Witchcraft, Wicca, paganism, goddess-based spirituality. Whatever you want to call the practice of magic, it's empowering women. 

Enchantments is a New York City occult store (and home to three cats) that sells custom candles, incense, spiritual books, blended oils and other magical products. It's also a place where both seasoned practitioners and people completely unfamiliar with magic come to seek answers. 

Stacy Rapp, a witch and the owner of Enchantments, says that the interest in witchcraft is increasing. While people of all genders are welcome in the community, Rapp said that women are particularly drawn to magic because of the gender equality inherent in the practice of witchcraft and the option to worship female deities. Goddess-based spirituality is also appealing to young queer and trans young people, who may feel unwelcome in other religious communities. 

Ammo O'Day, an Enchantments employee, personal trainer and life coach, said that she came to witchcraft after rebelling against her Catholic upbringing. 

"I was told I was going to hell because I’m a woman," said O'Day, who spent 12 years in Catholic school. "I knew from a very young age that something was up... that everything I was taught about being female was incorrect."

I spoke to Rapp about how she came to practice magic, stereotypes about witchcraft, and how she hopes to empower other women through education. 

How did you start practicing witchcraft?

I started reading up on it when I was 14 or 15. I did a lot of research on my own into persecution in Salem and witchcraft trials. That was a way to subjugate independent, strong unmarried women in a puritanical society. Puritanical society’s attitudes towards women make even some of the most screwed-up attitudes towards women seem lax. My interest was always there. The more I learned, the more I saw the potential.

I’ve been working here at Enchantments for 15 years. I see the extreme potential to undo a lot of the negative… attitudes towards women, I guess, from traditional religion or from society or from culture. We get a lot of people coming in saying, OK, I was raised Christian, it’s just not working for me. There is nothing for women’s empowerment. There is nothing for strengthening, nothing saying, “This is gonna help you get through all of this.” There is nothing that teaches you how to deal with abusive people, with abusive men. And there is nothing for healing certain aspects of women, whether that’s their psyches, or a physical or emotional healing.

What do you think the draw is, especially for people who may not have grown up knowing anything about this type of spiritual practice?

People are looking for a higher power that’s gonna be more like them, in their image. We do get a lot of guys, too, I’m not gonna say it’s female-centered at all. I think the biggest draw with witchcraft, unlike a lot of spiritual craft, is that it’s proactive. You have the ability to manifest positive change in your life. As opposed to thinking, if you pray really hard, maybe this will happen. It’s a lot more focused on working with the universe.

A lot of the stuff we deal with is love magic. Love and money, mostly. We’ve tried over the years to emphasize the fact that particularly with the love stuff, the most important place to start is with yourself. If you’re trying to attract positive people, you need to feel positive about yourself. I think, unfortunately, women are raised to see themselves not always as positive. That’s a cultural thing to some degree.

You’ve said that one of your major goals is to educate and empower women. How are you doing that?

A lot of what I’m extremely passionate about is empowering women, young women in particular. I have nieces now, and I don’t want them to grow up with the same stereotypes that I did, or my mom did. I want them to grow up to be strong independent women.

We do get a lot of young women [coming into the store] who are high school-age, who are trying to find themselves, trying to find their voice. They come in for education. It’s a lot more available because of the internet. Unfortunately, there is a lot of misinformation out there too.

What do people come in to Enchantments looking for?

We do deal with people wanting to put curses on others. We just don’t do it. That’s not what we’re about. We’re about self-improvement, empowerment, education, and helping people to better their own lives. To improve themselves, to improve their lives, to improve things for their family. It’s all about positive change.

There is a moral code to witchcraft. Hollywood and the media have focused on the lack of moral code that does exist in some people. That’s ultimately what creates scandal and spectacle and whatnot. But we don’t do the black magic... in the end result, it doesn’t help people. It actually hurts you.

What are some common misconceptions about witchcraft that you want to clear up?

Ah, the myths of witches, my favorite topic. A lot of [the stereotypes come from] fear. A lot of that comes from the rise of monotheism and the subjugation of women.

If you look at some of the witchcraft trials and persecutions in history, there were some men, but mostly women. Most of them were unmarried, they may have even been lesbians, they were healers, they were usually outspoken, very independent. The idea that if a woman is unmarried there must be something wrong with her.

If you look at certain cultures, you know, there is no difference between a witch and a medicine man or a shaman, except gender. And yet… they weren’t persecuted the same way. Witchcraft was a way to persecute women who were strong and outspoken in a time when women had no rights, and had no function other than to be baby machines. It was a way to keep women down, and keep women from rising to any sort of power.

Have people reacted negatively to you as a practitioner of magic?

I’ve been called all sorts of things over the years. We have people preaching outside [the store] sometimes saying we’re all going to hell, and I say “Thanks! Very productive.”

Has it been hard to dispel stereotypes, and help people understand what your practice is actually about?

A lot of the stereotypes are Hollywood stereotypes, too. You can’t just snap your fingers and make something happen. You can’t float in the air, you can’t fly on a broom. Much as we would love to. In terms of changing people’s minds, a lot of that is positive press. Or word of mouth. And people are interested.

We explain what we do and say to other things, “That’s not what real witches do.” We turn down bullsh*t scandal stories. And there’s been a huge, huge push to educate people about what magic really is. It seems to work.

Also on HuffPost: 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

When you were young, you were likely introduced to a wide range of professions that you could aspire to as a grown and functioning member of society. Like, for instance, doctor, detective, teacher, or writer. One option I was not aware of, however, was floral sculptor. I am sure of this, because I definitely would have pursued this path if given the chance. 

Even if you've never heard of a floral sculptor you can probably still guess what it entails: a creative soul does magical things with the fruits of mother nature, thereby combining the best elements of art and nature. Good stuff. One such artist is Azuma Makoto.

The Tokyo-based artist has been known to launch bonsai trees into space and encase floral arrangements in giant ice cubes. This month, he's putting his skills on view in an exhibition entitled "Shiki: Landscape and Beyond" at Zhulong Gallery. The show combines sculpture and photography, creating an otherworldly gardening tour that takes the traditional Japanese art of flower arrangement to surreal new heights. 

In the middle of the gallery space, Azuma's "shiki I" sculpture -- a Japanese White Pine Bonsai suspended from a metal frame -- will hover off the ground, encased in its iconic open steel frame. The sculpture, made from a living trunk, exposed roots and hand-made resin leaves, melds nature and artifice in a subtle and enchanting manner, celebrating a plant's death and artistic afterlife as much as its time in full bloom.

A memento mori for the modern age, Azuma's work constantly teeters between the living and the dead, without privileging one over the other. Around the "shiki I" centerpiece, large-scale photos, shot by Shunsuke Shiinoki, will depict the brave plants' journeys across the world. For almost ten years now, Azuma and Shiinoki have collaborated to capture the bonsai greenery in the most unlikely of habitats -- from underwater to outer space, from deserts to glaciers, from broken-down planes to dilapidated government buildings.  

"Flowers aren’t just beautiful to show on tables," Azuma told The New York Times Magazine, around the time he launched a bouquet of around 30 varieties of flowers into the stratosphere. 

Each of Azuma's choreographed adventures tests the physical limits of the floral arrangements -- often regarded as tame and familiar aesthetic accoutrements. The artist, who worked in a flower shop upon first moving to Tokyo, exposes the plants' alien underbellies.

"Azuma is confronting this unnaturalness head-on in his work," Satoshi Koganezawa explains in an essay written for the exhibition. "He doesn’t think that flowers that still look alive, that still have all of their water, are the most beautiful form that they can take."

To a florist, the death of a plant may be the end of its value. For a floral sculptor, however, a plant's demise is just the beginning. 

"SHIKI: Landscape and Beyond Azuma Makoto" runs from Oct. 23 until Dec. 5, 2015 at Zhulong Gallery.

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

If you’ve read Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn’s domestic thriller with a memorable, if warped, feminist manifesto nestled at its core, you already know the author has a knack for whipping up terrifying scenes that are all too believable. Her schtick is psychoanalyzing the buried resentments of married couples and bringing their worst fears to life -- with surreal levels of violence.

So, perfect for Halloween time!  

If you were seriously rattled but mostly impressed by Rosamund Pike’s performance in the Gone Girl adaptation, you needn’t revisit her chilly portrayal of psychopathic wife Amy to get your annual dose of scary. A newly republished scary story by Gillian Flynn is a pithy shot of spookiness that is definitely movie adaptation-worthy.

And, as a bonus, in the slim book’s acknowledgements, Flynn writes: “Thanks to George R.R. Martin, who asked me to write him a story,” probably fulfilling a thousand ideal dinner party guest fantasies.

The story is called “The Grownup,” a title that stays enigmatic until its surprising conclusion. Its narrator is a woman just over 30, who’s dabbled in petty crimes -- a theft here and there, but enough to keep her wary of the police, and barred from applying for a white-collar job. Still, she’s ambitious: she put herself through school and made all As, mostly by making money from begging, a skill she learned from her lazy mother, who’s got an affinity for daytime soaps and Zebra Cakes.

