elon University)


• GFP: "Good for posting," or a window of time between getting ready for the night and pre-gaming, when you have approximately 15 minutes of attractive sobriety that can be acceptably posted on social media (American University)


• Subfrosh: High school kids visiting the school (Colgate University)


• Prefrosh: Refers to accepted students that haven't started freshman year (Dartmouth College and elsewhere)


• BroPo: Brown University police (Rhode Island School of Design)


• UGLi: Undergraduate library (University of Michigan)


• Darty: Day party (Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Penn and elsewhere)


• SWUG: Senior, washed up girl (Yale University and elsewhere)


• Deucing: going to the local bar, named the Deuce, or The Mark II (Northwestern University)


• The wave: something that was popular at the moment (New York University)


• Banging salad: a guy who had great hair (Valparaiso University)


• PTL: "post-thesis life," meaning the period of time that came after students finished their semesters-long theses (Princeton University)


• FAC: Friday After Classes, when the bars open at 2 p.m. and sell fishbowls for $3 (Iowa State University)


• Fat Sundays: Not moving all day and eating away your hangovers (SUNY Buffalo)


• Getting buff: ordering a buffalo chicken sandwich (Johnson & Wales University in Providence)

Happy slanging!

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We're hatin' it. 

You know you've made it as a prankster when your fake McDonald's sign draws the adoration of fellow travelers and the ire of the park service in a remote part of Australia. 

An "artist" caused a commotion in June by erecting a McDonald's "OPENING SOON" sign, 124 miles from the edge of the Simpson Desert Regional Reserve in Australia. Taking it down required one park ranger to take a major detour. 

The prankster drove into the desert sometime during the Finke Desert Race in June and put up the sign, which can light up at night and makes for a striking eyesore in the flatland. Since then, fellow travelers have signed their names on the signage, and a four-wheel-drive group make a video about it using a drone. 

But the Australian government isn't too happy about its pending Happy Meals. Consumerist reports:

The government dispatched a ranger from Port Augusta who then made the 12-hour trek into the desert to take it down recently, SA Environment Minister Ian Hunter said. Hunter pointed out that it’s illegal to put a structure in a reserve without permission, but admitted that the agency sees how it could be funny.

“It is very humorous but we particularly don’t want people searching for a sign off the tracks, damaging the fragile landscape and putting themselves potentially at risk in a very remote location,” he explained.

The anonymous defiler told The New Daily that the joke was "12 months in the planning." 

The suspect plans to keep adding "installations" to the desert. When asked why, he told The New Daily, "Why not?"

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A British photography crew on Monday accidentally lost track of a tiger it had brought on a photoshoot at the historic Packard Plant in Detroit.

Police confirmed to local TV station Fox 2 Detroit that a tiger went missing during the shoot Monday morning and was recaptured shortly afterward. 

Andy Didorosi, a Detroit entrepreneur whose friend, a member of the photography crew, asked him to help recapture the tiger, documented the process in a series of social media posts.

"I'm going to help a friend scare a tiger out of hiding in a staircase. Mondays are always odd," Didorosi remarked on Facebook, adding later, "Update: water no longer scary. Tigers way scarier."

"[The tiger] was growling the whole time, but I think he just wanted people to leave him alone,” Didorosi told The Detroit News. “This whole thing really shook up the usual Monday blahs." 

Didorosi posted a photo of the tiger crouching in the stairwell, apparently unfazed by various attempts to scare it off.

He shared a video of the surreal incident as well:

A trainer who was on hand for the photoshoot eventually coaxed the tiger back into its trailer, The Detroit Free Press reported.  

The photography crew, headed by David Yarrow, a well-known wildlife photographer, had also brought along two wolves and a bobcat. While the humans had permission to be in the building for the shoot, the animals, whose presence they neglected to mention, most certainly did not, Kari Smith, project manager for the Packard Plant Project, told the MLive Media Group.

"This is not something that we would allow to happen here," she said. "This is not something that we condone in any way."

Yarrow did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Huffington Post, but said in a statement posted on Facebook that he believed he'd secured the necessary permissions to bring the animals to the shoot:

Didorosi said he thinks outsiders believe Detroit's financial troubles give them carte blanche to act however they please.

"People think it's OK to bring super dangerous animals into the city without alerting the authorities because they think people don't care, because they think it's a cesspool and that they can do whatever [they] want," Didorosi told the Detroit Free Press, condemning the photographer's actions. "That is not cool."

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A young girl lazes on her back, her Botticelli-like hair falling in waves. It’s a beautiful image, complete with hazy, diffused light falling evenly upon its subject, in the style that’s been popularized on Tumblr and in catalogs that use beauty as a sales tool.

It’s timeless and ethereal; the girl, whose looks align with today’s impossible standards, is waif-thin and without makeup. But, unlike so many representations of women shot in this vein, it has a single distinguishing attribute, so understated you might miss it: the model, conventional in every other way, rocks a tuft of fuzzy armpit hair.

“My photographs are deliberately not aesthetically pleasing,” photographer Cary Fagan explained in an email interview with The Huffington Post. “In various shoots, some of my subjects are contorted in unnatural positions.”

In one such picture, two girls sit huddled together on a chair, as though for warmth. Behind them, a messy bookcase is cluttered with drinking glasses and junk. It’s a lovely, offhand shot, and it’s a far subtler way of depicting women than we’re used to seeing. What does it mean, then, that the photographer behind it is not a woman expressing her identity, but a man hoping to produce honest art?

