A couple of Instagram posts by Drake has us wondering: While we were jamming to “Passionfruit,” was Sade singing it passionately from miles away?

The legendary R&B singer stopped by the London leg of Drake’s “Boy Meets World” tour because apparently she’s been jamming to the 6 God all this time ... like before he even grew a beard. 

On Tuesday, Drake posted a picture with Sade and his mom with the caption, “Two very important ladies in my life.” 

He also posted a photo with just himself and the “Sweetest Taboo” singer. 

This man’s life couldn’t be any more blessed, right? Not so soon.

One Twitter user posted a picture that reveals Drake has been in the presence of the notoriously private songstress not once, but twice. And that’s at minimum. 

You’re something else, Drake. Something else. 

While this may still be a lot to process, and you probably have a lot of questions, you have to acknowledge the excitement of the intergenerational nature of it all. Your mom’s favorite singer and your favorite crooning rapper are friends or something. That’s kind of cool. 

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You can find almost anything on Instagram: photos that provoke wanderlust, photos that inspire a new take on dinner, even photos of women who proudly show us all what a real body looks like. 

Now it’s time for photos of dogs that’ll fill your feed with humor. Some of these accounts are wildly popular, while others are less known. But all of them do the same thing: consistently post high-quality photos of really adorable, really funny canines. 

These pups will tug at your heartstrings and force you to crack a smile even on the toughest of days. That’s just when we all need a puppy, anyway. 

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WASHINGTON — Neil deGrasse Tyson is a numbers and data kind of guy. And the data he presented Wednesday speaks to the absurdity of the Trump administration’s plan to cut costs by eliminating funding for a pair of cultural agencies.

In fiscal year 2016, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities received roughly $300 million in combined federal funding — less than 0.0001 percent of the U.S. budget. Yet, in an effort to reel in government spending, President Donald Trump has proposed eliminating all funding for both agencies.

Tyson pointed out in a series of tweets that the agencies’ combined budgets are roughly equivalent to what Americans spend annually on lip balm, and would fund fewer than five hours of military spending. 

The famed astrophysicist also hinted at the small-mindedness of such a proposal. 

But he made sure to note that he was simply delivering the facts — not pushing his own political views.

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What exactly are the implications of white artists creating (and profiting) off of work that depicts black trauma and black pain?

That question is at the center of the controversy surrounding the painting “Open Casket,” now on display at the 2017 Whitney Biennial. The painting, by white artist Dana Schutz, portrays the body of 14-year-old Emmett Till ― the Chicago boy who, in 1955, was kidnapped, tortured, and brutally murdered for allegedly whistling at a white woman (who admitted that she lied decades later). The white men who killed him were found not guilty by an all-white jury.

After Emmett’s death, his mother, Mamie Till Mobley, famously insisted upon an open casket, so that the world might see what racism did to her boy. The pictures of Emmett’s swollen and disfigured body, later published in the black publication “Jet” magazine, became a catalyst and a rallying cry for the Civil Rights movement. 

Schutz’s “Open Casket” is an oil on canvas recreation of those famous photos. “Open Casket” is a weak attempt at white solidarity with black folk. 

The painting in question, below (included only for context), makes an attempt at forcing to viewer to meditate on loss and the “radical” visibility of the black body, but it fails. Why? Because there is nothing radical about a white artist misappropriating and profiting off of black trauma.

And yet, we see white artists and creators profit off of black trauma, black death, and black bodies time and time again. We see it in the endless loop of shaky iPhone videos and dashcam clips that replay the deaths of black people like Alton Sterling, Philando Castille and Eric Garner over and over again on 24-hour cable news. We saw it in the photos of lynched black bodies shared as postcards all the way up to the 1960s.

While Schutz has stated that she never intends to sell the painting, according to The New York Times, there’s no denying that the attention that it has generated will undoubtedly lead to some form of profit down the road. And this is beyond just profit. It’s about the currency of privilege. 

Black trauma drives views and clicks. Black pain translates to dollars, even as we’re told that the spreading of images of black bodies equals awareness, empathy.

Empathy has its place. But a black mother’s decision to share the image of her battered child with the world is very different than a white artist’s decision to reflect on that pain and trauma by recreating it. Did Dana Shultz ever stop to think she was literally taking ownership of the young Emmet Till’s body for her own gain? 

For many black folk, white empathy means little if it doesn’t come with positive, intentional action that centers and amplifies the voices of the oppressed. White empathy rarely translates to justice, or the restructuring of the institutional horrors that result in the deaths of black people every day. 

This is why black artists, art lovers and activists are now speaking out. On March 17, artist Parker Bright showed up at the Whitney Biennial to protest the painting. Wearing a T-shirt that had “Black Death Spectacle” written on it in big bold letters, Bright stood in front of Shultz’s painting, obstructing it from view, until the museum’s closing. 

And on Tuesday, artist and activist Hannah Black released an open letter to the curators of the Whitney Biennial, calling for the painting to be removed from the exhibit, and destroyed. 

“Although Schutz’s intention may be to present white shame, this shame is not correctly represented as a painting of a dead Black boy by a white artist,” Black wrote.

“Those non-Black artists who sincerely wish to highlight the shameful nature of white violence should first of all stop treating Black pain as raw material.”

In a statement to Artnet News, Whitney Biennial curators Christopher Y. Lew and Mia Locks had this to say: 

Dana Schutz’s painting, Open Casket (2016), is an unsettling image that speaks to the long-standing violence that has been inflicted upon African Americans. For many African Americans in particular, this image has tremendous emotional resonance. By exhibiting the painting we wanted to acknowledge the importance of this extremely consequential and solemn image in American and African American history and the history of race relations in this country. As curators of this exhibition we believe in providing a museum platform for artists to explore these critical issues.