Her ambition lands her a job at Spiritual Palms, ostensibly a New Age aura-reading shop, but the company’s main source of business is administering hand jobs. The narrator mostly does this diligently, taking pleasure in brief chats she has with some customers, who warm up to her by talking about books -- The Haunting of Hill House, The Turn of the Screw. But the narrator’s years of begging for money finely honed her sense of intuition, so she’s promoted to the front of the store, acting as a spiritual guide for the mostly female clientele. It’s here that she meets Susan Burke, a beautiful yet disheveled-looking woman (think Amy, post-five year anniversary) who’s different from the other clients. She’s skeptical of the psychic process, but opens up to the narrator nevertheless: she suspects that there’s a presence haunting her home.

On a visit to Carterhook Manor, the narrator encounters more than a few unsettling sites: Susan’s son, Miles, appears to be more disturbed and aloof than the average preteen, and there’s a mysterious splattering of blood on one of the room’s walls. Not one to buy into the witchy advice she touts, the narrator becomes sincerely concerned -- and things only get weirder from there.

Ultimately, in “The Grownup,” Flynn does what she does best: externalize inner human anxieties. Once she breathes life into the neuroses people harbor about their personal lives or social statuses, these fears run rampant, leaving destruction in their wake. 

Happy reading! 

For more scary books to read this Halloween, see our list of our favorites.

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Julio Salgado admits he doesn't know a lot about “Star Wars,” but when people threatened to boycott the movie because the latest iteration features a black protagonist, the Berkeley-based visual artist and self-identified "undocuqueer" immigrant rights activist felt he had to strike back. And that he did.

Salgado debuted a series of illustrations reimagining several popular sitcoms with casts of color Tuesday. "It's a  f**k you of sorts" Salgado explained in an email to The Huffington Post, adding that the series is directed at individuals who get riled up when people of color are featured in remakes of films and television shows with predominantly white original casts, but say nothing when characters of color are played by white actors. “My thought was like: you wanna be mad, I'll give you something to get mad at.”

Mexico-born, California-raised Salgado's version of "Sex and the City" would feature a cast that reflects the diversity present in New York. The cast of "Golden Girls" would be strong women of color who care more about social justice than they do about cheesecake and men. And Danny Tanner's "Full House" would include an undocumented teen daughter and queer brother in-law. 

Salgado says his illustrations are meant to give people of color an opportunity to see themselves represented in some of their favorite television shows and films -- a rare experience even in this day and age.

Latinos make up 17 percent of the U.S. population and purchase 32 percent of movie tickets sold domestically, however they have only 4.9 percent of speaking roles in movies produced in the U.S. This disparity is present in television programming as well, which Salgado hopes to shed light on with his illustrations. “Maybe some of these will be re-made with us in them,” Salgado said of his illustrations in a Facebook post address to fans. Hear that, Netflix? 

So far, the response to Salgado’s work has been positive -- for the most part. “A lot of folks are reminding me that there have been many shows with POC leads,” Salgado tells HuffPost. “These images in no way try to take away the amazingness of these shows. But for every POC lead show that was ‘given the opportunity’ to succeed, a bunch of more of white-lead shows were allowed to fail.”

Take a look at some of Salgado’s illustrations below, complete with revamped synopses for each show, and let us know what shows you would like to given a second chance to shine, this time with a new, diverse cast. 

For more of Julio Salgado's work, visit his website. 

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

"Memories of Melodrama" opens with a close-up of a young woman clutching an office landline phone. The camera zooms in on her lunch, iced coffee cup pooled with condensation next to a sad desk salad. A violin-heavy instrumental gallops into a distressing crescendo as the last lines of her call come into focus.

"I haven't found anything," she says, her desperation echoed by the bleak glow of unfortunate fluorescent lighting overhead. The music halts as a chilly voice on the other end cuts in. "And you never will."

The words "Memories of Melodrama" flash across the screen in blood-red lettering, before the scene transitions to aerial shots of New York City.

"This was me, three months earlier," I narrate, as the former child star playing me crosses a street in a flirty skirt. "I was a carefree reporter who thought it might be fun to write a story about Lifetime. I had no idea I'd become part of a Lifetime movie in the process of writing it." 

It all started back in August, when I was covering "UnREAL," the Lifetime drama set behind the scenes of a fictional reality dating competition. My interview with co-creator Marti Noxon was fascinating, especially when she got candid about Lifetime's reputation. She was respectful, but didn't hold back her concern that the network might soften the feminist tones of the show she pitched.

"I have to say, the experience we had on 'UnREAL' was really new for everybody," she said, emphasizing her pleasant surprise. "It was new for everybody on Lifetime, it was new for me working with them."

Clearly, Lifetime has been going through some rebranding. Take, for example, Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig skewering the stereotypes of a Lifetime movie in a Lifetime movie dubbed "A Deadly Adoption." The channel -- once known as a factory of made-for-TV movies about women getting murdered, or avoiding getting murdered, or doing the murdering themselves -- is now creating space for one of the smartest female antiheroes to date on "UnREAL."

I was interested in what was happening to foster this new space and set out to speak to a few executives. Unfortunately, Lifetime only offered one interviewee, who had been at the network only seven weeks at the time. Everyone else was "kind of on vacation." I started reaching out to past executives. Lifetime found out, discouraged contact and even proposed rescinding my initial interview.

Stubbornly set on executing this piece (and jokingly wondering if Lifetime was trying to cover up a murder of its own), I started speaking to other people, people who shaped the early days of the channel. Spoiler alert: If a dark past exists, I didn't unearth it. But what unfolded is a complicated history of "TV for women" as a genre, and a retelling of the way Lifetime created a brand out of that demographic.

Lifetime didn't set out to be a silo of movies about ladies triumphing over tragedy. Its mid-'80s origins were an obvious answer to a gaping hole in the emerging cable landscape: there wasn't a clear channel for women.

Crafting a concept of TV "for women," however, was as slippery then as it is today, particularly when Lifetime's first head of original programming had to convince other executives that no, women do not need a special type of "news" (the news "for women" is just "the news").

"TV for women" was treated as such a niche demographic at the time that it may as well have been for, say, left-handed libertarians with alopecia rather than half the population. Having a board of nine men dictating the network's trajectory from its inception probably didn't help much.

In interviews with The Huffington Post, four of the earliest Lifetime executives referred to the network's early incarnations using the term "hodgepodge." One reviewer referred to it as a "backwater" channel. Some casual viewers thought it might be religious. When it was created in 1984, as a combination of the Daytime and Cable Health Networks, a joint venture by ABC, Hearst and Viacom, Lifetime was more "loosely female-centric" than "for women." There was some medical programming, "Good Sex! With Dr. Ruth" and, by 1985, a lady talk show called "Attitudes," which was sort of like a less offensive version of "The View."

For the most part, though, Lifetime's first few years as a channel were the branding equivalent of throwing tampons at a dart board. Long before Lifetime was seen as a "weepy world" of things to "hate-watch," it was a channel with no idea what it was or wanted to be.

Lifetime was officially created in February of 1984. When Thomas Burchill was hired as president and CEO that April, he set about establishing an identity. He tried to figure out the network's image by asking his four inherited employees to finish the sentence, "Lifetime is a … "

No one was able to fill in that blank.

Burchill came in with a background in radio. Given that radio was a multichannel medium, a number of high-powered executives were recruited to help manage the first days of cable television. As Burchill sees it, that meant he was more creative and faster-paced than alternatives might have been. He came armed with ideas for talk shows and understood that audiences and advertisers needed a way to choose Lifetime and keep coming back.

"If you remember, many of the successful early cable networks had a signature of some sort," Burchill told me, referencing ESPN and MTV. "So, I thought we might try, 'Lifetime: The network that has America talking.'"

That made sense, given Burchill's previous experience, but radio's format felt too antiquated in 1984 to be simply translated to the small screen. 

"What Tom wanted to do -- what he knew how to do really well -- was talk television," said Doug McCormick, Lifetime's first head of sales and Burchill's eventual successor. "He thought you could just take the whole idea of talk radio and have people calling in."

"It didn't work so well," Burchill admitted. Shortly after realizing that, another possibility emerged. "We began to see this big gap [in demographics]," he said. "There was a need to address women's programming interests."

Burchill was focused on creating a channel that could be sold to cable distribution companies. Before Comcast emerged as the dominant provider, channels had to sell to 10 or 12 different distributors to reach the majority of the country. Burchill had to figure out how to pitch Lifetime to those companies, and fast.

Though dismissive of Burchill's radio-to-TV model, McCormick used a radio comparison to explain their strategy in that ever-changing market. "You know, when you used to drive a new car out of the showroom, before satellite radio, you had five radio channels to pick," he said. "We wanted to make sure women knew to pick Lifetime as one of those channels." 

The landscape shifted dramatically as the number of television channels increased from 18 to 54. Today, there's little point in even counting the total number of networks; as far as competition is concerned, it may as well be limitless.

"I saw a 500-channel layout coming," McCormick said, reflecting on the way things had changed by the time he became president of Lifetime in 1993. "By then, we were able to save millions in advertising by making it 'TV for women' and selling the channel instead of original shows."

Again, it's bizarre to discuss "women watching most of the TV," as though women are some tiny group of the total number of humans and not more than 50 percent of them. The concept that lies somewhat deceptively in this rhetoric is that there were actually already a lot of shows for women, just none labeled as such. TV movies, which Showtime and HBO popularized a few years before Lifetime, talk shows and most daytime programing typically attracted a female audience.