“All I see nowadays in the media is an abundance of focus on with the way women look,” Fagan said. “We have set a socially accepted idea of beauty and we rate every woman, despite her individual beauty, by this idea.” Conversely, of his work, he says, “I try to allow the viewer to experience the unconventional sexuality.”

It’s an alluring message -- one that photographers of both genders would do well to embrace. The problem, however, is when we only recognize the men who are doing so, paying less mind to the women who’ve been making waves in this arena for years.

A recent profile on Fagan ran in Dazed with the headline, “Reclaiming the female form through photography.” The piece kicks off with a shot of a slender, full-lipped woman, looking confident in a brightly colored bra. Although there’s no retouching at play, her cleavage is emphasized as the image’s focal point. The distance between this and Fagan’s self-proclaimed message -- “I want to help women reclaim their bodies as their own rather than a product of the media and those around them” -- understandably riled commenters.

“It's counterproductive to the theme of female empowerment,” one commenter noted. “It’s very disrespectful,” wrote another. “Why not promote the work of a female photographer?”

Fagan is aware that his work and the way he describes it is inflammatory. “The truth is as a male photographer of women ... it’s almost impossible to avoid negative criticism,” he says, adding that he sees his work as important regardless of his own gender. 

“I'm not looking at it like its my job to do this, but a product of my artistic experience,” he said. “Through working with certain models, and working with peers, I found the realization that with my success I have the power to change how people see the female form.”

Indeed he might -- but he’s not alone. The aesthetic of his work is not unlike the often dirty, grainy, offhand-looking shots snapped by photographer and girl collective founder Petra Collins, who released an anthology celebrating likeminded artists earlier this year. Some of her pictures depict girls taking selfies, juxtaposing the polished images they post on social media with their cluttered bathroom shelves and realistically messy lives.

In contrast, some of Fagan’s models look dazed and inhuman. But, his more successful shots are a worthy addition to the movement. One image, from his series “Date Night With a Real Boy,” shows model Jacqueline Salinas toting a mannequin by her side, a nod to objectification. Another, from his series “Goldie,” depicts a woman whose attire blends in with her surroundings, an abstract comment on the union between her mood and her constructed appearance.

“My aim,” Fagan says, “is to have my audience appreciate the beauty in a clothed or naked form without objectifying them.”

And in some cases, he succeeds.

See more of Fagan’s work:

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Hundreds of stray threads fray at the edges of a mesmerizing geometric tapestry. But the image wasn't woven, or even drawn by hand -- it's the visual manifestation of a convoluted equation, crafted by Iranian math artist Hamid Naderi Yeganeh.

Of course, the fields of art and math have long run parallel -- think of the Golden Ratio and M.C. Escher's ever-winding staircases. Yeganeh himself cites Escher's "Reptiles" and "Circle Limit III" as inspirations for his work. Escher's beloved illusions, rooted as they were in mathematical concepts such as tessellation and the more head-scratching idea of hyperbolic geometry, are a testament to how math-oriented art can be. 

Though the marriage of the two seemingly separate fields of study is a natural one, Yeganeh's captions for his works are best left to be deciphered by those who studied math beyond the high school level. An illustrious gray-and-purple work featuring soft lines that loop in the shape of a lotus flower bears the considerably less spiritual title, "4,000 Line Segments (3)." Its caption: 

This image shows 4,000 line segments. For each i=1,2,3,...,4000 the endpoints of the i-th line segment are:
(sin(14πi/4000), cos(22πi/4000))
and
(sin(26πi/4000), cos(34πi/4000)).

For an image with such a technical construction, it's awfully meditative to look at, its loops and loops promising a pleasant maze for viewers.

It's unsurprising, then, that Yeganeh's works are as much his own construction as they are a computer's. The process of making them involves using a program he created to cull through the shapes that result from lines connecting on a plane. When he changes the values for each point connecting the lines, the shape of the work shifts. Initially, his results were simple -- one, comprised of 100 lines, resembled a fish. But over time, they grew increasingly complex. 

Yeganeh has no ambitions to see his work hang on museum walls alongside human-made crafts. "My works are created by computer programs," he told The Huffington Post. "Therefore it is better to see them on a computer screen."

View more of Yeganeh's mathematical art:

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"I’m worried, because my daughter is losing weight, because she doesn’t eat," a single mother, detained at the Karnes Detention Center in Texas, wrote in a heartbreaking letter. "The food has pepper in it, and she doesn’t like it. I’m worried, because she could get sick."

The unnamed mother goes on to explain she was been in the detention center for seven months already, due to nothing other than her immigrant status. Both she and her daughter are desperate. The letter continues: "I need people to help me be able to get out. I don’t have anywhere to go. I cannot return to Guatemala. I am an orphan, and my husband was murdered. I was also threatened, that I would be killed together with my daughter. I am also discriminated against because of my language, I don’t know how to speak Spanish.The water has bleach in it, and I don’t have money to buy water from the store. Please help us."

It's hard for some to fathom that we live in a world in which people face injustices like this every day, that the mother above was only one of 315,943 individuals removed by the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) in 2014. It's impossible to find the words to explain how and why a mother and daughter can be denied food or water because they don't possess citizenship. Oftentimes, when words fail, art has the ability to express our deepest pain and unrelenting hope.

Visions from the Inside is a project enlisting 15 artists from across the country to create a piece of art based off letters from women in detention. The initiative, a collaboration between CultureStrike, Mariposas Sin Fronteras and End Family Detention, illuminates the horrific realities of life inside some for-profit detention facilities in the U.S., as well as the resilient spirit that keeps the inmates going.  

