It’s almost Valentine’s Day! If the imminent approach of the world’s least romantic holiday dedicated to romance isn’t exclamation-worthy to you, know you’re not alone.

Rebelling against the traditions tied to Feb. 14 seems to have become as popular as reveling in Russell Stover’s-fueled giddiness. To help you out with your iconoclasm -- or at least your assertion of hard-won independence, we’ve compiled our very favorite fictional characters who are more than OK with striking out on their own.

Velvet from The Mare by Mary Gaitskill

Gaitskill’s most recent novel is a departure from her earlier works, as it adds race to the already labyrinthine list of complex issues she confronts in her writing. The Mare is about a woman who becomes emotionally dependent on the Dominican girl she mentors, the fiery Velvet who’s often distracted from her studies by boys and popular girls. Nevertheless, Velvet’s boldness shines in the story; she asserts her independence by continually visiting her mentor’s horse -- a sort of kindred spirit -- in spite of explicit orders from her mother.

Read our review of The Mare

Ruby from Ruby by Cynthia Bond

In spite of her deeply painful childhood and adolescence, Ruby Bell sets out to make a life for herself in New York City, relying not on love interests, but her own willpower, to distance herself from the abuses she’s suffered. She flees her tiny East Texas hometown, but is called to return -- and quickly unravels. There’s a love story embedded in Bond’s tragic novel, but the romance shifts around a steady constant: Ruby’s fraught history and admirable perseverance.

Elyria from Nobody is Ever Missing by Catherine Lacey

A woman prone to repressing her deepest, darkest emotions flees her comfortable life to hitchhike across New Zealand. Removing herself from the comforts provided by her husband, and her generally easy lifestyle, she gets in touch with her anger, passion and confusion, but loses her sense of who she truly is along the way.

Kirsten from Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

When most of society was wiped out by a sort of mega-flu, Kirsten -- a girl among the somehow immune survivors -- was 8 years old. She was performing onstage as a child actress in “King Lear” when the lead -- a Hollywood star -- dropped dead. The post-apocalyptic life becomes, for her, an ode to the beauty and power of artistic performance, and she travels throughout Mandel’s pages, and the sprawling Midwest, spreading her creed.

Read our review of Station Eleven

Clee from The First Bad Man by Miranda July

OK, the antagonistic young woman at the center of Miranda July’s latest novel is a huge pain. She’s messy, irresponsible and superficial. But her own self-created form of womanhood -- one that embraces violence and subverts gender norms -- is commendable. The story follows Clee’s stumbling emotional development, which careens through new ideas of how femininity can be defined, with laugh track-worthy lines dispersed throughout.

Read our review of The First Bad Man

Sheila from How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti

If anything serves as a moral compass for the narrator of Heti’s novel-from-life, it’s her friend Margeaux, who she deeply admires and is also pretty jealous of. Or, maybe it’s her desire to live wholly for the sake of her art that motivates her choices, which aren’t always in her own best interest. Whatever it is that makes her tick, it’s certainly not whatever dude she’s currently seeing, making this deeply personal book a keeper.

Ruth from Green Girl by Kate Zambreno

Ruth, the wild and wildly funny protagonist of Zambreno’s novel, knows better than anyone that independence is a difficult thing for a woman to grasp, even if said woman is as modern and subversive as they come. She spends her days working in a department store doling out perfume samples, and her nights continuing to perform and to question the performances she keeps up throughout the day. It’s a messy story with an equally messy -- and therefore true to life -- girl standing tall at its center.

Ifemelu from Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This powerful novel’s narrator comes to America for college after fleeing war-torn Lagos. Her life in America isn’t easy, either, as she learns quickly about the hold racism has on the supposedly free country. Although prejudice colors her everyday interactions, she finds success blogging about her experiences, and when she comes home to Nigeria and reunites with a childhood love, she reassesses everything that she’s valued over the course of her life so far. 

Tiffany from The Wallcreeper by Nell Zink

At the beginning of Zink’s debut novel, narrator Tiffany is anything but independent. Financially reliant on her husband, she leaves the life she knows and moves to Berne, where her tumultuous marriage leads her to discover her truer passions: environmentalist pursuits.

Read our review of The Wallcreeper

Nora from Nora Webster by Colm Toibin

Like his book-turned-movie Brooklyn, Toibin’s more recent Nora Webster follows a young Irish woman as she comes to grips with lost love. Unlike Brooklyn’s protagonist, however, Nora Webster doesn’t assuage her grief with the attention of a romantic partner. She instead writes a complex self-analysis and wields the beauty of her own voice by learning to sing.

Purity from Purity by Jonathan Franzen

Franzen’s book has a few problems, some of them more defensible than others. But, its plucky protagonist is irrefutably a fully formed young woman with steadfast principles -- at least by the time the novel winds down. Purity “Pip” Tyler juggles a job she’s not passionate about with half-heartedly dating men in the Bay Area, but her devotion to her ragtag crew of roommates, and to the new family she discovers on a bizarre, globe-hopping adventure, is laudable.

Lila from The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante

By the time she’s reached middle age, Lila -- one of the women that comprises the very real, complicated friendship that Ferrante’s series centers on -- has been married, divorced, and partnered up again. But none of these romantic pursuits have colored her principles, or her ambitious career pursuits. She may be stubborn and competitive, but she’s unabashedly herself.

