Maryam Ashrafi's account originally appeared on ViewFind. Check out more photos on ViewFind.com. 

The Syrian Civil War has torn apart homes, families and entire communities. But while many families have fled for the relative safety of Europe, a group of Kurdish women have stayed behind in Northern Syria and taken up arms to rebuild and reclaim their lives.

Telling the story of these brave people was more than a photographic project for me. I lived with these fighters and was able to truly experience their pain and sorrow, their joy and triumphs as they fight for their freedom alongside their male comrades.

While Kurdish women have gained some equality in recent years, for most of these women fighting with the military forces is their first opportunity for independent and empowerment in the traditionally male-dominated society.

I can’t help but feel angry at some point when I see the amount of suffering these women (and men) in Northern Syria endure, and the little help they receive from the outside world. This was especially true while I was in Kobane, where the Turkish border was closed to any national and international help.

The fighters liberated the city of Kobane and have reclaimed 160 villages. Every two days during my stay, there was a funeral of some fighters on the frontlines who are still defending the city.

But before and after the victories, there’s a constant threat of death or serious injury during firefights and patrols.

The fighters must move constantly, setting up makeshift camps in old structures, like this old school in Baghdak. The school closed when the city was seized by by the Islamic State.

I hope people are able to put themselves in the place of the women in these photos. That’s why I tired to focus more on the daily life and quiet moments of their lives.

And there were some moments of joy, too.

My main motivation to follow the story of the fighters -- beside my personal interest to learn more about them -- was the ignorance of the mainstream media over this important story. Yet after the liberation of Kobane, they've received more attention and people have begun to look and listen.

Too many pictures of people fighting would create an "us" and "them" dynamic in our mind. Portraits of normal life, or the moments of emotion, gives us moments we can feel, perhaps opening the doors of understanding.

I can only hope you will remember the faces and surroundings, and understand the plight of these brave people.

At the beginning of my project back in 2012, I lived with the Kurdish fighters of Iran who live in their military camps in Iraqi Kurdistan. My later travel to the Qandil mountains and in 2015, my stay with the people of Kobane all were great moments that helped me to understand the motivations of their fight.

The Turkish government is also threatened by the independence of the Kurdish people and sometimes attacks them. The fighters face threats from both sides of their border, the Islamic State and Turkey. They are alone and vulnerable.

I still wonder whether the people in power will do anything to defeat the Islamic State. Turkey, N.A.T.O. are not helping, leaving the Kurdish fighters alone to fight.

Check out more photos on ViewFind.com. 

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One woman is giving self-harm survivors a fresh start with some fresh ink. 

Whitney Develle, a 22-year-old tattoo apprentice who lives in Brisbane, Australia, recently announced on her social media accounts that she's offering free tattoos those who want to cover up scars due to self-harm in what she calls the Scars Project. 

Develle told The Huffington Post that she hopes her initiative will inspire survivors of self-harm hope to view their scars with acceptance and pride. 

"Every person we meet in life is facing their own struggles. We don't know what someone has been though or how hard they've had to fight, to judge a person on appearance alone is just ridiculous," she wrote in an email to HuffPost. "I hope to change that by turning their scars into something beautiful, something worth embracing -- a sort of badge that screams 'I am here and I am more than my scars.'"

The project will officially commence on March 17. Develle plans to ink one or two free tattoos a week until the end of the year. After, she says she'll offer highly discounted tattoos to any remaining individuals who want a tattoo. 

Develle told HuffPost that she felt compelled to start the initiative after a chatting with a friend, who has scars from self-harm and also dealt with depression and an eating disorder. 

"She was so embarrassed, she told me how much pain it brought her when people would question her about them or make comments, which is completely understandable," Develle said. "As I've said in the past no one should ever have to feel like a public museum for people to ridicule."

The apprentice ended up tattooing her friend, who felt honored by the work. So far, Develle has tattooed two people's scars, and she's preparing to do many more as she's received about 600 inquiries regarding the Scars Project. The emails alone, she said, have already left her inspired. 

"The things these people have fought through is admirable and they deserve to know that. People will immediately label self-harm as an act of weakness," she said. "I think to crawl out of that abyss and still be here, in this life that honestly is already so brief, and to have changed your life around into a positive is commendable."

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Two years ago, Nickolay Lamm launched Lammily dolls aka "Normal" Barbies to combat the unrealistic beauty standards girls face from a young age. Since then, the realistically-proportioned doll line has expanded with empowering marketing campaigns, educational accessories and pamphlets about menstruation and add-on sticker packs that let kids give their dolls acne, stretch marks mosquito bites and more.