Artist Micah Bazant transformed the heartbreaking letter featured above into vibrant lines and colors. A mother and child hold each other in a muted cell while blue water gushes in from the window. "The letter I illustrated was short and so heartbreaking," Bazant explains in his artist statement. "There was so much unsaid in it: so much strength, suffering and history ... When I imagined what I wished for this mother and her child, I imagined a mighty waterfall breaking through the prison walls."

"The stories about immigration family detention that dominate the news media are often negative and do not fully portray the humanity of the individual, nor the reasons around why people migrate," Favianna Rodriguez, co-founder of Visions from the Inside project, explained to The Huffington Post. "I felt that it was critical to show the resilience and the dignity of the many [adults] and children in these detention centers." 

 The conditions in some detention centers around the country can be dehumanizing, with detained families dealing with starvation, humiliation, abuse, rape and sexual assault. Many women have reported being raped by guards who enter their cells at night, as well as being assaulted in front of their children. These conditions have grave consequences. 

"You don’t have a heart for anybody," 19-year-old Lilian Oliva wrote in a note prior to a suicide attempt in June of 2015. She was discovered with self-inflicted wounds in the bathroom of Karnes Detention Center and deported to Honduras. "You just lie and humiliate all of us who have come to this country. For the second time if I do this is because only God knows what I have suffered in my country. I come here so this country can help me but here you’ve been killing me little by little with punishment and lies in prison when I haven’t committed any crime."

Visions from the Inside intends to spread awareness of the many stories like Lilian's by enlisting artists to create work inspired by the brutal letters of detainees. The participating artists come from all walks of life; some were moved by the struggles of migrant mothers with little previous knowledge of the situation. For others, the motivation was much more personal.

"I knew I couldn’t say no," participating artist Fidencio Martinez said. "It was important for me to be involved because I was in ICE detention when I was 7 years old. I remember how scared, lonely and cold I felt. Even though I had my mother with me, I could see she was in pain. I was too young to understand why people in uniforms could walk around freely while we had to remain in a holding cell ... My current self feels like I am making work that would've helped the 7-year-old me when I was in there, when I thought the world had forgotten us. That is why I was so grateful to be a part of this."

Visions from the Inside is a grassroots effort to spread awareness, anger, conviction and change regarding a topic that has been silenced for too long. Thanks to resources like Tumblr, marginalized voices are able to make themselves heard like never before. "As people of color, putting our stories out there goes against the generations-long media silence around our issues," Iris Rodriguez, webmaster at End Family Detention said.

"As people of color in a technological age, we have a privilege bestowed unto us that is unprecedented and that was not afforded to our ancestors -- the technology to communicate immediately with the world. It has been through everyday folks like me and you sharing these letters and stories that has taken this issue to dinner tables, churches and conversations worldwide."

Rodriguez affirmed the necessity of spreading these women's stories and providing them long overdue support. "We should be providing services to the women and to all the families who are fleeing violence. We should welcome families with open arms and we should extend to them refugee status when they are escaping from a place like Honduras or El Salvador that is considered among the most dangerous places in the world. I would like for people to understand that many of these immigration detention centers are run by for profit prison corporations and that they do not care at all about human beings."

Similarly, for artist Martinez, the heart of the project is about communicating that, beyond classifications and citizenships, we're all just people. "I would like people to know that there’s no difference between them and us. To break your conceived notions of what an undocumented person must look like or come from. These people are mothers, children, families. We have to see the humanity in all of this and acknowledge their dignity, dreams, and sacrifices."

See some of the artworks from Visions from the Inside below, accompanied by artist statements and the letters that inspired each image. For more information on how you can help, visit the End Family Detention Website. 

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This post is excerpted from the book Bare Reality: 100 Women, Their Breasts, Their Stories created and edited by photographer Laura Dodsworth, in which 100 women bravely share un-airbrushed photographs of their breasts alongside honest, courageous, powerful and humorous stories about their breasts and their lives. Women from all walks of life took part, aged from 19 to 101, sized AAA to K, from Buddhist nun to burlesque dancer. This is one of those stories.

Images below may be considered NSFW to some readers.

I'm a burlesque dancer who doesn't fit the beauty archetype.

Age 36 | No children

It's interesting to talk about breasts separately from the rest of my body because I have never conceived of them that way. When I look in the mirror I see an hourglass shape composed of my breasts and my hips. It is that line that I connect with. It's not a shape you would see on billboards as a perfect physique, although I like it. When I thought about this interview I realized I had never conceived of my breasts separately. When I perform and dress as a burlesquer, my breasts are just part of a reveal of many parts of my body.

Burlesque is a real litmus test for a lot of people in how they feel about women controlling and enjoying their bodies, or using them as a tool in an intellectual performance. Men are normally quite embarrassed to be there and they are not sure how they are supposed to react to a burlesque performance in front of other women. Women have a whole spectrum of responses.

After the performance you socialize at the bar and meet the audience. This group of young girls came up to me, and funnily enough one of them happened to be my bikini waxer. She has seen a lot more of me than I have of her! She is a beautiful young woman, she meets a lot of the standards of a beauty idol. She was saying, 'That was amazing. I would like to do some lessons, but I don't think I can perform. My breasts are too small.' I thought they looked perfectly in proportion, but she is slim. She leant in and said, 'You can see, all my friends have really big breasts, and I would love big breasts.' I had never experienced someone not doing something they want to do because of a perception about their breasts. The burlesque show she had just watched featured a woman who's had a mastectomy, with one breast, a woman in a wheelchair, and me, size 14, plus a woman in her 50s and a couple of men. So I thought, 'Where did you put yourself on the spectrum when you decided you couldn't fit in?' It was sad.