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After building its buzz at the Public Theater, Lin-Manuel Miranda's "Hamilton" hit Broadway with a bang that hasn't let up since. The musical, which showcases a diverse group of actors as they retell the story of the United States' first Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton, has earned Miranda the acclaim of critics, popular audiences and peers alike.

Actor, rapper and poet Saul Williams raved about the "extraordinary" show and the creative brains behind the operation in a conversation with HuffPost Live.

"Lin-Manuel is a gift," he told host Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani. "I consider him a friend. Chris Jackson, who's in the play, was one of my co-stars in 'Holler if Ya Hear Me' on Broadway and it was him who introduced me to Lin-Manuel."

Williams, whose new album "MartyrLoserKing" tackles some of the dire political issues of today, said he witnessed one of the first iterations of the concept years ago.

"I saw him perform excerpts of Hamilton in 2009 when we were both invited to the White House … and I was blown away then by this play that he was still working on at the time," he said. "Someone just told me today that the bar scene in the new 'Star Wars,' that he composed the new music there. I'm blown away by that dude."

With productions like "Hamilton," "The Color Purple," and "Allegiance" all running simultaneously, Broadway has been lauded as entertainment's beacon of diversity this season. But Williams warned that the theatre hasn't always been so inclusive.

"[Diversity] lives in 'Hamilton,' but we need to be really careful because we've had issues on Broadway as well," he said.  

As he explained, Broadway has historically faced many of the same issues that reignited the #OscarsSoWhite debate over the Academy Award nominees. He also pointed to pictures like "The Gods of Egypt" for misrepresenting history and portraying a narrative that's "unaligned with the reality and the truths of ancient Egypt."

"The issues are the same across the board," he said. "Just like you can watch Eddie Murphy talking about the Academy Awards back in '88, you know what I'm saying? There's essentially this sense of obliviousness that comes with this lack of inclusiveness that's just absurd."

Watch the full HuffPost Live interview with Saul Williams here. 

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

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There are certain mornings when kitchens become works of art. The red checkered tablecloth, the fruits in the fruit bowl, the colored coffee mugs with their scratched off insignias, and the cabinet's best selection of boxed cereals, frozen momentarily in arbitrary formations, all illuminated by morning light. 

Mornings like these must occur quite often in the home of Betty Woodman, an 86-year-old artist who has both heeded and challenged the tradition of ceramics for 60 years. "If you go in our kitchen, we’re very aestheticized," Woodman explained in an interview with The Huffington Post Arts. "What we eat out of, what cup we choose to drink out of in the morning, it’s an important decision. It brings us joy, pleasure." 

"We both like to live with art around us and to look at it," speaking also for her husband of 63 years, George, a photographer. For the Woodmans, this means lots of photographs and lots of ceramics. Colorful vessels hovering between function and fine art, kitchen shelfs appearing like museum walls. 

Woodman, born in 1930 in Connecticut, first encountered clay in a high school art class when she was 16. "It was sort of like magic," she recalled. "We were given some clay and using our hands we could just make it into a shape. The first thing I ever made was a pitcher. As far as I was concerned that was what I wanted to do. It fell into my hands." 

Before long Woodman dove deep into the history of clay, studying prehistoric Chinese pots, Bauhaus designs, customary tea sets and Etruscan vessels with matched intensity. But when it came to her own work, Woodman considered herself a craftsman more than an artist, at least at first. "I was interested in ceramics not as a fine art," she said. "I wanted to make functional things for people to use. I don’t think the question entered my mind."

Slowly, gradually, Woodman wanted more. She wanted her work to be seen and understood in a larger context. She paired with Max Protetch, a gallerist known for showing architectural drawings, who was conveniently familiar with objects like hers, that slip in and out of the boundaries of fine art. He became the first person to exhibit Woodman's work.

As a result of Woodman's pioneering spirit, today's artists have embraced ceramics as a viable, mainstream artistic technique. But at the beginning of Woodman's career, potters and ceramicists were regarded in a category of their own, looming between artist and artisan. "It was just something different," Woodman said. "Maybe admired -- but not seen on the same page. Today there is an understanding of clay as a material to make art with, and that was not always true."

While Woodman was making work on the East Coast, Californian Peter Voulkos was sparking a ceramics resurgence in California, a movement dominated by men. "It was macho," Woodman explained. "It was a man’s world. Being a woman was not easy to achieve some kind of recognition." Woodman recalled the prevalence of male professors in her university's ceramics department, solidifying a male-to-female artist ratio that followed the graduating class into the outside world. 

Woodman hypothesizes that with the rise of second wave feminism in the 1960s, curators began to feel self-conscious about curating all male shows, and rightfully so. Woodman was soon invited to participate in male-heavy group exhibitions, and eventually earned her own solo shows. However, as Woodman explained, her interest in clay was far more isolating in terms of art world acceptance than her status as a woman. 

Now in her eighties, Woodman has become one of the most influential figures in ceramic arts, with a Metropolitan of Art solo show under her belt and simultaneous current exhibitions at New York's Salon 94 and London's Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA). "I would say that my work has quite a lot of visibility at the moment," she said, still hoping that her work will reach and inspire the next generation of ceramicists. "I want younger artists to be able to see what I do. More than to hear what I’m saying, they should look at my work."

