Have you ever watched "The Nutcracker" and felt bad for the Mouse King? A certain 7-year-old from Omaha, Nebraska, certainly has. And she's determined to do something about it.

If you recall the story of "The Nutcracker," adapted from E.T.A. Hoffmann's The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, you'll remember that epic scene in which toy soldiers and mice battle underneath a giant Christmas Tree. Toward the end of the scene, Clara -- the ballet's lead character -- throws her slipper at the Mouse King, knocking him out. The remaining mice are forced to carry their commander's lifeless body away in shame.

Annabel Averett recently watched this scene firsthand. The young ballerina, about to turn 8 years old later this month, has been performing in a production of "The Nutcracker" at Creighton University, running through this weekend in Omaha. And she plays a mouse.

"Playing the part of the mouse made her see 'The Nutcracker' storyline in a completely different way," Annabel's mother, Erin W. Averett, Associate Professor of Archaeology at Creighton University, told The Huffington Post over email. "She realized that people -- in the audience, but also the other characters -- were scared or hated the mice and the Mouse King."

Annabel, her mother says, didn't think the hatred was warranted. So the empowered elementary schooler decided to start the Mouse Freedom Front, a backstage effort to advocate for the rights of the mice in "The Nutcracker." It's no small feat. Annabel has recruited other Mouse Freedom Front members, crafted a 12-point manifesto, passed out pamphlets with information about her cause, and even composed an anthem. All in the hopes of teaching her fellow "Nutcracker" dancers a little bit of empathy.

Annabel will be performing in the production of "The Nutcracker" this weekend at Creighton. Ahead of closing night, we spoke to Annabel's mother about the founding of Mouse Freedom Front and what it means to watch her 7-year-old speak out against intolerance today.

Tell me a little bit about Annabel -- is this her first time taking a stand like this?

She is very bright and reads quite extensively at an advanced level for her age. I think her reading has given her a sense of empathy and awareness of people and issues outside her immediate world. In particular, books like the Harry Potter series that highlight compassion and justice in a way that is approachable for children. She has read all seven Harry books, twice!

Although Annabel has always been sensitive to other people’s feelings and is always helping kids at her school, I believe this is her first time taking a stand on this level. One interesting thing is that we have taken her (and her sisters) to see "The Nutcracker" ballet in Atlanta every year since she was three. She told me that when she watched the ballet before she was always scared of the Mouse King and thought the mice scene was a little scary, but also admitted that she didn’t understand everything when she was younger and just a spectator.

This is her first year performing the ballet and she was cast as a mouse. She told me that playing the part of the mouse made her see "The Nutcracker" storyline in a completely different way and she realized that people -- in the audience, but also the other characters -- were scared or hated the mice and the Mouse King, but it didn’t have to be this way. This caused her to form the Mouse Freedom Front.

When you say she thought the mice in the ballet were unfairly hated or portrayed, was there a particular moment or series of revelations that led her to turn her dissatisfaction into action?

I had to ask her this, since I didn’t really know! Annabel says that when she played a mouse, she started thinking about mouse traps and the “violent” battle scene and how mice didn’t do anything to people to deserve mouse traps or war. That inspired her to form the Mouse Freedom Front to fight for mouse freedom and to raise awareness that mice are really nice and should be able to get along with people. She also really bonded with her fellow mice ballerinas and thought this would be a nice way to unify them as a group.

How did she come up with the name Mouse Freedom Front?

Annabel told me that she was inspired by two things: SPEW (Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare from Harry Potter) and the Turkey freedom movement from the Thanksgiving movie "Freebirds." We thought that these books and movie did a really good job of inspiring empathy in a 7-year-old [who] can see these humorous concepts from fiction and apply them to “real” life. I realize "Nutcracker" isn’t really real life, but it is a step more real than reading a book. Hopefully this type of thought and action will continue later in her life.

Timeline-wise, how did she organize the Mouse Freedom Front?

Annabel first came up with the name of the movement on Monday night, and then at school on Tuesday during her creative writing period she wrote up a 12-point manifesto.

1. We find out how to destroy mouse traps
2. If people join the club we give them free cheese
3. We set up a mouse castle and make up laws for mouse freedom.
4. We set up a school for mice and make sure everyone in our kingdom has a job.
5. We come up with a name for our kingdom.
6. Find out how to get the signs up so people can join.
7. Make sure everyone knows about it.
8. Protect the mouse jewel in the queen's vault.
9. We make sure everyone knows the mouse national anthem (which by the way they actually have already!)
11. We make sure all mice have homes and everybody has enough cheese for the winter.
12. Make sure nobody starts a war with Clara and the party kids against us and make sure we all have mouse names.
13. Make sure nobody fights or offends or takes over the queen's place.

She then asked us to help her make a pamphlet, which her dad made. I printed and cut the pamphlets and she handed out the pamphlets during the opening performance. 

It started as a cute thing Annabel and her mice did, but backstage during their opening performance it really blossomed. Annabel brought the pamphlets and passed them out. Eighty in all! And several mice vowed to post them in six different Omaha schools today. The mice were super excited, but eventually all "The Nutcracker" cast joined on board, including Clara, Fritz and the “party kids." One of the parent volunteers backstage let Annabel give a speech, in which she recited her manifesto, and then they even voted on certain manifesto items. 

Did Annabel at any point become overtly angry with the way the mice were handled in the story?

Annabel was never really angry, but remained really rational about everything. She did say she was bursting with outrage when she saw Clara knock out the Mouse King on the stage since background Clara was so nice. But then she realized Clara was just playing a part. And now Clara is a proud member of the Mouse Freedom Front!

If she could rewrite "The Nutcracker," would she? Would she change the storyline of the mice?

I asked her this question. She says, “Yes she would! Instead of Clara knocking out our Mouse King with her shoe, I would write the Mouse King as winning the battle and becoming friends with the Nutcracker. The soldiers would then be scared of the mice and just march away. Eventually they would solve all their problems by becoming friends and living happily together."