In other words, the defense of these two non-black POC was that they wanted to “start a conversation,” a conversation that black people and more importantly black artists started long ago, a conversation that Shutz’s painting, quite frankly, adds nothing to, past highlighting the aestheticization of black trauma for profit and for press. Where’s the solidarity in this?

Like so many examples of white art about black pain, from the lowbrow like Macklemore’s song “White Privilege” to Quentin Tarantino’s meditations on slavery in “Django Unchained,” Schultz’s painting takes up space rather than creating it. Her artwork, and the controversy it has generated, has overshadowed the important works by black artists included in the Biennial ― works that have far more to say about the black experience than Schutz ever will. 

The only thing to take away from this controversy is this: listen to black people. Believe black people. Give black people the access and space and resources to elitist, mostly white institutions so that issues like these don’t even have the chance to arise. 

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Ellen DeGeneres knows what the next bedtime story hits will be.

On Tuesday’s episode of “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” the host discussed the news that Chelsea Clinton wrote a children’s book about inspiring women titled, She Persisted. In light of this fact, DeGeneres noted, President Donald Trump will also be releasing some books for kids.

The comedian presented some satirical titles inspired by the Trump administration, including The Cat In the Make America Great Again Hat, Oh, The Places You Won’t Go (Because Of The Travel Ban) and more.

Bedtime will never be the same.

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Asians and Asian-Americans are very different, and actress Constance Wu wishes that more people in the media, film and TV industries realized that.

In an interview with Allure Magazine this week, the star of ABC’s “Fresh Off the Boat” opened up about her experiences as an Asian-American actress. The only characters Wu said she was offered early in her career were supporting roles, like “the best friend or the assistant to the white person,” she told the magazine.

It wasn’t until she landed a leading role in “Fresh Off the Boat,” a sitcom that focuses on a Taiwanese-American family, that she realized as an Asian-American actress, she was “placated to the point of satisfaction” while being cast in strictly sidekick roles. 

“Once I was in the lead role and other people started making such a big deal out of it, I realized I was previously blind to it,” Wu told the magazine.

Now that more people are discussing diversity and demanding more roles for Asian actors in Hollywood, Wu wants reporters to get one thing straight.

“I wish reporters were more in tune to the difference between the Asian experience and the Asian-American experience,” the actress said.

Her experience as a Taiwanese-American who grew up in a white community in Richmond, Virginia, was much different to that of an Asian person in Taiwan, for example.

But Wu thinks many in the media overlook that difference.

“I think often they lump the two together and think that when I talk about Asian-American narratives that they can cite ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ or ‘Mulan’ as proof of concept when it’s a different experience,” she told Allure.

Wu also pointed out that Asian-American stories have yet to hit the mainstream, while Asian stories have.

“A lot of times people think of Asian culture as some mythical world, instead of modern people with modern occupations with modern problems, modern tools,” she told the magazine. “We’re not all just talking Taoism and kung fu ― some people are just trying to get over their breakup with their boyfriend, and they’re Facebook stalking.”

And Wu’s career trajectory may just change all that.

The actress is slated to star in the upcoming film “Crazy Rich Asians,” based on the novel of the same name by Kevin Kwan, where she’ll play a Chinese-American economics professor who discovers her boyfriend is an heir to a fortune in Singapore.

Wu said in a Facebook post in February that the film is directed and written by Asian-Americans and starring “a global, all Asian cast.” 

Read Wu’s full interview with Allure Magazine here. 

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President Donald Trump’s extremely active Twitter feed constantly presents us with profound questions about the nature of language. Why does he deploy so many exclamation points? Use strings of repetitive synonyms? End so many tweets with “Sad!”?

Not since Fifty Shades of Grey has the nation been forced to spend so much energy close-reading text composed with so little precision and care. Actually, that’s not fair: E.L. James’s repurposed vampire fan fiction was far more thoughtfully crafted than President Trump’s body of tweets.

Exhibit A: Trump’s typically baffling use of quotation marks. “What does he use quotation marks for?” reporters and linguists ask. “Does he just throw them in at random?”

Here are a few examples:

Analysis of Trump’s quotation marks has reached fever pitch since his oddly-punctuated tweetstorm claiming President Barack Obama tapped his phones at Trump Tower:

After these seemingly cavalier accusations were widely criticized as baseless, Press Secretary Sean Spicer and Trump both argued that the quotation marks around “wire tapping” indicated that it was not meant to be taken literally. (But, presumably, it was meant to be taken seriously.)

What’s going on here? Theories proliferate: 

1) He’s using scare quotes, indicating that he is not to be taken literally.

At first glance, this is essentially Spicer’s and Trump’s contention. Scare quotes allow writers to distance themselves from certain words, calling the word’s validity into question. “It’s part of a strategy Trump has of saying things he can deny later, and this is a perfect example,” Philip Seargeant, senior lecturer in applied linguistics at the Open University, told The Guardian earlier this month. 

On the other hand, he frequently throws quotation marks around words he clearly means to fully endorse ― see his habit of calling his supporters “a ‘movement’” or tweeting that “the people are seeing ‘big stuff’” thanks to his election.

2) He’s using them for emphasis.

In an Atlantic article from last year, Megan Garber pointed out that the predecessor to the exclamation point, the Greek diple, was used to emphasize important words. Though other forms of emphasis now exist ― italics, all-caps type, or even underlining in handwritten contexts ― the impulse to use quotation marks for emphasis hasn’t died out. Trump appears to fall into this fairly common trap, tossing quotes around words he clearly means to sincerely mark as important. “The race for DNC Chairman was, of course, totally ‘rigged,’” he tweeted in February. The quotation marks appear around the key accusation of his post, not a word he appears to want to soft-pedal or distance himself from. 

Then again, Trump notoriously resorts to all-caps or exclamation points for emphasis ― why would he need quotation marks to do the same job?

3) He’s created a new use, in which they indicate metonymy or synecdoche.