Lifetime had to use the raw material of existing female-centric shows to create original programming and shape itself into a brand. They had to take the mass of generally lady-ish stuff on TV at the time and refine it into a product. To start that process, Burchill brought in Patricia Fili-Krushel from HBO as the head of original programming.

Fili-Krushel, then Fili, was and remains a strong voice in TV. (When she went on to run ABC daytime in 1998, The New York Times dubbed her "the highest-ranking woman executive" in the business. She's now the executive vice president of NBCUniversal.) When Burchill hired Fili-Krushel, she was excited by the challenge of creating a channel's identity from scratch.

"It's like anything else you create from a blank slate," Fili-Krushel said. "I knew I needed to put it on the map in some way."

"Part of that was explaining that a women's network didn't just mean shows that had women," she said. "Yes, there was a female star, but she had to be complex," she continued. "It was a lot about projecting what we felt as women."

Fili-Krushel first made waves in July of 1991, when she resuscitated "The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd" on Lifetime after it was canceled on NBC. "A woman named Molly changed the face of Lifetime," Susan King wrote of the acquisition in the Los Angeles Times. Fili-Krushel then focused on original movies, particularly ones that empowered a female protagonist.

Unfortunately, "strong female characters" was not a very sexy selling point when it came to filling ad space.

In defining what exactly a "women's network" meant, there were two sentiments held between Fili-Krushel's programming team and McCormick's sales team. As Burchill remembers it, the former was interested in figuring out what the right kind of content for women was, while the latter "cared about ratings and how to get there." The clash created a professional rivalry, ending when McCormick was named Burchill's successor over Fili-Krushel in 1993.

Burchill referred to that early sparring as "healthy," though it was much more complex than two employees vying for influence at a fledgling network. Fili-Krushel and McCormick’s dynamic was loosely representative of the struggle at the core of the Lifetime brand. The two are almost symbols for what the channel became in the early '90s and its continued evolution decades later.

Perhaps there's a modern-day Shakespearean telling of this story, in which Fili-Krushel is the tragic feminist hero, McCormick is a greedy villain, and women's programming is the damsel in distress. That'd be entertaining literature. Maybe even a good show for the current Lifetime network. It's also not what happened. 

Fili-Krushel and McCormick had -- as everyone in this story had or have -- a business to run. In a perfect world, there might be a channel called The Feminist Movie Network, only distributing films approved by a board of thought leaders headed by Alison Bechdel. A theoretical idea can never be pure in its execution. 

All this is to say, keep in mind, that the Lifetime narrative is a little black, a little white, and a whole lot of grey -- reimagined in varying shades of pink.

Of course, it's impossible to discuss Lifetime without Lifetime movies, and the quintessential way to describe the Fili-McCormick struggle is with two of the earliest originals: "Wildflower" and "Memories of Murder."

"Memories of Murder" was the first ever original Lifetime movie, so the fact that it is so on-the-nose for the micro-genre is almost as terrifying as getting temporary amnesia while there's a killer on the loose (the plot of the film, pretty much).

The writer, John Harrison, said he initially titled the movie "Passing Through Veils," though he gave up the rights to dictate the way the story was told when he sold the script. Harrison doesn't regret signing his script over, but the finished product was definitely a misstep for the channel, in terms of critical reception. (Entertainment Weekly gave the movie a "D," writing, "[Star Nancy Allen] comes uncannily close to reproducing the state of catatonia that 'Memories of Murder' will induce in anyone who watches it.")

"Wildflower," on the other hand, is the quintessential representation of what Lifetime movies might have been in their purest form. Directed by Diane Keaton, it tells the story of an abused, partially deaf girl played by Patricia Arquette, who finds herself and a place in her community with the help of a very earnest Reese Witherspoon. It has aggressive themes buried under its soft packaging. In a different world, it might have been titled something like "Sounds of Abuse," maybe "Beaten to Deaf." Thankfully it wasn't.

"We had a rule about what makes a Lifetime movie," Fili-Krushel said. "Originally, a Lifetime movie meant the woman couldn't be saved by a man at the end."

McCormick, however, understood Fili-Krushel's goals less as moral standards to strive toward and more so as rules that could be bent.

"Not every show has to keep every promise, but no show should ever break a promise," McCormick said. "In other words, we want to be uplifting to women; that's great. But if I want to have a show on that is not uplifting to women, but on the other hand, it's fun, you know, or a guilty pleasure that's just lighthearted."

At this point in my discussions, Fili-Krushel and McCormick's voices start to merge. Where they were disparate, they begin to overlap, with each understanding the other's challenges and goals. It's too easy to say "Wildflower" is to Fili-Krushel as "Memories of Murder" is to McCormick, though it's obvious which won out. Even a deaf girl with amnesia could figure out the trashy thriller would perform better.

"'Memories of Murder' scored much better ratings," Emily Yahr wrote in her history of Lifetime movies for The Washington Post. "The contrast helped the network decide what direction it wanted to go."

Still, there was a lot of feminist content in those early years of Lifetime. It was just wearing a tighter dress. As a writer, that's where things zoomed into focus for me. I can create this thorough, well-reported, multi-thousand word piece on Lifetime and call it "A History of Women's Programming." I could also call it "TV's Vagina Vendetta." Both angles have their merits. As the creator, should I be more concerned with the content or the way it's distributed?  

Maybe there's a future where a "History of Lifetime" piece goes viral and wine is zero calories and you don't have to buy Hulu Plus to binge "Seinfeld." But here, in real life, to make my work worthy of the time I've spent, it has to hit a huge audience. Or, as McCormick put it, "It's the sound of a tree falling in the universe, if you can't get people to see it."

Another movie, 1993's "Stolen Babies," sums up the dichotomy of Lifetime's identity in those early films. Yes, it's called "Stolen Babies." And the title delivers on its sordid promise, offering viewers a glimpse into a black market baby ring. It's also an independent film starring Mary Tyler Moore with a plot that addresses issues of motherhood and female agency.

"It's a matter of making great content with great marketing," Burchill said, emphasizing the value of compelling packaging.

That's not to say everything on Lifetime is secretly a feminist masterpiece stuffed into Cosmo cover advertising. "There were showcase pieces, but there were also pure popcorn,'" McCormick said. "We wouldn't have been able to do anything if it was all, 'Eat your peas.'"

A more recent version of what you might call the "Stolen Babies" phenomenon is "Anna Nicole" (2013). A movie about Anna Nicole Smith is, at first glance, so precisely a ripped-from-the-tabloids film it may as well be Harvey Levin reading TMZ's old stories. It doesn't even need a cheesy title. Her name alone is probably a bigger draw than something inflammatory like "Dead Gold Digger."

But there's a catch: the movie was directed by acclaimed "American Psycho" director Mary Harron. 

Harron struggled to make "Anna Nicole" her own, but she says she eventually created a movie she is proud of. "I felt like I was doing something undercover," she admitted, recalling the process of making the movie.

One aspect of the quiet clash between Harron's style and the Lifetime mold came with the movie's opening sequence. Lifetime wanted to start with a newscast announcing Smith's death. Harron fought for more abstract, stylistic images of her body in the morgue against a white backdrop.

"You're being held to this idea of, 'This is how we do a film,'" she said. "If you come in with something different, then you have to sort of push them, if you can, or persuade them, hopefully, to go in a different direction."

As the critic Matt Patches wrote in his review, the film "could have been another movie off the network's conveyor belt. Yet with Harron, Lifetime finds a credible and sensitive filmmaker, able to elevate the material and mine its dramatic potential."

To be clear, "Anna Nicole" was not, nor was it trying to be, anything so noble as Lifetime's "The Gabby Douglas Story" (2014). There was and continues to be a spectrum of content on the channel. Still, both of those films are part of a holistic shift in quality that began for Lifetime in 2012 with a remake of "Steel Magnolias" featuring a primarily black cast. All three mark the distinct reclamation of the TV movie Lifetime began about three years ago.

The TV movie is often seen as a lesser medium, though there's no reason for that to be the case. Sure, there are reduced resources, but just because you're not going to get a few million dollars to CGI some Transformers doesn't mean there is a lesser opportunity for good storytelling.

"You know, it could have been on the big screen," the director of 2012's "Steel Magnolias," Kenny Leon, said. "But, you know, for me, as a director, I'm shooting it that way anyway. I'm shooting it as a film. I don't say, 'I'm shooting it as a TV movie.'"

"It's kind of like doing a low-budget movie," Harron reiterated. "I never had any prejudices against working in television … I always thought it was a great medium. It's just what you do with it."

While they may have a smaller budget and cramped schedules -- "Steel Magnolias" was shot in under 20 days -- TV movies are often given a greater amount of freedom. TV remakes can allow more space for diversity, giving access to women and people of color who often can't get past the roadblocks of dealing with big-name studios. Case in point, where the hell else are you going to see a female-centric story led entirely by women of color promoted for a mainstream audience?

Talking to talents like Leon and Harron sets up a clear view of the channel's movie-making process. Lifetime movies are understood as a mass of murder-y sameness, but each film is the work of a creator trying to do her or his best in the context of the network's brand.