What does Annabel hope her fellow dancers take away from the Mouse Freedom Front? Does she hope to continue it after the ballet?

Annabel says that she "hopes that this was a really good way to bring us [fellow mice dancers and the cast] together and that mouse freedom is a really big thing that we should fight for and that people know mice are nice.” She also says she hopes the news will spread after the production ends, and she is working with her friends to keep hanging the pamphlets and spreading the word. She says she plans to continue to fight for mice freedom.

Your takeaway?

Although we helped her with the pamphlets, the initiative and and details were all her! We think it is quite impressive for a second grader, but of course we are biased. And even though this was done for fun and in a “safe” context of a ballet, in the end we feel that it sends a positive message of inclusion for everyone. In our current political climate where certain groups are feared, hated and negatively portrayed, we think this is an important message for kids to understand. And even better if the message gets across in a fun way and sticks so that they can apply it in real life when they are a little older.  

It is also pretty amazing how a 7-year old thinks about an “ideal society” -- in a way it is very simple and humane (educate everyone, give them food and jobs, and don’t be mean!). Ultimately, it’s also a good message to emerge from a Christmas ballet.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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If you didn't tune into "The Wiz Live!" Thursday night on NBC, you missed some stellar performances. Shanice Williams' rendition of the original film's iconic song "Home," which was originally sang by Stephanie Mills, was amazing. However, long before Williams' performance, it was performed first by Diana Ross, Amber Riley, Whitney Houston, young Beyoncé and even Pam from "Martin."

The song, written by Charlie Smalls, is beyond beautiful -- it's magical. 

Watch eight versions of this classic number, sang by some of our favorite artists below!

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In India, the attitude that "it's better not to report rape" runs rampant. 

But Indian filmmaker Vibha Bakshi decided to hold authorities accountable and empower victims. She created a documentary "Daughters of Mother India" that's now been implemented in police gender sensitization trainings across the country. 

The film is based on what happened the night of December 16, 2012, when an Indian medical student was taking the bus home in South Delhi and was tortured and gang raped by six men before being abandoned on the side of the road. On December 29, she died. Her name was Jyoti Singh Pandey, she was 23 and she is now known across India as Nirbhaya -- one without fear. 

Though the attack on December 16 was neither the first nor the last brutal case of violence against women we will hear about, what sets it apart is what unfolded afterward: Indians decided they had had enough. And they took to the streets. 

Bakshi was in those crowds, a part of those protests. She went on to create her documentary, which chronicles the movement sparked by Pandey's attack and seeks to keep it alive. "Daughters of Mother India" is comprised entirely of interviews Bakshi conducted with Indians. The people featured in the film ranged from Supreme Court justices to educators to sociologists to -- perhaps most significantly -- the Delhi police force. 

Bakshi visited New York for a series of screenings of the film in November; after attending one such screening, The Huffington Post interviewed Bakshi about the change the film sparked across India. 

Bakshi explained, "I was a part of the protests happening on the street. It was the winter, it was cold -- but everyone was out... Men, children, women. It was a proud moment, and I clung onto it. This issue was so urgent that I knew the police had to play an integral role [in the film]." 

Her cameras were the first to be allowed inside the Delhi Police command and control room. But on her initial efforts to gain access to the police, Bakshi said, "It was impossible. We tried everything -- three weeks of pursuing the [Delhi] police commissioner [Neeraj Kumar]. When we finally got to him, I said, 'Give me 10 minutes of your time and then you can throw me out. I am a stakeholder in this society, and if this momentum stops, I have everything to lose.' He looked me in the eyes and said, 'I have two daughters.' The next day, we had access." 

When Bakshi initially begun interviewing Delhi police officers, "all their answers seemed to be the right ones -- very rehearsed." Her crew proceeded to leave their cameras at home and continue showing up to the command and control room -- simply to hang around. Eventually, Bakshi remarked that it was as though the police had forgotten her crew was there. 

"And that's when [the police] began opening up, began feeling. I saw anger, disgust [of the December 16 attack]. I realized for the first time that they are human beings... They are reflective of us. It's a mirror image. It's not us versus them, it's we. They wanted change as much as we did." 

It was in this spirit that "Daughters of Mother India" offers a humanized portrayal of the Delhi police force. Bakshi agreed this portrayal influenced what came next: following the film's 2014 premiere in Mumbai -- which was attended by more than 400 of the most senior-level police officers -- it was screened at the National Police Academy. The director of the Academy then issued a memo asking for mandatory screenings of the film to be integrated into police officers' gender-sensitization trainings.

During the film, Mr. Palden, the Head of Delhi Police Control and Command Room, remarked that women calling the police help line reporting domestic violence prefer to hear a woman's voice on the other end of the phone, rather than a man's. Later in the documentary, Ms. Suman Naiwa, Head of Delhi Police Unit for Women and Children, is filmed during a training in which she stressed that women should feel comfortable enough to come to male police officers and report assault. Naiwa iterated,

“We are not male cops or female cops, we are people in uniform.”

After Mumbai Police Commissioner Rakesh Maria requested she curate a campaign with the aim of bridging the civilian-police divide, Bakshi opened the crime profiles of high-profile rape cases and devised a three-part short video series that features police officers giving emotional accounts of their experiences working on these cases.

Following their launch in May 2015, these awareness videos -- which are still being shown -- were taken on by "every single movie theatre" to be run prior to feature films. Bakshi estimates they have reached some 22 million people, reflecting: "Change won't happen overnight, but something has. Four years ago, would any theatre owner do this?"

In "Daughters of Mother India," sociologist and professor Dr. Dipankar Gupta states, “The roots of patriarchy are so deep, that you cannot uproot them. So what do you have to do? Cut off its every branch.” 