Woodman's ICA show, her first in the U.K., titled "Theatre of the Domestic," features work from the past decade -- rowdy vessels, flattened mosaics and other thingamajigs that don't easily fall into any one category. Three-dimensional jugs mingle with two-dimensional simulacrums, streaks of unruly color indiscriminately scattered on both. 

The exhibition offers up a dreamy domestic space, removed of functional obligations, free to morph into something ever so slightly more theatrical. "I think that I was looking carefully and with a great pleasure at a lot of [Pierre] Bonnard paintings," Woodman said. The French post-Impressionist painter is known for his disorienting depictions of interior spaces, often involving a table adorned with a basket of fruit or a pot of tea, a window and a cat. 

Woodman's show dissects Bonnard's breakfast nooks like the most playful of surgeons, serving up a deconstructed living space in which tables emerge from canvases, vases are sliced down the middle, and paintings rest on the floor. Perhaps most delightful are the "Wallpaper Pieces," made from the leftover slabs of clay from other works. Woodman glazed the scraps and arranged them in a vibrant wall mosaic, the excess parts converging on the wall like old friends.

"It’s really very nice the way the show links back to my original interest in pottery and the domestic object," Woodman said. Not surprisingly, home base and domestic space continue to play a large role in the artist's creative process, which takes place primarily in her studio, based in her Chelsea home. If you leave your kitchen suspecting the various shapes and colors on display might spring into action in your absence, this show will make sense. 

"I always had my studio at home," Woodman said. "It made it easier for me to have children and be able to do my work." Woodman's son is electronic artist Charles Woodman and her daughter was the late photographer Francesca Woodman. "We had breakfast, the kids went to school, I went into my studio. Ceramics is time-based work. When a piece the right thickness you put the handle on, turn on the kiln, walk out of the studio, put the stew in the oven, give it a stir. It’s a personal taste, but it's how I like to work." 

The arrangement also allowed for a spongy relationship between Woodman and her husband's practices, which have flourished alongside each other for the past six decades years. "We laugh because our work is really different but I think we influence each other. We've lived together all this time, we don’t ignore what each other is doing." 

You've probably heard the ice breaker: if you could invite anyone, living or dead, to a dinner party, who would you choose? Woodman's two exhibitions loosen the reigns on the question, allowing inanimate objects to join the gathering. Who is invited to Woodman's domestic theater? Pompeii's wall frescoes, Fra Angelico's paints, Matisse's visual sense of humor, maybe the dependable joy of my favorite coffee cup.

Like a good host eager to provide her guests a brief and delightful respite from the trials of everyday life, Woodman hopes her viewers feel a bit lighter in the presence of her ceramic goods. "I hope they experience some kind of beauty, the experience of something which is pleasant," Woodman says. Of course, she's a host to her objects as well. "And as for the vases I've been making, I want to give them a place to live."

Betty Woodman's "Breakfast At The Seashore Lunch In Antella" is on view until February 21, 2016 at Salon 94 in New York. "Theatre of the Domestic" is on view at London's ICA until April 10, 2016. 

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Beyonce's Internet-breaking video for her new single "Formation" showed just how invested the star is in social justice, with its powerful #BlackLivesMatter imagery. Her upcoming world tour will also have a social conscience: she's using it as an opportunity to fundraise for the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.

She'll do so through her charitable initiative #BeyGood, according to a press release. Her fans at all 40 tour stops will be able to donate to Flint residents, whose water supply has been poisoned by lead.

The superstar is partnering with two charities working in Flint: United Way of Genesee County -- which has been donating huge amounts of clean water and filters to Flint residents -- and the Community Foundation of Greater Flint -- a group with which Beyonce plans to create a fund to address the education and health needs of children affected by the water crisis.

The star has a long history of charitable giving, much of it surprisingly low-key. She's quietly given $7 million over the years to housing for the homeless in her hometown of Houston, Texas. Last year, she and Jay Z reportedly posted bail for a number of Baltimore activists protesting police brutality, and last week, Jay Z's Tidal music service announced it would donate $1.5 million to the Black Lives Matter movement and other social justice causes.

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Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards wanted to become the first British Olympic ski jumper. So, in 1988, he did.

Edwards' story is now the subject of "Eddie the Eagle," a biopic opening Feb. 26. The Huffington Post and its parent company, AOL, have an exclusive clip in which The Eagle (Taron Egerton) announces his dream to his parents (Jo Hartley and Keith Allen) before dashing off to train with his coach (Hugh Jackman). Anyone planning to declare their left-field Olympic ambitions should take notes.

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Warning: Some readers might consider a few of these images not safe for work.

Photographer Demetrius Fordham has just released a portrait series called “Ageless Beauty,” which celebrates the loveliness of women aged 45 and above. Fordham told The Huffington Post that he wanted his images to challenge the belief that “youth is synonymous with beauty.” He said, "I wanted to show women  -- despite what society tells them -- that getting older only makes them stronger and more beautiful and that they should own that."

Fordham, who began his photography career 10 years ago in the fashion industry, did not retouch any of the "Ageless Beauty" photos. He told Huff/Post that the models came from a casting call and most have a creative background in the arts. "Beauty really does come from the inside," said the 35-year-old photographer. "If a woman feels confident and empowered on the inside, it radiates."

Masha, age 48, is the mother of four. She said, "I’m turning 49 in April, but age is just a number -- health, energy and joy of life are truer indicators of age. Beauty is an illusion, of the ephemeral harmonious balance of elements, the yin and yang and the energy of love, as perceived through our six elements."