Wednesday morning, the toy creator unveiled a new addition to the Lammily doll family -- a male doll with a more realistically proportioned body. Think: "Normal Ken."

"I feel men also feel pressure in the form of not being tall, not having enough hair, not having enough muscle, etc.," Lamm told The Huffington Post. "I think those are things which few talk about because, as a guy, you're kind of expected not to worry too much about your appearance and because women face beauty standards on another level."

The "boy Lammily" doll will serve as an alternative to the many highly muscular action figures and male fashion dolls on the market today. Lamm said the doll's design is based on the CDC's data on the average measurements and BMI for 19-year-old and 24-year-old males in the U.S.

At the moment, the final "boy Lammily" is only a digital prototype, but the creator said he hopes his new crowdfunding campaign will help make the empowering toy a reality. Once funded and manufactured, the actual doll will come with a story "describing what he does and who he is" and the option for kids to choose their own names for him. 

"I think realistic representations of men can positively influence kids' body image and show boys it's cool to show your emotions," Lamm told HuffPost.

Lamm drew inspiration for the male doll from his personal experience with body image. "Back in high school I thought I needed to lose weight because I read that I needed a really low body fat percentage in order to achieve a six pack," he said. "I'm not that tall, so I'm like, 'hey, at least I'll have a six pack!' I became so skinny that I just didn't recognize myself anymore."

"My experience in high school essentially came down to me being influenced by the media, peers, many different things," he continued. "I often internalized these pressures and they became core to my identity. Who I was, was directly linked to what I looked like. And how much time I spent worrying about my looks is time I'll never get back."

Reading reports that showed fashion dolls like Barbie may lead to eating disorders and other body image issues compelled Lamm to take action. After releasing the female Lammily doll in 2014, he started receiving requests for a "realistic boy doll," as well. 

"I also read Brian Cuban's book called Shattered Image, which showed me that there are many men out there who suffer from the affects of negative body image," he said. "So, to me, the boy doll is the next logical step."

Lamm's new crowdfunding campaign only just launched today, but he's already received pledges of nearly $8,000 toward his goal of $70,000. He hopes even more parents, educators, businesses and everyday citizens will "join the toy revolution" to make playtime a more positive experience for children.

"I've seen boys play with [girl] Lammily dolls because they like how 'real' the doll looks," Lamm said. "It's almost as if it stops being a doll and it becomes a tiny person. Kids are very observant about the small details, the toes, the fingers, the belly button."

He added, "I hope that, playing with realistically proportioned dolls, kids may have a better chance to grow up with realistic expectations about their own appearances."

To learn more about the new Lammily doll, visit the crowdfunding campaign website, and keep scrolling for more images of the design.

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A new video, simply titled "Body Image," and posted to artist Jody Steel's Facebook page has been viewed over 40 million times in the 24 hours since it was uploaded.  

The video features a time-lapse of Steel's abdomen -- we never see her face -- as she paints a rope into her stomach, making it look as though it's cinched into an unbearably tight knot -- a symbol of the struggles so many women and men go through to achieve a "perfect" body.

Last night, shortly after posting the video, Steel wrote the following in the comments section, encouraging viewers to let go of unrealistic body expectations: 

Once I realized that naturally, I don't have a coke bottle figure, or long and thin legs, I began to let go of the pressures I've felt to fulfill an image that our society has deemed the pinnacle of beauty. So let go of your demons and learn to enjoy the things you love in life. You can be healthy and happy. 

Thousands of viewers have voiced their support for the video by leaving comments. "I have been there and it's sad to see how many people in this world have body image issues," one Facebook user said. "This is beautiful and incredibly illustrative of the struggle millions of people go through every day,"said another. 

The number of views and comments speak for themselves: The video has struck a chord for the huge number of men and women alike who struggle with body image issues every day. 

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"Mom, I hate reading!" - Youths of America

"Read this book!" - Beyoncé

Queen B graces the cover of art and fashion mag Garage's Spring/Summer 2016 issue. Considering how famously selective she is with interview requests, new Beyoncé content is like honey for the Beyhive.

In her first major interview since her Super Bowl slaying, Beyoncé turns the focus away from her own art to talk about those who inspire her.

“I would love for my younger fans to read What Will It Take to Make a Woman President? by Marianne Schnall," she revealed. "It’s a collection of interviews and essays by great women, including Maya Angelou, Gloria Steinem, and Melissa Etheridge. They will inspire you to become a better leader.”