This is what "Daughters of Mother India" seeks to do. On December 3, Viacom will screen the documentary in eight different languages -- including four Indian regional languages: Murathi, Bengali, Kannada and Hindi. Bakshi said her work is creating a dialogue, and this is the first step -- particularly given the historical silencing of violence against women. But in the end, she asserts, "We have to hope change will happen. Otherwise, there's no fight." 

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As 2015 comes to a close, we look back on the most popular baby names of the past year. But we also look forward to naming direction many parents will take next year. Here are Nameberry's predictions for the major baby name trends of 2016. 

Star Wars Influence

With the new "Star Wars" movie already selling out theaters weeks before its release date, we predict it will swamp all contenders as baby name pop culture influence of the year. Luke and Leia may be old baby name news, but Anakin is way up in the national standing already. And with director J. J. Abrams talking widely about the names of new characters, we predict the rise in 2016 of such "Star Wars"-influenced names as Poe, Finn, Rey, Hux, Kylo, Ren, even Dameron. We can also see the actors’ names taking off: Oscar and Isaac, Adam and Driver, Daisy and Ridley. We’re not sure we see a future for Phasma, however.

'Th' Sounds

This year we see the emergence of not a single dominant consonant but the digraph th. Th' names in the top 1000 and rising include include Thea and Theo, Dorothy and Theodore, Thatcher, Thiago, Thalia, and Thaddeus. On the horizon: Dorothea and Theodora, Thayer, Matthias, Meredith, Edith, Ruth, Judith, and Seth.

Redefining Gendered Names

The most important culture-defining trend in the year (and era) ahead will be baby names that have moved beyond old definitions of gender. Names will no longer be designated strictly as girls’ names or boys’ names but will be used more fluidly for children of either sex. At the end of a year earmarked by the advocacy of Caitlyn Jenner, we meet the newborn Max, daughter of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Dr. Priscilla Chan. We’ve seen other high-profile little girls named Wilder, Ryan, Jayde, Andy, and Jagger; boys named Indigo, Blues, and Rhodes, and celebrity babies of both sexes named James, Charlie, Sailor, Dashiell, Sparrow, Arlo and Bodhi. James has become the standard-issue middle name for both genders, and names such as Eden, Sasha, Remy, and Rory are rising for both boys and girls.

Nouns As Middle Names

This trend comes straight from celebrities, many of whom have given their children nouns as middle names. We’ve recently seen famous babies with these middle names, destined for more widespread use: Snow, Love, Moon, Rainbow, Ocean, Sky, Rein, Blue, Red, and Day. Up ahead: Bay, Dove, Dream, Dune, Frost, Grove, Muse, Pike, and Pine.

French Inspiration

There is fresh attention on French names. For girls, these might include Ines, Manon, Maelys, Lilou, and Leonie, while for boys, we may see more French names like Timeo, Jules and Mathis. There are also popular names in France that are already used in the U.S. but could become more prominent, including Lea and Leo, Louise and Louis, along with Charlie for both genders.

Short, Simple Names

Our lives were changed this year by the magic of tidying up and coloring between the lines, and that emphasis on uncluttered, destressed living is reflected in a new taste for streamlined names. We see the rise of such uncluttered names as Liv, Eve, Bo, Ace, Dean, Van, Dax, Noe, and Elle, along with such simplified nickname-names as Edie, Art, and Hank. 

Vintage Flower Names

U.S. parents are embracing the cultural migration of baby names. You don’t have to be Irish to name your daughter Maeve or Italian to call your son Giovanni instead of John. A baby with the culturally-distinct first name like Cohen or Cruz is likely not to be Jewish or Spanish, while babies named Brooklyn are born more often in Montana and Iowa than in New York. 

The Sky Above

Nameberry predicts a rise in baby names related to the skies and heavens. We see more babies named Luna, Nova, Orion, Celeste, Phoenix and Skye. Some further reaches: Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Cloud, Andromeda, Io, and Cassiopeia.

Vintage Boy Names

Rising again from the mothballs are Clyde, Alfred, Harvey, Ellis, Clark, Otto, Harold, Ernest, Leonard, Warren and Howard were all up in the last Social Security count. Up ahead, we see Barney, Edwin, Floyd, Leopold, Morris, Murray, Montgomery, Ralph, Rudolph, Seymour and Stanley.

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"The Wiz Live!" aired on NBC on Thursday night, and the performances were truly magical. The musical showcased the diversity of black excellence as Dorothy and her squad eased on down that yellow brick road. 

From the shade-filled-one-liners to the fierce costumes and choreography, we have rounded up the musical event's most entertaining moments. 

Yes! They did that!

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The International Robot Exhibition 2015 kicked off in Tokyo on Wednesday at the city's international exhibition center, also known as Tokyo Big Sight. 

The biannual robotics show is the world's largest exhibition of its kind and puts on display the latest innovations in robot technology. With a record 446 companies and organizations in attendance, the 2015 exhibition is a true must-see for sci-fi aficionados, android enthusiasts, or anyone who wants to catch a glimpse of how robots may changeour future. 

From lightweight bird-like drones to a hyper-realistic robo-replica of Leonardo da Vinci, take a look at the best androids from this year's show.

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Nora Ephron once wrote, "Reading is bliss." That couldn't be more true as December ushers in cozy winter nights spent curled up with a good book.

In honor of the holiday season, we've rounded up some of the standouts in the world of literary swag.

Without further ado, here are 42 gift ideas for the voracious readers in your life.

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This holiday season, make a declarative statement by choosing the perfect gift for the person who catches every mistake.

YUP.

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For eight hours on a Saturday in November, performance artist Mirabelle Jones subjected herself to an ongoing loop of catcalling and street harassment in a piece called "To Skin a Catcaller." In a gallery window facing a busy L.A. sidewalk, Jones paced back and forth in just her underwear, to an ongoing loop of her voice reciting 200 real catcalls drawn from an online survey.

Amongst these catcalls included "I like that ass," "Hey girl, get in my car," and "Bitch, I said come here." 