See more of the "Ageless Beauty" photos below. 

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Late last year, scientists verified the age of the world’s oldest tattoos. According to The Smithsonian, they belong to a European Tyrolean Iceman who died and was buried beneath a glacier positioned near the Austrian–Italian border around 3250 B.C. He had a whopping 61 tattoos on his body.

We know that people have been decorating their bodies with ink for centuries. Yet, looking at the famous paintings that serve as a visual record of our history pre-photography, you'd think tattoos were basically nonexistent. In the 17th and 18th centuries, they were far from ubiquitous, but it's a shame artists didn't seek out more tattooed models for their work.

Enter Nicolas Amiard, a contemporary Photoshop master who's behind "The Art of Tattoo," where modern inked designs meet classic paintings.

"I'm French," Amiard said, introducing himself to The Huffington Post over email. "I live in Paris where I'm art director at an advertising agency. As AD, I use Photoshop all day long. That's how I technically realized these images."

He explained that his "Art of Tattoo" series consists of full photo-manipulations.
He had the idea to mix modern tattoos with classical paintings because, in his words, "I like tattoos" and mixing opposed things. He added that, after viewing a collection of paintings, he caught wind of a big tattoo event in Paris in March.

"That's why I thought it was time to [create] this series," he concluded.

Amiard's project reminds us of another aspect of famous paintings past: it's safe to say, art history has a whitewashing problem. 

As several blogs and news outlets have pointed out over the years, the famous paintings that make it to the walls of well-known museums are disproportionately filled with the faces of white men and women, downplaying the existence of darker-skinned people throughout pre-Enlightenment Europe and Asia. 

Amiard isn't directly tackling this issue. But his series takes the sometimes homogenous bodies of 17th and 18th century paintings and adds a twist. We'd love to see what his series would like if he took into consideration the paintings we don't often see at the Met or the Louvre.

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This article originally appeared on QuietRev.com.

You can find more insights from Quiet Revolution on work, life, and parenting as an introvert at QuietRev.com.

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In the future, books won’t be books at all. Pixely plots will replace cut-creating pages, and cover art will become a strange relic to be studied by our puzzled descendants.

That’s the narrative we’ve been told, anyway: print is dead, and ebooks are the way of the future. But a slew of new studies have thickened the plot.

Most recently, Naomi S. Baron -- author of Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World and a HuffPost blogger -- surveyed the reading habits of students around the world, and found that a whopping 92 percent of them prefer print.

Baron cited the pleasure of feeling the progress you’ve made in your reading (rather than making note of an onscreen percentage) as one possible explanation for print’s popularity. Plus, ebooks aren’t waterproof, and add to the headache-inducing screen time young readers are likely to rack up on their computers and mobile devices.  

In an interview with The New Republic, Baron said another major strike against ebooks is that students “get distracted, pulled away to other things.”

This news is in keeping with a New York Times article from last fall, reporting that ebook sales are slowly declining. Amazon -- the online megastore largely responsible for the proliferation of ebooks in the first place -- seems to have already caught wise, as the company recently announced that it will open brick-and-mortar bookstores soon.

The print resurgence hasn’t stopped some libraries from going “bookless,” or a bevy of developers from scheming up ebook-oriented apps, targeting those readers who enjoy both mediums.

As the battle rages on, let us know which you prefer: print or ebooks.

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Buddhist artwork is infused with layers of meaning. Every posture and gesture has a special significance, intended to inspire devotion and reflection. But it's easy to miss these subtle cues without a guide.  

Most images of the Buddha show him in one of four postures -- reclining, standing, walking, or sitting. Along with these postures, artists will place the Buddha's hand in certain ways to illustrate specific states of mind. These hand gestures are called mudras. 

Mudras have been an important part of Buddhist history from the very moment of its founding. Buddhism traces its origins to a prince named Siddhartha Gautama who was born in Nepal between the 6th and 4th century B.C.E. In his late 20s, Gautama ventured outside of the palace where he was brought up and was immediately troubled by the suffering he saw in the world. He decided to leave his life of luxury. After years of studying, he sat down under a bodhi tree and vowed not to move until he discovered the true cause of suffering and a way to overcome it. Mara, an evil demon, attempted to unseat him and demanded that he show proof of his spiritual awakening. In response, Gautama simply reached down and touched the earth, calling on it to act as a witness to his enlightenment. 

This gesture of reaching down to touch the earth encapsulates the moment that Gautama became a Buddha, or an enlightened being. In the centuries after this moment, artists used this mudra and others like it to illustrate important aspects of Buddhist teachings.

New York City's Rubin Museum of Art explores the art and ancient history of the Himalayas, India, and other regions in Asia where Buddhism has flourished. HuffPost Religion teamed up with the museum to share some insights into the mudras that feature prominently in Buddhist art. Check out their Instagram takeover below, and head over to @rubinmuseum for more examples of art from the Himalayas.

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"The Bachelor" franchise has returned, this time with all-American family man Ben "Unlovable" Higgins at its center. And on "Here To Make Friends," we talk about all of it -- for the right reasons.

In this week's "Here To Make Friends" podcast, hosts Claire Fallon and Emma Gray recap Episode 6 of "The Bachelor," Season 20. We'll discuss Caila's confusing attempt at confessing her love, the "aggressive" pigs, Leah's last-ditch villainy and Olivia's downfall. 