"I love movies for television, but I look at them as movies that are playing on television," said David Rosemont, who produced "Steel Magnolias" and "The Gabby Douglas Story," among other Lifetime movies. "I think that what is finally happening, especially with Lifetime, is that the broadcasters are allowing us a little more freedom to tell our stories … There is a much higher standard to strive for."

While there is still a whole slew of "unauthorized" films ("90210," "Saved by the Bell," "Full House") on Lifetime, that seem to be created as intentional camp in the way of "Sharknado," there is also a set of more mainstream efforts striving for a higher level of recognition, like Angela Bassett's "Whitney" (2015) biopic or "Flowers in the Attic" (2014) starring Academy Award winner Ellen Burstyn. Such projects have been on the rise for the past three years, culminating in the much-talked-about "A Deadly Adoption."

And then, there's "UnREAL."

"I think 'UnREAL' is a game-changer for us," said the current head of programming at Lifetime, Liz Gateley. "It so much represents where Lifetime is headed and it’s squarely within my brand vision [for] the new Lifetime."

Despite its ingenuity, "UnREAL" is still seen by some as a "guilty pleasure" show, with viewers fooled by its sly tone, one the New Yorker's Emily Nussbaum described as "greasy bacon ... at once sweet and salty, greasy and irresistible."

It's also not quite as "new" as it seems. Upon a closer look, "UnREAL" actually epitomizes the network's paradox. Juicy packaging makes the show a Trojan horse of feminism, far better than but not unlike "Stolen Babies" or, more recently, "Drop Dead Diva." (The latter is Josh Berman's dramedy about a model who dies and is brought back to life as an overweight attorney, which advertised itself as magical realism with a ton of fat jokes and ended up being a fun, semi-intelligent take on body positivity.)

While "UnREAL" is groundbreaking in terms of acclaim, it's actually very much in line with that early combination of Fili-Krushel and McCormick's visions.

Gateley came to Lifetime, by her own account, just two weeks before "UnREAL" began. She has a sense of rightful pride when talking about the network's notoriety, though she can't provide details on its history.

"For me personally, I can't speak to the last three or four years," she said. "I know that there's been a concerted effort to bring the brand in a new direction since [CEO] Nancy Dubuc."

Dubuc is the head of A&E, which bought Lifetime in 2009. The most current changes, along with a new Lifetime logo and tagline -- "your life. your time," all lowercase -- can be traced to that deal.

"I think the goal was to make the movies more relevant," said Tanya Lopez, senior vice president of original movies, in the aforementioned piece by The Washington Post.

"Look, I'm a big believer that a lot of the elements of the old Lifetime movie -- like the melodrama and the female aspect of it -- are really important," vice president of original movies Lisa Hamilton Daly told Yahr. "It's just finding a newer take on it and finding a new way to tell those stories."

In writing this, I requested interviews with Lopez and Hamilton-Daly, among other executives who currently work for Lifetime, but was turned down. After speaking with Gateley, I emailed senior vice president of publicity Danielle Carrig for more sources. I explained to her that, as I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, Gateley had only been at the network seven weeks, so I wanted other voices for the story who could speak to the history of the network. That's when she said everyone was on vacation.

In August, Carrig found out that I had reached out to past executives on my own, and she requested I send her a full list of my sources. I called to explain that a number of my interviews were off the record, so I could not provide names. She said she would retract my Gateley interview unless I handed over a full list of sources. At that point, I wondered if Lifetime had blocked me from speaking to a number of potential sources, a few of which Yahr was able to speak with in January.

Fili-Krushel and McCormick left the network by 1998, so there remains a decade-long gap in this timeline. It's not too hard to fill in, simply by virtue of being alive as a woman has who watched Lifetime over the years.

Yahr summarized the late 1990s to mid 2000s, writing, "As the movies became more popular … [the network] became known for 'teens in crisis' and 'women in peril' themes." So, yeah, nothing too shocking among the likes of "Mom at Sixteen" and "Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life."

Before leaving, McCormick launched the Lifetime Movie Network, expanding the impact of Lifetime's arsenal of content and its impact. Around that time, Geraldine Laybourne created Oxygen. It was less so competition than a solid reason for Lifetime to earn an increased budget. If there are key changes during this time, they have to do more with what was going on outside of Lifetime than within, the way ideas of the brand were spreading and warping.

Go on, do any general search for Lifetime Movies and the links not provided by the network itself are evidence of the way the channel may still be viewed. Almost all current coverage is an elbow-to-the-ribs mocking of the type. See: "How to Navigate the Weepy World of Lifetime Movies" by the A.V. Club, "The 10 Types of Lifetime Movie Titles" by Vulture, "7 Lifetime Movies That Aren't Completely Terrible" by VH1 or  "The 10 Most So-Bad-They're-Good Lifetime Movies of All Time" by Women's Health Magazine. Admittedly, it's a thing I, too, got somewhat wrong in writing "Think Twice Before You Binge-Watch All Those Lifetime Movies On Netflix."

Fili-Krushel and McCormick left the network by 1998, so there remains a decade-long gap in this timeline. It's not too hard to fill in, simply by virtue of being alive as a woman has who watched Lifetime over the years.

Yahr summarized the late 1990s to mid 2000s, writing, "As the movies became more popular … [the network] became known for 'teens in crisis' and 'women in peril' themes." So, yeah, nothing too shocking among the likes of "Mom at Sixteen" and "Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life."

Before leaving, McCormick launched the Lifetime Movie Network, expanding the impact of Lifetime's arsenal of content and its impact. Around that time, Geraldine Laybourne created Oxygen. It was less so competition than a solid reason for Lifetime to earn an increased budget. If there are key changes during this time, they have to do more with what was going on outside of Lifetime than within, the way ideas of the brand were spreading and warping.

Go on, do any general search for Lifetime Movies and the links not provided by the network itself are evidence of the way the channel may still be viewed. Almost all current coverage is an elbow-to-the-ribs mocking of the type. See: "How to Navigate the Weepy World of Lifetime Movies" by the A.V. Club, "The 10 Types of Lifetime Movie Titles" by Vulture, "7 Lifetime Movies That Aren't Completely Terrible" by VH1 or  "The 10 Most So-Bad-They're-Good Lifetime Movies of All Time" by Women's Health Magazine. Admittedly, it's a thing I, too, got somewhat wrong in writing "Think Twice Before You Binge-Watch All Those Lifetime Movies On Netflix."

This piece was inspired by the creative freedom Lifetime gave Noxon and "UnREAL." It seemed a part of the same freedom that had allowed Wiig and Ferrell to make "A Deadly Adoption." My plan was to put together a feature on how such a strategically laissez-faire attitude might have come to be. This could have been a quick, seven-hundred word recap of Lifetime's current plans.

Then Carrig started dodging my reporting efforts, turning me into a Lifetime protagonist by virtue of having an antagonist to cope with. There may well be a more scintillating story I'm missing, but it is hard to imagine Lifetime executives committing the crimes upon which they base their movies, sacrificing virgins in exchange for ratings. More likely, the brand is focused on promoting its current iteration without delving into its development or highlighting the almost accidental way projects like "UnREAL" and "A Deadly Adoption" fell together to start the current conversation. 

But it's hard to talk about the current face of the channel without revisiting its foundation. Lifetime's place as the very first network "for women" is fundamental to Carrig and Gateley's current attempts to sharpen the identity Burchill, Fili-Krushel and McCormick set out to build.

Lifetime's history holds up a mirror to the hesitation some have talking about TV "for women." The fact is, that qualifier hasn't lost its stigma in the past 30 years. Thrillers and melodramas on Lifetime, and outside of it, are still dismissed for their inherent feminine appeal, seen as less-than because of their packaging. They are attached to "guilt" like a commercial about a woman eating chocolate in a bathtub. It's valuable to strive for stronger content as well, but women are a massive demographic that doesn't always need to be eating popcorn or peas.

"[The change] is an evolution with the times," Gateley said. "We're trying to be something for every contemporary woman."

And that could be part of the problem. There's not one thing that is going to satisfy the target group known as "women." From goofy trash like "Restless Virgins" to meditations on female identity like "UnREAL," there's a wide range of types of entertainment Lifetime represents. Yet, they express a hesitation to own any of it, with the brand both shying away from addressing the well-known reputation of its made-for-TV movies and refusing to directly attach themselves to the word "feminist" (Gateley chose "ass-kicking" as her adjective of choice).

But wouldn't this current, more visible reworking of Lifetime be even stronger if it accepted the history of the brand while pursuing a brighter future? It would be empowering to see Lifetime own the sector of TV "for women," to refuse to apologize for how that type of programming fits into pop culture, and embrace it. 

"Memories of Melodrama” draws to a close with the typing of these last few lines.

"Sometimes the best stories are the ones you least expect," I narrate, as bright, hopeful stock music begins to play. The Lauren Duca character sighs, takes a sip of her tea and smiles.

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

For eight years, Japanese photographer Ishiuchi Miyako traveled to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, over 500 miles away from her hometown of Yokosuka, Japan, to document the women's everyday objects that were left after the 1945 atomic bomb attacks. 

This year, 70 years after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Ishiuchi is exhibiting her photographs at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles -- her first exhibition in the United States. The show, titled "Postwar Shadows," opened on Oct. 6 and will run until Feb. 21, 2016. 