Your local book store right now: 

But Bey's biggest source of inspiration is, of course, her mother, Tina Knowles. "Ring Off," one of the strongest songs off Beyoncé's last album, is basically an open letter to her mom, in which she praises Tina for her unwavering strength. 

“My biggest hero is and always will be my mother," she told the magazine. "She has taught me about caring for others, working hard and working smart. Everything I know about being a mother comes from the examples she has shown. My mother has instilled confidence in my sister and me and taught us to always be grateful.”

Tina has, no doubt, set an example for her daughter about how success comes from paying no mind to other people's expectations and taking control of your own ... destiny. 

“Over time, I have learned to focus on the things I want to focus on in the time frame that I set,” she continued, “I no longer have to work based on someone else’s expectations of pressure. I put enough pressure on myself! I love being 100 percent involved with all my projects and now I’m fortunate enough to do that.”

And for those that try to define Beyoncé as a just a singer, an actress, an activist or an artist, B would like to make one thing clear: She is not here for your labels. 

“I think defining art is a really personal thing,” she explained to the mag. “I try not to think about it too much. It makes me think of a Basquiat quote I read somewhere that said, ‘I don’t think about art when I’m working. I try to think about life.'”

Download the Garage app to read the full interview now. 

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A temporary tattoo company has sprouted a new innovation.

The Brooklyn-based company, Tattly, has released a line of floral watercolor temporary tattoos with a scent that smells as sweet as they look.

The pretty-smelling Perennial Set comes with eight temporary tattoos (two of each design) plus a Tattly sponge for application. It retails for $18 a set and will be available online and in stores on April 19.

The idea came to Tattly’s founder, Tina Roth Eisenberg, when she stumbled upon French artist Vincent Jeannerot’s lush watercolor paintings online and instantly fell in love with his work, a company rep told The Huffington Post. She was already in talks with Agilex Fragrances to make a scented tattoo, but hadn’t come up with the perfect design yet -- but Jeannerot’s gorgeous paintings seemed perfect fit for a floral scent.

Eisenberg reached out to the artist to see if he would help design the aromatic tattoos and when he said yes the botanical brainchild began to bud.

The set features the artist’s blue hydrangea, pink and purple peonies and roses. All the tats have a single fragrance that includes notes of dewy fuchsia petals, pink poppies, ylang-ylang and poplar wood.

It’s enough to make a smile blossom on anyone’s face.

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Who said you only wear your wedding dress once? 

When her marriage of 19 years ended, Clara Herrera decided to dig up her old wedding gown and put it to good use, traveling around Texas and taking some striking black-and-white photos in it.

"The wedding dress just represented sadness [after divorce]," the Austin, Texas-based science and writing teacher told HuffPost. "It was either get rid of it or change the way I felt about it in a positive way." 

So beginning last summer, Herrera, 46, donned the dress dozen of times, posing at places both commonplace (the gym) and meaningful to her (hay fields similar to the one she used to play in as a child).

"This wedding dress project is the bridge that is carrying me from the past to the future," Herrera explained.

"I didn’t want to get rid of the dress because when I married, my father had died and both of my brothers walked me down the aisle," she said. "My oldest brother paid for it. I wanted my daughters to want to wear it." 

Most of the photos were taken by Herrera's 17-year-old daughter, and all three of her kid make appearances in the photo series. 

"They're used to my quirkiness. Never did they say, don’t do [the project]," she told HuffPost. "They're the reason I do not regret my marriage. They're the reason I do not regret my decision to divorce." 

At one point, Herrera even got her divorce attorney involved.

"I told him, 'I bet you’ve never had a client ask this before. If you [agree to it], you will never forget me and you'll have a good story to tell," Herrera recalled. "He said, 'true' and agreed with a sigh." 

Herrera dubbed the project Acid Neutral, after the description on the gown's storage box.

In the last photo, she poses in a field of sunflowers in a red dress, with the wedding gown cast aside at her feet. 

"It's very spiritual to me. I literally felt light, in both senses of the word," Herrera said. "It represents leaving the past behind and moving ahead gloriously." 

H/T The Today Show 

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In late February when President Barack Obama selected Carla Hayden, the head of Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library, to run the Library of Congress, he lauded her commitment to boosting the community’s use of the facility and providing patrons with greater access to computers. Hayden’s focus might also get a thumbs-up from the authors of a new study that ranks 61 countries from most to least literate.

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Once upon a time, there was a woman with a story to tell.

Maybe she had children, and wanted to warn them about the wayward world beyond adolescence.