We're also joined by Kristen Baldwin, the Editor-in-Chief of Yahoo TV!

See who made the cut this week in the handy graphic (above), and check out the full recap of Episode 6 by listening to the podcast:

Do people love "The Bachelor," "The Bachelorette" and "Bachelor in Paradise," or do they love to hate these shows? It's unclear. But here at "Here To Make Friends," we both love and love to hate them -- and we love to snarkily dissect each episode in vivid detail. Podcast edited by Nick Offenberg.

The best tweets about this week's episode of "The Bachelor":

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Maddie Ziegler might be headed for Hollywood, but this new ad serves as a reminder that she's still quite the dancer. 

Sia's video sweetheart appears in the newest campaign for dance apparel and accessories brand Capezio, released Tuesday. The clip sees a black-clad Ziegler start moving in line with a bunch of young ballerinas in pink, only to break off into an expressive dance of her own that totally reminds us of Taylor Swift in the "Shake It Off" video -- that is, if Swift was a 13-year-old dance prodigy. 

The other dancers are eventually inspired to follow Ziegler's lead, a message she told the Huffington Post she hopes other young dancers will take from the ad, too.

"Self expression in dance has always been so important to me, so I fell in love with the concept of this film," she said. "Hopefully it will remind young dancers everywhere that expressing yourself can be empowering, contagious and fun." 

Inspiring, creative or otherwise, we just love getting the chance to see Ziegler dance.

Check out the video above.

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Shakira will join the Disney family when the company's new animated movie, "Zootopia," premieres later this month. The Colombian singer lends her voice to Gazelle, an international pop sensation.  

Ahead of the movie's upcoming premiere in Spain, Shakira spoke with El País to discuss her silver screen debut and the one part of the character that she asked animators to change. 

Shakira told the Spanish newspaper that she and Gazelle have a lot in common, but when she noticed the character lacked some of her signature curves she made sure the animators knew it. 

"A lot of the details are mine: the eye color, the eyelashes, the hair. Even the clothes. That skirt is very me. I felt she needed more hips... and I asked them for more and they did it!" she said. 

Shakira's newest single "Try Everything" will appear in the film, as well. 

"[It's] a song about being unafraid of your dreams and the size of your own dreams and being able to fight for them and follow them," Shakira told ETonline last month.

The song's lyrics also reflect themes in the film that the songstress says she can personally relate to. 

"The bunny [and protagonist], Judy Hopps, wants to fulfill dreams that seem impossible, illogical... I've had Judy moments in my life," Shakira told the El País. "Imagine, when I was young in Barranquilla, I dreamt of big stages and becoming a music star while my voice teacher said my voice was dissonant and that I should limit myself to moving my lips and not singing in the chorus."

And while Shakira has always been a Disney fan, the new gig also comes with some extra perks for the mother of two.  

"More than once I've found myself by myself on a couch watching Disney movies with a big jar of popcorn," Shakira told ETonline. "But I also think it's very cool now to brag to my son about my connection to Mickey Mouse."

"Zootopia" premieres in the United States on March 4. 

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There are few things “The Bachelor” franchise enjoys more than milking some good, old-fashioned sh*t-talking and some good, old-fashioned female insecurity.

On Monday night, viewers watched a depressingly familiar scene play out between Bachelor Ben and Leah: Girl feels insecure about her relationship with Boy (who happens to be dating 10 other girls on reality TV). Girl goes to Boy in a bid to get his attention, and instead of talking about herself and productively furthering her relationship with said boy, talks badly about another girl. Boy is unimpressed by such behavior and unceremoniously dumps Girl to great acclaim from those watching back home.

It’s painful to watch girl-on-girl hatred on-screen, and it’s particularly frustrating to watch a woman speak poorly about another woman (twice!) and then lie about it, as Leah did to Lauren B., Becca and Amanda. But it’s also exactly the type of interaction “The Bachelor” is structured to create. The show takes the most base, retrograde gender dynamics of the real world and magnifies them a thousand times. Viewers are left to simultaneously be repulsed by and enjoy the spectacle.

“Bachelor” story arcs like Leah’s make for satisfying television -- a villain is born and defeated all within the span of two hours. Scrolling through Twitter, the general sentiment seemed to be that Leah had gotten what she deserved. She stabbed another woman, frontrunner Lauren B., in the back! How could she?

Leah's “mean girl” behavior -- in all of its carefully-edited, presumably producer-prodded glory -- was pretty shitty. But there were also moments during Monday night’s episode where her actions felt uncomfortably human -- a reflection of our most unattractive, immature romantic failures. She gets passed over for a one-on-one date for Caila, and then watches as Ben spends the entire group date with Lauren B. She passive-aggressively says that she’s “fine,” while internally (and to the cameras) having a low-key emotional breakdown. Her reactions weren’t pretty or productive, but they also didn’t seem so out of the realm of reality.

In “The Bachelor” world, male attention is perceived as a zero-sum game -- the more another girl is getting, the less you can have. And a woman’s ultimate value within the franchise is defined by the amount of male attention she receives. This plays out nearly every season, as the women who are “not here to make friends” throw other women under the metaphorical bus on their “journeys” to true love. Sometimes these women are portrayed as cunning villains who have seduced the Bachelor into falling for them despite their evil inclinations, like Courtney Robertson on Ben Flajnik’s season. When they are less well-liked by the lead, they get the Carly Waddell edit, portrayed as desperate mean girls who cut down other women in a futile play for the Bachelor’s affection.

