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The Unconventional Way This Ad Campaign Is Promoting Breastfeeding

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A new ad campaign is giving breastfeeding a supermarket-style twist. 


North Carolina ad agency BooneOakley created pro-breastfeeding stickers resembling the ones you find on fruits and vegetables in grocery stores. The stickers feature text about some of the purported health benefits of nursing and phrases like "Locally Grown," "Guaranteed Fresh" and "100% Natural." They also serve as a memory aid to remind moms which breast to nurse from next.


BooneOakley also put together a series of posters that show photos of the stickers on pregnant and nursing women's breasts. 



According to the BooneOakley website, "This campaign was created to help promote the benefits of breastfeeding in Lancaster General's Women and Babies Hospital."


"The concept came from seeing fruit stickers in the produce aisle," the website states, adding, "As soon as people see a fruit sticker they know that the product is healthy and natural. That's the same way we want women to feel about breastfeeding. These posters show expecting and new moms that 'the best nutrition for your baby is you.'"


The posters may be considered NSFW to some, but the agency was purposeful in its decision to show nipples. In an interview with Adweek, BooneOakley copywriter Mary Gross explained, "We're so used to breasts being sexualized. But to a newborn, it's nutrition. You don't censor fruits and vegetables, do you?"


Keep scrolling for a look at the pro-breastfeeding campaign posters.



H/T Adweek


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Wild Photo Series Depicts Apocalyptic Girl Squads In Their Element

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In his series "Future Fatigue," artist Bryn DC explores the war waged on women with women who can, frankly, kick your butt.


Through war paint, horned helmets and gas masks, Bryn creates a cinematic and dusty future full of violence with women at its center.


"I wanted to deconstruct the representation of strong women I kept seeing in the media, remove the sexualization and just have them be what they were, strong women," Bryn said in an email to The Huffington Post. 



Bryn's vision, which he calls "a place of neon-grit and violent gangs," and the title of the series originally came out of his own struggle with chronic fatigue. He has been suffering from it one and off for the past four years.


"At its worst, I feel that it is never going to end and this fills me with dread toward my future; that I will never get to create what I need to, never get to create the things that make me tick," Bryn said.


"This series was a reaction to that, my way of proving that no matter how exhausted I am, I keep on keeping on. I think most of us feel a similar dread toward the future, our apocalyptic world-view, but we continue and hopefully that alone is enough to change where we are heading," he continued.



More of Bryn's work can be found on Instagram and Facebook.


 


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Meet Isla, The New Gerber Baby Contest Winner

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There's a new Gerber baby on the block! Today, the iconic baby food brand announced the winner of its annual Gerby Baby Photo Search contest: 7-month-old Isla from Troy, Michigan.



A panel of judges selected Isla out of 170,300 entrants to be the new Gerber "spokesbaby." As the winner, she will appear in a 2016 Gerber ad, and her parents will receive a $50,000 grand prize and $1,500 in Gerber children's clothes. 


"Isla is always so happy, and we really think it showed in her winning photo," her mom Rachael stated in the official press release. "She's got that same smile on her face every day. Plus her hair is so cute and crazy -- it just adds to her adorable personality!"


"We still can’t believe we won because there were so many gorgeous entries, but we are so excited and grateful to see what the rest of the year holds as the 2015 Photo Search winners!" she added.


Gerber's Senior Marketing Manager Bernadette Tortorella noted in the press release, "While we received so many incredible entries, the judges all fell in love with Isla’s cheeky smile and awesome hair. We are so thrilled to be celebrating our sixth annual Photo Search winner!"


Congratulations, baby Isla! 


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Ai Weiwei Quits Denmark Over Controversial Refugees Law

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Artist and activist Ai Weiwei has long used his art to make a political statement, from Lego portraits of human rights activists to sculptures that highlight government corruption in China. Now the artist, who is working on a memorial on the Greek island of Lesbos—a major point of entry for migrants attempting to enter the European Union—is using his art to challenge a controversial new regulation for asylum seekers in Denmark.


 

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Romantic Comedies Teach Women That Stalking Is A Compliment

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There’s a long list of reasons to love romantic comedies. The triumph of true love. The frantic run through the airport. The getting-dressed-for-a-big-date montage. There are lots of reasons to hate the genre, too. It’s so white, so heteronormative, so predictable, and so hellbent on convincing us that genetically gifted, gorgeous women are actually homely hags in need of a makeover. And now there’s another reason to be wary: A new study suggests watching romantic comedies makes women more likely to tolerate stalking in real life.


The study, published recently in Communication Research, found that participants who watched movies in which men’s “persistent pursuit” of women was depicted as romantic -- as it so often is in rom coms -- were more likely to subscribe to stalking myths.


Stalking myths are the misconceptions that underpin our conventional wisdom about the crime. They include ideas like "many alleged stalking victims are actually people who played hard to get and changed their minds afterwards," "stalking has no serious, lasting impact on the victim," and the notion that lots of stalking "could be avoided if the alleged victim would have just told his/her stalker clearly that s/he was definitely not interested in a romantic relationship."


And then, there’s the myth that is central to so many romantic comedies: "An individual who goes to the extremes of stalking must really feel passionately for his/her love interest." He stalked you because he just loves you so much. It’s romantic.


Take the scene in "Love, Actually" in which Keira Knightley’s character discovers that her new husband’s best friend has been secretly filming her while simultaneously treating her like garbage -- the former because he claims to love her, the latter as "a self-preservation thing." She’s shocked, but the movie directs us to overlook the total creepiness of the close-up camcorder shots he’s taken and hoarded in his apartment, and to instead empathize with his tortured, unrequited love. Later, when he shows up at Knightley's character's house and wordlessly professes his love while her husband, his best friend, sits unknowingly upstairs, it’s supposed to be the romantic climax of their storyline, and it remains one of the most beloved moments of this modern classic.





Or look at the adorable 13-year-old in "Crazy, Stupid, Love," who adorably tells his babysitter how much he loves her, even when she asks him -- in writing -- to stop. After he cutely publicly humiliates her in front of her classmates (twice), she capitulates and gives him an envelope full of nude photos of herself to tide him over until he’s old enough to date her. So romantic! Maybe he learned that kind of behavior from his dad (Steve Carell), who sneaks into his wife's backyard under cover of darkness after they've separated and mows the lawn? Oh, and while he's doing that, Carell's character creepily watches his wife through the window, unbeknownst to her. Though most rom-com stalking, like most real-life stalking, is of women by men, female characters in romantic comedies also engage in stalking that’s depicted as proof of true love and passion. See Meg Ryan’s character in "Sleepless in Seattle," who abuses her professional resources and flies across the country to creepily lurk outside the house of a guy she heard once on the radio.





Julia Lippman, the University of Michigan professor who conducted the study, found that, when participants watched films in which “persistent pursuit” was depicted as frightening, they became less likely to agree with stalking myths. But, when they watched a romantic comedy -- Lippman used "There’s Something About Mary" -- and they perceived it as realistic, they became more likely to agree with them. Watching romanticized, seemingly realistic portrayals of stalking behavior, in other words, made women more likely to accept stalking behavior as desirable.