Poynter’s Roy Peter Clark argued recently that if Trump’s claim that he used “wires tapped” in quotation marks in order to indicate that he meant surveillance more generally is in good faith, this would constitute a nonstandard use of the punctuation to indicate two possible figures of speech: metonymy, “A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated,” or synecdoche, “A figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole (as hand for sailor), the whole for a part (as the law for police officer), the specific for the general (as cutthroat for assassin), the general for the specific (as thief for pickpocket), or the material for the thing made from it (as steel for sword).” 

This example, however, doesn’t appear to make a lot of sense when applied to Trump’s other uses of quotation marks.

4) He’s purposefully destabilizing our understanding of meaning through using a punctuation that allows him to distance himself from the literal implications of his words while still using them.

Trump’s scare quotes, wrote Moises Velasquez-Manoff recently in The New York Times, function as “weaponized irony.” “He and Mr. Spicer are employing ironic techniques not comically but cynically — to destabilize meaning,” he argued. “In the president’s hands, air quotes are apparently a way to push an alternate reality — one that’s often defined after the fact.”

Whether intentional or not, obfuscation is an effect of Trump’s unorthodox punctuation, which has become clear thanks to Spicer’s tortured defense of the president tweeting, without any evidence, that President Obama ordered a wiretap of Trump Tower: “The president used the word ‘wiretapped’ in quotes to mean broadly surveillance and other activities during that,” he claimed. Even if Trump initially threw the term into quotes to emphasize it, the use of the marks is so confusing that it can later be used to manipulate the very meaning of the tweet.

Is this all part of Trump’s masterful plan? His slapdash communication has caused him enough trouble governing that it seems unlikely that such cunning lies behind all of this.

5) He’s afraid of the written word.

Now we’re really getting somewhere! In February, English professor Ben Yagoda made a case in the Chronicle of Higher Education that passes the Occam’s razor benchmark: “The quotation marks show the struggles of someone ill at ease with setting down words and sentences,” he pointed out. “When a familiar word or phrase comes to the mind of these people, they’re not sure what to do with it; sometimes, they’re more comfortable picking it up with protective gloves.”

Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg concurred in a New Republic column recently. “Like scare quotes, they’re meant to immunize the writer from the taint of the word’s associations, but out of fear of sounding uneducated or common,” he wrote. “The effect is invariably the opposite.”

For example, Trump will often tweet something like, “For eight years Russia ‘ran over’ President Obama.” The quotation marks don’t indicate that he doesn’t really buy that Russia ran over Obama, as scare quotes would. In context, it’s clear that he very much believes that it did. Instead, his punctuation indicates that he has the sense he’s using a colloquialism or cliché.

Sometimes it’s fairly obvious where Trump has picked up the phrase or term he’s using. In a late January tweet, he threatens, “If Chicago doesn’t fix the horrible ‘carnage’ going on [...] I will send in the Feds!” Here, Trump is quoting his own inauguration speech (reportedly written by chief strategist Steve Bannon and senior advisor Stephen Miller), which railed against the “American carnage” of gang-related crime. There’s no need to quote a single word from his own speech, but the choice suggests that he wouldn’t normally write down such a word and feels somewhat out of his element doing so.

Trump’s use of parentheses, which has been less analyzed, also speaks to his discomfort with the written word. 

This incredible example includes both phenomena:

As with quotation marks, Trump sometimes uses parenthetical comments in a normal way ― to attribute sources, for example. More often, however, he seems to throw them in when he’s not sure if he’s adequately conveyed his point. Arnold Schwarzenegger was “swamped” in “The Apprentice” ratings compared to Trump, he tweets; but is that clear enough? Just to be safe, he tosses in “(or destroyed)” to make it indisputably obvious that he means Schwarzenegger’s performance was absolutely terrible compared to his. 

The evidence is stacking up that the president’s bizarre Twitter habits mostly arise from his lack of familiarity with the written word. Given that he doesn’t read books, prefers brief and infrequent security briefing memos, and seemingly gets most of his information by watching cable TV, it’s hardly any wonder his Twitter missives are often typo-laden, oddly punctuated, and awkwardly constructed. 

The unfortunate news: Trump’s quest to undermine meaning doesn’t need to be calculated to be effective.

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Sometimes when we think we need a whole a makeover, all we really need is to tweak our beauty routine. Even the unicorn lipstick that once made us feel invincible can start to feel stale after a while. 

We rounded up our favorite Instagram accounts that keep beauty front and center. It’s true that a search for the hashtag #beauty on Instagram will turn up a whopping 159.2 million posts. Yet only a handful of those posts come from the accounts you really want to know about. 

So scroll through and find a new way to use the makeup you’ve got, or find a reason to buy something new. Don’t worry, we need very little convincing, too. 

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UPDATE: In a conversation with The Huffington Post, The Whitney Museum of American Art claimed that the letter sent by a sender claiming to be Dana Schutz was a hoax. “The email is completely fake,” Stephen Soba, Director of Communications at the Whitney, explained over the phone. “Dana Schutz had nothing to do with it.”

PREVIOUSLY:

A person claiming to be Dana Schutz, the white artist behind a controversial painting of Emmett Till that appeared at this year’s Whitney Biennial, has issued a letter to the museum, asking that the institution take down her work. 

“Though it was not at all my intention to cause harm, many artists have come forward to announce that my depiction of suffering is in turn causing them suffering,” the sender wrote. “I cannot rightly protect a painting at the expense of human beings.”

Schutz’s painting, “Open Casket,” depicts the abstracted face of 14-year-old Till, a black teenager who was lynched in 1955 after being falsely accused of harassing a white woman. The work is based on images of Till at his open-casket funeral decades ago, which were later published in the black publication “Jet” magazine. In those photos ― and in Schutz’s painting ― Till’s face appears brutally mutilated, the horrific violence enacted upon him on open display. 