Maybe her mother, or her mother's mother, told her the story, and as a child she delighted in its shocking twists and turns. Maybe it helped break up the mundanity of her domestic duties, or the telling of the story felt like a duty in itself.

No one's sure exactly why this woman had a story to tell, because this woman lived as many as 6,000 years ago...

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Technology can only get you so far. No matter how many clear-as-day DSLR shots you take, no matter how many Valencia filters you lovingly apply to your iPhone photo of brunch, you can't fake pure photographic genius.

That's the underlying philosophy of the International Krappy Kamera Competition, the 2016 results of which are now on view at the Soho Photo Gallery through April 2. The competition, now in its 18th year, was launched by Soho Photo, a cooperative gallery in New York City, to celebrate the triumph of a photographer's eye over the arms race of photographic technology. 

This year's juror, fine art photographer Susan Burnstine, argued in her jury statement that working with imperfect cameras can lead to even more serendipitously lovely results than using the best equipment available. "In today's digitally driven world, manufactured perfection tends to be the norm," she wrote. "But in the world of 'krappy' plastic and pinhole cameras, the lack of technical control allows for unforeseen imperfections such as light leaks, vignettes and blur that can transform what may have been an average image into something spectacular."

To be clear, not all bad cameras fit the definition -- your flip phone snapshots, for example, aren't eligible. What Soho Photo aims to highlight are images captured by still lower-tech equipment: "homemade or plastic cameras with lousy lenses," as competition co-chair Myra Hafetz put it, like those Diana cameras that you might find at Urban Outfitters, Holga or Ansco cameras. Some artists in the competition even made their own cameras, or altered pre-made ones, to capture their shots.

If you're into the perfect imperfection of an old-school photo, or the faded aesthetic of an over-filtered Instagram, the photos on display as Krappy Kamera 2016 winners are the real deal. Check out some of the winning entries, including the prize-winners, and some snaps from a special exhibit photographed during Hurricane Katrina by photographer Jennifer Shaw:

All photos courtesy of the International Krappy Kamera Competition and Soho Photo Gallery. To check out the full exhibit, head to Soho Photo through April 2.

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In this series, The Huffington Post profiles some of the best ballet dancers in the world, working in some of the rarest and most unusual work environments imaginable, to try to understand how they deal with the same workplace issues that confront the rest of us mere mortals.

Most of us don’t get literal standing ovations from hundreds of people when we do good work. And most of us don’t have to visit the physical therapist at the beginning and end of every workday. But no matter what sector we’re in, the big questions are the same: What does it mean to have your body under scrutiny on the job? How does it feel to be asked to represent your entire race in a company meeting? How do you find the right people to mentor and guide you?

Read the first installment, about being the kind of partner people fight to work with, and the second, about changing careers. 

Ifyou’ve ever wondered what it’s like to fall hard for a colleague, or work alongside your significant other, Gillian Murphy can tell you. She can also tell you what it’s like to stand in the background and work your ass off while your partner kisses someone who is not you in front of a large crowd and gets paid for the privilege.

Murphy is a Principal dancer at American Ballet Theatre, where she’s spent almost 20 years honing her craft and becoming one of the nation’s greatest working ballerinas. She’s also spent much of that time falling in love and building a life with a co-worker. 

Murphy joined ABT at 17, entering the company’s lowest rung, the corps de ballet. Two years later, she started dating Ethan Stiefel, a principal dancer and company star who was six years her senior. While she was dancing in the corps, he had already been a principal at New York City Ballet and toured the world as a guest artist at other prestigious companies. They had their first kiss on her 19^th birthday. 

“We connected on a human level outside of work,” she told The Huffington Post, munching spinach salad and sipping on juice as she recovered from hours of rehearsal. Stiefel, who some readers might recognize from his turn as ballet bad boy Cooper Nielson in the "Center Stage" movies, retired from dancing five years ago and would go on to become Artistic Director of the Royal New Zealand Ballet. But for years, they worked together, taking daily morning class and often rehearsing and performing romantic ballets like "Swan Lake" and "Don Quixote" together.

It’s not uncommon for dancers to date and marry each other. A dancer’s work life is so consuming that it can make it hard to find the time to meet people outside of the dance world. Murphy’s fellow principal dancer, Stella Abrera, is also married to a dancer who was in "Center Stage" -- Sascha Radetsky, aka Charlie, and who, like Stiefel, now teaches in ABT's master’s dance pedagogy program.