Take a look at the hauntingly beautiful photographs of the objects that survived the atomic bomb, from broken eyeglasses to remnants of dresses and parts of false teeth.

Also on The WorldPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Having taken over 10,000 portraits for his world-famous "Humans of New York" Facebook account, Brandon Stanton's something of a professional when it comes to understanding how subjects are presenting themselves. With that in mind, it's not without good reason that the photographer described President Obama, whom he profiled in February of 2015, as seeming "very genuine."

"It was a quiet moment," he said of meeting POTUS in a conversation with HuffPost Live on Thursday. "I guess that's kind of how you recognize what's genuine or not -- whether something is very ... kind of rehearsed, and very kind of stiff and seems like something that's practiced, or something is very quiet."

Having interviewed thousands of individuals since starting "Humans of New York" in 2010, the photographer recalled how easy it is to tell when a subject's being phony rather than authentic.

"When I meet somebody in the street who knows about 'Humans of New York,' a lot of times they might have a scripted answer, and that scripted answer is the first thing to come out of their month," he said. "Like, 'What is your greatest struggle right now?' 'My greatest struggle is figuring out how to impact the earth to achieve world peace!' ... like everything's kind of forceful and pre-arranged in the mind, and you can feel it that way coming out."

President Obama's words felt more like "the result of a real-time reflection than something that had been practiced before," explained Stanton.

According to Stanton, the photo he took of the President for "Humans of New York," shown above, adequately portrays that.

"He was very contemplative at the time and so, you know, I like to think that was a genuine energy being put fourth and a genuine statement that was being put fourth," he affirmed. "Hopefully the question [being asked at the time] caused him to reflect on something that was maybe unlike the questions that he'd been asked before." 

Watch more from Brandon Stanton's conversation with HuffPost Live here.

Want more HuffPost Live? Stream us anytime on Go90, Verizon's mobile social entertainment network, and listen to our best interviews on iTunes.

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Did you know that only 22 states require their public schools teach sexual education?

And even in the states that do provide it, the curriculum can be woefully underwhelming and leave out important topics like queer sex and HIV prevention.

So where do teens turn when they aren't getting the information they want and need from their schools (or often parents)? For many, it's their local bookstore or library.

In this episode of The Huffington Post's Love+Sex Podcast, co-hosts Carina Kolodny and Noah Michelson explore how young adult (YA) literature -- from classics like Clan of the Cave Bear to more recent favorites like Twilight -- is providing many teens with information about sex and sexuality they aren't getting anywhere else.

Kolodny and Michelson chatted with Emily M. Danforth, the author of The Miseducation of Cameron Post, Megan McCafferty, the author of the New York Times-bestselling Jessica Darling series which includes Sloppy Firsts and Amy Lang, the founder of Birds And Bees And Kids, which helps parents figure out how to approach that important -- and often intimidating -- talk about sex with their kids:

If you want to download and/or listen to the podcast offline, head to iTunes or Stitcher.

This podcast was produced and edited by Katelyn Bogucki and edited by Nick Offenberg. Like Love + Sex? Subscribe, rate and review our podcast on iTunes.

Have an idea for an episode? Find us on Twitter at @HuffPostPodcast or email us at loveandsexpodcast@huffingtonpost.com.

Also on The Huffington Post:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Orhan Pamuk, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006, stands out as a novelist who, from his lifelong perch in Istanbul, uniquely straddles East and West. In this conversation with The WorldPost, he discusses his new novel, “A Strangeness in My Mind,” the global story of mass urban migration and the prospects for the next election as Turkey is embroiled in political turmoil.

Like many of your novels, this is a richly detailed portrait of your beloved Istanbul. It covers the last decades as Turkey modernized and large populations -- including your protagonist Mevlut -- moved from the traditional Islamic Anatolian countryside to the secular capital on the frontier of Europe -- from tradition to modernity.

Yet, this experience is also universal. The Wordsworth quote about “a strangeness in the mind/ A feeling that I was not for that hour/ Nor for that place,” from which your title is taken, describes the sense of loss, dislocation and disorientation that all urban migrants feel around the world when they move from the countryside to Mexico City or Beijing or São Paulo.

Isn’t this book as much about the great tale of our time, mass urban migration, as about your individual characters?  

Mevlut’s story may look like a very personal story because it has fable-like qualities. In fact, I first thought of writing only a short story about a man who loses his job selling traditional craft items like the mildly alcoholic boza or yogurt because of industrialization and their displacement by more modern products. It evolved then from a moral story of one individual struggle to a more multi-voice, multi-character epic because I became curious about how immigrants came to Istanbul and settled there.

How did they first build their own houses with their own hands in the shantytowns that sprung up around Istanbul as it developed from a city of 1 million to 17 million in 60 years -- something I have seen from inside as a lifelong resident? What was it like to take so much time to find work and deal with the frustrations of securing the necessary papers or permits from the bureaucracy? Who had to be bribed? How were their families, customs and faith challenged by their new environment? What did it feel like to be marginalized as the rundown neighborhoods where they settled became gentrified over time? We all know this general story. My novel describes it in detail through my characters.

So, yes, “A Strangeness in My Mind” has fairy-tale qualities out of my imagination, but also epic qualities about immigration as it is experienced all around the world. Mevlut’s story is also the story seen many times over in immigration from Sicily to Milan or Turin in the 1950s, or from rural Spain to the larger industrial towns or the truly massive migrations to the big cities in China today.  

Mevlut walks the streets at night in the seeming lost cause of a spent tradition selling boza like his father. This thin and fragile thread to the past is all that gives him a sense of lineage and continuity that helps him keep his balance. His other daytime job is in the modern sector -- reading electric meters for the newly privatized state power company which is growing along with the sprawling city. It is a tenuous thread that ties him to the future.

These contrasting occupations and split identities of Mevlut are a hybrid of the old and the new. Isn’t this the way identities really are?

One of the most important things we have learned in modern times -- and even before that as reflected in post-Renaissance literature from Shakespeare to Dostoyevsky -- is that we are not made up of one quality, one color or one idea. The individual is simultaneously made of multiple traits. Our rationality and desires are often in contradiction and play out in complex, not always transparent ways. My understanding of my characters is in this sense Dostoyevskian.

Many of the characters in my novels over the years are upper class, secular Turks. They may have a European outlook and want to join the European Union, but at the same time also believe in the power of the army to make a military coup and will follow an authoritarian leader. Even as they aspire to European values, they also still want to be wrapped in the comforts of traditional ethics, morality and religion. So you can’t label something “modern” or “traditional.” They bleed into each other.

What makes human beings interesting is that they continue to hold contradictory ideas together at the same time, and that mix is what constitutes the individual character. Nations are also like that. Just as with individuals, you can’t look out onto the international scene and say this country is “good” and that country is “bad.” The good and the bad go together.

In my part of the world, egalitarian and authoritarian ideas, most of the time dominant, live alongside more liberal notions. Some want the government to control everything. Others want free trade and markets. Some seek the protection of society by government, others pursue ruthless ways of making money with gangster friends.

In my characters I have sought to portray individuals who can feel affinity with the extreme right-wing, both religious and nationalist, but also with the Marxist, secular groups. In “A Strangeness in My Mind” I use the character of Mevlut as a way to navigate into these far, contradictory corners of Istanbul society.

There is also a kind of dialectic here. Like Turkey itself under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the AKP, modernity has shaped traditional Islamic ways just as they have transformed the Turkey -- and the Istanbul -- of Atatürk into a kind of non-Western modernity. Has each transformed the other?

Yes. Istanbul has become more conservative and religious as a result of the vast migration from rural, traditional areas. A new culture has emerged. New melodramatic movies based on this immigrant sensibility have become highly popular and pervasive. Political Islam itself has transformed from a static posture to a politics of economic development that is responsible for the mushrooming high-rises that have changed the city’s skyline. In the process, Erdoğan’s party has also changed from a stalwart of clean government to one accused of corruption linked mostly to real estate development.

At the same time, we have seen the emergence of a new individuality, the sense that “you are on your own, charting your own path in the big city.” This in turn has generated its own response as we see in Mevlut. He embraces the family more and more, including his contentious cousins, as he feels more alone in the forest of the modern city.

The philosopher Peter Sloterdijk worries about what such plastic identities always in transition will mean. Modernity, especially as its pace of change quickens, is a steady rupture in which we always feel out of place, “not of this hour.”

Sloterdijk has argued that the “excess reality” mobilized by modern energies outstrips any narrative of origins and continuity that can tie a society together. The steady disruption of these energies has led to persistent asymmetry and disequilibrium, perpetual alienation and a lack of balance. Would you agree?

 I agree with Sloterdijk as far as it goes. The new influences of global culture are so fast and so rich that the national cultures are broken. The comfort of simple stories no longer can shape a convincing narrative. But I want to underline one difference with Sloterdijk. People adapt the way Mevlut does, as I have already mentioned: He embraces the family.

This is a third dimension. For Mevlut, family is his castle, his refuge and rampart, against the rapidly changing, economically demanding and politically dangerous life of urban Istanbul. It is another world that modernity cannot penetrate. When all else melts, the family is solid.

Are we seeing the consequences of such rapid change in the political turmoil today in Turkey? The society as a whole can’t seem to decide if Turkey wants to go back to the Ottoman past, forward to a European future or something else. In the vacuum of a convincing narrative, division and violence fill the void, as we saw in the recent Ankara bombing. 