On her website, Jones wrote about the "exhausting" endurance performance, and dealing with the ongoing stream of both empathetic and hostile passerby:

Throughout the day, there are men who enticed by my lack of clothing stand and stare at me. When they realize through the audio loop and visual cues that they are watching a performance about catcalling, some take off... Another group of men stand, point, laugh and make comments about my body, especially my breasts and ass, as if weighing their value. There are groups of men who argue on the sidewalk about whether or not I as a woman have the right to object to catcalling. “Those are just compliments,” one says. “Women should be grateful they get that kind of attention,” says another.

Jones not only listened to the ongoing loop of harassment, but also had to navigate a physical space wherein razor blades hung from balloons above her, and were strewn across the floor. "Like people do everyday on the streets," Jones explained, "I [had] to make decisions about what spaces in the gallery are still safe for me to move in without coming too close to violence to escape it."

Jones works with the anti-harassment group Hollaback LA!, and her own organization, Art Against Assault. Her confronting performance piece is yet another reminder that catcalling, while largely viewed as "harmless," can be an act of violence against women, making them feel unsafe and exposed in public spaces. And it's never OK. 

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When Sophie Hevlin rang in her third birthday last month, she celebrated with a "Star Wars"-themed party, featuring stormtrooper decorations, tauntaun rides, and creative snacks like "Wookiee Cookies" and "Obi-Wan Kabob-ies." But the real standout by far was the cake.

The Oregon toddler and her friends and family enjoyed a very unique Chewbacca cake in which a doll version of the Wookiee warrior wears a princess dress. "Sophie loves 'Star Wars'! She has been watching the original trilogy her whole life," mom Jamie told The Huffington Post, adding that she and her husband Brian are also big fans. 

Jamie said her daughter enjoys dolls and pretty dresses, as well as action figures, LEGO and cars. "Just this morning she and I had a lightsaber duel while she was wearing her Elsa dress nightgown," the mom explained. "Stuff like that is commonplace in our house. That's how I got the idea for the Princess Chewbacca cake."

With a Chewbacca doll as the base, Jamie visited several grocery store bakeries, but her cake request was rejected because the bakers were unable to work with the full-size doll. Unable to afford a custom cake from a more expensive bakery, the mom enlisted the help of her friend Megan McChesney, who offered to make the cake herself. 

"Megan was my hero," Jamie told HuffPost, adding that her friend spent four to six hours working on the cake. "Her cake was every bit as awesome as an expensive bakery cake would have been."

Clad in a "Star Wars" dress handmade by her grandmother, Sophie received her Chewbacca princess cake on the day of the party. 

"Sophie was elated when the cake arrived," Jamie recalled. "She said, 'Oooh! Chewbacca is so pretty, Mom!' Then she promptly asked me to hand her a fork."

If the cake tasted even half as good as it looked, we're guessing it was pretty darn delicious.

Keep scrolling and visit Imgur for more photos of Sophie's totally rad "Star Wars" party.

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Oprah Winfrey may have influenced literary culture with her renowned book club, Oprah's Book Club -- but now she'll dish on her life lessons in her own memoir titled The Life You Want.

The media mogul and philanthropist signed a memoir deal with New York's Flatiron Books -- a division of international publishing company, Macmillan Publishers. Her tell-all memoir is set to be released in January 2017, according to a statement obtained by The New York Times. 

“I’m still learning and I hope my story inspires other people to live the highest, fullest expression of themselves," Winfrey said according to the statement. 

Winfrey has a collection of work in O, The Oprah Magazine and a number of published books including, What I Know For Sure, but this upcoming memoir is expected to get considerably personal. 

"All of my experiences, even the painful ones, have been there to teach me something about life," she added. 

Winfrey will also have her own publishing imprint at Macmillan that will focus on publishing nonfiction titles, as part of the deal, The Hollywood Reporter reported. 

"We all know how extraordinary Oprah's instincts are when it comes to choosing books, instincts borne of her lifelong love of reading and the power of the written word," Bob Miller, president and publisher of Flatiron Books, said in the statement. 

We're ready to be inspired, Oprah!

H/T The New York Times

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 Don't bother saying "cheese" when this dude is taking your photo. 

Florin Mehedinti, a husband and soon-to-be-father who lives in Seattle, Washington, is a pretty darn good prankster. For years, he's been tricking his wife Gracie into thinking he's taking a picture, when really he's recording the pose, he told The Huffington Post. The husband recently released a compilation of these wondrously awkward clips called "The Forever Pose."

For those of us who often forget to switch the camera from video mode, to picture mode, the video is kinda the most relatable thing in the world.  

Mehedinti told The Huffington Post in an email that he started this silly practice about three years ago when he found some failed photos on his camera roll that were videos. While he's subjected many people to the forever pose, his wife became his main focus. 

"She's just such an easy target," Mehedinti, who's compiled a video using the same concept in the past, explained to HuffPost. "She loves photos -- and more specifically me taking photos of her. She does these hilarious poses that are just the best when captured on video."

But the husband says his latest compilation isn't just silly -- it's also sentimental. He explained that he's been able to capture his wife's pregnancy through the "photos." 

While he's pranked his wife time after time, he says somehow people have still trust him to take their pictures. 

"I'm still the friend people ask to take photos," he says. "I guess it might be because I still do take the photo after all, I'm not some cruel monster who only does videos." 

Oh, and don't worry. Mehedinti's managed to stay out of the dog house for these videos. 

"Luckily, she didn't end up killing me for continuing these shenanigans," he joked. 

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You've never been to a saloon. Maybe there was a kitschy bar in your hometown with "saloon" in its name, but, rest assured, it was in name only. You've never been to a bonafide, old-fashioned saloon, because Prohibition wiped them off the map. 

If you're a woman or a man who cares about women, the death of the
saloon was a good thing. Saloons were generally the dirty, male-dominated spaces that sapped their families' finances and barred women from having any fun inside themselves. While saloons frequently functioned as working-class community centers, few welcomed female patrons who weren't sex workers.