The company doesn’t frown on dancers dating, or advise them against inter-rank dating -- principal dancers don’t have any influence over casting or promotions the way ballet masters/mistresses, choreographers and directors do. Murphy says that, in the early days, dating Stiefel came with challenges, though. There was the age difference, and the fact that he was much further along in his career. And then there was the jealousy she felt when she had to watch him play at falling in love with other women night after night -- to say nothing of the intimacy and trust required for him to lift and throw those women around in pas de deux.

“He was doing 'Romeo and Juliet' with gorgeous leading ballerinas in the company, and other romantic ballets that involve a lot of chemistry and kissing and love portrayed on the stage,” she says. “So as a 19- and 20-year-old that made me a little uncomfortable. Because he was playing Romeo alongside some of my idols.”

As she advanced in her career, though, and started dancing solo roles, Murphy saw for herself that, while what happens on stage is real, it’s not true. It's just acting. She learned first hand that creating the illusion of earth-shattering love “is part of the job, you have to create chemistry on stage and it doesn’t need to be anything to be worried about in real life ... you can fully connect with someone on stage, but that doesn’t even compare to who you want to spend your life with, your evenings.” She learned, she says, to support Stiefel in his dancing and to stop being intimidated when he was on stage pretend-making out with the Black Swan.

Murphy was promoted to soloist a year after she and Stiefel started dating, and to principal three years after that. At 36, she’s been a principal for 13 years and is the most senior dancer in the entire company. Now that Stiefel’s retired, he teaches company class once a week, so their working relationship has changed yet again. Is it weird being a student in her husband’s class? “No, it’s great,” she laughs. “He teaches a great class. I love him, and I love his artistry, and what he’s passing on.”

In the ballet world, there are real upsides to dating a co-worker. For one thing, they truly understand what your work life is like; they literally speak the language, the French-English hybrid that so many ballet dancers rely on to talk about their work. For another, Murphy points out, touring with the company has meant that she and her now-husband were able to travel the world together and be paid for the pleasure.

On the other hand, when you live together and work together, it can be hard to find time apart.

And not all dance couples work quite so well. It’s easy to imagine that the higher-ranked dancer in a romantic relationship might want to keep that power dynamic intact, and would begrudge or belittle their partner’s advance through the ranks. Murphy says that’s never been the case for her. “I couldn’t be in a relationship like that. That would be awful. Ethan was always genuinely rooting for me, and I think he was genuinely aware to not influence me in terms of my career choices, and to let me learn on my own. But if I needed help he was there.”

They’ve managed to keep competition out of their relationship, and, it seems -- somewhat paradoxically -- they manage to keep ballet out of it, too. “In some dance-life partnerships people like to give each other corrections all the time and constantly give each other that technical ballet feedback about what worked and what didn’t,” she says, frowning. “And we’ve just never done that.”

If it’s common for dancers to date and marry, it’s common for them to break up, too, and just as in other workplaces, they’ve still got jobs to do. This is, it’s worth noting, exactly what happens to Ethan Stiefel’s character in "Center Stage."

Much of Murphy’s life at ABT has been lived as part of a ballet duo-turned-power couple. But on the day she speaks to HuffPost, she’s dancing on her own. Her regular work day starts with a morning company class, and then she moves from one rehearsal to the next, learning or perfecting the choreography she’ll be performing in the next few months. At a half-hour private rehearsal in the mid-afternoon, it’s just her, a ballet master -- Keith Roberts, himself a former ABT Principal -- and an accompanist. She arrives wearing a black mesh-back leotard and black-and-white patterned tights. Roberts helps fasten the back of her rehearsal tutu, so that she can know how the steps will feel once she’s got a large and obtrusive skirt bouncing around her hips. In this rehearsal, she’s calling the shots. There’s no set agenda, but she tells the men she wants to rehearse her solos for "Sleeping Beauty."

She starts with the third act solo, which begins with a series of 11 huge développés -- big left lifts with her supporting leg on pointe -- that bring her from the back of the stage right down to the front and then moves on to a series of enormously difficult pirouettes that she has to land in a perfectly still arabesque. After a couple of run-throughs, Roberts tells her it’s looking good and she nods, wide-eyed, like she’s not so sure. She moves on to the next solo, which includes a long sequence of delicate footwork done entirely on pointe.

Part way through, the pianist struggles with a sticky key, and the music slows. Murphy, who’s spent three decades listening to music and arranging her body accordingly, slows down while he catches up, and laughingly asks, mid-arabesque, “You OK, Ben?” The variation ends with a series of terrifyingly fast turns that take her from one side of the studio to the other. Then she launches into yet another solo, her pointe shoes squeaking on the rubbery floor in a way that audiences will never hear over the sound of the orchestra. That one ends with her leaping around the stage in a huge circle, her legs splitting to 180 degrees in each of the eight or so jumps. “This kills my calves,” she says when the music stops. “I’m sure it’s impossible, but it looks great,” Roberts replies.