Lippman’s participants were all women, which is fitting, given that women comprise a sizable majority of the audience for romantic comedies. It’s also important, because it has implications for the prosecution of stalkers who target women.


"Men are socialized to be persistent and women are socialized to be flattered by it," Lippman told The Huffington Post. "And 9 times out of 10 it’s not a problem and it’s not abuse." About 3.4 million Americans are affected by stalking every year; 78 percent of victims are women, and 87 percent of perpetrators are men. And, Lippman notes, at the outset, it can be hard to spot red flags that signal the unhealthy and dangerous behavior that may follow -- especially if you’ve been desensitized by cultural messaging that tells you persistent pursuit is romantic.


"We’re taught that we should want this from men," Lippman said. "That it means we’re desirable. And who doesn’t want to be desirable?"


But when flattering pursuit becomes frightening stalking, and you want law enforcement to intervene to protect you, that socialization comes back to bite you. Not only do women have to contend with a criminal justice system that has been shaped by stalking myths -- like the fiction that most stalkers are strangers (they aren’t), or that stalking is just a petty nuisance (it’s not) -- they also have to explain why they didn’t spot the future stalker right from the start. "Personnel at every step of the legal process subject the stalking victim to scrutiny," the study notes, "and if she behaves in ways that suggest anything other than her unequivocal rejection of the pursuer, her behavior can be -- and often is -- used as a reason not to prosecute, or to find in favor of the pursuer if the case does go to trial."


When women accept stalking myths, when they’re socialized to perceive abusive behavior as flattering, “it’s a lot harder to prosecute because [police] ask, ‘why didn’t you say no at the outset?’” Lippman told HuffPost. “Because that’s not how relationships work. It’s easy to say in hindsight that it was a red flag, but at the time, it’s like ‘this is a cute how-I-met-your-mother story.’” Those red flags, this study suggests, can be even harder to spot when the movies you watch depict stalking behavior not as stalking behavior, but as normal and desirable courtship.


Perversely, some courts appear to recognize how those depictions shape the expectations of stalkers, but not of their targets. Last year in Australia, a man accused of stalking two women used the "Bollywood defense": he told the court that he "learned from Bollywood movies that relentlessly pursuing women was the only way to woo them." His case was thrown out.


But, the study suggests, the answer isn’t to Ban All Rom Coms. Rather, there’s a causal link between watching portrayals of stalking as frightening, and taking the crime seriously; participants who watched those depictions were less likely to endorse stalking myths than they were before viewing those movies. So, given that reboots are so hot right now, it’s clear that we need a new "Love, Actually." Only this time, Keira Knightley will tell the "Walking Dead" guy to stop being such a creepy stalker and get the hell away from her doorstep.


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Mesmerizing Graphics Strip Classic Books Down To Their Punctuation

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Grammar buffs may love their commas and apostrophes. But, day to day, punctuation marks are the unappreciated workhorses of textual communication.


Data visualization artist Nicholas Rougeux's new project, "Between the Words," shines a spotlight on the punctuation of classic novels, and though he comes from what he describes as a "grammatically correct upbringing," zeroing in on punctuation marks was something of a happy mistake.


Inspired in part by Stefanie Posavec's Writing Without Words project, which explored classic books through a number of creative data visualizations, Rougeux began playing with new approaches. "The challenge was to find a new direction," he told The Huffington Post in an email, "because she already explored so many interesting options."


In the course of his tinkering, Rougeux "ended up accidentally removing all the letters in some text and saw that the punctuation left behind was interesting in its own right," he wrote. His finished visualizations, which use free text from Project Gutenberg, cluster the punctuation in a long spiral toward a center illustration, the whole novel in parentheses and dashes on one canvas. 



Rougeux doesn't have any bold claims for what his graphics reveal about literature, writing, "I'm not sure anything revolutionary is revealed." But in the absence of what we most often focus on -- the words -- we're able to see how different authors put punctuation to work in telling their stories, and how even such simple marks might ebb and flow over the course of a single narrative. 


"There seems to be an abundance of exclamation marks in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and A Christmas Carol," he pointed out, "probably because of so many expressions of surprise or loud reactions throughout the stories." Fitting, for books with fantastical elements and a strong appeal to younger audiences. 


Meanwhile, James Joyce's Ulysses seems to follow none of the common patterns, frequently breaking into strings of parentheses and dashes. "The last episode is most notable for its lack of punctuation in just a couple run-on sentences," pointed out Rougeux. "The last few slashes and hyphens in the center of that poster are all that make up the last episode." In comparison to the more traditional novels in his project, most of which are littered with dense passages of quotation marks, even the punctuation in Ulysses signals its experimental nature.


Rougeux told HuffPost he hopes to branch out into poetry for future punctuation graphics, such as Edgar Allan Poe. What would "The Raven" say if it only had exclamation points and em dashes?


View the full collection at Rougeux's website.










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Painter Vanessa Prager Talks Beauty And Makeup, And Art Too

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Makeup both accentuates the real, obscures the imperfect, and actualizes the artificial. A little blush can highlight the cheekbone while some concealer can brighten up those dark eye circles. Mascara, when clumped on layer after layer, becomes something almost inhuman; lacquered eyelashes appear like a spider dipped in tar.


Painter Vanessa Prager likens her maximalist oil paintings to women's cosmetics. They paint a picture that's not quite real and not quite fake, a carefully constructed combination of fact and handy contouring. Prager's densely layered paintings, with pigment applied so thickly it forms its own topography, contain too much visual information to digest right away.



The various strokes of color -- a ribbon of white like a squirt of toothpaste, a sharp sliver of green like a fish darting by -- come together to form different visual narratives. No two viewers encounter the same portrait the same way, just as no two people encounter the same person the same way. 


Prager's current exhibition at The Hole NYC is titled "Voyeur," referencing both a person who likes making the private public, and a person who gets sexual pleasure from secretly watching others.


In a conversation with The Huffington Post, Prager discussed the excitement of looking where one should not in relation to social media. "Information about people is everywhere," Prager said. "You meet someone and you find out about them before you even want to."



As any social media user or online dater knows all too well, what you find out about people is often not true. "People add their own information into things; they’ll make up their own stories of people or things or how great they can be and how perfect it all is. Things can be any which way depending on what you add to them."


Like, for example, a favorite book you've never actually read. Or a second layer of mascara to really plump them up. 


"I'm playing with idea of the voyeur as this Peeping Tom," Prager continued, "getting pleasure out of things that are not necessarily real, but also not not real. It's based on your own experience, on what you’re imagining it to be. There is a salaciousness to it, a danger in creating the whole thing before it’s actually real."



In the studio, Prager works on a bunch of paintings at once, throwing down paint almost at random until a face or figure starts to emerge. "I don’t like a nice perfect face," she said. Using knives, toothbrushes, and occasionally her hands, Prager adds layers of paint, piling on a chaotic array of colors until the canvas is wet with peaks and valleys, every errant stroke only an impetus for more and more pigment. 


"Anytime I make a 'mistake' painting, I add to it," Prager said. "I never take it away. Maximalism -- more, more, more. It's all there underneath. The paintings are living breathing creatures to me. They evolve. Sometimes somebody will accidentally touch a piece and it’s totally okay."