It's interesting how women react when they see a burlesque dancer who doesn't fit the beauty archetype. Very early on in my career, a young girl came up to me and said, 'It's so nice to see someone overweight do burlesque.' I'm not an orthodox beauty. She enjoyed the performance but was still policing it. Bless her, she was very inebriated. The comment was a double-edged sword. But it was her hang-up, not mine.

My mother's reaction when I took up burlesque was, 'What! Are you going to be taking your top off on stage?' I never thought I couldn't do it. I go down to nipple covers and knickers for some of my acts. I have friends who do full nudity, and some don't take off any clothes at all. Some burlesque acts are sensual, some are comedic. Sometimes if they use big fans they don't take off any clothes, it's tease and reveal, but no clothes come off. It's a different play on expectations.

In most of the venues I perform in, they don't allow nipples to be uncovered as they don't have that sort of license. The reveal of flesh on show is a determining factor, so nipple covers get round that. In truth, burlesque and gentlemen's stripping clubs are worlds apart. I think the real difference between them is that men have a low opinion of women at strip clubs. They pay women to submit to their desire to strip for them. In a burlesque club you are performing for an audience, it's not one-to-one and it's not for arousal. It's a theatrical performance that has elements of sensuality.

Nipple covers can be part of the costume. For instance, in a Christmas act the nipple covers might be giant snowflakes, or in an act about eating cake the nipple covers might be cupcakes. Sometimes the nipple covers fall off by mistake, it's just one of those things. Normally the audience laughs if that happens. I have large areola. I couldn't trade nipple covers with other girls back stage, as theirs wouldn't cover my areolae.

Burlesque is part of the cabaret genre. It's subversive, a bohemian form of entertainment. It can be glamorous and feminine, political commentary, satire, any number of tableaux. You can see surprise at the end of the show, the women in the audience haven't felt threatened at any point. The body isn't reduced to a clinical object.

The boom of burlesque, following the success of Dita von Tees and Pussycat Dolls, has led to a new wave of performers who are part of pop culture, rather than the subculture that existed before. They are bringing in body image and self-esteem issues, and we are not used to that in burlesque.

Burlesque is not empowering in itself. You should be empowered and then you do burlesque. It is a literally and metaphorically exposing thing to do and if you are insecure off stage you will also be insecure on it. Newer performers are more aware of the male gaze. I have noticed that the demographic in some audiences is changing, and groups of men are coming on their own. So burlesque is facing some challenges at the moment.

It's hard to make money from burlesque. A lot of the new performers won't last the distance, it's hard to earn a living and their insecurities will push them out. The audience can sense insecurity in a performer. They won't respond positively if they sense you don't connect emotionally to your body. They won't 'boo', but you might get a gentle smattering of applause. Right now burlesque is in fashion, but it will go back to being a subculture again. It thrives on not being mainstream. In the longer term, sexualization of society might be more of a problem for burlesque.

There are an awful lot of single burlesque performers. Does being a sexually confident woman intimidate men? I don't tell people what I do until I know I am definitely with someone I want to spend time with, because of the expectations it creates. They wouldn't get past it. The burlesque becomes their object of attention, not me.

Female burlesquers are the most confident I know. They don't waste time, and they don't need male attention, they don't crave it. But whenever we have social media profiles we are deluged with aggressive, sad individuals. Very sad, very lonely men, who spend their lives emailing women to tell them how pretty they are and trying to meet up with them. They think it's safe to approach you because you are a burlesquer. Social media gives them an impression of access and they assume you are open-minded. Men send you unsolicited pictures of their penises and vulgar language. They think if you take your clothes off on stage you must be a goer in bed.

Boyfriends have been wowed by the idea of burlesque while I am off stage and they love the confidence. But there aren't many boyfriends who will go and watch a performance. The ones who do are the ones who last. Men almost seem slightly cowed by it, as though the women are too confident for them. They can't cope with the confidence.

My breasts are important to me sexually, but not more or less than any other part of my body. It's interesting that men can be very clumsy about sensual eroticism. Breasts are always a great focus for men, and I have to show them that the back of my neck, the touch of my skin, are as sensual as my nipples. It's as if I have to train men to see my body as an erotic whole, not cut and pasted into body sections.

Excerpted from Bare Reality: 100 Women, Their Breasts, Their Stories, by Laura Dodsworth. With permission from Laura Dodsworth and Pinter & Marti.

Head over to Amazon to order Bare Reality: 100 Women, Their Breasts, Their Stories.

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College freshmen today have never known a world without "South Park," as noted in Beloit College's annual Mindset List, released every year since 1998. 

Beloit, in Wisconsin, releases its Mindset List each year to note things that college freshmen have never lived without, and point out things or people they never lived with. For example, Notorious B.I.G. has never been alive during the average college freshman's life, while Dolly the sheep and the McCaughey septuplets are roughly just as old as incoming first-years. 

"They will encounter difficult discussions about privilege, race, and sexual assault on campus," Charles Westerberg, director of the Liberal Arts in Practice Center and a sociology professor at Beloit, said in a news release. "They may think of the 'last century' as the twentieth, not the nineteenth, so they will need ever wider perspectives about the burgeoning mass of information that will be heading their way. And they will need a keen ability to decipher what is the same and what has changed with respect to many of these issues."

The typical college freshman today was born in 1997 or 1998. South Park debuted in August 1997. 

A sample of the Beloit Mindset List is below:

1. They have never licked a postage stamp.


2. They have no first-hand experience of Princess Diana’s charismatic celebrity.


3. Email has become the new “formal” communication, while texts and tweets remain enclaves for the casual.


4. Color photos have always adorned the front page of The New York Times.


5. Cell phones have become so ubiquitous in class that teachers don’t know which students are using them to take notes and which ones are planning a party.