With the elections coming up in the wake of the Ankara bombing, what’s next for Turkey as you see it?

I’m hoping that the parliamentary elections on Nov. 1 will pave the way for a coalition that will calm down the turmoil by including the opposite poles of Turkey into a unified sense of national purpose. In short, to embrace the very diversity of society we have been discussing as the precondition for stability and democracy. There has been too much polarization, too much aggression in Turkish politics today. Politicians should put the brakes on.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

The classic imagery of Cleopatra killing herself with a snake might be dramatic, but it probably never happened, experts say.

For years, researchers have argued that the Egyptian ruler might not actually have committed suicide via snake -- but that hasn’t really changed public perception, Egyptologist Joyce Tyldesley of the University of Manchester in England told The Huffington Post.

“Death by snake remains deep within the publicly held Cleopatra myth,” said Tyldesley, noting that she discussed alternatives means of death in her book, Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt.

Cleopatra committed suicide in 30 B.C., shortly after she and her lover and political ally Mark Antony suffered military defeat at the hands of Roman emperor-to-be Octavian, Tyldesley wrote for Encyclopaedia Britannica.

This month, Tyldesley and Andrew Gray, curator of herpetology at the Manchester Museum, appeared together in a video explaining the impracticalities Cleopatra would have encountered if she'd actually attempted to kill herself with a venomous snake. The video, which can be seen above, is part of a free online course about ancient Egyptian history that will launch on Oct. 26. 

Classical accounts say Cleopatra had an “asp” covertly transported into the palace where Octavian was holding her prisoner, inducing the snake to bite her and one or two of her maids. In the video, Gray notes that an “asp” could refer to either a viper (the European asp) or the Egyptian cobra.

A cobra would be too large for Cleopatra to sneak into the palace undetected, and even if she did manage to get a snake inside, trying to use any venomous snake for suicide would have a high failure rate, Gray says in the video. 

“A lot of snake bites are dry bites,” he explains, referring to a bite in which the reptile does not inject venom. "Even with cobra bites, I’d say probably it’s about a 10 percent chance that you’re going to die from it.” 

Death by snake venom would be neither quick nor painless, Gray adds. Cobra venom slowly rots a person’s flesh. This necrosis can also occur after a European asp bite, but it rarely occurs, according to a toxicology resource site managed by Australia’s University of Adelaide. 

It’s even more unlikely that Cleopatra and her maids all killed themselves with one snake, Gray says, since getting a snake to bite two or more people in quick succession would be difficult.

Christoph Schaefer, an ancient history professor at University of Trier in Germany, made similar arguments in an interview with CNN in 2010. Schaefer speculated that Cleopatra actually poisoned herself, since some records suggest she was knowledgeable about poisons.

Cleopatra wasn’t the type of person to take chances on a mode of suicide as unreliable as a snake, author Stacy Schiff wrote in her book, Cleopatra: A Life. She also believes the leader was far more likely to use poison.

And though some -- including criminal profiler Pat Brown -- believe Cleopatra was actually murdered, Tyldesley doesn’t buy the homicide theory.

“I think that she did commit suicide,” she said in a statement emailed to HuffPost. “We know very little about suicide in ancient Egypt - it is almost as if it was unheard of - but suicide in the Hellenistic/Roman world was seen as a totally acceptable means of dealing with an otherwise insoluble problem. And Cleopatra belongs to that world.”

Contact the author at Hilary.Hanson@huffingtonpost.com

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 Welcome to a special Halloween edition of Middlebrow, please listen to some spooky music while you read about teen sexuality. 

Know what's so weird? Teens! Like, they are just some exotic species only loosely related to all of us non-teens. They talk in emojis and they have so many feelings and they know how to use Snapchat. But more terrifying than all of that put together is this: Puberty.

It can be hard to remember the experience of pubescence, especially for people in writer's rooms working on pretty much anything besides "Diary of a Teenage Girl." Teenage sexuality, especially female teenage sexuality, is treated as some mutant, removed thing in pop culture, often ignored, trivialized, or -- worst of all -- exploited.

There are so few intelligent meditations on the tricky realities of coming of age. That is, outside of the teen horror sub-genre. With all the lazy, uncomplicated iterations we see grounded in reality, some of the most striking representations of teen sexuality are supernatural.

The most recent example is "It Follows" (2014), in which the "monster" is an ever-morphing presence that plainly represents one's sexual history and the looming threat of STDs. But we've had these themes of teen sexuality intermingle with horror since "Carrie" (1976, and, unfortunately, 2013).

In this reading of the Stephen-King-novel-cum-film, the pot of blood dumped on Sissy Spacek's head is almost too on the nose. What we get from the subsequent iconic prom massacre (the ultimate, if homicidal, revenge for bullying) is a devastating portrait of the convergence of the disastrous intensity of becoming an adult in terms of physical and social changes. 

It's a fascinating look at the way terror can be linked with coming of age. This theme is perhaps most obvious in "Ginger Snaps," in which the titular character gets her first period at the same time she starts transforming into a werewolf.

"I'm sure it seems like a lot of blood," the hapless school nurse tells Ginger and her sister. "It's a period!"

"But really it was like a ... geyser," they explain, shaken and confused.

"Everyone seems to panic their first time," she says, reassuring Ginger it's all "normal" and mimicking the lack of openness that surrounds the shame-y stigma around periods.

Soon, Ginger's natural and supernatural bodily changes are merged in a way that can't be clearly distinguished, and her urges are tied up in fear. The inability to ask questions or get clear answers is hit at a disturbing register across the sub-genre.

Consider "Teeth" (2007). The black comedy centers around Dawn, a purity-obsessed young woman, who is a total stranger to her own body. She only discovers her personal version of the vagina dentata myth when a friend tries to rape her. She's been denied any understanding of her anatomy -- the lady parts are covered with a giant sticker in school textbooks -- so she must set about a path to discovery from a point of being no more familiar with the presence of incisors in her vagina than her labia.

"From the beginning, she has a subconscious awareness that something's lethal down there," explained writer and director Mitchell Lichtenstein on the phone. "So, she joins the abstinence group to delay knowledge of that."

For the male version of that exploration, we have "Idle Hands," in which young Anton's horniness becomes an agent of destruction in the form of his right hand. Initially, he attempts to control himself, tying his hand up in a love scene with Jessica Alba (his love interest). But when it grows too powerful, he self-amputates, treating the appendage -- and the desires it represents -- as something outside of himself.

"I think that scene [with Jessica Alba] is the most explicit metaphor for that moment when you're trying to control your sexuality," said director Rodman Flender. "Everything about it is terrifying. What's happening to your body is scary and different and you try to control that."

The toxic masculinity at play is obvious: when men can't control their impulses, the results are dangerous.

In "Ginger Snaps," "Teeth" and "Idle Hands," the connections are so clear, "teen sexuality" may as well be a subtitle. Although the intermingling of magic and puberty are also present in less obvious examples.

Witchcraft is a strong symbol of the simultaneously mystifying and frightening realities of growing up. In the more tame (and so very '80s)  "Teen Witch" (1989), Louise uses her newfound magic because she is "tired of looking like a little girl." Influence over her peers is directly linked to her developing into a woman and pursuing intimacy for the first time.

"The Craft" is a more haunting example. As transfer student Sarah bonds with her newfound coven and discovers her powers, their witchcraft morphs into a chaotic force threatening agency and individuality (see: that face-changing scene). Writer Peter Filardi directly linked adolescence with magic as a forceful yet unpredictable tool. "Teens have the need and they have the emotion, but they don't have the knowledge," he said of the film's version of the metaphor.

"I think when you're in that phase of your life, what you're going through doesn't feel real," said "Beyond Clueless" writer and director Charlie Lyne, emphasizing the importance of "The Craft" among the 200-something teen movies in his documentary.

"It feels so extreme and otherworldly," he continued. "So, science fiction or horror feels like a perfectly reasonable analogy for what's happening."

A perfectly reasonable analogy, and sometimes a better, more striking and honest version than the ones grounded in real life. If only there was a spell to change that.

Middlebrow is a recap of the week in entertainment, celebrity and television news that provides a comprehensive look at the state of pop culture. From the rock bottom to highfalutin, Middlebrow is your accessible guidebook to the world of entertainment. Sign up to receive it in your inbox.

Follow Lauren Duca on Twitter: @laurenduca

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

These elaborate pumpkin carvings put our jack-o'-lanterns to shame. 

Edward Cabral, an artist who lives in Chicago, creates intricately carved pumpkins with designs from pop culture and history as part of the Jack-O'-Lantern Spectacular, a Halloween festival in Louisville, Kentucky.

A photo posted by @actingfat on Oct 21, 2015 at 10:23am PDT

Cabral told HuffPost that he typically uses black or gray ink to draw his designs and then carves into the pumpkin to show highlights and create extra detail.

A photo posted by @actingfat on Oct 15, 2015 at 8:54am PDT

One of the 28-year-old's breathtaking pumpkins, a "man on the moon"-themed design, caught the attention of social media users after Cabral's friend posted a photo of it on Reddit earlier this month. The picture has racked up more than 7,200 upvotes on the site and over 2.6 million views on Imgur as of Friday morning. 