Eventually, the paintings' chaos subsides and features emerge from the multicolored swamps to form likenesses. Prager's creations creep out from the material itself; there is never a source image. But they are fabrications of paint, as heavily premeditated as a self-aware online persona.


The results beg to be felt, like a pelt of colorful sludge, too. "The furriness makes them these cozy, lush things that you can fall into," Prager added. "Touch them, eat them. You want to be in them -- or, at least that’s the intention."



The "Voyeur" portraits, lined up like a string of People You May Know, explore the relationship between the palatable surface and the ugly buildup underneath, and the way both come together to form something complicated, beautiful.


In the Hole's exhibit, Prager toys with just how much we're allowed to see of each work and just how much we want to see. Some paintings are hung so the viewer is closed in a confined space while confronting the work. Another can only be accessed through a peephole. Despite our desire to see more and more, Prager only allows entry to the very surface.


"The ways that people deal with imperfection is really interesting to me. There is a comfortability that comes with exposing yourself and being okay," she concluded. "Makeup is a perfect example -- it can cover things up or accentuate who you are. What you see on top isn’t necessarily what’s below. What you see on the surface or a certain angle isn’t necessarily the whole thing."


"Voyeur" runs until February 29, 2016 at The Hole NYC. 



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How To Turn Thrift Store Figurines Into Naughty Works Of Art

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At first glance, the diminutive ceramic figures of English artist Amy Douglas look like something you might spot at an antique store and pick up to surprise Grandma. The refurbished Staffordshire figurines, part of a longstanding tradition in English folk art, sure do look good on a mantle. 


But keep on looking and certain details come to light. For example, the oh-so-respectable looking king in the white ensemble and triumphant pose -- he's holding a golden dildo. Ah, and a giant penis is emerging from the ground beneath him in the direction of his crotch. Yes, his name is King Dick. 



Douglas is no traditional folk artist. She's in the business of ceramic intervention, finding broken figurines at thrift stores and junk shops and rendering them contemporary, absurd, hilarious and sometimes deranged. 


After studying decorative arts, training in matching and replicating colors and surfaces, Douglas worked in ceramic restoration. She developed the tools to play around with the traditional form, transforming broken flea market finds into contemporary art objects. Through her work, Douglas hopes to deceive "the modern viewer into believing what they are seeing is a work of the past."


Staffordshire figures were, back in the day, toys of the common man, sold at fairgrounds depicting curiosities and celebrities and placed proudly on a domestic mantlepiece forevermore. "I have always been interested in the Staffordshire flatbacks as they are very much part of our English folk art," Douglas wrote in an email. "Unfortunately, as many were often displayed on mantelpieces, when dusted, many have broken. These broken pieces I find in Junk shops and carboots, pretty much ready for the tip."



Working with conservation-grade materials, Douglas transforms a fair maiden into a pig-human hybrid who found an online dating profile she liked. 


"How they are broken dictates what I do to them," Douglas added. The content and condition of the statuette leads the way. Some are missing heads or limbs or both. "I either stick with their original story and twist it or make a new history for the piece."


For inspiration, Douglas turns to the resounding weirdness of contemporary, everyday life. "I am nosey and listen to what people say on the bus," she told The Creators Project. And thus, brilliant titles like "We Don't Talk Much But He Is Hung Like A Horse" are born. 



Douglas hopes her motley crew of dogs with absurd nose jobs and princesses with lobster claws will make you pause, and make you laugh. "In our modern fleeting times, attention spans are short," Douglas said, "and this means we have a generation of people not looking very carefully at what is in front of them. Humor I believe is a great tool for unification, we love to laugh and I like to make people smile."


Douglas' statues are on view in "The Art of Salmagundi" at Jack Hanley Gallery until February 7, 2016. All images courtesy of the gallery and artist. 



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Natasha Lyonne And Chloë Sevigny Have Devoted Their Lives To Each Other

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Chloë Sevigny and Natasha Lyonne first met in "someone's backyard." They were filming different movies in Toronto, circa 1999. Seventeen years later, the longtime friends returned to Sundance this week with their fourth film together. Written and directed by Danny Perez, "Antibirth" is about a foolhardy stoner named Lou (Lyonne) who seeks answers after a drug she doesn't remember taking mysteriously makes her pregnant. Sevigny plays her best pal Sadie in the trippy sci-fi mind warp. The Huffington Post sat down with the trio at Sundance, where Lyonne and Sevigny's "Party Monster" premiered in 2003, to discuss their history together, women in pop culture, "American Horror Story" and more. 


Chloë, I was at the premiere for your other movie, "Love & Friendship," a few nights ago. It seemed to play very well. How was your reunion with Whit Stillman and Kate Beckinsale? It's been almost two decades since "The Last Days of Disco."


Sevigny: I think it played really well. I think people wanted to laugh, but they also didn’t want to miss the dialogue. It was really fun. Whit’s a really complex, interesting man. He’s very demanding on the set. It’s funny because you go and you work with someone for the second time, and you think, “Oh, I know all their quirks. I’m coming prepared and I’m not going to let it rattle me.” But Whit still totally shook me to the core.


Is it because he’s a perfectionist? 


Sevigny: Oh, yes. Every day there’s a different actor who he decides he’s going to put through the ringer. So everybody gets their turn.


Lyonne: But the movie’s excellent, though. That’s the bottom line. And they do say that if the movie is a blast and a half and everybody’s having a great time and really great friends, that your movie is probably a piece of shit. But if your movie is up against the elements and you’re going to war and you really have to work hard and you’re having a lot of complicated feelings, then you might just have a good movie on your hands. It sort of sounds like that.


You can’t cast any actress in these "Antibirth" parts. Why were they written for Chloë and Natasha?


Perez: First and foremost, I was a fan. Before I even knew them, I was a fan. I consider myself a movie lover and and a lover of media, as far as TV and music goes. So with Natsha, even before I went to film school, I was like, “That girl’s dope.” She was always the one I had my eye on.



Was there a project of hers that first grabbed you?


Perez: I think “Slums of Beverly Hills” was such an animate, colorful world that she occupied. The chemistry with Kevin Corrigan is so great and it was a very unique character. Then also just being a visually minded person, not even through the lens of the male gaze, I just find her very pleasing to look at. Even in photographs, she fits into my world in a nice way. 


Lyonne: Thanks!


Sevigny: And you guys worked together before. You did that thing together.


Perez: We did a music video and I thought she was amazing in it. Chloë did some amazing wardrobe on her.


Sevigny: That was accidental, but OK. 


For this movie?


Lyonne and Perez: No, no, no. 


Sevigny: Well, yes, for this movie too. 


Lyonne: Well, that’s true, actually. 


Sevigny: I wore a lot of my own clothes. We both did.


Lyonne: We had a wonderful costume guy, but Chloë and Danny are so specific with their aesthetic. Certainly Chloë is an aesthetic genius. “Duh,” you would say. Everybody knows this.


That is your reputation.


[Sevigny rolls her eyes.]


How much of the visuals are written into the script?