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It doesn’t matter if you’re a tourist or a born-and-bred New Yorker: Free entertainment always feels like a win. We rounded up fun, free things to do around Brooklyn, a borough known for its hip arts scene, culture and history. 

From free hours at museums to wellness classes to bocce ball, there’s something here for everyone. But a pricey afternoon? Fuhgeddaboudit!

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Have you been wondering how, exactly, institutions like the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities affect towns and people across the U.S.? 

Not long after it was reported that President Donald Trump plans to defund the NEA and the NEH ― and that that defunding will have “dire” effects on local and regional arts programs ― advocates of the arts have stood up to defend the cultural agencies that bring exhibitions, literacy programs, theater endeavors, history programs and more to underserved communities around the country. Museum Hack, an organization that offers unconventional tours of major museums that promote access to the arts, is one such advocate.

Below is an infographic Museum Hack created, celebrating the positive impact of the NEA and NEH. Take a look and learn how significant the endowments’ influence really is.

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According to the Southern Poverty Law Center ― an organization that tracks hate crimes and promotes tolerance ― there are currently 101 anti-Muslim groups in America, out of 917 total hate groups. According to The New York Times, anti-Muslim hate crimes were already rising in 2015, which saw a 67 percent increase from the previous year. But add to this President Donald Trump’s proposal, initially banning immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S., and religious discrimination seems to be mounting.

While Trump’s travel ban applies the same restrictions to all members of Muslim-majority nations, projecting a message many have viewed as intolerant, Muslim book publishers are aiming to do just the opposite. A recent report on Publisher’s Weekly highlights several Muslim presses working to shed light on the nuances of Islam, and of its practicers.

Reporters Marcia Z. Nelson and Emma Koonse spoke with publishers that issue updated versions of the Quran, books about Islam for non Muslim-readers, academic titles encouraging readers to think critically about religion, children’s books with Muslim protagonists, and YA books bolstering Muslim voices.

Of the diversity of perspectives on offer by these publishers, Publisher’s Weekly writes:

Despite the nuances found in the Muslim publishing industry, one common goal between publishers is clear: to provide resources that accurately represent beliefs and experiences of distinct and numerous communities of Muslims in the U.S. and around the globe.

The work of promoting a complex vision of Muslim identity isn’t to be shouldered alone by Muslim presses. Another publishing house, Comma Press, vowed to only publish books by authors from the countries affected by the travel ban until it’s fully overturned. “Personally, I’d much rather hear voices from Somalia, Yemen or Iran than have to listen to yet another news report about the new show business that is U.S. politics,” publisher Ra Page told The Huffington Post.

Libraries are also doing their part to provide accurate information about Islam, and to report any hate crimes that may happen within their walls. To this end, the American Library Association started the hashtag #LibrariesRespond. 

While a response system is valuable, Muslim presses could offer something that treats the gnarled root of hate: visions of religious identity that are too complex to be stereotyped, and too full of humanity to be ignored. 

For a thorough list of Muslim publishers, see Publisher’s Weekly’s profile. 

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“I was asleep before. That’s how we let it happen,” Elisabeth Moss (as Offred) says in the official trailer for Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” an update to Margaret Atwood’s dystopian classic, out next month.

“When they blamed terrorists and suspended the constitution, we didn’t wake up [...],” her voiceover continues. The trailer shows a montage of familiar images: protestors crowding streets, religious fundamentalists bluntly saying their piece.

Margaret Atwood, the author of the 1985 book that the show is based on, has already drawn comparisons between the beginning of her story and current affairs in America. In a letter distributed by PEN America in January, she cautioned against “dictators of any kind”; this month on Twitter she agreed with a fan who wrote that The Handmaid’s Tale novel doesn’t seem “unrealistic.”

Then, the story takes a turn. Abruptly, women are dismissed from their jobs and members of targeted groups try to flee the country on foot. Those women who don’t make it out are assigned as surrogates to couples who aren’t able to conceive, made to wear uniforms, and forced to have sex with certain men.

Whether the show sets out to directly compare its dystopian themes with today’s political climate, for some readers ― and for the story’s author ― the similarities are ripe for picking.

Catch the trailer above. “The Handmaid’s Tale” debuts April 26 on Hulu.

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A teenager in Denison, Texas, who made widely publicized claims that she was kidnapped and raped by three black men in ski masks admitted to police Tuesday that it was all a lie. 

The Denison Police Department posted a statement to Facebook on Wednesday describing the case in detail and said 18-year-old Breana Talbott, who is white, confessed to the hoax and has been charged with making a false report. 

Talbott was reported missing on March 8 by her then-fiancé Sam Hollingsworth, who told police he found her car in the parking lot of her apartment complex with the driver door open and her phone, keys and a single shoe nearby. Hours later, Talbott stumbled into a local church half-naked and covered in cuts.

“She told witnesses at the church she had been kidnapped and sexually assaulted in the woods behind the church,” the police department said. “There were also visible cuts and/or scratches on her body.” 

Detectives and police scoured the area for the suspects, who Talbott claimed were “3 black males” wearing ski masks. The events of that evening were all staged and her injuries were self-inflicted, according to the police statement.

Police said they had suspicions about the case “almost from the beginning,” as they were unable to corroborate any of Talbott’s accusations. Medical personnel also reportedly found no evidence that Talbott had been sexually assaulted.  

Studies have found that as little as 2 percent of reported rapes are false. The department noted the harmful effect Talbott’s claims had on the entire community. 

“This alleged crime as reported by Breana Harmon Talbott made many in the community fearful there were individuals abducting women,” the department wrote on Facebook. “Even though we know the story to be a hoax, there is still potential damage to the reputation of the City of Denison and the Texoma region as many may remember the reported crime but not the outcome.”

“Breana Harmon Talbott’s hoax was also insulting to our community and especially offensive to the African-American community due to her description of the so-called suspects in her hoax,” the post continued. “The anger and hurts caused from such a hoax are difficult and all so unnecessary.”