By pretty much all accounts, saloons could be and often were nasty places. They bred machismo, reeked of stale beer and sometimes featured "piss troughs" at the bar. (These may have been meant to catch spilled beer, but the name hints at a darker purpose.) Often their windows were tinted or covered so passersby couldn't see who was there or what they were doing. There were so many of these establishments, and their alcoholic commodities so popular, that beer was cheaper than water, author Catherine Gilbert Murdock told The Huffington Post. 

Americans had different reasons for voting to enact the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act -- together banning the production and sale of alcohol -- in 1920. Some were interested in promoting Christian morality, or improving national health and productivity. But American women, a group that gained political momentum over the latter half of the 19th century, were especially focused on eradicating saloon culture. Not everyone's motivations were entirely pure -- the primarily middle-class movement being tinged with some xenophobia and classism -- but, to many women, Prohibition meant cleaning up the behavior of men they called husbands and fathers. 

"Having a husband who had a drinking problem could be a really serious issue," Juilliard professor Lisa Andersen told The Huffington Post. Saloons were where their husbands got drunk, spending the family's hard-earned money on beer or gambling. (Hilariously, the novelist Jack London once described saloons as places where "men talked with great voices, laughed great laughs and there was an atmosphere of greatness.") Some became alcoholics, coming home to abuse their wives and children, or unable to hold onto a job. Andersen noted that certain women even filed civil suits against saloons and bartenders for the income their husbands drank away.

"Historically, it is not America that has had a drinking problem, it is American men," Murdock wrote in Domesticating Drink: Men, Women, and Alcohol in America 1870-1940. In defeating the saloon, however priggish their mission seemed, women hoped they could better protect the home. 

Prohibition, or the Noble Experiment, would come to be known as a failure: People drank anyway, many thoroughly, and newspaper headlines were littered with fresh incidents of gangster violence. But the movement did succeed in one critical way: Saloons shut down. And in their place came a new social drinking culture, where men and women imbibed together at hidden speakeasy bars.

"In the 1920s, women became people," Murdock said, noting that the glittering picture of flappers in fur coats was mostly limited to big metropolitan areas like New York. Outside those places, drinking during Prohibition was a much more ho-hum affair. Nonetheless, the image of carefree coed drinking was a compelling one that would be immortalized in movies and other media for decades.

With saloons out of business, "the rules of the past [went] out the window with it," journalist Daniel Okrent, author of Last Call: The Rise And Fall Of Prohibition, told HuffPost. "Then it [became] kind of sporting for men and women to go [drink] together." Speakeasies made adjustments to attract patrons of both sexes, including offering table service so women needn't go up to the bar. They played music. People danced. 

Prohibition also kicked open the gate to hard liquor for women. Sure, it was covered up with sweet syrups in a cocktail, but you probably wouldn't have wanted to drink it straight anyway -- much of the liquor available in the Prohibition era was disgusting. And so the "gatekeeping status" of hard liquor as a man's drink, Andersen explained, no longer applied. Increasingly, drinking became a social pastime for men and women alike -- and, more importantly, something they could do together. 

Were it not for Prohibition, it's difficult to say when widespread co-ed public drinking and socializing would have turned into a popular pastime. Saloons would have likely died out eventually. Gender relations were already quickly changing, most notably when women finally won the right to vote beginning in 1920 -- the same year Prohibition went into effect.

Technological advances also would have likely created more social drinking opportunities for women even without Prohibition, as more people bought refrigerators, and canned beer made at-home drinking more convenient.

"Absolutely, the saloon would have disappeared," Okrent said. But Prohibition inarguably expedited the process.

After 13 years, Prohibition was repealed on December 5, 1933, and legal drinking establishments sprung back into action. But not in the same way. Speakeasy bar culture had won out. And while some bars remained male-only into the 1970s, the macho air of saloon culture no longer exclusively governed public drinking. 

There are certainly many aspects of American drinking culture that are still gendered, as Michelle McClellan, an assistant history professor at the University of Michigan, told HuffPost over email. Particularly in one place.

"Sports bars certainly retain that association of masculinity with drinking leftover from the saloon era," McClellan wrote, "while certain cocktails seem marked as feminine." Perhaps you've heard of an apple martini.

We're still battling for equality between genders in all areas of society, bars included. But thanks in small part to one of America's greatest failures, women can now sit down in any dingy watering hole they please and enjoy a drink. 

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Today, Joan Didion turns 81. 

Most of the writer's devotees and critics agree upon the fact that in her carefully woven sentences, whether fictional, personal or reported, "her subject is always herself." So, in honor of Didion turning the big 8-1, I'd like to share a short anecdote in which the subject is me.

Women writers love Joan Didion. This love may have sprung initially from a certain black-and-white photo of a stylish intellectual, arms crossed, cigarette in hand, eyes daring you to look away. But of course, there's so much more. 

We love her because she is unsentimental yet evocative, gifted and industrious in technique but open to errors and loose ends in signification. She molds sentences with scientific precision, every rearranged comma ever so slightly recalibrating the assertion made, the story told, the reality reflected, only to settle matters with an inconclusive "who knows?" thus embracing the chaotic, unsayable reality that inevitably lurks after every sentence break. 

But also, we love her because she's short and sometimes can't say words good. 

Didion says so herself. In the preface to 1968's Slouching Towards Bethlehem, a collection of essays on California culture and chaos, she writes: "My only advantage as a reporter is that I am so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive, and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to forget my presence runs counter to their best interests. And it always does."

For me, measuring in at a whopping 5-foot-2, this iconic quote of Didion's was big. Though I may (on occasion) feel competent or even confident while working through ideas on a laptop, as a disembodied voice manifesting itself through keyboard clicks, the moment I pick up the phone to make an interview or walk into a room I feel imposter syndrome flowing through my veins, as if I've been caught guilty of catfishing someone after years, and am awaiting a big, Dr. Phil-style blowout.