Perez: I would say kind of a lot. It comes from my background primarily as a visual artist. Not to say that I’m a window dresser or a very superficial filmmaker in that regard, but that is always the construct I like to put things in: a visual world. Something I wanted to do was achieve a certain duality as far as the sets and costumes -- they're very stylized. But the performances and the language are a little more grounded, a little more gritty. With a movie like this, you’d almost think Natasha would be like, “Oh, my God! This is ca-raaaaaa-zy!” And Chloë would be like, “Girl! You can’t!” But you have to take it down a couple more notches so the scenes are almost dazed and confused. 


Did you always know it would be women at the center?


Perez: Oh, hell yeah.


Why?


Perez: Well, because women are more interesting than men. I don’t want to make another movie about a 30-year-old white guy chasing a girl around Washington Square Park. I don’t want to do that.


Lyonne: That was a great example. It’s true. They always end up under the arch. 


Perez: I think even in this day and age, having a main female character, let alone a crass one or an antihero, in and of itself, is a subversive act. And I’m not saying that to toot my own horn, like, “Oh, I’m so cool because I cast a female lead.” It fucking sucks that there aren’t more female main characters, so this movie definitely pushes that touch of subversion pretty far, in terms of the graphic nature and the things that she does. I think there are a lot of political aspects of this movie and I wanted to fucking put it out there in an entertaining, surreal format.


Lyonne: I do think this movie, what’s interesting about it is, in terms of references, what I would think about for Lou is pretty much all male references. There was a lot of Denzel Washington at the end of “Training Day,” a lot of Ratso Rizzo, like studying Dustin Hoffman, a lot of thinking about Sam Peckinpah guys, even “The Wild Bunch,” like them all sitting in that weird hot tub together laughing maniacally. We are finally getting into a time when people are finally realizing women are pretty happening as a species. It’s a bit of a delayed reaction, but there you have it. That said, I think Lou is a pretty testosterone-driven female lead, which is pretty fun. 



It inverts “Rosemary’s Baby," in terms of a woman confused by her pregnancy. This time, she's not helpless and dependent on a husband to find out what's going on to her own body. She's independent with a female buddy.


Sevigny: I kind of wanted to base my character on, you know “Hairspray”? The best friend. What’s her name? I’ll have to look it up again. Polly or Peggy or something? She was always kind of a ding-dong.


Lyonne: Yeah. Even Divine’s gal pals in “Female Trouble” are like that.


Perez: There’s a certain irreverence, even sloppiness, to those John Waters movies that I like. You get the sense that the sound guy is also the guy in the background of that one shot, and everybody’s having fun. You have these scenes with Natasha and Chloë dancing to Suicide where we’re going for this playful sassiness, kind of thumbing your nose at the culture. I think there’s a looseness to that, as opposed to a polished movie with long dolly moves where everyone is hitting their marks. I think there’s kind of a reckless abandon, if you will.


Did you just look up the "Hairspray" character?


Sevigny, who was just googling something on her phone: Penny! I kept saying Polly. Penny Pingleton. Remember? I was like, “I want to play a character like Penny!”


Perez: But there’s that really dark scene where she gets hit by a cattle prod because she has a black boyfriend. Remember that scene?


Lyonne: Now I’m really thinking about “Rosemary’s Baby” and how messed up and outdated it is, and how unlike this movie it is. I’ve been saying in witty asides that "Antibirth" is like Joe Pesci instead of Mia Farrow. Mia Farrow is sort of like a helpless victim, kind of like a waif who’s walking around and her husband has answers but she has none. She’s fascinating to me because it’s such a legendary, incredible movie. But that's something that we really discussed -- that shift that happens where Lou goes from being a wasteoid to someone who’s like, “I’m not going to be a victim in this situation.” It’s basically the idea that it’s one thing for me to abuse myself; it’s another thing for people to think they have a right to abuse me. Culturally, in terms of the free world and on a feminist trip or whatever, in general, it is free will. You wouldn’t imagine that Joe Pesci would be, like, standing there in a little frilly pastel dress, kind of blindly walking around. Joe Pesci would be like, “Where the fuck are those Satanists? Get me to fucking Satan! I’m going to talk to Lucifer and we are going to fucking figure out this pregnancy.” And I think that’s really what it means. It’s in the vein, and automatically that becomes a wild fucking idea.


Is it ever not going to be a wild fucking idea?


Lyonne: From the inside out, I will say it feels like things are really shifting, and that’s really good news. However, at the same time, when you look at the numbers, it’s staggering. It’s shocking that it has not changed racially or for the female filmmaker or actor. The numbers are probably very different than the experience. Chloë just directed her first short film. I produced this movie. Clea DuVall, who is the director for another film I’m here for, “Intervention,” just made her first movie. It's Jamie Babbit on “Fresno” and Tamara Jenkins and Jenji Kohan, obviously -- a lot of major women in my personal career. And yet, when you look at the numbers, it’s just devastating.


Do you feel like you’ve worked with enough women, Chloë?


Sevigny: I think I’ve worked with some great directors. 


Kimberly Pierce on "Boys Don't Cry," of course. 


Sevigny: Kimberly Pierce, and Mary Harron on “American Psycho.” I worked with two great female directors on this series I did in England called “Hit and Mess.” But no, there’s always a lack. I’ve done many TV shows now for years, and we’re lucky if we have one female director per season. 


Perez: I’m not trying to take Natasha and Chloë, like, “OK, now we’re going to dress you down like you’re 22 years old and have you talk like you’re fucking high schoolers.” Now, the inverse, which I love, is that in the ‘80s and ‘70s, you have these "Porky's" movies where you have 40-year-old men playing teenagers, like, “Hey, Samantha, let’s go skinny-dipping!” This guy is fucking 40 years old! I think that’s just hilarious.


Lyonne: You really see so many threads of this kind of wasteland communities happening across America that are really pretty depressing in their hopelessness. These are people in their 30s and 40s who still haven't been able to eke out a life for themselves, and how dark that is. These characters are more in that world, rather than just like, "Hey, I’m a wasted teenager going through a phase." It’s more about the hopelessness and the depression of America in modern society. 


Perez: It’s fine to be a wasteoid when you’re 20, 25. When you’re 35, it’s little more endemic of other things going on. 



Chloë, this season of “American Horror Story” also explored pregnancies gone awry, with The Countess' vampire children. Not to mention the escalating bizarreness of the visuals.


Sevigny: I know. That’s “American Horror Story.” Is there any way to make sense of it? Is anyone going to rationalize it?


I wouldn’t dare. But I do wonder if seeing the end results of "Hotel" and “Antibirth" are similar experiences. Do they surprise you? Ryan Murphy has a reputation.


Sevigny: Well, in all honesty, I haven’t seen “American Horror Story.” I went to the premiere and I watched the pilot, but, you know, I think it’s like candy. It’s like pop. People love the visuals. He’s kind of forward enough but not too forward, where people can embrace it in the middle of the country. But he is pushing it, and the music was wild and great. We had all this Bauhaus and these gothic references. I think people love that show. It’s the same with Natasha’s show, “Orange Is the New Black” -- somehow it just hits with people. I think it’s great escapism, but I also had my own kind of existential crisis with the violence and the serial-killer storyline.


Can you say more about that?