It’s not just “The Bachelor” world, though. On “The Bachelorette,” plenty of men still seem smugly aware that they’ll do just fine with the ladies when they leave the show, while the girls on “The Bachelor” moan that not getting a rose would be the worst thing in the world, a true indictment of their desirability. In the real world, women have been socialized to compete for male approval, while men have been taught to pursue as many women as possible with the plan of at least one working out.

In the context of the show, where a single romantic target rules all, this leaves the women to desperately cut each other down to get love from the one man present. The men, in contrast, seem to cut their losses and speculate that they’d be great Bachelors next season. 

In "The Bachelor" world, male attention is perceived as a zero-sum game -- the more another girl is getting, the less you can have.

Leah thought she was gaming the system by sneaking out of the house to “do something extreme” and make an impression on Ben. But in reality, she just played into the idea that the ultimate prize is a man’s affection, and that the “fight” for that “love” trumps all -- including basic human decency to the people she’d been sharing a home with for the last month and a half.

Ultimately, "The Bachelor" gamed her. The show got a dramatic plotline and an emotional exit. Leah got called a b*tch on Twitter, and earned herself a spot in the hot seat during the "Women Tell All" episode. She will likely apologize for her bad behavior, and be ushered into "Paradise" with a relatively clean slate. The show will move on, and producers will ready themselves for a new crop of young, beautiful women who are hungry for true love and socialized to go after it at all costs. When your worth as a female human being is inextricably tied to how desired you are by men, why would you prioritize anything else?

Want more on "The Bachelor"? Listen to this week's "Here To Make Friends" podcast.

Do people love "The Bachelor," "The Bachelorette" and "Bachelor in Paradise," or do they love to hate these shows? It's unclear. But here at "Here To Make Friends," we both love and love to hate them -- and we love to snarkily dissect each episode in vivid detail. Podcast edited by Nick Offenberg.

The best tweets about this week's episode of "The Bachelor":

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Martin Shkreli faces a new legal headache, a lawsuit claiming that his $2 million Wu-Tang Clan album contains illustrations ripped off from a New York artist, who now wants the former drug executive to pay for them.

In a complaint filed on Tuesday in Manhattan federal court, Jason Koza said he never allowed his fan art depicting Wu-Tang members to be used in packaging for the hip-hop group's "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin," the sole copy of which Shkreli bought.

Shkreli has bragged that he had no plans to listen to the album, but bought it to "keep it from the people."

The 32-year-old is also known for sparking outrage last year among patients, doctors and politicians after his former company Turing Pharmaceuticals raised the price of the anti-parisitic infection drug Daraprim by more than 5,000 percent.

Koza, 34, of Copiague, New York, said he thought his nine works would appear only on the website WuDisciples.blogspot.com.

But the Fashion Institute of Technology graduate now blames Wu-Tang leader Robert "RZA" Diggs for including them in the "Shaolin" album, and Shkreli for allowing three works depicting Inspectah Deck, Ol' Dirty Bastard and Raekwon to accompany a Jan. 29 article at Vice.com.

"Mr. Koza was happy when his work appeared on the website," the complaint said. "Mr. Koza never granted a license for his works to be copied or displayed anywhere (else)."

Other defendants include Paddle8, which auctioned the album, and Wu Tang-affiliated producer Tarik "Cilvaringz" Azzougarh.

Koza said Cilvaringz has acknowledged the infringement, asking in a Jan. 31 email "if you want to skype discussing the use of your drawings. Thanks bro."

Benjamin Brafman, a lawyer for Shkreli, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Wu-Tang did not immediately respond to a similar request. A Paddle8 spokeswoman declined to comment.

Last Thursday, Shkreli invoked his constitutional right against self-incrimination at a House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing on drug pricing, and later tweeted that lawmakers in Congress were imbeciles. He also faces separate federal securities fraud charges.

Koza is seeking unspecified damages plus profits stemming from copyright infringement.

His lawyer Peter Scoolidge said in a phone interview that Shkreli "didn't need to know" the illustrations were protected to be liable. "There is no intent requirement for copyright infringement," he said.

The case is Koza v Diggs et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 16-00956.

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A new interactive exhibit takes you, from the comfort of your own laptop, into the tangled orgy of dirty details that is Hieronymus Bosch’s iconic 16th century painting "The Garden of Earthly Delights."

Thanks to the website, you can navigate the tangled terrain of the notoriously gnarly artwork with your mouse, by zooming in on particular elements and listening to 40 short audio lectures featuring visual descriptions, historical context and interpretation. Oh my!

The online experience, created as part of an upcoming documentary by Pieter van Huystee titled "Hieronymus Bosch, Touched by the Devil," is hugely informative. I learned a lot from my brief tour -- for example, that they played backgammon in the 16th century. But the real joy of the experience was hearing the f**ked up things in that awesomely absurd painting voiced aloud. If you've never heard a British man seriously utter the phrase "giant potty chair," do you even love art at all? 