Soon, she’ll start rehearsing with a partner. She’ll perform this ballet with fellow principal Cory Stearns, and "Sylvia" with Marcelo Gomes. But at the end of the day, she’ll go home to Stiefel. After almost two decades in the company, the partnerships Murphy has built with the men she dances with are crucial -- you can’t dance together without trust and chemistry -- but what she has with her dance partners is distinct from what she has with her life partner. “When I’m on stage portraying Juliet, I’m very much in the moment, and I feel that chemistry with my partner and I can have that moment, but when the curtain comes down, I’m fully myself again.”

American Ballet Theater will perform at the Detroit Opera House starting March 31 and at the Metropolitan Opera Theater in New York City starting May 9.

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The fairy tale “Snow White and Seven Dwarfs” has been an opera, a ballet and, of course, a Disney animated feature. It’s safe to say, however, that none of those adaptations featured pole dancers, a scantily clad damsel-in-distress and a handsome, “gender-neutral” prince.

Enter Company XIV’s “Snow White,” which puts a racy, “baroque-burlesque” twist on the story’s specifics. Now playing at New York’s Minetta Lane Theatre, this take on “Snow White” finds the racy undertones in the classic tale, weaving classical music, modern dance, acrobatics and even Britney Spears together along the way. That cheeky, irreverent tone is apparent from the minute the audience enters the theater, which is done up as a smoky, Weimar era cabaret, complete with cages, bondage gear and even a carousel horse.

Things only get hotter, both literally and figuratively, from here. For the most part, Company XIV’s “Snow White” eschews many of the child-friendly changes of the Disney version and skews closer to the original, and much darker, Grimm Brothers’ original. For instance, the evil queen (Laura Careless) attempts to kill Snow White (Hilly Bodin) not just once but actually three times, once with the help of a very tight-fitting corset. 

One of director Austin McCormick’s most subversive choices is the casting of dancer Courtney Giannone as the prince. A veteran of Company XIV’s productions of “Nutcracker Rouge,” Giannone is a master of the “Cyr wheel,” a giant aluminum ring used for performing acrobatic tricks, and her talents are used to great effect in “Snow White.”

Although she spends much of the show’s second act dressed as a man, Giannone says she interpreted the prince in a “gender neutral” way as opposed to being a woman in drag.

“The parts of myself that I brought to the character are my femininity and humor,” she told The Huffington Post. And that isn’t the only twist. “I think the prince is most focused on himself, which is humorous to me. I try to personify that this prince thinks it’s all about him.”

Of working with director McCormick, she said, “The best part about working with Austin is that he considers every contribution a cast member can offer to a production and integrates that which is appropriate to the show. “

So what does Giannone find most sexy about a good fairy tale?

 “Love, beauty and fantasy,” she said, all of which Company XIV’s “Snow White” serves up in spades.

Company XIV’s “Snow White” plays the Minetta Lane Theatre in New York through March 12. 

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"Hamilton," the musical that's single-handedly changing the way we engage with Broadway, is headed to the White House. 

In a recent #Ham4Ham video (the digital version of the skits "Hamilton" cast members perform for lottery ticket hopefuls waiting in line in New York City), Lin-Manuel Miranda and company announced that they are traveling to Washington, D.C., to hang with the first lady and highlight its educational initiative program.

Last year, "Hamilton" partnered with the Rockefeller Foundation, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and the New York City Department of Education to launch a $1.46 million program that provides “Hamilton” tickets to public school students at a cost of just $10 per person. Along with the initiative, the “Hamilton” team is working with history and theater classes to create a mini “Hamilton” curriculum for students and teachers that will incorporate studies and performances.

During their visit to D.C., set for March 16, the cast will hold a Q&A and perform a selection of songs from the show. Bonus: The first lady will introduce them to the White House, because even Michelle Obama can't get enough of Miranda. Of course, he's been at the presidential abode before -- in 2009, he performed "The Hamilton Mixtape," essentially, the basis for his wildly successful musical that debuted in 2015.

If you're still envious of the fact that basically everyone but you has been able to wrangle tickets or one-on-one performances with the "Hamilton" all stars, we leave you with this reenactment of the beloved musical, performed by peeps. We know it doesn't help, but it's hilarious.