Sevigny: No. [Laughs]


Lyonne: Well, it is interesting. I mean, Chloë was saying the other day that right now she’s obsessed with “The West Wing.” But it’s worth noting that there are these sort of eras of different kinds of escapism for society, and traditionally it’s been more in the vein of the procedural. And for some reason now, these weirdo, idiosyncratic things -- sure, there may be pop, polished versions, but they really are very dark and absurdist thematically, and people seem to be, I think, bored and played out. We get it, “C.S.I.” We get it, you’re a lawyer. And now people want the deranged world of “American Horror Story,” or the brutal reality and absurdism of female prison. It’s interesting that those are things that have hit such a cord on such a mainstream level. I think it speaks to a boredom in our culture with assembly-line propaganda.


Perez: Speaking to exactly what Chloë said, I think a lot of Middle America can get down with a show with “American Horror Story,” where a guy gets impaled with a screwdriver dildo. It’s pretty extreme stuff. So when you’re trying to get movies financed like this one, you often come across, “That’s not commercial, there’s no market for that, there’s no audience for that.” We’re all like, “What are you telling me? All of my friends watch this stuff and we all think it’s awesome.” It can be frustrating when you have people who try to break it down to categories like that, but the reality is that people are bored.


Are you done with “American Horror Story” after this season?


Sevigny: I don’t know, they haven’t asked me back. I don’t even know if they’re on to the next one year. I think they’re going through “American Crime Story” right now. 


Lyonne: But you would go back. 


Would you, after feeling the way you do about "Hotel"?


Sevigny: Oh, I love “Hotel.” I think it was great. It was so much fun to be on. I love the cast. Of course, I was in the second season, “Asylum,” and I think this whole formula that he’s developed where he’s using the same cast and casting them as different characters is awesome and fascinating and kind of groundbreaking. It’s almost like [Rainer Werner] Fassbinder in a way. There’s this history in cinema of directors using the same actors over and overs again and having a troupe.


Lyonne: Altman.


Sevigny: I love that idea. I think he is a really interesting man, fascinating, has a lot to contribute. TV’s so hard because you sign on to something without even reading a single script. It’s a giant leap of faith. And I think, with “American Horror Story,” it’s such a huge ensemble that really my biggest problem with the show was that I wanted more to do. I wanted a bigger part. That’s always my complaint on that. Also the tone is so weird. For me, I don’t know if I’m the right kind of actress. You know what I mean? Some actresses are very good at that. For me, I always want to underplay it.


Everything is very big. Look at Sarah Paulson’s character.


Sevigny: Yes. Finding the tone is a scary place for me, which is exciting and fun. I hope he invites me back. 


So your existential breakdown wasn’t enough to draw you away form the show? 


Sevigny: No, no, no, no. Of course not. I’m sure if I was watching the show I wouldn’t feel the same way as when you’re reading it. I actually was home one night and I watched a bit of it because I had to do an interview the next day, and it was this super violent, crazy scene and then they cut to, like, a Snickers commercial. “’American Horror Story’! Brought to you by Snickers!” There’s a pumpkin carved out, and I’m like, when people are watching this at home and that happens, it totally take you out. It’s a whole other experience.


"Antibirth" can’t be an easy movie to find distribution for. Are you guys used to showing up at Sundance and not knowing where your movie is going to go?


Sevigny: Sure.


Lyonne: It’s pretty exciting to sort of figure out where this movie is going to land. What’s great about making such a singular thing is it ends up finding its appropriate home -- the place that knows it’s special and weird and one-of-a-kind. One of my favorite things about Chloë in particular is, I love that Chloë’s not, like, best friends with everyone. It makes me feel like she loves me. I’m the one she loves unconditionally. You know what I mean? The loyalty is there for me. I’m the one she thinks is cool enough to fucking spend her life with, and that makes me feel really, really special. As someone who doesn’t have a ton of family and that kind of thing, it really gives me a lot of strength. I will tell you this: I’ve definitely made my fair share of bizarre movies. I've seen enough movies and been around long enough to say that I do feel like we’re going to still be hearing from this movie, maybe even more than in the next year -- more, in a weird way, in like 20 years from now, as a sort of bizarro cult classic.


Perez: No! I want to hear that now. I can’t wait 20 years!


Lyonne: I will say that this movie is built for that. I look forward to the Chloë Sevigny retrospective at the Film Forum when we’re like 70 years old. I want to be her plus-one and it’s fucking “Boys Don’t Cry” and “Kids” and “My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?” and “Gummo.” I mean, there’s going to be so many of them, and then this weird one in there, “Antibirth.” I think this movie is going to be OK in the big picture.


There’s so much affection for you at this table right now.


Lyonne (to Sevigny): We love you!


Sevigny: Good, I’m so tired that I’m going to fall over.


This interview has been edited and condensed. 



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'Race' Trailer Brings Olympic Runner Jesse Owens' Racial Adversity To The Big Screen

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Jesse Owens wanted to be the greatest runner in history. So he accomplished it at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, despite overwhelming racism and Hitler's Nazi supremacy. Now, Owens is the subject of "Race," a biopic in which Stephan James ("Selma") portrays him, alongside a cast that includes Jason Sudeikis, Jeremy Irons, Carice van Houten, Shanice Banton and William Hurt. 


The Huffington Post and its parent company, AOL, have an exclusive trailer for the film, which opens in wide release on Feb. 19.






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Can't Wait For 'Fantastic Beasts'? There's A 'Harry Potter' Coloring Book For That

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Want to know where to find some fantastical beasts, straight from the pages of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series?


Well, the better part of a year remains before Eddie Redmayne, as magizoologist Newt Scamander, leads audiences deep into the world of Rowling's mythical creatures in the film adaptation of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them


In the meantime, however, a new Harry Potter coloring book from Scholastic offers a sneak preview of the supernatural fauna in store. Plus -- duh -- coloring.



The ink drawings in the book, inspired by the beasts from the "Harry Potter" films, will be familiar to fans. Whether it's knowing owls, sinuous dragons or droopy house elves, these creatures won't be new to true devotees. 


If you're a fan of more illustrator-driven adult coloring books, which emphasize the soothing joys of coloring with designs optimized for filling between the lines, the Harry Potter coloring books may not be for you. These illustrations are all about calling back to the iconic images from the beloved films, even if that means designs with huge swathes of unbroken space or extraneous detailing.


For the series buffs, though, this book and a 36-pack of Crayolas is a pretty enchanting way to chill out. 




 


All images courtesy of Scholastic. HARRY POTTER characters, names and related indicia are © & ™ Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. Harry Potter Publishing Rights © JKR. (s16)


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The Hottest Baby Names For 2016

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What are the hottest baby names for the year ahead?


To find out, Nameberry looked at which names have attracted the most unique views of a total of more than six million visits to the website's name pages in the past 30 days.


Then, the folks behind the popular baby naming website tracked which of those top names had increased 50 percent or more over the same period last year.


The result: A group of 50 baby names Nameberry sees as the very hottest right now. These names might not be showing up on international popularity lists quite yet. But the current spike in interest is sure to translate to much wider adoption in the months and years ahead.