6. The airport in Washington, D.C., has always been Reagan National Airport.


7. Their parents have gone from encouraging them to use the Internet to begging them to get off it. 


8. Four foul-mouthed kids have always been playing in South Park.


9. Hybrid automobiles have always been mass produced.


10. Google has always been there, in its founding words, “to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible.” 


11. If you say “around the turn of the century,” they may well ask you, “which one?”


12. Phish Food has always been available from Ben and Jerry.


13. The Lion King has always been on Broadway.


14. CNN has always been available en Español.


15. Dolly the sheep, The McCaughey septuplets happened when they were born.


16. TV has always been in such high definition that they could see the pores of actors and the grimaces of quarterbacks. 


17. Mr. Jones and Mr. Smith have always been "Men in Black," not their next-door neighbors.


18. Their proud parents recorded their first steps on camcorders, mounted on their shoulders like bazookas.


19. They had no idea how fortunate they were to enjoy the final four years of Federal budget surpluses.


20. Amoco gas stations have steadily vanished from the American highway.

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A passionate new friendship might be a lifeline for the troubled young woman at the heart of Eileen. But not in the way she hoped. 

If you’ve read Ottessa Moshfegh’s short fiction, in The Paris Review or in the form of her novella McGlue, you’ll know what to expect from her novelistic debut. Moshfegh writes about a range of characters -- a sexually deprived Chinese man who visits a prostitute, a sailor from New England who murders his best friend -- but utter wretchedness remains a hallmark.

So, in Moshfegh's usual adept style, Eileen, the titular protagonist of Eileen, can both manage to be heartachingly relatable, with her unrequited crushes and her physical insecurity, and so repugnant and perverse that I squirmed at times against the urge to turn away.

Narrating a pivotal week in her own young life 50 years later, Eileen gazes upon herself with the unsparing cruelty of a teenage girl mixed with the measured pity of a far more experienced woman. “The terrain of my face was heavy with soft, rumbling acne scars,” she recalls. “I hated almost everything. I was very unhappy and angry all the time.” Her frank, if slightly repulsed, narration makes her youth of unwashed clothes, intense laxative-induced defecation, menstrual messes and spit-out chocolates jump so vividly to life that readers themselves may yearn for a shower.

Eileen was a bitter, desperate, hopelessly hopeful young woman who wore her dead mother’s clothes and spent her weekends stalking Randy, a handsome guard at the correctional facility for juvenile boys where she worked. Her father, a former cop and current drunk, required constant vigilance and repaid her with creatively nasty insults (“I can’t eat a stick of butter for dinner, Eileen. Be reasonable. Be smart for once”).

And then, like an angel descending from heaven to raise the wretched Eileen from her unmitigated squalor, Rebecca Saint John arrives to take a post at the prison. Tall, elegant, fiery-haired, she seems out of Eileen’s league, and yet Rebecca instantly sets about winning her over. Captivated by her educated, upper-class new friend (Rebecca, incidentally, means “captivating"), Eileen dares to dream that this is the key to a longed-for escape. 

Which, in a way, it is. But not, of course, in the rose-tinted manner our protagonist expects.

With almost surreal speed, Rebecca seduces Eileen into a lurid, morally muddled act, which necessarily alters her life irrevocably. And while even the elder and wiser Eileen, as she narrates, seems to imply she was entrapped by Rebecca, left absolutely no choice, there's a note of long-suppressed thirst for violent retribution in what follows. 

This final twist belongs in a soap opera, so pat and unlikely is it -- a shame after Moshfegh’s masterful construction of an atmosphere of unease, which flickers out with an “um, really?” This can’t help but undermine the haunting resonance of Eileen’s dark themes, though she does take on deeply unsettling realities. She plumbs the depths of violence people can visit upon their children, and the impossibility of inflicting revenge or even defense upon one’s parents. Without totally disappearing, Eileen is shackled forever to her vicious father, a servant to society's expectations of filial duty.

Finally, that image endures as the success of this debut: a girl who isn’t an object of desire or even particularly appealing, but who aches to be seen and loved; a kid who is decidedly not all right. 

The Bottom Line:

Ottessa Moshfegh’s literary suspense debut lacks in the suspense department, but makes up for it with a painfully honest, even grotesque, character study of an unloved, uncared-for girl.

What other reviewers think:

The New York Times Sunday Book Review: "Through Eileen, Moshfegh is exploring a woman’s relationship to her body: the disconnection, the cultural claims, the male prerogative."

The LA Times: "Eileen adopts convention and dips it into murky Moshfeghian brown, which is more staunch bleakness and delightful filth than any antique sepia."

Who wrote it?

Ottessa Moshfegh has published short fiction in The Paris Review and has won the prestigious Plimpton Prize. She is a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. Eileen is her debut novel.

Who will read it?

Readers who are drawn to creepy, unsettling fiction and books that evoke the physicality -- and even grossness -- of being human.

Opening lines:

“I looked like a girl you’d expect to see on a city bus, reading some clothbound book from the library about plants or geography, perhaps wearing a net over my light brown hair. You might take me for a nursing student or a typist, note the nervous hands, a foot tapping, bitten lip. I looked like nothing special.”

Notable passage:

“So here we are. My name was Eileen Dunlop. Now you know me. I was twenty-four years old then, and had a job that paid fifty-seven dollars a week as a kind of secretary at a private juvenile correctional facility for teenage boys. I think of it now as what it really was for all intents and purposes -- a prison for children. I will call it Moorehead. Delvin Moorehead was a terrible landlord I had years later, and so to use his name for such a place feels appropriate.