I look young and sound young, and even 26-year-old women who look and sound their age are professionally undermined more than they appreciate. The fact that I laugh four volume notches louder than I talk and that my eyes wander off in directions I can't control doesn't help. I used to wish I could call up the artists I admire for an interview and engage them in a conversation so mutually compelling we'd become pen pals for life. Instead I get a lot of "what?" and "can you repeat that, your voice is really soft."  

In 2012, I was assigned to interview artist James Rosenquist after he was awarded the Isabella and Theodor Dalenson Lifetime Achievement Award. Starting off as a billboard painter, Rosenquist adapted his predilection for popping color and sharp line into painted collages combining patriotic, commercial and surrealist imagery. Making a name for himself in the early '60s alongside artists like Johns, Rauschenberg and Lichtenstein. For me, although I knew little about him or his work, it was a huge deal. 

When I introduced myself I couldn't locate the usual force of breath that buttressed my words. "Hello, darling," he boomed in response. I was nervous and he was patronizing, not in a malicious manner but in a way I felt I deserved for being nervous, meek, young. Rosenquist was around 79 years old at the time of our conversation, I was 23. Not long into our chat, however, he kindly divulged that I did not sound like it. "How old are you, 14? You don't sound a day older than my granddaughter," he said. 

Any pretense that Rosenquist and I were engaged on an even playing field was immediately shot, as his offhand comment dragged me down two generations. I stumbled through, hating myself, and wrote up a dull Q&A in which I described Rosenquist as "gently cocky," whatever that means.

This isn't to say that James Rosenquist is an asshole, which he's not. Or that I'm operating on Joan Didion levels of fly-on-the-wall observations followed by brilliant exposés, which I'm most definitely not. It's about, in the wise words of my colleague Tricia Tongco, "recognizing the moments when you feel the most powerless and imbuing them with power."

After years of feeling hugely disadvantaged by my diminutive stature and propensity for saying "great!" in situations that should not be qualified as such, I realized it's quite the opposite. As an observer by profession, being small, inarticulate, overlooked, and underestimated is a gift. Every conversation becomes its own little ritual of espionage.

It's such a powerful realization, that this thing you've been fighting is a valuable weapon itself. That you don't have to network or banter or have the perfect handshake. You just have to write. 

Trivialize me, condescend me, let your guard down. It's not our conversation that will be remembered, it's what I write on paper. Or, laptop, whatever. Great. 

Happy birthday, Joan Didion, from a fellow tongue-tied shortie. 

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After nearly two centuries, we may finally know where humbugs come from.

Scrooge is a name that's become synonymous with being a curmudgeon. He's greedy, stingy, surly and, in the case of "A Muppet Christmas Carol," looks an awful lot like Michael Caine. But it turns out there may be a big reason Scrooge is such a miser.

The theory:  Scrooge is so stingy because he lived through the Napoleonic Wars and knows what economic hardship is really like.

Image: Buzzfeed

Whaaaaat? Is Napoleon indirectly responsible for possibly the biggest tightwad ever? 

Redditor themightyheptagon explains that because the Charles Dickens story was published in 1843, and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows Scrooge his death one year later, "presumably" of old age, you can probably assume Scrooge is around 60 years old when the story happens.

If that's the case, Scrooge would be about 20 years old when Britain declared war on France in 1803, and the Napoleonic Wars got underway. The wars lasted more than a decade. In 1806, Napoleon issued the Berlin Decree as a trade embargo to weaken Britain. The next year, Thomas Jefferson also issued the Embargo Act of 1807 against Britain, causing the country to face more economic hardship.

As the Redditor says:

When you consider that Scrooge was in his early 20s when all this was going on, and likely just striking out on his own and trying to make money, you can understand why he might have grown up into a surly old miser with a chip on his shoulder.

So according to the theory, Scrooge may have had a good reason for being stingy after all. He knows what economic hardship is like, and that shaped the person he became.

Could this really be the reason Scrooge holds on to his money? Is this why he gets especially irritated when people blow their savings on Christmas? Could this even be why his relationship with Belle fell apart? He feared raising children in poverty?

The Huffington Post reached out to experts to get their take, and, though there are varying opinions, they offered some more evidence.

Claire Jarvis, an author and assistant professor in the Stanford English department, told us "there are a lot of reasons Scrooge is the way he is."

"The Napoleonic Wars thing is interesting because the early part of the 19th century is a period not just of trade embargoes but religious rioting," she added. "You have the Gordon Riots, which were the pro-Catholic riots, and then you have, a little bit later in the century, the Chartist movement. You have things leading up to that, so you have people who are also frustrated with the changes in England's internal structure."

Jarvis also had more evidence from the book to support the theory. "In the section with the Ghost of Christmas Present, he’s going through the list of all of the food that he sees in the shop windows, and one of the things that he sees is French Plums," she said. "And that’s really interesting, right? Because it makes it clear that the present is once free trade starts happening. That’s after the embargoes that were happening earlier in the 19th century."

Jarvis said England was going through a series of "booms and crashes" at the time, and the story shows Scrooge was very familiar with economic hardship.

"Scrooge’s vision of his childhood is a vision of deprivation," she explained. "The house that he lives in is a red brick house, but it’s empty. The windows are broken. It’s in disrepair. When he has the next vision of his sister, it seems like that deprivation is gone. It seems like his father has had a turn in his fortune. He’s at school. He’s being brought home by his sister from school, so it seems like there’s a kind of cycle. So it may also be that his love for money comes from an experience of those boom and bust periods." 

Still, Jarvis wasn't down with everything about the theory. For one, she thinks Scrooge may be even older. 

"When you see Marley’s face in the door knocker, Scrooge worried that he’s going to see Marley’s pigtail coming out of the backside, and men didn't wear pigtails in the early 19th century. They only wear them up until the beginning of the 19th century, so that definitely puts them as young men maybe in the 1790s," she said. According to the prof, Scrooge is likely in his 60s or 70s, and might've been born as early as the 1770s.