Without further ado, these are Nameberry's picks for the 50 hottest names of 2016, in order of popularity on the website and including the percentage they jumped over last year:


Girls



  1. Astrid, up 101 percent

  2. Thea, up 54 percent

  3. Sadie, up 50 percent

  4. Riley, up 335 percent

  5. Elise, up 54 percent

  6. Avery, up 52 percent

  7. Rowan, up 115 percent

  8. Elsie, up 68 percent

  9. Finley, up 60 percent

  10. Jade, up 96 percent

  11. Anouk, up 122 percent

  12. Wren, up 104 percent

  13. Amara, up 52 percent

  14. Celeste, up 51 percent

  15. Aveline, up 57 percent

  16. Teagan, up 134 percent

  17. Bryn, up 317 percent

  18. Peyton, up 71 percent

  19. Sage, up 78 percent

  20. Ruby, up 124 percent

  21. Annalise, up 54 percent

  22. Kaia, up 52 percent

  23. Mavis, up 98 percent

  24. Xanthe, up 83 percent

  25. Everly, up 76 percent


Boys



  1. James, up 72 percent

  2. Elijah, up 50 percent

  3. Jayden, up 489 percent

  4. Elliot, up 80 percent

  5. Logan, up 81 percent

  6. Charlie, up 92 percent

  7. Jude, up 137 percent

  8. Elias, up 82 percent

  9. Isaiah, up 60 percent

  10. Arlo, up 51 percent

  11. Kai, up 66 percent

  12. Evan, up 95 percent

  13. Aryan, up 70 percent

  14. Aiden, up 102 percent

  15. Noah, up 92 percent

  16. Augustine, up 231 percent

  17. Owen, up 54 percent

  18. Alistair, up 63 percent

  19. Amias, up 55 percent

  20. Lewis, up 57 percent

  21. Lucian, up 87 percent

  22. Angus, up 78 percent

  23. Micah, up 76 percent

  24. Rhys, up 71 percent

  25. Eamon, up 96 percent




 


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Forget Valentines, Let's All Send Hamiltines Instead

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There's no better way to say, "I heart thee," than by sending a carefully crafted Valentine. Come Feb. 14, few gestures beat a twee card, cut with ornate scissors into the shape of a big red muscular organ; pink lace is a plus.


Wait, just kidding. Scratch that. Artist Casey Barber has created something called a "Hamiltine," and you should definitely burn that homemade heart disaster you were planning and send one of these instead.


Because, come Valentine's Day, we should honor the one and only crush that matters these days: Lin-Manuel Miranda and his swoon-worthy musical "Hamilton."



Barber, who is a food writer and photographer by trade, created her Hamiltines -- Valentines that incorporate terms of endearment and quotes from "Hamilton" the musical -- as tongue-in-cheek homages to the clever wordplay of Miranda's production.


"I think your pants look hot," one reads, echoing a line that is actually uttered by a Founding Father in the musical. "I will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love," another declares, nodding to the song "You'll be Back."


 



Basically, these Hamiltines are, in Barber's words, a salute to Miranda's top-notch brain.


"I saw a quote on Instagram that 'Hamilton' isn't just a musical, it's a lifestyle, and I think that's how a lot of us feel about it," Barber explained to HuffPost. "It's so rich and so diverse and so funny, and you want to immerse yourself in that story any way you can."



In closing, never forget that even teens love the musical "Hamilton." Oh, and I've been waiting for an opportunity to remind the world of this Humans of New York portrait of Miranda and his baby.


You can check out Barber's shop on Etsy. Happy Hamiltine's Day. 


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Haunting Photos Show Effects Of Climate Change In Bangladesh

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The number of "climate change refugees" in Bangladesh is expected to rise dramatically in the coming decades. Around 20 million people in the Asian nation are at risk of losing their homes by 2050 because of the effects of climate change, like soil erosion, rising temperatures and water pollution. If sea levels rise by just 3.2 feet, one-fifth of the country -- which is located on the delta formed by some of Asia's biggest rivers -- is expected to be covered in water. Poor populations are the most vulnerable to the changing conditions.


The people of Bangladesh are already feeling the consequences of climate change in dramatic ways. The rising sea levels combined with increased temperatures create unpredictable weather phenomena and sometimes make existing patterns more extreme.


On Nov. 15, 2007, for example, Cyclone Sidr swept the Bangladeshi coastline with winds of about 155 miles per hour and tidal waves as high as 16.4 feet. It was the most intense cyclone to hit the country since 1991, affecting about 3 million people and destroying tens of thousands of homes. The storm also caused problems with electricity and communication.


HuffPost Greece spoke with Probal Rashid, a Bangladeshi photographer who knows the effects of climate change quite well. Through his photos, Rashid has documented the despair, grief and hardship that follow a major hurricane.



What do people need to know about climate refugees? 


The idea of photographing climate change came about when I visited Satkhira, in southern Bangladesh, to cover the flood-affected areas in 2011. Villagers in this area have been suffering one disaster after another since 2007, when Cyclone Sidr hit. Every year, they have to live in rehabilitation camps or temporarily built houses for four to five months during the monsoon.


I visited the area again in 2012 and started to realize that there was a real urgency to make a documentary on climate change. Some regions are always waterlogged. There is water everywhere, but not a drop to drink! The most severe times are the summers and winters, when rainfall is minimum. Those who preserve some rainwater from the previous year’s sources are lucky, otherwise most of the people have to travel long distances to acquire pure drinking water. The traditional way of agrarian life has been changed due to the environmental change.


One of the photos I took is of 15-year-old Rani Begum, who has one daughter and was married at the age of 12. The natural disasters due to climate change -- combined with the lack of an adequate government safety net -- compound the population’s poverty and drive young women towards child marriage.


A large number of homeless people in Dhaka have lost their homes and properties through floods, river erosion and other natural calamities, and come to the city in the hope of a better future. These people have no place to hold themselves. Their day starts in dump streets and ends at the roads of nowhere.



In your opinion, what do you think should be done to mitigate the problem?


If our goal is to bring global warming under control by reducing the release of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, we can contribute to this global cause with personal actions. Our individual efforts are especially significant in countries like the U.S. and Canada, where individuals release over 10,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per person every year. We can help immediately by becoming more energy efficient. Reducing our use of oil, gasoline and coal also sets an example for others to follow.


What’s the message of your series on the climate crisis in Bangladesh?


I think my work is there not only to describe the present problems in Bangladesh, but also to warn us of future problems before it's too late -- this series casts its gaze on the devastating effects that rising sea levels will have on the world's coastal inhabitants.


What makes you different from other photographers? How would you describe your photography style?


Every photographer develops her or his own strategy in their own unique way, be that interning, assisting, graduate school, job training, etc. Understanding how each photographer develops their particular style is important in figuring out your own approach to photography.


For me, photography is my language to access, to communicate and to identify myself. My photographs explore the relationship of humanity and environment in a simple manner. I make pictures that call attention to things that other people overlook. This exploration of the overlooked helps me to engage more deeply with where I am in space and time. When I am photographing people I try to see what is on the inside as well as what is on the outside, this is where I find true expression. I truly have a strong desire and enthusiasm for photography and that intensity is delivered into each image I create.


Which photographers influenced you, and how did they influence your thinking, photography and career path?