"In a week, I would run away from home and never go back. This is the story of how I disappeared.”

Eileen

by Ottessa Moshfegh

Penguin Press, $25.95

Publishes Aug. 18, 2015

The Bottom Line is a weekly review combining plot description and analysis with fun tidbits about the book.

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"Bonnaroo is a commitment. You don't just go to Bonnaroo, you immerse yourself in the experience," New York-based photographer Ryan Mastro explained in an email to The Huffington Post. 

People love their music festivals with a zealous, almost cult-like fervor. There are the Coachella diehards, the Burners, the Lollapaloozites and, of course, the Bonnaroovians. Every year, like-minded individuals of all ages and backgrounds grow out their facial hair, gather their hemp bikinis, pack up their multicolored bandana collection and head to the famed 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tennessee, for four days of music and so much more.

For Mastro, the power of Bonnaroo extends far beyond the quality of the lineup. "I feel we have become disconnected as a society and people are craving personal connections," he explained. "Bonnaroo is a community of people who have come together for a chance to reconnect with humanity and 'radiate positivity.' The result is an accepting and open environment, where everyone feels comfortable to love and live freely."

For years, Mastro documented the magic of Bonnaroo in a relatively straightforward fashion -- photographing the bands. He felt, however, like the obvious route failed to communicate that ineffable something that makes Bonnaroo Bonnaroo.

In his most recent series, "What Does Bonnaroo Mean To You?," Mastro decided to enlist Bonnaroo attendees to help him find the words to explain what the festival is all about. Each work is split down the middle, juxtaposing a black-and-white snapshot of a devoted Bonnaroo disciple in his or her natural habitat with a letter or doodle summarizing what the four days of magic mean. Expect lots of yin yangs, peace signs and hearts, as well as touching letters describing what for many is hippie heaven on earth.

"My goal in this series was to communicate the many thoughts, feelings and experiences of the people who attend Bonnaroo," Mastro continued. "There’s over 85,000 people living together on The Farm for four days every year and each Bonnaroovian does it a little differently. The people and the stories highlighted here are meant to communicate what Bonnaroo is really all about and the recurring themes are clear. Positivity, freedom and love."

And of course, get excited for next year's festival, coming June 9-12, 2016.

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It's official! According the Office for National Statistics, the top baby names in 2014 for England and Wales were Amelia and Oliver.

Amelia managed to maintain its #1 spot for the fourth year running, and Oliver for the second year. Overall, the top ten names are pretty similar to last year's lists, especially for the boys.

New to the top 100 are Ellis, Joey, Jackson, Thea, Darcie, Lottie, Harper, Nancy and Robyn. These names replaced Evan, Aiden, Cameron, Niamh, Paige, Skye, Tilly, Isobel, Maddison and Madison, which all fell out of the top 100.

Kian showed the largest rise within the top 100 for boys while Teddy, Theodore, Elijah, Albert and Freddie were also high climbers. For girls, Aisha showed the largest rise within the top 100. Elsie, Heidi, Evelyn, Eliza, Georgia, Ivy and Darcey also made big jumps.

It's also worth noting the differences between the separate lists for England's top 100 and Wales' top 100.

In Wales, Cody (61), Carter (61), Eli (71), Rowan (74), Macsen (78), Ifan (86), Cole (88) and Jesse (98) for boys and Lois (69), Nevaeh (82), Mila (85), Eleri (96) and Elsa (99) for girls all rose in the Welsh top 100, but don't make England's list.

On the other hand, England's top 100 boasts Stanley (60), Jude (63), Teddy (66), Hugo (70), Albert (82), Ronnie (85) and Sonny (95) for boys and Harriet (61), Zara (65), Violet (71), Maryam (73), Aisha (75), Nancy (90) and Penelope (100) for girls. These all moved up in England's top 100, but remain below the top 100 in Wales.

So without further ado, here are the full lists of the 100 most popular names for boys and girls in England and Wales in 2014.

Girls:

1. Amelia


2. Olivia


3. Isla


4. Emily


5. Poppy


6. Ava


7. Isabella


8. Jessica


9. Lily


10. Sophie


11. Grace


12. Sophia


13. Mia


14. Evie


15. Ruby


16. Ella


17. Scarlett


18. Isabelle


19. Chloe


20. Sienna


21. Freya


22. Phoebe


23. Charlotte


24. Daisy


25. Alice


26. Florence


27. Eva


28. Sofia


29. Millie


30. Lucy


31. Evelyn


32. Elsie


33. Rosie


34. Imogen


35. Lola


36. Matilda


37. Elizabeth


38. Layla


39. Holly


40. Lilly


41. Molly


42. Erin


43. Ellie


44. Maisie


45. Maya


46. Abigail


47. Eliza


48. Georgia


49. Jasmine


50. Esme


51. Willow


52. Bella


53. Annabelle


54. Ivy


55. Amber


56. Emilia


57. Emma


58. Summer


59. Hannah


60. Eleanor


61. Harriet


62. Rose


63. Amelie


64. Lexi


65. Megan


66. Gracie


67. Zara


68. Lacey


69. Martha


70. Anna


71. Violet


72. Darcey


73. Maria


74. Maryam


75. Brooke


76. Aisha


77. Katie


78. Leah


79. Thea


80. Darcie


81. Hollie


82. Amy


83. Mollie


84. Heidi


85. Lottie


86. Bethany


87. Francesca


88. Faith


89. Harper


90. Nancy


91. Beatrice


92. Isabel


93. Darcy


94. Lydia


95. Sarah


96. Sara


97. Julia


98. Victoria


99. Zoe


100. Robyn

Boys: 