Jarvis also said you can't forget the love plot has a lot to do with "Scrooge's failure."

Image: Hooplaha

Jarvis brought up a moment when Belle calls Scrooge out. "She says, 'When we got engaged when we were young, we both had nothing and we wanted to work toward better times, but now if you got engaged with someone, I know you’d get engaged with someone for money,' and he doesn’t really correct her," Jarvis said. "It's pretty harsh."

Other themes Dickens is interested in, and possible causes for Scrooge's behavior, include the shift from the city to the country and the impact work has on your life. Jarvis explained: "This is a period of deep anxiety in England for a lot of different reasons. It’s not just the Napoleonic Wars. It’s also the rise of industrialism. One of the big things that Dickens is really digging in on in this book, one he picks up in many other texts, is that you need to protect parts of your life from work."

HuffPost also reached out to Judith Flanders, a historian and author of The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens' London. Flanders expanded on the economic hardships of the time, saying the British government passed a series of laws from 1815 onward that kept the price of flour and wheat artificially high, and the 1840s saw crop failures across Europe. Though it's possible Dickens used historical events to influence Scrooge, Flanders said she wouldn't jump to that conclusion.

"Dickens was writing at the time of those historical facts; he might or might not have used the economic situation as a ‘reason’ for his character’s personality, but I’ve never checked to see if we know this -- if he mentioned it in letters, for example," she said. "Otherwise, I don’t think we can ascribe the formation of a fictional character to real historical events."

Were the Napoleonic Wars and harsh economic conditions part of the reason Scrooge is a Scrooge? Or is this just a big bah humbug?

Whatever side of the argument you're on, as Scrooge says ...

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Every week, The WorldPost asks an expert to shed light on a topic driving headlines around the world. We recently spoke with photographer Marcus Bleasdale about his work in the Central African Republic.

Pope Francis brought his appeal for peace into a war zone last weekend when he visited the Central African Republic, a country torn apart by violence between Muslim and Christian militias.

Muslims and Christians alike celebrated the pope's visit. Once he left, however, violence returned. A Muslim man was found dead on Tuesday after he tried to leave a Muslim enclave encircled by the mostly Christian anti-Balaka militia in the capital of Bangui. Two days later, rebels from the mainly Muslim Seleka movement killed eight civilians at a camp for displaced people near the central town of Bambari.

Fighting erupted in the Central African Republic in 2013 when the Seleka seized control of the government, and the anti-Balaka militias emerged to fight their brutal rule. The violence quickly spun out of control as atrocities by both militias against civilians mounted, leaving at least 5,000 people dead and nearly 1 million displaced. The conflict has been simmering since a peace deal was signed last July. Presidential elections planned for October were postponed after violence flared again in the capital.

The WorldPost spoke to Marcus Bleasdale, an award-winning photographer who witnessed some of the most horrific days of the conflict. He and Human Rights Watch's director of emergencies, Peter Bouckaert, traveled through the war-ravaged country, collecting testimonies and images published by Human Rights Watch, National Geographic and Foreign Policy magazine. A photo book of his work,The Unravelling: Central African Republic, with essays by Bouckaert and a foreword by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, was published last month.

Why did you call the series and book "The Unravelling"?

Essentially that's what we witnessed. We witnessed the unraveling of a country, the unraveling of a government and the unraveling of relationships amongst different ethnic groups and religious groups that had been forged over generations. Historically, Central African Republic has been a place that people came to for refuge -- they came from Chad, Congo and Sudan over the last 100 years or so. Different ethnic groups and religious groups have been living together and intermarrying for years and years. This whole eclectic relationship that had developed in the country unraveled within weeks.

You’ve covered the Central African Republic, and other conflicts in the region, for decades. Were you shocked by how fast and badly things unraveled in CAR?

I wasn't so shocked about the original takeover of the government by the Seleka movement. What was more shocking was after the Seleka were dissolved, how quickly the uprising against the Muslim population started, and how aggressive and violent and personal it became, very, very quickly. 

Why did you feel it was so important to document this descent into violence?

I first went to document the human rights abuses under the Muslim Seleka government with Human Rights Watch in August 2013. We returned in December, and were there on Dec. 5 when the anti-Balaka had this quite clearly coordinated attack on several towns throughout the country that lasted several days. When we returned in early 2015, the Seleka movement fled Bangui to northern regions, and Bangui and other towns rose up and started to attack the Muslim population and their property.

It was extraordinarily underreported by the world's media. There were times when I could count possibly three, four or five different journalists and photographers in the country at any time. It was just desperately under-covered, so much so that nobody knew what was going on. The United Nations wouldn't travel into the regions because of the security issues and the restrictions they had. So, the only way we were going to learn about what was going on and engage people -- like the French government, for example -- to come in and try to calm the situation down with peacekeepers was do this reporting with Human Rights Watch.

Has working on this conflict changed you, personally or professionally?

Yes, definitely. It was an extraordinarily violent conflict, and a very personal one in that most of the killing was very accessible. We were present on many, many occasions in which people were being attacked and killed in front of us, and there was nothing you could do about it because it was mob rule. When there's 200 to 300 people killing one person in front of you there's nothing you can do but record it, to make sure that the people who are committing the atrocities are held to account at a later date. When you see that sort of behavior and you see it at such proximity and carried out with such hatred, of course that has an impact on you.

Has it changed the way I work? I think it's more that I appreciate how it is more important than ever to cover these underreported stories, especially when news organizations don't have the resources to put people on the ground. We were in the Central African Republic on the 20th anniversary of Rwanda's genocide. We were witnessing again this very personal hatred, and I think if it wasn't for the NGOs and human rights groups who were there and their very effective reporting and advocacy, it could very easily have been another Rwanda.

Do you have a favorite photo from this series? 