It's rumored that Bosch's triptych, depicting Eden, Earth and The Last Judgment, was essentially created during a bad trip. It's believed that Bosch suffered from St. Anthony's Fire, a disease caused by a form of the grain ergot, that among other symptoms causes terrifying hallucinations. (An element of ergot was later used to synthesize LSD.)

Well, after listening in fine detail to all the crazy stuff going on in Bosch's vibrant imagination, I would not be the least surprised if the man was tripping on something. Luckily, Bosch's lucid fantasies and nightmares, in all their bizarre detail, make for a hugely entertaining audio tour. Thank you Bosch, you total weirdo. 

Behold, the 10 best lines from Bosch's audio tour. These sentences have probably never been said before and, in all likelihood, will never be said again. 

1. "A group of lost souls is being squashed by a pair of huge ears, with a knife wedged between them."

2. "With a pot on its head and jugs for shoes, it is sitting on a giant potty chair."

3. "A man has been tied to the neck of a giant lute and is about to be set upon by a snakelike monster."

4. "On top of the hurdy-gurdy sits a blind beggar. One more turn of the handle and the triangle playing lady will lose her head."

5. "One rich stinker is pooping coins. The figure right next to him is throwing up."

6. "From a stick, a giant key is dangling. A man, clearly drunk, is hanging limply through its eye."

7. "A man wearing a pale-red robe and a pig dressed up as a nun try to persuade a soul to sign a document."

8. "The tree man is balanced on two small boats in which a group of people try to find shelter."

9. "The tiny flag on his eggshell back also shows a bagpipe."

10. "He is riding an animal that is not easily recognizable, but just like its rider it was undoubtedly born in the darkest, deepest reaches of hell."

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"Is Calendar Girl the next Fifty Shades?" asked USA Today last month. To put an end to the suspense: If USA Today has to ask, the answer is obviously: "Yes, because we, the press, have deemed it to be so."

Let's not get ahead of ourselves here, though. A few obvious questions spring to mind: What is Calendar Girl? Who wrote it? How is it qualified to be designated the next Fifty Shades? Do we need a next Fifty Shades? Are we totally sure about that?

Calendar Girl, a 12-part series written by newcomer Audrey Carlan, follows the erotic adventures of Mia Saunders, a self-described badass biker babe with tits and junk in the trunk. At 24, she's emotionally battered by past relationships, including one with a sleazy loan shark who has now ordered her father beaten into a coma over some gambling debts. If Mia doesn't come up with $1 million in a calendar year, her ex will actually kill her father. To pay off the debt, Mia becomes a high-class call girl, paid $100,000 each month to spend all her time with a new man (sex optional, for an additional fee under the table). All very simple and plausible, as set-ups go. 

Fortunately, as it turns out, every man who hires her -- or one of his available sidekicks -- is not only rich enough to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for escorts, but blisteringly hot, emotionally layered, and interesting in a totally unique way. There's the brilliant screenwriter, the (credulity-stretching) French artist, the bad-boy ballplayer, the world-famous hip-hop artist -- all hot, all well-endowed, all unlikely to spend good money on a month with an escort.

But hey, this is a fantasy! And to me, it seems like a better fantasy than the long-ubiquitous Fifty Shades fantasy of female naiveté and submission to a volatile master. Over the months, Mia gets to drool over plenty of sexy man bodies -- she doesn't even bother pretending she's an "only have eyes for you" sort of sap -- and even sleeps with more than one of them.

The love story woven into her adventure, by necessity, demands of her swain that he loosen his grip; unlike Christian, he's unpossessive, grudgingly willing to let her see other men in order to (by the twisted logic of the plot) win her father's life and her own independence. 

Plus, the sex scenes are way better than Fifty Shades. (I know, I know, the bar is basically on the floor.) Like the classic erotica that stocked romance shelves long before E.L. James, Calendar Girl doesn't constantly cut the sexy tension of a romantic scene with a muttered "holy cow," and the sex itself seems more fun and sensual than the interludes we saw through tentative, scared Ana's eyes.

So, what's my problem, right? 

In between the steamy scenes and the (slightly) more empowering angle, there's something very Fifty Shades-ish about the wide-eyed, first-person writing style, labored metaphors, and laissez-faire adherence to basic grammar rules. None of this should be too surprising, right down to the traces of mimicry: Carlan told Today she was inspired by E.L. James. "I read Fifty Shades of Grey, and I loved it," she said. "I thought, if this woman, a mother, could leave the corporate world, write her story -- a story people could connect to -- why couldn't I?"

Like Ana, Mia spends a lot of time describing her outfits and the decor of the lavish homes she's working in -- kitted-out kitchens and luxurious living rooms that sound suspiciously more like a middle-aged woman's fantasy of remodeling without a budget than the likely digs of an escort-frequenting, 20-something rich dude. Like Ana, Mia is depicted as innocently unwitting of her own charms, which are nonetheless universal and absolutely devastating. Like Ana, Mia has totally independent inner urges, like her "libido" and "feminine side," which are exceedingly active and don't answer to her super-ego whatsoever.

Is this what erotic literature is coming to? Given the perfect storm by which Fifty Shades took the publishing world, Carlan is unlikely to be the only successful amateur-to-professional imitator. Thanks a lot, E.L. James.

As evidence, here are 20 of the most James-worthy passages from Calendar Girl, sourced from her website's excerpts (and, in a couple cases, the actual eBooks). Um, we'll just skip to the sex parts. 