1. Oliver


2. Jack


3. Harry


4. Jacob


5. Charlie


6. Thomas


7. George


8. Oscar


9. James


10. William


11. Noah


12. Alfie


13. Joshua


14. Muhammad


15. Henry


16. Leo


17. Archie


18. Ethan


19. Joseph


20. Freddie


21. Samuel


22. Alexander


23. Logan


24. Daniel


25. Isaac


26. Max


27. Mohammed


28. Benjamin


29. Mason


30. Lucas


31. Edward


32. Harrison


33. Jake


34. Dylan


35. Riley


36. Finley


37. Theo


38. Sebastian


39. Adam


40. Zachary


41. Arthur


42. Toby


43. Jayden


44. Luke


45. Harley


46. Lewis


47. Tyler


48. Harvey


49. Matthew


50. David


51. Reuben


52. Michael


53. Elijah


54. Kian


55. Tommy


56. Mohammad


57. Blake


58. Luca


59. Theodore


60. Stanley


61. Jenson


62. Nathan


63. Charles


64. Frankie


65. Jude


66. Teddy


67. Louie


68. Louis


69. Ryan


70. Hugo


71. Bobby


72. Elliott


73. Dexter


74. Ollie


75. Alex


76. Liam


77. Kai


78. Gabriel


79. Connor


80. Aaron


81. Frederick


82. Callum


83. Elliot


84. Albert


85. Leon


86. Ronnie


87. Rory


88. Jamie


89. Austin


90. Seth


91. Ibrahim


92. Owen


93. Caleb


94. Ellis


95. Sonny


96. Robert


97. Joey


98. Felix


99. Finlay


100. Jackson

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The following is an excerpt from Lolita - The Story of a Cover Girl: Vladimir Nabokov's Novel in Art and Design, edited by John Bertram and Yuri Leving. In it, 80 graphic designers reimagine the iconic cover of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. There are also multiple essays by Nabokov scholars on the difficulty of visually representing the themes of the classic.

Fifty-eight years after Lolita was first published, Vladimir Nabokov’s most famous novel remains firmly in the public consciousness, but more often for its misunderstood subject than for its masterful and dazzling prose. The character of Lolita, in her innumerable pop-cultural refractions (Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation is primary among them, but there are also a failed 1971 musical; a 1992 Russian-language opera; a second film, from 1997; a 1999 ‘retelling’ from Lolita’s point of view; and a recent one-man show), has come to signify something very different from what Nabokov presumably intended. Though she has acquired this misleading advance guard, the novel itself remains as potent as ever. At turns sad and hilarious, deeply disturbing and insanely clever, Lolita is an immensely rich reading experience. Still, if there ever were a book whose covers have so reliably gotten it wrong, it isLolita. This book explores why this is so.

Lolita—The Story of a Cover Girl has its genesis in “Covering Lolita,” Dieter E. Zimmer’s online gallery of close to 200 covers, spanning nearly six decades of the novel’s international publishing history. Though it is intriguing to see them arrayed together, and amusing to follow the choices made by the designers, illustrators, and publishers, it is apparent how few of them ultimately succeeded at communicating the depth and complexity of the novel. Overflowing with powerful, finely wrought imagery, Lolita also strikes with darkness and brutality. Ellen Pifer, editor of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita: A Casebook (Oxford University Press, 2003), describes it starkly as “a threnody for the destruction of a child’s life.” It is difficult to think of another book whose cover design has been as fraught with peril.

There are several factors that make Lolita such an instructive case for investigating the art of cover design. First, dozens of existing covers are available for study. Furthermore, Nabokov was not only interested generally in the covers of his books but, in particular, voiced strong opinions about how Lolita’s cover should and shouldn’t appear. (Although as Zimmer notes in his essay, included in this collection, Nabokov’s opinions evolved over time.) Nabokov wrote with great care and specificity, believing that what may appear to be textual minutiae are often crucial to a full understanding and appreciation. The publisher that chooses for its cover of Lolita a girl with long blond hair or a woman of 21 may not care about such matters. After all, “fidelity to the novel’s narrative has not been high on the list of publishers’ concerns.” This is one reason why misunderstandings and misinterpretations of Lolita still persist. It’s easy to see why a prospective reader, even at this late date, would assume that the titular character is the precocious seductress that her name has popularly and unfortunately come to signify.

Duncan White writes that “Lolita has been repeatedly misread on the cover of Lolita, and frequently in a way to make her seem a more palatable subject of sexual desire.” Kubrick’s 1962 film, with its maddeningly indelible image of Lolita (played by the actress Sue Lyon), is arguably the primary source of this interpretation. Ellen Pifer calls it “a blatant misrepresentation of Nabokov’s novel, its characters and themes. Not only does it betray the nature of the child featured in its pages; it disregards the way that the narrator, Humbert Humbert, comes to terms with his role in ruining her life.” But however misleading it was, the movie—and Adrian Lyne’s 1997 film adaption—influence our understanding of the novel to this day, especially since their images have been used unsparingly for decades to promote the book.

Is a cover responsible for fairly representing the book? Taking it a step further, can a cover even be said to have a responsibility to a fictional character, particularly one who has been abused and victimized as Lolita has? When might a cover incorporate images that are not supported by the text, and what problems could arise with such an approach?