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Thursday marks the two month anniversary of the death of music legend David Bowie. Since then, artists like Lorde and Lady Gaga have paid homage to the Starman on the awards show stage, but something about this W Magazine tribute is endearingly simple. 

In the video above, the magazine's April cover stars -- Willow Smith, Zendaya and Kiernan Shipka -- do their best rendition of Bowie's classic rock ballad "Changes," delivering the ever powerful lyrics like, "Time may change me, but I can't change time," with a youthful charm. 

All three ladies are impressive vocalists in their own right, but Smith is the one that seems to connect most with the song. Can someone please get them in a girl band STAT because if this image doesn't scream album cover to you then it's time to make a change. 

Head over to W Magazine to hear more from Smith, Shipka and Zendaya. 

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A new powerful photo series captures the emotions black women can have -- but don't always get to express -- when their bodies are appropriated. 

College freshman Imani Diltz's assignment, which has since garnered a lot attention outside of the classroom, was to explore one of the seven deadly sins. She chose lust. But the kind of lust she wanted to underscore was the appropriative lust that makes the features on black women -- big lips, larger butts, traditional hairstyles and even darker skin -- undesirable unless they're on white women. 

"There are these blatant robberies of culture that are taken and made trendy and conglomerated by white society," Diltz, who was the model for this project, told The Huffington Post. She pointed to celebrities like the Kardashian sisters as culprits. "[It's] something that I was really fed up with." 

She said her project, titled "Erosion," is meant to show the sheer discomfort black women face when their features are fetishized. In the four photos, white hands pull and grab at Diltz as they try to manhandle take her hips, butt, hair and more.

When shooting photos, Diltz and her photographer, Daniel Stewart, took everything into consideration, from Diltz's facial expressions to the people whose arms appear in the photos, ensuring that they were white people who understood how destructive cultural appropriation is.  

"The facial expressions [in the photos] weren’t indicative of being in that situation," Stewart told HuffPost, explaining that black women can't always react the way they want to. "We wanted to make sure that these photos were something that… women [who] do go through could connect with and know that they’re not alone."

Stewart said he often hears his peers say they love black women's features but only when they see them on white women. This mindset frustrates Diltz, she said. Though these features aren't exclusive to black women, she finds it irksome when cornrows, big lips and big butts only get accreditation and praise when a white celebrity rocks them, especially when they've surgically modified their bodies to appear this way.

Diltz said it takes an emotional toll when black women constantly see synthetic attributes meant to mimic their natural bodies being uplifted while their natural bodies are ridiculed. This is why she titled this project "Erosion."

While this project is meant to shine a light on this problem, Diltz wants to ensure that it's also empowering for women. 

"It’s a celebration of all types of black women and black women’s bodies who do go through this experience," Diltz said. "You don’t have to just have confidence in your body because all these other people want to appropriate your features. You can have confidence in your body because you are amazing people."

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A large protest of Israel's sex work industry just hit the streets.

A 10-foot-high vagina sculpture was installed on a Tel Aviv thoroughfare to honor International Women's Day on Tuesday, the Times of Israel reported.

Artists Sasha Kurbatov and Vanane Borian crafted the giant vulva from cards that advertise sex work services. A 50-foot trail of the same type of cards leads to the work on Rothschild Boulevard.

Hundreds of brothels operating illegally in Tel Aviv are reportedly responsible for the cards strewn about city sidewalks, the Jerusalem Post reported. Advertising sex services is against the law as well.

“All the fragments of women that are on the floor, people are stepping on them, they see it, and there is no longer any value to it," Borian told The Times of Israel. "A woman simply loses all value and becomes an object, not even a complete object.”

The artists did not answer a Huffington Post request for comment about the specifics of their message. According to The Independent, the artists needed a year to build the work using about 10,000 of the cards. "We hope that the project speaks for itself," Kurbatov said, per Haaretz.

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In the early '90s Jennifer Lopez was a fly girl -- literally, as a dancer for "In Living Color"-- but by the end of the decade the Nuyorican triple-threat was a full blown star thanks to her movie portrayal of slain Tejano star Selena Quintanilla.

The 1997 biopic catapulted Lopez to stardom and those who still remember her work in the film fondly are in for a treat. A J.Lo fan page on Instagram resurfaced a video of the singer posing for a photo shoot in several different Selena costumes earlier this week. 

In the clip, J.Lo smiles for the camera as she twirls in different colored bustiers and outfits that mirror the Tejano icon's own sense of style.