"His eyes went from a normal Crayola green to a bright forest green in an instant."

"That libido I’d kicked to the curb and stuck in a hidey-hole peeked out and was paying close attention to the finer details of the man before me."

"I nipped at his lips like a starving animal would a steak."

"Alec Dubois was bizarre. Who the hell even talks like that? ‘A physical manifestation of our joining?’ He may have spent too much time reading Ask Jeeves online."

"This guy was ripped, and not in that gross body builder way where the muscles bulged and veins stuck out of the skin like ropes."

"Oh man, I wished he hadn’t done that. Instantly, my sexy feelers flared and I had to slow my breathing in order not to pass out at the sheer male perfection before me."

"'Well, hey there, sweet thang,' were the first words out of his sexy assed mouth."

"His tongue came out and wet his full bottom lip. The space between my legs took notice instantly, twinging delightfully." 

"There was one lone surfer wearing a pair of black board shorts catching some serious waves out in the distance. He definitely had mad skillz."

"Lust swirled in those inky depths, and my feminine side jumped for joy and did the chicken dance." 

"He leaned a bit closer, enough that I could smell the sweet notes of apples and expensive leather from his cologne. 'And what are you used to?' His tone was alluring and spoke directly to the woman in me."

"He was definitely stellar at the art of seduction."

"We entered an open floor plan kitchen; white cabinets spanned an entire wall, each with a unique black scrollwork handle, as if each one was individually made. An obscenely long counter stretched in front of the cabinetry and top notch appliances. Ten stools with rounded tops sat in a perfect line under the black granite slab counter."

"Frustration and anger hit me with a wallop. 'You gonna talk to me?' I smacked my own chest. 'What's up with you and food, Anton?' I shot back."

 "'No, it’s not possible because I’ve already been wooed. I’ve already met the most amazing man I’ll ever meet, and I’ve already been so completely swept off my feet that the ground now feels wrong to stand on.' He smiled that sexy-surfer-boy smile I wanted to look at every day for the rest of my life."

"Like anything life had thrown my way, I pulled on my big girl panties, not the sexy lacy ones I enjoyed teasing my guy with, but the kind that said, 'This ass means business.'"

"Now that I was free, well, as free as anyone could be, I decided to pursue something for me. To grab life by the horns and ride that sucker until I found my place within it."

"'Come in, Shandi,' said a smooth-as-hot-chocolate-dripped-over-an-ice-cream-sundae-type voice."

"Not in a million flippin’ years would I deny sealing this man to me for eternity." 

"He grabbed my bum and squeezed. I could feel him hardening underneath me. 'Nope. You see, this woman was special. Not only was she beautiful with a smokin’ hot bod and a golden heart, but she had a gift.'"

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At the Oscars, ballgowns and updos reign supreme. If stars get up to carouse during the commercial breaks, you wouldn't know it. But at the Grammys, outré fashion and unlikely mingling are key. We bet Lady Gaga isn't going to arrive at the Oscars in a giant egg later this month, but she sure did at the Grammys in 2011. 

Days before we find out what threads disgust your grandparents this year, it's our duty to explore the past two decades' Grammy-inspired joie de vivre. Each of the photos below is a "caption this" moment, because when else do we witness the reunion of "Divas Live '99" headliners Tina Turner and Cher? 

Here are scenes from the past 20 years' awards. Most take place at the ceremony, while a few hail from the annual weekend's illustrious bashes. Below each photo you'll find the big winners from that year, because it's important to remember that Evanescence and Duffy (who?) are top-tier Grammy champs.

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Actor Saul Williams, who starred in the musical "Holler If Ya Hear Me," believes there are a few things that could have saved the show from its early demise.

The Tupac-inspired production had a tough time attracting patrons and closed just six weeks after its Broadway premiere in the summer of 2014. But according to Williams, the play may have fared better if it opened a few months later.

When Williams sat down with HuffPost Live to discuss his latest album "MartyrLoserKing," he said the messages in the musical, which detailed the struggles of a midwestern industrial city, would have been much more potent after the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner.

It would have changed everything if it came out that September. It's horrible for me to say that because … by that time, we had the death of Michael Brown and then Eric Garner, and so instead of being on stage during that time, I found myself in the streets being one of the thousands of people stomping up the West Side Highway or the Triborough Bridge or what have you marching through the streets of New York. But if we were on the stage at that time, we would have been addressing exactly what we were already addressing.

While Williams said the production drew A-list audience members like Harry Belafonte and Madonna, its subject matter may have also prevented the word-of-mouth favorability that could have driven theatre-goers to the show. In fact, Williams told Rolling Stone in 2014 that the production threw together a last-minute street team to "counter those TKTS people" that weren't promoting "Holler."

"When those people standing in the center of Times Square who were talking to tourists who were asking like, 'What should I go see? I'm in New York for two days and I have the family with me!'" he told HuffPost Live. "They're like, 'Well, there's 'Rocky the Musical,' which is really fun. There's 'Cinderella' … There's ['Holler if Ya Hear Me,'] which has a bit of profanity. It's a bit of a downer, but it's really well done.'"

Unfortunately, the play may not have fit the lighthearted material that potential viewers were looking for, Williams said. 

"I think that goes to my argument about aligning entertainment with escapism," he added. 

Watch the full HuffPost Live interview with Saul Williams here. 

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