These questions are complicated because what we know of Lolita comes from Humbert, the epitome of the unreliable narrator, charming and devious in the masterful subterfuge that is his “confession.” Many have noted that Humbert, preferring the idealization of his obsession, is largely oblivious to Lolita’s qualities as an autonomous human being—and, since she is a child, these are qualities that are still being formed. We, in turn, dependent on Humbert’s words, ultimately learn little about Lolita. Perhaps the alternate title—“Confession of a White Widowed Male”—mentioned in the fictional John Ray, Jr.’s, foreword should have been the title of the book. Or perhaps there is no woman in the text at all. One sophisticated response would be to create a cipher instead of depicting a girl, which is what Hilary Drummond has done—a synaesthetic translation of cover text into color, based on the chromatic alphabet that Nabokov described in Speak, Memory and the colors that Jean Holabird assigned them in Vladimir Nabokov: Alphabet in Color (Berkeley: Gingko Press, 2005). In Drummond’s design, the colors (placed against a flesh-tone background) spell out “Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov.”

Originally published on August 9, 2013

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Perez Hilton is returning to the stage a changed man.

In the three years since his Off-Broadway debut in “NEWSical,” the celebrity blogger has become a father to 2-year-old Mario Armando Lavandeira III and Mia Alma Hilton, born in May 2015. So Hilton, 37, has plenty of real-life experience to draw from as he steps into the role of Danny Tanner in “Full House! The Musical,” a spoof on the iconic 1990s sitcom that starred Bob Saget and John Stamos. Written and directed by Bob and Tobly McSmith, the show performances in Toronto on Aug. 18 and Sept. 10 in New York.

Hilton, who is studying with two vocal coaches in order to tackle the musical, has learned a thing or two about the parental highs and lows that the series depicted firsthand. Admitting to “overthinking everything” and holding himself “to a really high standard,” Hilton says the struggle to balance his career pursuits with duties as a single father is real.

“With more children comes more happiness, but also more guilt and stress,” Hilton told The Huffington Post in an interview. “Am I doing enough for my son? Am I doing enough for my daughter? Am I making the right financial decisions for our future? It’s definitely a challenge on my own without anyone to bounce ideas off of [but] I like to think I’m super-human, so I’ve been able to do it all just by doing it all.”

These personal and professional sentiments might seem strange coming from a catty gossip that rose to prominence by skewering the rich and famous on his blog. Although he made strides toward public redemption in 2012 when he starred in “NEWSical,” Hilton acknowledges that the shadow of the old Perez, who outed celebrities and insulted others, looms over his new project.

If anything, he says, that persona should now be indicative of his performance skills as he moves further into the acting world.

“That was a character,” he clarified. “When I realized I was really convincing people and the world saw me as a major D-bag, I knew I needed to stop hiding behind this character I created and put more positivity out in the world.” 

He’s not above admitting to a slip-up or two: “I’m not perfect. I still make mistakes, but at least I’m actively mindful of what I’m doing and trying to do better daily.”

Eleven years into his career, he’s branching out creatively. In addition to “Full House! The Musical,” Hilton has filmed a cameo for the Disney Channel series, “Girl Meets World,” and will also be seen in the upcoming horror movie, “Most Likely to Die,” opposite “Glee” veteran Heather Morris.

He’s also co-hosting “The PHP: Perez Hilton Podcast” with Chris Booker, which offers him the chance to “really dig deep into the world of pop culture and show people who I really am.” So far, his guests have included Amber Rose and original “Full House” icon Candace Cameron Bure.

His ultimate dream these days, he says, is to land a recurring or regular role on a TV sitcom, something along the lines of Sean Hayes in “Will and Grace.”

“I would be so happy to be the gay best friend or the quirky neighbor or a kooky cousin -- like a really fun, supporting character,” he said. Other interests beckon, too: “I’d love to do a talk show. I’d do a reality show. I’m available, I’m hungry and I’m easy to work with.”

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Photographer Helen Aller's striking image of a newborn baby resting by his mother's C-section scar has prompted more conversation than she ever imagined.

"My images usually get seen by 100 people at most, so I never thought it would reach anywhere near what it has done," Aller wrote in an update to her caption for the photo, which she uploaded to Facebook on August 11. To date, the photo has received over 200,000 likes and almost 30,000 responses in the comment section.

The story behind the photo is one of fear and triumph, the photographer explains in the caption. "I photographed this mama's pregnancy a while back, and she was telling me how terrified she was of having a C-section," Aller wrote, adding, "Well last week she went into labor but had to have an emergency C-section after complications. She asked me to come over this morning and shoot this particular image, as her worst nightmare proved to be what saved her and her child's lives."

Many parents praised the photo and shared their own C-section experiences in the comments. "Beautiful mother and beautiful baby," wrote Lucy Armitage. "What a brave women and proud women to share such an intimate and also inspiring and wonderful photo."

"This is such a powerful image," mom Amanda Hann commented. "I also had an emergency C-section. It makes you realize the beauty in it all. Thank you so much for sharing. And kudos to this mama for allowing you to photograph such an impactful portrait!"

Some others wrote more negative comments, calling the photo "too personal," and even reporting it for removal from Facebook, but the Guernsey-based photographer said  the site did not take the image down. 

"To me it’s a beautiful image that shows both a struggle and something beautiful," Aller told HuffPost UK, adding, "I have received so so many stories from C-section mums saying how it has changed the way they look at their scars. I can’t believe the amount of women that are ashamed of their scars and are made to feel like they haven’t done the job properly because they didn’t give birth naturally."

"I feel proud that an image I created has allowed so many people to open up about their experiences and change the way they feel about something they should only feel pride for," she continued. "Giving life shouldn’t be a competition of how you did it."

Hear, hear!

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