American renowned photographer Steve McCurry’s photo "The Afghan Girl," which was taken in 1984 and published the next year, influenced me most during my days as a student of photojournalism. Along with this, the photography of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Ansel Adams, Sebastiao Salgado, Yousuf Karsh, Jonas Bendiksen and many others motivate me in carrying on my job. I think there’s a common theme we’ll find among them all, and that is their faithful commitment to their vision.


What's favorite portrait you've taken?


A portrait of Suruz Ali, 25, is my favorite. When I met Ali in a hospital during my project Tuberculosis in Bangladesh in 2014, I felt that his situation showed the real scenario in our vulnerable society. The purpose of this image is to interpret the disease among the most vulnerable sections of the population and to increase the awareness of the general public regarding tuberculosis through photographic display using print and social media.



What motivates you to continue taking pictures?


The satisfaction from knowing that there are people who appreciate my images, and the positive feedback that I receive keeps me going. But most of all, I am motivated by my way of documenting the people and things that I’ve encountered.


How do you prepare for your stories?


When I start a personal project or receive an assignment, I do research as much as I possibly can about my subjects’ culture, and collect information from books, newspapers and the Internet. Then I visit the place, speak to people and make them aware of my presence and what I am doing.


Does a photo say more than a thousand words?


Yes, I should think so. When we publish a photo on the Internet, the entire world becomes stirred and moved. You may consider yourself as an example. You don’t know me personally. But you know me now through my photographs.


Some photographs screamed so loudly that the entire world stopped to take notice. Some photographs have touched humankind in many different ways and help shape the future for the better. For example, the picture of tragic Aylan Kurdi's fate has sent shock waves across the globe.


 


Scroll down to see more of Rashid's work documenting the effects of climate change in Bangladesh.































This story originally appeared on HuffPost Greece and was translated into English. 

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Meet The Woman People Are Calling The ‘Cuban Adele’

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There are few people out there who can cover Adele’s music and do it justice. Yoli Mayor is one of them.


Dubbed the “Cuban Adele” thanks to her throwback vibe and spot-on covers of the British singer’s hits, the 20-year-old Miami-raised cubana is beginning to make a name for herself on the South Florida music scene.





As a teen, Mayor attended the Academy of Arts and Minds, where she honed her skills. She now performs at local festivals and music venues, drawing inspiration for her performances from some of her favorite artists, including Adele, Amy Winehouse, Selena and Marc Anthony. “My love for these artists stems from their passion, their fire! I can relate to that fire because I am by nature an intensely passionate woman,” she told The Huffington Post. “Watching Marc Anthony live as a young girl was one of the experiences that made me realize this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. The fact that he gave it all on stage spoke to me and greatly influenced my respect and commitment to my craft. All I could think was ‘I want to do that.'"


Mayor began uploading videos of herself singing covers of Adele's songs on YouTube four years ago, and has since begun creating her own music. 



A video posted by Yoli Mayor (@yolimayormusic) on




The singer is currently working on “Men Will Be Men,” an original song she says is inspired, in part, by her traditional Cuban upbringing. “I was always taught by the older generations in my family that a woman’s place is to have everything ready for the man and to be at his beck and call and basically mother him,” she explains. “‘Men Will Be Men” is a song about removing those ideals.” 


“When people think of strength and power they automatically think of men. That men should be in charge and make the decisions while we women just go on to take care of ‘feminine things,’ like cleanliness and taking care of the children. When a woman tries to take that role of confidence and power she is viewed as unapproachable, intimidating, bossy. If we taught our girls that they don’t need the approval of men or of anyone other than themselves for that matter, we would have more strong and confident young women striving for the things that make them happy. This also goes for men. We don’t need all young men to be warriors. There is nothing wrong with being more of a lover than a fighter. I want people to strive to be happy for themselves,” she added. 


And she’s definitely leading by example. “Although I feel incredibly honored to be compared to Adele, I hope to very soon be recognized for my own voice, my own message,” she says.


We hope so too. 


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These Are The Stories Of 12 Activists Silenced In Egypt

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Five years ago this week, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians took to the streets to demand the end of the regime of autocratic President Hosni Mubarak.


While hopes of democracy, freedom of speech and a brighter future motivated the crowds, Egypt’s subsequent leaders -- the military leadership that took over after Mubarak's fall, Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, military-appointed interim President Adly Mansour and current President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi -- have waged an ever-intensifying crackdown on dissent.


Although Egyptian authorities have not disclosed an official count of detainees, human rights experts said over 41,000 people had been arrested, indicted or sentenced as part of the government's muzzle on dissent and activists since the 2011 revolution, according to a 2015 Amnesty International report.


Since coming to power in June 2014, Sisi’s government has been tarnished with allegations of torture, arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances. "Enforced disappearances" are defined as when state officials abduct people secretly and then deny it, per Amnesty International. 


Security forces have arrested some 22,000 people since July 2014, Human Rights Watch wrote in a report released Wednesday. Judges have convicted hundreds of people at a time during mass trials, and many of them were sentenced in absentia. In many court cases, judges handed down sentences based on little to no material evidence against defendants, Amnesty International said.


Last August, Sisi issued a counterterrorism law that further widened the government's surveillance powers.


In the weeks leading up to the fifth anniversary of the Egyptian revolution, the country's officials have further cracked down on activists and dissenters, closing down cultural centers and cafes, and even encouraged imams to preach about the "sinfulness" of protests against Sisi, Reuters reported.


Here are the stories of 12 prominent activists who remain imprisoned in Egypt.



This post is part of a series ​looking back at the five years since the start of the protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.​ More in the series: 


An Egyptian Artist Took On His Country's Revolution. Now He's Turning His Eye To The U.S.



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Someone Paid Over $1 Million For A Photo Of A Potato

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We love potatoes.


They’re delicious, pretty cheap, and really versatile. And Kevin Abosch is inarguably a great photographer. But we’re not sure we’d shell out €1 million -- that’s about $1.8 million -- for “Potato #345 (201).”






But that’s exactly what one customer did, according to Business Insider. Abosch apparently made the sale last year, but he told Business Insider about it in an interview published last week.


The photographer makes most of his money on portrait commissions -- which can range from $150,000 to $500,000 -- for celebrities and Silicon Valley big shots. But “Potato #345” marks the most he’s ever made from a single photo, according to Peta Pixel.


The proud new owner of the spud portrait is a European businessman who was visiting the photographer’s home and agreed to the deal over an unspecified number of glasses of wine.


"I see commonalities between humans and potatoes that speak to our relationship as individuals within a collective species," Abosch told CNN.


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These Are The Texts People Wish They Could Send Their Exes

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What would you tell the one that got away?


A new photos series on Instagram explores that very question, asking people to anonymously share the texts they wish they could send their exes. The series, called The Unsent Project, is the brainchild of 19-year-old artist Rora Blue. 


Some messages speak to the pain of unresolved feelings: 




Others are a little more sassy:  





"You used to be my cup of tea. I drink coffee now." #unsentproject

A photo posted by Röra (@rorablue) on




The submission prompt on Blue's website is simple: jot off a message and share the color you associate with your former love. From there, Blue takes the faux text and prints it out on brightly colored squares of paper: 




Since launching the project back in March, Blue has received roughly 26,000 submissions from all over the world. 


"To say the least, I am absolutely thrilled that the project received such a large response," she told HuffPost. "I think there has been such a strong reaction from people because love is a powerful emotion that leaves almost no one untouched." 