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Eight years ago, RuPaul Charles brought nine relatively unknown drag queens from across America into one workroom for a reality-based competition series best described as a hybrid of “America’s Next Top Model” and “Project Runway.”

No one expected it to become one of the most successful LGBTQ television shows of all time. 

On March 24, the ninth season of the Emmy-winning “RuPaul’s Drag Race” franchise debuts ― but this time on a new network, in a new time slot with a new audience. For the first time ever, viewers will watch “Drag Race” on VH1 during primetime on Friday nights instead of Mondays on Logo, the largest exclusively gay network on TV. An encore of the show will still play on Logo every Monday.

When Logo announced the decision, the reaction was both polarizing and revealing of how intimately intertwined “Drag Race” has become with LGBTQ culture. The move not only affects the network and the show’s audience, but also local queer communities that have championed and sustained “Drag Race” from its humble beginnings. 

“Drag Race” leaving Logo is monumentally significant for the network, whose relevancy has largely been predicated on the show’s success. But the hub of gay TV is much more than “Drag Race,” with programming encompassing documentaries, feature films, web series and other reality-based content. And now Logo and LGBTQ people everywhere must decide what the future of queer storytelling looks like as “Drag Race” finds itself on a more mainstream network.

The shift from Logo to VH1 speaks to a conversation in the LGBTQ community about visibility in a post-marriage equality world and the importance of safeguarding the queerness of spaces and culture. While there’s apprehension that something will be lost in this transition, both Logo and Ru are encouraged by the opportunity to expand the reach of the show.

While younger generations of viewers might be taken aback by the shifting tides, VH1, Logo and RuPaul share a history and all operate within the same corporate parent company: Viacom. In fact, the Supermodel of The World once hosted his own talk show on VH1 from 1996 to 1998, which helped solidify him as a household name.

“We’ve had a great time at Logo. Logo has been so good for us and allowed us to be ourselves, so in my heart Logo will always be a part of ‘Drag Race,’” RuPaul told The Huffington Post, adding, “I think the move to VH1 really reflects the broadening of our audience.”

Pamela Post, Senior Vice President of Programming and Original Development at Logo, echoes these thoughts from RuPaul and assures viewers that the nature of “Drag Race” won’t be compromised.

“I think as a fan you’ll watch it and you’ll see the context of the show has not changed, the jokes haven’t changed, the point of view has not changed,” Post told The Huffington Post. “I think all of that is very much intact. And that’s what we love about it – it’s point of view and humor and take on the world. And especially RuPaul’s point of view. So I think at the end of the day it’s just about exposing it to a larger group of people and hoping its fan base increases.”

The prospect of “Drag Race” on primetime Friday night TV is certainly exciting for the franchise, but it also presents challenges for queer spaces, like bars and nightclubs, who have built business models around the program.

For Steven McEnrue, the manager of two popular gay bars in Brooklyn, New York, the making over of “Drag Race” into a primetime VH1 show on Friday nights presents a set of challenges to his business. When “Drag Race” aired on Mondays, bars like McEnrue’s organized screenings on a night where foot traffic was typically low and nightlife industry workers, including local drag queens, were usually off. On Friday nights, bars tend to be busy with regular programming already slated.

“[Mondays] felt like a community experience with everybody watching this show and having a really good time,” McEnrue said. “I think it’s a little early to tell but I do think a bit of the magic of coming together on a Monday night might be lost. It’s definitely going to be a completely different dynamic this year in terms of the crowd and how the show is.”

This concern isn’t exclusive to local queer business owners, as former “Drag Race” contestants are already contending with the tension between the show’s ballooning popularity and the desire to preserve what feels precious to the LGBTQ community.

“It’s one of those confusing things that we see online and in our gay bars around the world that as the gay community becomes more mainstream, the need for exclusively gay spaces, be they television networks or brick and mortar gay bars, becomes seemingly less necessary,” season six finalist Courtney Act told HuffPost. “Obviously that’s a great thing because we’re becoming more accepted and more visible, but also at the same time it’s really sad because there is something so important about preserving and celebrating queer spaces and culture.”

Still, Act sees the power in having “Drag Race” become more accessible to a mainstream demographic in a television landscape largely devoid of multidimensional LGBTQ representation. “Drag Race” has always embodied a commitment to celebrating individuality and difference in a world that tells queer kids to conform.

In the words of RuPaul himself...

“Drag challenges the status quo,” RuPaul told HuffPost. “It’s always challenged the matrix – the matrix being ‘choose an identity and stick with it the rest of your life because that’s how we want to sell products to you, so we’ll know who you are and can put you in a box and then sell you beer and shampoo. Well, drag says ‘I’m a shapeshifter, I do whatever the hell I want at any given time.’ And that is very, very political.”

This message has never been more relevant at a time when minorities in America are under attack and the need for diverse representation ― and a commitment to looking out for one another ― is critically important.

Pamela Post also considers the migration of “Drag Race” to VH1 as an example of the allyship that this political moment demands.

“This is a time for allies,” she told HuffPost. “I think that whether you are somebody who is worried about your immigration status, or you’re a person of color who is finding that your life may be treated slightly differently than others, I believe that us as an LGBTQ community … should bond together and try to find some strength at a time that’s very difficult. I don’t tend to get political mixing it with television conversation, but I think inherently Logo has always been part cause and part entertainment.”

Despite the popularized notion that Logo puts its full resources behind reality-based programming like “Drag Race,” “Finding Prince Charming” and the upcoming “Fire Island,” this concept of allyship and commitment to diverse storytelling through a variety of platforms is very much at the heart of the network.

Just last year, Logo launched the Global Ally campaign, which strives to connect people along the spectrum of queer and trans identity around the world through storytelling. “Out of Iraq,” an Emmy-nominated documentary about two men who fall in love in Iraq only to be forced apart, was borne from this campaign alongside short-form videos highlighting queer experiences in places like Uganda and Jamaica.