A photo posted by @actingfat on Oct 8, 2015 at 3:02pm PDT

"It was nuts," Cabral, who also designs cakes, creates ceramics and draws, told HuffPost of the attention he received after his pumpkin went viral. "I witnessed it take off ... it blew me away."

A photo posted by @actingfat on Oct 9, 2015 at 3:56pm PDT

This is Cabral's third year participating in the festival, which showcases elaborately designed pumpkins along a trail. Besides the incredible moon landing-themed pumpkin, the artist also carved ones inspired by The Beatles, "The Wizard of Oz" and "The Phantom of the Opera," among other works. 

A photo posted by @actingfat on Oct 10, 2015 at 1:12pm PDT

He told HuffPost that the designs do take a bit of time to finish. He spends an average of about three hours drawing on the pumpkin and then another two or three hours carving it. 

A photo posted by @actingfat on Oct 11, 2015 at 10:31am PDT

It's a great deal of time spent on something that won't last forever, but Cabral told HuffPost that the impermanence of his artwork actually draws him to it. In fact, he believes it makes these works unique. 

"I witness the entire life of the object. I can see it from beginning to end -- I know it wholly," he said. "It's fun because it's more exciting -- it makes it more rare."  

A photo posted by @actingfat on Oct 7, 2015 at 4:18pm PDT

And his advice for the the amateur pumpkin carvers of the world? 

"It's matter of carving off the skin as opposed to cutting it out," he explains. "You can shave away parts of the skin -- it gives it a glow."  

A photo posted by @actingfat on Oct 13, 2015 at 6:55pm PDT

Check out more amazing pumpkins below! 

A photo posted by @actingfat on Oct 12, 2015 at 4:09pm PDT

A photo posted by @actingfat on Oct 17, 2015 at 10:42am PDT

A photo posted by @actingfat on Oct 12, 2015 at 8:59am PDT

A photo posted by @actingfat on Oct 20, 2015 at 4:40pm PDT

To see more of Edward Cabral's work, visit his Instagram page here, or his website here. 

Also on HuffPost: 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Halloween is crumbs compared to the witchcraft and wizardry news coming out of the "Harry Potter" universe. 

On Thursday, Pottermore released artwork for J.K. Rowling's upcoming Harry Potter play, "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child." And on Friday, the site released the much-awaited ... synopsis! 

People who've spent the last day speculating about who might be this cursed child in the winged bird's nest ("Uh ... looks like Harry Potter ... but Rowling said it's not a prequel?") finally have their answer: It's Harry's youngest son, Albus Severus. The play will center on him in addition to adult Harry Potter, who is now an "overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband and father of three school-age children." Readers will remember Albus from the epilogue from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, when he was prepping to head to Hogwarts on Platform Nine and Three-Quarters.

The Pottermore synopsis did not name, tragically, the bizarre magical species that made -- or is? -- the nest featured in the official artwork.

Rowling announced back in June that "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" would hit the London stage, reigniting our childhood hopes, dreams and fears, which are all now bouncing around thanks to this new information. A peek back into the Harry Potter world is extremely exciting, but it's also like, the Harry Potter is an overworked dad and his kid still can't catch a break? Life is sad. 

I'm also very excited to confirm today that a new play called Harry Potter and the #CursedChild will be opening in London next year.

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 26, 2015

It will tell a new story, which is the result of a collaboration between writer Jack Thorne, director John Tiffany and myself. #CursedChild

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 26, 2015

Also on HuffPost: 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Kourtney Kardashian looked gorgeous at the gallery opening of "Metallic Life" by Brian Bowen Smith on Thursday night. The reality star appears nude in the photo series, which was shown in Vanity Fair earlier this month.

The 36-year-old wore black stilettos, leather pants and a sheer black shirt, which fell down to her knees in the back, for the event. Kardashian was all smiles as she posed with Smith in front of her nude photo: 

Kardashian later headed out with her girlfriends, Instagramming a photo of the group having fun: 

Post gallery vino with my bitches.

A photo posted by Kourtney Kardashian (@kourtneykardash) on Oct 22, 2015 at 9:57pm PDT

Also on HuffPost: 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Bob Ross disciples, raise your brushes: the first episode of "The Joy of Painting" just hit YouTube. 

Thanks to some avid Ross fans on Reddit, we came across Episode 1, Season 1, of the instructional painting show, which aired from 1983 to 1994 on public television. The episode was uploaded to YouTube on Thursday, the latest addition to the Bob Ross channel currently hosting a happy little archive of Ross' best moments.

If you don't remember "The Joy of Painting," let us refresh your memory. In the show, Ross and his perm teach viewers to paint things like clouds and trees and mountains, using phrases like, "We don't make mistakes. We just have happy accidents," and, "There's nothing wrong with having a tree as a friend."

It's the kind of television you watched as a kid, on that day you finally got the chicken pox, because nothing else was on at noon on a Tuesday. It might've seemed boring at first, but Ross' eerily peaceful voice and unbridled enthusiasm for winter evergreens pulled you in, captivating your senses for, oh, I don't know, six or seven hours. 

Go ahead, imagine you're on your couch right now (maybe you are!), slanket in tow, sipping on a cup of hot chocolate, when you hear the immortal words of the late, perfectly coiffured teacher: "I think there's an artist hidden at the bottom of every single one of us." 

Weird, but we'll take it.

(Bonus: Here's Bob Ross beating a bunch of paintbrushes, just 'cause.)

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

While Mike Huckabee and Martin O'Malley are known to break into song on the campaign trail, the rest of the 2016 presidential candidates mostly stick to singing the national anthem.

But what if they decided to let loose and drop some beats? What would their albums look like?

Matthew Newell, 42, designed album covers for nine of the presidential contenders. 

"The inspiration really comes down to 'politicians as brands,'" Newell, who lives in Bloomington, Illinois, told The Huffington Post. "And music is such an easy way to frame brands."

Below are Newell's creations, accompanied by some explanations of what inspired him.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Are you a woman who's unusually outspoken? Peculiarly bossy? Preternaturally clever? Is anything about you special or extraordinary in any way? Are you single?

Face it: You're probably a witch.

Why not unlock your inner hellcat and fix yourself up with a nice, unsuspecting man? Or extract your revenge on a mean, unbearable one? The secret to everlasting love or sweet vindication is simply your own willingness to embrace the darkness rooted deep within your heart.

Thanks to a May 1973 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine, we have at our disposal the ancient spellbinding recipes of our enchantress forebears, neatly documented in a listicle. A full five magical spells are inscribed there. They are, briefly:

1. "To Make Love Grow"

Plant an onion. As a vegetable that is "somewhat unusual in formation, in that it consists of many layers" -- not unlike an ogre -- it represents years of happiness. As it grows, so does the metaphor. 

It produces a love that will grow slowly but surely. Incidentally, there is one advantage to this spell. If you grow tired of your lover, you can always eat the onion and look for a new lover!

2. "To Start A Torrid Love Affair"

Write his name on a sheet of paper at the same time every day and burn it over a candle at least eight inches long and as blue as your saliva.

This is to make him burn with desire for you. After you have kindled the (metaphorical) [Ed. note: also literal] flame with this spell, it is up to you to see to it that the flame keeps burning.

3. "To Freeze Your Rival"

Stick your lady rival's name in an ice tray. Leave it in the refrigerator.

When it comes to defrosting time, use your neighbor's fridge, but make sure that she does not know why, or or she may tell your rival, who may then cast a counterspell.

Or, never defrost your freezer.

Laugh.

4. "If You Desire Him, Don't Wire Him"

Wrap a red thing around your finger and press it to your forehead, concentrating very hard on the object of your affection. Alternatively, you can burn a blue candle every day for seven days. But be warned:

Another trap is one common to all the spells in this article, namely, that you may not want him once he does contact you and you may find it impossible to get rid of him!

5. "The Full Revenge"

In this "modern version of a gypsy spell that dates back to the fourteenth century," you will use a stick and a brown candle to wreak havoc on your ex-lover's life. First, place the twig in his path at night by "the light of a waning moon." Then, every evening, over the burning candle, recite:

With this twig I break luck.

With this light I show your shame:

Nevermore by day or night

Will your wishes turn out right!

For complete instructions, take a look below. Happy hexing!

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

A six shot panorama image of the Himalayas won this year's EPSON International Pano Awards. 

The stunning photo, titled "The Ice Prison," was taken by Max Rive of the Netherlands. 

Now in its sixth year, the competition celebrates beautiful achievements in panoramic photography. More than a thousand professional and amateur photographers from 60 countries sent in 4345 entries combined. 

Mateusz Piesiak of Poland won the amateur competition with his long exposure panorama of egrets in a pond titled "Phantoms of the Morning." 

See more of the amazing winners from The EPSON International Pano Awards below:

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

There are a number of celebrities who quietly choose from the canon of traditional names -- not the trendier classics like Beatrice and Charlotte, but the solid, historic stalwarts, the most established of the perennial classics. Which makes them almost surprising picks these days.

Christopher

The new son of Benedict Cumberbatch and Sophie Hunter is named Christopher Carlton.  Christopher is the name of a character Cumberbatch played in a Tom Stoppard play, and Carlton is a family middle name that Benedict, his dad and grandfather all share. The name Christopher was second only to Michael for 16 years straight beginning in 1979, and it is now at number 26.