I don't think any of the photos I took at that time can be classed as favorites. It's not the easiest body of work I've ever had to take and use.

But I think the one that moved me most was the one I took of the reunification between a mother and her son, after her son Eliam had been abducted by the Seleka with his father. We found Eliam and his father exhausted on the side of the road with his father after they'd managed to escape from the Seleka, and we took him back to his family. That was a very moving moment. That moment of hope, of enduring love between a mother and her son, was probably a moment that will stay with me for a long time.

The conflict in CAR can often feel so remote to outsiders. Who are some of the unsung heroes that you think people should know about?

There were a lot of people, from both religious communities as well as civilians, who protected people during the attacks. There were many priests who protected the Muslim populations in their towns. They risked their lives in order to secure the safety of people who are from the religion that was attacking their own people. There are many stories of many imams doing that and many stories of many priests doing that -- too numerous to mention. 

Do you think the pope’s visit will have any impact on the conflict?

This is a question I've been asking myself. I think what it can do is bring attention to what's going on there, but yet again, despite the amount of interventions we have made into countries like the Central African Republic over the years, we seem to be still unsure about how to move forward.

While I think democracy is the way forward, it's very difficult to see how we can have an election in this country without the majority of the Muslim population, who are in camps in Cameroon and in Chad, and call that government legitimate. And at the same time, there are still armed groups from all sides roaming around and the intimidation that goes on is huge. So, I don't see how we can force a process on a country so early, without trying at least some form of demobilization and disarmament of militia, and reasonable security for the civilian population.

The pope's visit will focus attention on the issues of Central African Republic for what, five minutes, 10 minutes, a day, two days? But, really what we should be doing is focusing our attention on this whole concept of the policy of forcing elections on a country that maybe isn't quite ready. 

What is perpetuating the violence there at the moment?

The Seleka movement is fracturing -- some parts of the movement would like to sit around the table and have a dialogue, some are quite happy with the status quo, and others would like partitioning between the Muslim population in the north and the Christian population in the south. There is as much intergroup fighting as there is fighting between anti-Balaka and Seleka.

If you travel into the regions you can see that these organizations are essentially mini fiefdoms. They're profit centers for the commanders in those zones. All of the natural resources the country had -- gold, diamonds and timber -- are earning the people controlling these remote areas a fortune. 

It's clear what's happening when you see the types of weapons that people have. The anti-Balaka are no longer walking around with just hunting rifles, they're now armed with AK-47s and RPGs and reasonably professional grenades. It's also clear that the Seleka are receiving outside funding and support.

Do you plan to return to CAR in the near future?

Yes, I'm currently doing a project there for National Geographic magazine, continuing the work we've been doing there.

This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.

More from The WorldPost's Weekly Interview Series:

- What Is The State Of Political Islam Today?
- Formerly Jailed Journalist Explains Iran's Recent Crackdown On Dissent  - Why Myanmar's Upcoming Election Is So Historic
- What Made Dozens Of People Hide In The Laotian Forest For Years?

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Excited about this street art, we are.

Yoda, famed for training up Jedi for combat in the Star Wars epic, has been turned into a multi-colored peace activist for this new mural in Miami.

The Grand Jedi Master is pictured carrying a placard that simply reads, "Stop Wars" in the font of the franchise.

Eduardo Kobra, from Brazil, is behind the new piece in the Wynwood art district, according to Mashable. 

Well known for his bold and brightly colored kaleidoscopic themed work, he posted the image on his Instagram and Facebook pages Thursday.

It's the latest in a long line of gigantic murals from the artist.

Martin Luther King Jr., the Dalai Lama, Formula One racing driver Ayrton Senna, Albert Einstein and Tupac Shakur are just some of the portraits he's painted.

In 2013 he paid tribute, with four other artists, to the recently deceased architect Oscar Niemeyer, from Brazil, by covering the entire side of a Sao Paulo skyscraper with an image of his face.

He's also recreated the VJ Day kiss in Times Square, New York, in street art form on 25th Street at 10th Avenue in Chelsea.

Kobra's social media profiles and website are filled with stunning examples of his work, including this time-lapse video of him painting Abraham Lincoln on Water Street in Lexington, Kentucky, in 2012:

The Force is indeed strong with this one.

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Christmas is a time for giving, sharing and -- let's be honest -- the occasional argument. 

And this hilarious NSFW parody Yule Log video posted to YouTube tells it exactly how it is.

The crackling sound of the cosy fire and seasonally-themed jazz music are repeatedly interrupted by a bickering married couple.

The husband and wife, who we never see, argue over everything from how high the ornaments should go on the tree to the fact they're running out of ice.

Curse words and the F-bomb are launched at each other, especially when the woman questions how much alcohol her partner is drinking.

YouTube user sjshock posted the 57 minute clip online on Nov. 27. It's not known where the producers are from. But it appears to have touched a nerve with viewers, with one dubbing it as "the most Christmassy thing I've ever seen."

Actor and comedian Nick Offerman this year offers up an alternative Yule Log video, where he sits next to a fireplace sipping scotch as part of a Lagavulin promotion.

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Severe weather has never looked so good.

"Stormscapes 3," the newest ultra-HD time-lapse weather video from Nicolaus Wegner, shows both the beauty and the ferocity of nature. The clip features supercells and other rotating systems, a tornado, daytime cloud formations and nighttime storms. 

There's also crepuscular rays, rainbows and plenty of lightning -- so much lightning that the video comes with a warning: 

"If you suffer from any negative photosensitive reactions to strobing or flashing lights, it might be advisable to skip the night focused lightning sequences of Stormscapes 3. They are...intense...welcome to mother nature's dance party (it's even crazier in person). The last two minutes are almost nothing but lightning sequences. Stop watching immediately if it becomes too much for you."

Check it out in the clip above (unless you have negative photosensitive reactions).

For more incredible weather footage, take a look at Wegner's "Stormscapes" and "Stormscapes 2." 

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