Logo also centralizes their efforts to uplift stories of the LGBTQ community’s most vulnerable. The web series “Beautiful As I Want To Be,” which aired in 2015, partnered four young trans people with prominent trans leaders in an effort to help them fully express what it means to them to be beautiful and authentic. The network’s upcoming documentary “Strike a Pose” will follow the seven backup dancers from Madonna’s iconic Blonde Ambition tour and examine how their lives have been forever changed. Not to mention, Logo was also home to a seminal series about the lives of black gay men, “Noah’s Arc,” which premiered in 2005, a time when diverse queer stories were rarely told.

So why, despite all of this programming, does the LGBTQ community in 2017 tend to primarily associate Logo with whiteness, abs, debauchery and drag when all of these other stories are within reach?

”We as the queer community have fought so long and struggled to be seen as equal and to be respected in community,” said Courtney Act. “But now when we choose to show ourselves in a light that is bordering on the worst of humanity rather than celebrating our high points, it’s like, ‘Are we there already? Are we ready to show the world that we’re just as trashy and unhinged as the Housewives are?’”

While reality-based programming on Logo is not without merit ― whom among us wasn’t curious about a gay version of “The Bachelor”? ― these types of shows are not necessarily representative of the network’s big picture.

Are we there already? Are we ready to show the world that we're just as trashy and unhinged as the Housewives are?

“I think all of us should be supporting stories that are enlightening, entertaining and showing the diversity of our community now more than ever,” Rich Ferraro, a former Logo employee and current chief communications officer at GLAAD, told HuffPost. “All too often so many of the diverse queer stories that Logo and other LGBTQ media outlets put out there fly under the radar because it’s not something that white, cis gay men often share over social [media]. But now more than ever we should be standing together … to find the creative ways to showcase those stories that will also hopefully drive positive change.”

Perhaps the cultural fascination and success of these shows over other programming says as much about us as a community as it does Logo as a network.

As Logo moves on to redefine itself outside of a “Drag Race” framework, now is an important time for queer people to ask themselves: what do we actually want to watch on TV? Whose stories do we want elevated? How do we want them to be told? What do we want the world to know about us?

“I don’t ever envision a post-’Drag Race’ world,” Post added. “’Drag Race’ is always going to be a huge part of the Logo line-up and people will still view it on Logo and we will still air it on Logo. At the end of the day I think we are always going to find new boundaries and areas we want to push into... I think that we are always going to find new, interesting and diverse stories and different ways to tell them.”

The desires of LGBTQ people to see themselves on screen have evolved. We are multidimensional people, living complex lives and navigating a multitude of different identities. It’s time that we as a community commit to sharing, engaging with and prioritizing the elevation of diverse, compelling stories that are representative of more than just a white, cis gay ideal. This has to begin not only within Logo but also the community at large through conversations we have with each other ― and what we choose to watch on a Friday night.

“RuPaul’s Drag Race” airs Friday nights at 8:00 PM ET/PT on VH1 with an encore on Logo every Monday.

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Black representation in ballet is crucial.

That’s why organizations like Dance Theatre of Harlem have always made sure black ballet dancers see themselves on stage. The Huffington Post is exclusively premiering the dance company’s most recent short film titled “High Above,” directed by Daniel Schloss and written by Charlie Sohne, which shows the power representation can have in a young person’s life. 

DTH collaborated with India.Arie for the film’s title track, which doubles as the release for the Grammy-award winning artist’s latest single.  

In the film, the death of a young black girl’s grandmother inspires her to dance. She sneaks off to a performance, looks up at a gorgeous black dancer on stage, and afterwards the dancer gives the girl her dance shoes. When the girl returns home, she learns about her mother and grandmother’s special bond through ballet.

The film is a promotion for DTH’s annual spring engagement at New York City Center from April 19-22. 

Watch “High Above” above.

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French actress Karidja Touré may have first caught your attention in 2015 after the U.S. release of the coming-of-age drama “Girlhood.” Now, she’s back for another coming-of-age movie, but this time she’ll be depicting the life of equestrian Selika Lazevski.

“The Adventures of Selika” is a short film based on the 19th-century equestrian, whom the film’s writer Sybil H. Mair reimagines as an African princess forced to leave her home and find her place in the world. 

The movie comes three years after the Cannes Film Festival premiere of “Girlhood,” which earned Touré a nomination for a Cesar Award ― comparable to an Academy Award ― for Most Promising Actress. 

Touré’s new role is starkly different from her turn as a lost 16-year-old who befriends a rebellious group of girls to gain a sense of identity in “Girlhood.” 

“The Adventures of Selika,” which also stars Jennifer Daley and Luke Elliot, is slated to premiere on April 16, but the platform on which the movie will appear has yet to be publicized, according Shadow and Act. You can check out images from the film on their website. 

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Los Angeles’ Viva Los Cupcakes is serving up margarita cupcakes so authentic, they come with two shots of tequila.

“There’s tequila in the batter, the frosting also has tequila in it. So I guess you can say it’s a double shot,” Karina Jimenez, the store’s owner and baker, told We are mitú.

The cupcake entrepreneur, who grew up in Tijuana, Mexico, is the subject of a recent video by the outlet, posted Wednesday. Jimenez left a desk job to create the colorful cupcakes inspired by Mexican flavors. 

In addition to the margarita flavor, Jimenez makes and sells fresas con crema cupcakes, conchita cupcakes, churro con cajeta cupcakes, tres leches cupcakes and more.

“My weirdest cupcake is our tamale with mole cupcake, which is actually our signature cupcake,” Jimenez said. “There’s no chicken in our mole, it’s dessert mole. It’s three kinds of chocolates and, of course, there’s a spicy kick.” 