Edward

Czech model Eva Herzigova is a clear fan of classics -- she has a George and a Philipe as well as an Edward. Popular in England since the Norman Conquest of 1066, with a substantial royal heritage, Edward was a top ten name in the U.S. until the 1930s, and recently came back into the limelight thanks to Twilight’s Edward Cullen.

George 

The young Prince George of Cambridge has brought a cute, cuddly, chubby-cheeked image back to this regal classic that’s been shared by six British kings. In the U.S. top 10 until 1940, it has now fallen to 157, though little Georgie may reverse that tide -- it’s now number seven in England. Zac Hanson is latest celebrity parent of a George, but Tina Brown and Kristin Scott Thomas also used it for their sons.

Jane

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Jane is not plain. This short, one-syllable classic choice of Jimmy Kimmel and his wife (who also have a daughter named Katherine) is a rare combination of sweetness and strength. Once so common it became generic (as in Jane Doe), Jane is now down at number 322 -- though it’s in the Top 50 on Nameberry.

John

Actress Bridget Moynahan (born Kathryn Bridget) went triple classic when she named her son John Edward Thomas. Now at number 27, this most archetypal of traditional English names, after being in the top 10 for well over one hundred years, has dropped to number 26. Other celebrity parents who went this well-traveled route include Michelle Pfeiffer, Denzel Washington and Rob Lowe.

Joseph

After picking the elegantly vintage Arabella Rose for her first child, Ivanka Trump went much more conservative with son Joseph Frederick’s name. Biblical, multi-cultural and classic, Joseph has always been in the top echelons of the popularity list, now in 20th place.

Mary

James Marsden’s daughter Mary James was named for her mother, born Mary Elizabeth but called Lisa. Marsden’s classically-named family also includes son William, father James, sister Elizabeth and brother Robert. The venerated New Testament Mary was the top girls’ name from before records were kept through 1947, when she was toppled by Linda, but it has since dropped precipitously to 120.

Robert

Although Owen Wilson honored his father by naming his son Robert after him, the boy is called by his middle name, Ford. Robert has been a common English name since the Middle Ages, a top 10 choice in the U.S. for 110 years straight. 

Thomas

Since both Jack Black and his father were born with the name Thomas, it's clear where his second son Thomas’s name came from. Another of the most enduring male classics, Thomas was a top 10 name for over a century.

William

Another classic name chosen by James Marsden (for his third child), William was second only to John in the English-speaking world for centuries, and popular Prince William has added some contemporary charm. Mary-Louise Parker and Colin Firth have also chosen the moniker for their respective sons. It’s a popular Nameberry classic as well, standing at number 18.

Also on HuffPost: 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

The marketing for "Suffragette" has been a hot mess. Writer Abi Morgan told Variety that she "didn't set out to make a feminist film," Meryl Streep pulled some of that "actually, 'I'm a humanist'" nonsense and -- definitively worst of all -- the movie was promoted with T-shirts reading, "I'd rather be a rebel than a slave."

Basically, the publicity has been a heap of white feminism that was too scared to even call itself feminism. It's frustrating, if not just confusing, that an outwardly empowering film about women fighting for the right to vote would engage in such aggressive self-sabotage. But director Sarah Gavron is here to make things right.

In an interview with The Huffington Post, Gavron explained her intentions for creating "Suffragette," acknowledged the backlash and clarified that she and her impressively female-centric team are 100 percent feminist -- whether they say so in interviews or not.

What drew you to direct "Suffragette"?

No one had ever made a movie of [the movement] and it seemed such an important part of our history. I couldn’t believe there hadn’t been a big screen version of it. I hadn’t learned it in school. It’s just not widely known, because women’s history has been so marginalized over the years. It not only felt overdue as a story to be told by these women who had begun to change the course of history, but also it felt really timely in the way the story resonates with 21st century issues.

There's definitely been a rise of feminism in the mainstream, why do you think that is?

It’s interesting what’s happening at the moment and the new kind of activism. We’re reclaiming feminism, which is a word that -- certainly in my early career -- was dismissed, and that’s exciting. So, it’s entered the mainstream conversation in a really positive way. I hope it’s a recognition that gender equality is good for everyone and not just for women. It’s something we could all keep addressing.

How would you like "Suffragette" to add to that conversation?

I’d like [the audience] to take away two things. One, to remember how the right to vote was hard-fought. Two, to remember how recently we have gotten these rights, how precarious they are and also how important it is to use the vote ... You realize it’s important to stand up and be counted and have your voice heard. I hope people come away from the film empowered, willing to stand and fight the continuing inequalities in society.

I think this film will -- as it has in the U.K. -- provoke a dialogue that can be a kind of positive discourse about inequality and how to solve that.

Is Carey Mulligan's character Maud based on any specific woman in your research? Why did you choose to lead the film with her story?

She's composite of a number of different working women we read about. We wanted people to connect with her. We wanted the heart of the film to have a human story, to have someone who the audience could get inside the mind of and go on this emotional journey with. Abi really created her as the three-dimensional character we could believe in. But you can find several of her in the research. All of those women are out there once you look.

The supporting male characters are also quite three-dimensional, which is interesting since supporting female characters are so often used as plot devices.

We wanted to put women very much at the forefront of this story, but we also didn’t want to use the men as two-dimensional figures. They were complex characters, they weren’t just villains. There was a whole range of opinions. Some men, as reflected in the husband of Helena Bonham Carter’s character, supported the movement. Then you’ve got Sonny, Maud’s husband played by Ben Whishaw, who is struggling to understand the pressures. So, we wanted to show all of that.

But you still had a bit of trouble casting them?

It was interesting, we got all the women we wanted very quickly, but some agents were hesitant about the male roles. They’d say, “He’s just the husband, there isn’t very much for him to do.” It’s funny to hear that after all these years of women as supporting roles in film.

Abi Morgan told Variety she didn't set out to make a feminist film. Did you feel that way, too?

I saw that and I’m not quite sure what she meant by that! We set out to tell a human story, I think. We set out to tell this important piece of history in a way that everybody, we hoped, could connect with it. You know, women from all backgrounds across the world and also men, anyone who is fighting inequality, anyone involved in activism today ... So, that was one of the missions for it, but we are 100 percent feminist, Abi and I and the whole team.

Do you think there is hesitation to directly brand "Suffragette" with the word "feminism," from Abi or anyone involved in marketing the film?

Feminism has been around so long as a term, it’s got lots of variation, but I think ultimately what it means is equality between the sexes. So, I don’t see why there can be any resistance to that idea.

We recently had a screening in the U.K. where a man stood up and said, “I’m a feminist!” And I thought, “Yeah, of course, but you wouldn’t have that a few years ago." He wouldn’t have used that label. Now, it’s kind of being reappropriated. So, I think that maybe young people need to find their own word for it, perhaps to own it in the next generation. I think, if people know what it means, it should be a good, approachable term.

Right, but even a hero like Meryl Streep is saying she's a "humanist" now.

You know, if you look at what she does, she is such an ardent feminist. I’ve never met a woman like that. There are many people that campaign, but she really, truly is a feminist. She has also said that she's a feminist in interviews. So, I think what she meant is that she’s also a humanist.

OK, one more "what is going on with everyone besides you on this film?" question. What happened with the T-shirts?

I think it’s all about context. In the U.K., we had a very different movement. We had a very different makeup and a very different association, but I completely acknowledge the sentiment it received here. Anything that brings up a discourse about diversity in film, which is one of my passions, is a good thing. You know? We need to have those conversations.

Can you speak more to the idea of context and this specific moment in the early feminist movement?

The intention of the film was to make a film that related to all women everywhere. It’s set in this two-and-a-half mile radius in London in a very specific 16-month period, but it can speak to people everywhere. And the issue around women of color in it is really interesting and I think needs to be discussed.

Part of the response to the T-shirts may have been a reaction to this particular story being so white.

Right, I think it’s important to know that the U.K. movement was very different because we had a very different immigration pattern. Here you had many people of color and many women of color involved in the women’s movement at that time and some were excluded or forced to march at the back of the march. It was very divided from that period. But in the U.K. we only had tiny pockets of immigrants. We didn’t have women of color [in the film], but we did have two women who worked for the aristocrats.

Also, the first film I made was all people of color, there was not a single white person in it. It was “Brick Lane” and this is my second film. My mission in life is to put people you don’t normally see on screen on screen and also to put people behind the camera that you don’t necessarily have behind the camera. I hope that narrative doesn’t get divergent from the positive narrative of talking about inequality and how we can tackle that. 

You've certainly made strides there with "Suffragette." It's easily one of the most female-centric films we've had this year.

This film redresses the balance in every respect. As we know, about one to 10 percent of films each year are directed by women, and it feels more like 99 percent by men. But in this film we had this incredible team: the writer, director, production designer, location manager, costume designer and all of these women in front of the camera. So, we were really doing something that broke the mold and that was exciting, but I think it’s really important that we keep talking about it.

It's exciting to me that this year the conversation has gathered proper momentum. It's partly because people are being vocal about it, partly because there are initiatives to challenge it. We’re aware that things are really shifting and this is just the beginning.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.