Read through more unsent texts below or check out Blue's Instagram account for the full collection. 



"We were just two different people that became too different of people." #unsentproject

A photo posted by Röra (@rorablue) on





"All I want is for you to be happy, even if it's without me" #unsentproject

A photo posted by Röra (@rorablue) on





"Try and look me in the eyes and tell me what we had wasn't real" #unsentproject

A photo posted by Röra (@rorablue) on










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Young Palestinian Poet Brings To Life The Troubles Of Jerusalem

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Mohammed al-Kurd was something of a child star. When he was 11 years old, Israeli settlers took over part of his family’s home in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, sparking protests by Palestinian and Israeli activists. Al-Kurd was the main subject of an award-winning documentary about the episode called "My Neighborhood."


Over six years have passed since the film was made, and al-Kurd is finishing high school and applying to colleges in the U.S. He still lives in the same house, and Israeli settlers still live in that house too.


The family has complained about ongoing harassment by the settlers over the years. Al-Kurd said groups of young men rotate through the house every few months, making his family miserable with late-night parties and a “terrifying” dog. 


Growing up in such circumstances gave al-Kurd plenty of material for what evolved as his main passion: poetry.


“I use writing as a tool to make sense of life; without writing I wouldn’t be able to think properly, understand profoundly and make decisions,” he told The WorldPost.


Al-Kurd wrote his first poem when he was about 9 years old -- a verse mocking a police officer who helped evict the family from part of their home.  




As he grew older, al-Kurd realized that his family’s travails were not completely unique.


Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, a move never recognized by the international community. Israel offered Palestinians in Jerusalem a path to Israeli citizenship, but most declined for political reasons and instead took residency status, which affords fewer legal and political rights. Israel built large communities -- designated as settlements under international law -- throughout East Jerusalem, despite international condemnation. Today, Palestinians make up about one-third of the city’s population.


Over the last decade, Israeli organizations dedicated to increasing the Jewish majority in Jerusalem have used the Israeli legal system to take over homes in Palestinian neighborhoods across the city.


Under Israeli law, Jewish Israelis can reclaim properties in Jerusalem that were owned by Jews before the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. Palestinians do not have a corresponding right to reclaim properties.


Thus began decades of legal battles between Jewish groups and Palestinian families living in East Jerusalem, including al-Kurd's family. Their eviction from part of the home came amid a string of evictions in Sheikh Jarrah in 2008 and 2009, which were condemned by the U.N. The al-Kurds' legal battle to regain control over the whole property is ongoing. 



“I grew up to be pretty conflicted and have an abnormal life, just like any other Palestinian child,” al-Kurd told the media nonprofit the Institute for Middle East Understanding in a recent video interview. “I started looking at the world and I saw that there are people who go to school … and have homes and live in them without the terror of being thrown away.”


“Their normal was abnormal to me and ... I felt that I was responsible, at the very least, to talk about it,” he said.


Al-Kurd now writes poems at least every other day, in both Arabic and English. He dreams of becoming an influential writer. He is already writing a book exploring the Palestinian situation, called Tomorrow's Never Coming.


“Poetry doesn’t liberate occupied land, nor it does free imprisoned and enslaved nations,” al-Kurd told The WorldPost. “What it does, simply, is represent an element that fuels and encourages the souls of the oppressed.”


Al-Kurd likes to perform his poetry to visitors, and sometimes, to total strangers on the streets of his neighborhood and around the city. 


"I find my favorite moment when reciting a poem, is when I bring a person to tears, because that is how I realize I have succeeded in provoking the person’s conscience," he told The WorldPost. "But it's really challenging to move Palestinians by my poetry, because we became numb to our reality."



“Poetry doesn’t liberate occupied land, nor it does free imprisoned and enslaved nations. What it does, simply, is represent an element that fuels and encourages the souls of the oppressed.”



Al-Kurd is adamant that his poetry should be provocative, asking uncomfortable questions about the Israeli occupation, injustice and social taboos.


He is critical of modern poets from the region whose poems are full of nostalgia or delusions of victory. He is also critical of empty talk about peace.


"I’ve grown to learn that peace should be the last discussion, what should be focused on right now is justice," he said. "Justice is the ultimate solution to the conflict, the oppression and the violence."



His family is supportive of his writing, although they’re not thrilled when he pushes religious or social boundaries, al-Kurd says. He feels passionately about gender stereotypes in the region, for example.


"I think sexism is one of the most unproductive, destructive, and threatening ideologies," he wrote in a blog post last year titled I Experience Sexism.


"As long as we laugh at our crying boys and gasp for our physically strong girls, nothing will change," he wrote. "I think the word ‘man’ is very fluid and very flexible, not because anyone had said so before, but because I said so, for I am not defined, I define."


“I hope my poetry would ask questions that are too loud to be ignored, and will provoke people to change certain things in society,” al-Kurd told The WorldPost.


Watch the video above by the Institute for Middle East Understanding of al-Kurd reading a poem he wrote called “I.” As al-Kurd explains: “This poem showcases the struggle of being born into a situation where your future is already decided and known, and it also challenges the feel of belonging and not belonging.”


"I" by Mohammed Al-Kurd


There is death
in the eye of a new born
a fetus tragedy is re-singing
the same old floating catastrophe
and in ears there is storm
only raging for silence
what do you do
when your destiny is already
embroidered in the womb?


There is life
falsely promising of return
so I saved my innocence
for a long gone tomorrow
somehow the children
sing along
to the foolish hallows
of my song
and I wither
under the rain
that refuses to give
somehow I still drink
the tears
of those who care


There is a face
written
but unread
with the ink of experience
I write the future
the heart of thunder
and the eye of lightening
only dance to the beat of
‘stop!’


Dare stop a lung
that only pleads
to be heard
breathing.


 


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Photos Capture Young Boys And Men Learning Masculinity At Boxing Clubs

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There's something strange and sometimes wonderful about watching a kid register, scrutinize and assume the patterns and behaviors exhibited by adults. For example, the first time a young boy or girl makes a concerted effort to embody masculinity, strength, gusto or power, whether through a cross-armed stance or a fearless scowl.


Photographer Jona Frank explores the dynamics of learned masculinity in her photography series "The Modern Kids," documenting adolescent, working class boys warming up at an amateur boxing club outside Liverpool, England. The young boys strike a pose for the camera, teetering between toughness and innocence in posture and expression. 



"I liked hanging out in the gym," Frank explained in a piece on The Independent. "I liked how inviting and open the space is and how hard these boys worked. I also liked the history -- here was a place where age and youth and dads and lads all coincide and work together."


Frank's straightforward photographs capture a space in between -- between childhood and adulthood, attitude and authenticity, work and play. As the subjects get older, their expressions become more assured, while the younger ones seem to ask for approval in their puzzled expressions. "All the boys tried to act tough for the camera," Frank continued. "They remind me of the Arcade Fire song 'Rococo' -- 'They seem wild, but they are so tame.'"


Frank's series will be on view at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., from March 12, 2016, through January 8, 2017. The photographs will also be compiled into a book of the same name, with an introduction by photographer Bruce Weber.See a preview below. 



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