In 2013, she told OC Weekly that her desk job involved “mind-numbing” reports and she now cherishes being able to do something different. 

“I love the creative process in the kitchen as much as I love interacting with people and watching them be surprised and enjoy something I have made,” she said.

And we'd love to eat these cupcakes. Yum. 

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What’s that mysterious ticking noise?

Harry, Hermione, Ron and co. learned the answer to that question in a “Harry Potter” puppet production that made the rounds on YouTube after its publication 10 years ago.

You read that right: a whole decade ago. Yer not a young wizard anymore, Harry.

To celebrate the momentous occasion, creator Neil Cicierega remade his masterpiece — only now, because it’s 2017 and all, in 4K. It really feels like Snape and Dumbledore are singing right there with us.

The nostalgic callback makes the recent news that the “Harry Potter” film actors are in a group text together even sweeter. Our Hogwarts acceptance letters may be permanently lost in the mail, but we can all still enjoy the magic.

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On Thursday morning, The Huffington Post received an email claiming to be from artist Dana Schutz, requesting that her painting “Open Casket” be removed from the 2017 Whitney Biennial because of the harm it inflicted upon black viewers.

The email was soon revealed to be a hoax. Stephen Soba, Director of Communications at the Whitney Museum of American Art, told HuffPost that Schutz was in no way involved with the letter. For a brief period, however, it appeared to offer a long-awaited response to the outpouring of anger, pain and controversy surrounding the painting.

Schutz’s painting, on view now at the Whitney, depicts the disfigured face of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black teenager who was tortured and beaten to death in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white women ― an allegation his accuser admitted to be false earlier this year. Emmett’s mother, Mamie Till Mobley, insisted Till’s casket be left open during his funeral, so that the racist brutality inflicted upon her son would not go unseen. Photos depicting Till’s battered body and face were published in the magazine “Jet,” becoming a catalyst in the fight for civil rights.

The violence inflicted upon Till as a black American is not a thing of the past. “I made this painting in August of 2016 after a summer that felt like a state of emergency,” Schutz explained to Brian Boucher at Artnet News. “[T]here were constant mass shootings, racist rallies filled with hate speech, and an escalating number of camera-phone videos of innocent black men being shot by police. The photograph of Emmett Till felt analogous to the time: what was hidden was now revealed.”

The goal of the Whitney Biennial ― the longest-running survey of American art ― has long been “to gauge the state of art in America today.” The 2017 exhibition, co-curated by Mia Locks and Christopher Y. Lew, was imagined amid the chaotic and anxiety-inducing backdrop of the 2016 presidential election. “This biennial arrives at a time rife with racial tensions, economic inequities and polarizing politics,” the curators write in the exhibition’s introductory statement, “inviting us to pause and pose questions in a tumultuous world.”

The Biennial was described as “humanist” and “pro-diversity” by New York Times critic Roberta Smith, for its more-inclusive roster of artists compared to years past, as well as its consideration of themes including misogyny, immigration, racism, violence and religion. And yet the most audible conversation surrounding the show has revolved around the museum’s privileged exploitation of black suffering. It has also revolved around a white artist. 

On March 17, the day of the Biennial’s opening, a group of protesters gathered around Schutz’s painting in protest, blocking it from view during the museum’s open hours. Artist Parker Bright stood in front of the painting for hours at a time, wearing a shirt that read “No lynch mob” on the front and “Black death spectacle” on the back. As he told The Guardian: “I wanted to confront people with a living, breathing black body.”

Shortly thereafter, artist and writer Hannah Black circulated an open letter calling for the work to be removed from view and destroyed. “In brief,” she writes, “the painting should not be acceptable to anyone who cares or pretends to care about Black people because it is not acceptable for a white person to transmute Black suffering into profit and fun, though the practice has been normalized for a long time.” 

Black’s letter ― co-signed by 47 other artists, writers and curators of color ― was widely disseminated via social media and covered by publications including The New York Times and The Guardian. In response to Black’s letter (though without directly addressing its demands), curator Locks defended the decision to display “Open Casket” to The Guardian. “The horrific murder of Till is something we all have to confront, regardless of race,” she said. 

On March 21, Rhizome assistant curator Aria Dean responded to Black’s letter (and Locks’ comments) on Facebook. To the idea that all Americans must “confront” Till’s image, she replied:

I have already confronted it, and continue to confront it in its many forms ― those where the corpse is Till’s, those where another body takes his place. I already understand these images. We can argue about the power of painting, but I will confidently argue that no white person will look at this painting and feel anything close to what a black person feels when confronted with it.

Likewise, I will argue that Dana Schutz’ time spent making it was time spent in the throes of a simulation of the sick, complicated eroticism of white violence against black bodies whether or not she admits it or has even given it thought.

Dean, who co-signed Black’s letter, was also disturbed by the idea that, despite the artist and institution’s desire to address white supremacy through the artwork itself, both were less concerned about the pain and trauma of the many people of color speaking out against the work and pleading for its removal. 

“We’re again confronted with this ongoing and tiresome problem,” Dean wrote, “where white and non-black people make symbolic gestures toward their supposed dedication to curbing antiblackness [sic] and overtly anti-black violence and refuse to do any work that has material impact on the lives of actual black people in this country.” 

Poet Jenny Zhang, who participated in discussions related to the painting on Twitter, articulated her solidarity with Black’s message and echoed Dean in arguing that, whatever the original intention behind the painting, to ignore the suffering it ignited is unacceptable. “If you are a white artist and you create something that black people are telling you has caused harm, you ought to expend your energy, at the very least, on self-reflection, not self-defense,” Zhang wrote to HuffPost in an email. “It’s shameful to do anything less.”

Additionally, Zhang, who is Chinese, wrote to the frequency with which black America is bombarded with images of violence and death at the hands of white supremacy. “I can’t even begin to imagine how it would feel if there was a graphic video of an Asian-American person being murdered in public showing up in my news feed every week, every month,” she added, “but that, as Hannah writes, is what black people in America are subjected to.”

The Huffington Post’s Zeba Blay offered a similar message in an op-ed Wednesday, describing the painful repercussions of using black pain for white gain. “We see white artists and creators profit off of black trauma, black death, and black bodies time and time again,” she wrote. “We see it in the endless loop of shaky iPhone videos and dashcam clips that replay the deaths of black people like Alton Sterling, Philando Castille and Eric Garner over and over again on 24-hour cable news. We saw it in the photos of lynched black bodies shared as postcards all the way up to the 1960s.”

Although such images are often circulated with the intention of spreading knowledge and compassion, they also yield a profit. As Blay put it: “Black trauma drives views and clicks. Black pain translates to dollars, even as we’re told that the spreading of images of black bodies equals awareness, empathy.”

In a Facebook post written March 22, writer and curator Legacy Russell continued the conversation, arguing that the painting ― through abstracting and stylizing an image with such a specific political purpose ― is itself an act of erasure, as she put it, of “the equivalent of closing the coffin.” Furthermore, in directing the conversation toward Schutz and her work, Russell argues the entire ordeal erases the voices of Emmett Till, Mamie Till, and the many artists of color whose works in the Whitney are overshadowed. 

“We need to be focusing less on Schutz here, and more on Mamie Till, and what her intentions were,” Russell wrote. “This was her baby boy, and seeing him ― and remembering what this violent America did to a 14-year-old boy ― is the thing that we all should be aiming for, not allowing that body to be made lyrical or poetic via the process of being formally abstracted, blurred, erased, forgotten.”

A string of comments quickly erupted beneath Russell’s initial message. One dissenter, who, in an email to The Huffington Post, called the painting “a work of genius,” was Art F City editorial director Paddy Johnson. “I think it’s quite legitimate for artists like Hannah Black to be angered over the use of black pain as raw material, though I don’t personally agree with it,” she wrote. “Owning suffering is a very dangerous proposition, because it precludes the possibility not just of empathy but sympathy. Without that, there’s no way to bridge these gaps.”

In the conversation that unfolded on Facebook, commenters questioned whether or not Johnson, who is white, has a stake in the Schutz controversy and should be positing her opinion at all. In a similar vein, Black, in her open letter, requested only people of color co-sign her message. The conflict raises questions about whether white individuals’ convictions are welcome or productive in conversations surrounding racial politics their experiences do not reflect. 

The debate over Schutz’s painting even made its way to “The View.” On March 22, the show’s hosts argued that neither art nor empathy are specific to race, and the painting carries a painful yet important message regardless of who created it. They then discussed white artist Norman Rockwell and writer Mark Twain, whose depictions of black America helped to galvanize the forward progress for civil rights. Host Sara Haines added: “Now you have someone lifting up a story. Does it matter who lifted the story or that the story is being told?”

The problem, for many, remains whether the story of Emmett Till needs to be visualized by a white artist to be salient and horrifying. To imply it does, as Dean put it, “stinks of a white savior mentality.”

So what should be done? Black and her co-signers demand Schutz’s work be taken down and destroyed, as to never be publicly shown or sold in the future. Zubeida Agha, a pseudonymous member of the art activist group Guerrilla Girls, who goes by the name of a late Pakistani artist, suggested in an email to HuffPost that the Whitney replace Schutz’s work with Black’s open letter.

Aletheia Wittman of The Incluseum, a project dedicated to increasing inclusion in museums, shared her thoughts with HuffPost as well. Specifically, Wittman highlighted the difference between freedom of expression ― the ability to create the artwork itself ― and giving it a platform at one of the most prestigious exhibitions in the U.S. Defenders of Schutz’s work have expressed, both on personal blogs and on Twitter, that threatening “Open Casket” is an act of censorship and a limitation of free expression, arguing that even if the subject matter is offensive or wounding, censorship is never the answer.

But for Wittman, the central question is not whether the piece was made, but whether and where it was shown. “No one wants to censor art,” she said, “but as with opinions, when we are in the position of picking and choosing which to give space to, not all opinions should be aired and amplified. Space and power has been given to this work as a result of its inclusion in the Biennial and now we hope that trust can be rebuilt.”

The fake letter that circulated Wednesday, purported to have been written by Schutz and directed to Locks and Lew, also called for the removal of the work in lieu of the pain it’s caused. Multiple outlets, including The Huffington Post, reported on the letter’s contents, treating the sentiments expressed within as Schutz’s. Hoax aside, the most recent, authenticated information we have regarding Schutz’s feelings about the controversy comes from her interview with Boucher.

“The anger surrounding this painting is real and I understand that,” she said. ‘It’s a problematic painting and I knew that getting into it. I do think that it is better to try to engage something extremely uncomfortable, maybe impossible, and fail, than to not respond at all.”

As of now, Schutz’s painting still hangs at the Whitney, and Black’s call for its destruction still stands. The artwork, along with the protests and conversations it ignited, certainly raised a variety of “polarizing” issues, as Locks called them, including but not limited to white privilege, the limits of freedom of expression, art world inequality, the exploitation of black bodies, the limits of empathy, and the very purpose of art. 

With no closure in sight, perhaps one constructive, though hardly sufficient, course of action, is to take a step away from “Open Casket” and lift up some of the other 62 artworks included in The Biennial, specifically those that illustrate the black experience from the perspectives of artists of color, artists for whom the issue of racism in America is not a horrific revelation to be explored or a creative well to be mined, but a lived reality, day in, day out. 

We have repeatedly reached out to the Whitney for an opportunity to speak with Schutz, but our requests have not yet been met. 

Aria Dean and Legacy Russell granted permission to have their words, originally written on Facebook, featured in this piece. 

Katherine Brooks contributed additional reporting to this piece.

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