In honor of the 20th anniversary of Quintanilla's death, Lopez gave a moving tribute to the slain artist last May during the Billboard Latin Music Awards. 

After the ceremony, the Puerto Rican star opened up to the "Today" show about how much Selena inspired her as an artist and how portraying her in the film changed her life. 

"The impact that it had on my life, on my career ..." Lopez said, breaking off with a sigh. "It was a great thing for her to be my mentor. And it was a great thing to have her teach me so much about how to navigate this business, but also how to navigate through life."

Watch J.Lo channeling Selena during the photo shoot in the clip above.  

H/T: Latina

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What will the future of music look like? New York Times Magazine published an ambitious multimedia feature on Thursday that purported to answer that question, and apparently the answer is: pretty masculine.

The feature, which includes contributions from fantastic writers such as Marlon James, George Saunders, Jenna Wortham and Jezebel's Jia Tolentino, unscrolls beautifully through an introduction (focused on Beyoncé) and 25 brief articles on individual songs that are shaping the future of music. Snippets of the songs play as you reach the relevant article. It's a delightful multimedia experience.

The writers who contributed are talented and diverse, and the selected songs include many written and performed by people of color -- an extremely important factor, especially given how often black performers and artists have been written out of music history, and still are to this day. The list celebrates Fetty Wap, Kendrick Lamar, Run The Jewels, D'Angelo, Pharrell, Vybz Kartel, Chance The Rapper, Vince Staples and a song from "Hamilton."

But one imbalance remained glaring: Out of 25 artists given the primary credit on the track noted, only four were women. Wortham wrote about Syd tha Kyd and the Internet, a band formed by Sydney Bennett of Odd Future; and then there are blurbs for Rihanna in duet with Sza, classical composer and singer Caroline Shaw, and country singer Margo Price. Should I go on? Oh, I can't -- those are the only female performers whose songs are among the 25. (Beyoncé apparently makes the introduction, but not the list.)

To be sure, there probably simply wasn't room on the list for Beyoncé or other musical women -- the list had to make room for bland pop dude Charlie Puth, bland pop band Twenty One Pilots, bland band Coldplay and Lionel Richie -- whose early-'80s "Hello" is on the list thanks, apparently, to Adele's current hit, "Hello." (Adele is not on the list.) Oh, and Justin Bieber. (He's No. 1.)

The music industry has never been accused of being excessively gentle to women. In the past few months alone, the rampant sexual harassment and assault problem has made headlines, with female artists and music industry workers speaking out about men within the field who have allegedly victimized women with impunity. Pop star Kesha recently lost a court battle to be freed from her contract with producer Dr. Luke, despite her allegations that he had sexually assaulted her.

None of this is remotely in the same category as the NYT Magazine list's far more mundane failure, but the current spotlight on women's struggles in the industry would, one would hope, be a reminder that female musicians face significantly greater obstacles to being viewed as serious artists as opposed to sexual objects and/or dilettantes among serious male professionals. Instead, in the formulation of this list, it seems that serious music cred and stardom is needed to qualify a woman for consideration, while men make the list for all sorts of reasons -- as a particular instance of blandness, of a retro trend, of whatever. 

To be clear, this is probably not the fault of the writers bylined in the piece, who each contributed thoughtful musings on the songs they selected. Most of the songs included are well worth writing about and listening to, and the components of the feature were exceptionally well executed. So who was overseeing the totality of the project, making sure that it came together into something that truly looked like the future of music, not another version of a boys' club? How did this happen?

As a little reminder that women are shaping the future of music as much as men, we've quickly compiled 25 other songs by women we think are showing us what music will look like, and why:

Katy Brooks, Senior Culture Editor:

1. Courtney Barnett, “Pedestrian at Best”: Barnett turns banal observations into rousing, lyrically innovative poetry, pairing her perfectly muttered words with hard guitar lines and pounding drums. In the age of confessional writing, Barnett unabashedly embraces her internal monologue -- showing us that small stories and big music still go hand in hand.
   
   


2. Lizzo, “Batches and Cookies”: In a performance of this song at Terminal 5 in New York City last year, Lizzo and her crew took to the stage in aprons and began tossing cookies into the audience. She rapped and belted, all the while dancing in unison with her collaborator Sophia Eris, who previously stood behind a rig emblazoned with the words “BIG GRRRL.” In an interview with HuffPost, Lizzo described the performance and her work, stating, “Yes, my new music is super body-positive. I'm going to stand firm in that, and that's something I want to represent.” All hail Lizzo.
   
   


3. Alabama Shakes, “Don’t Wanna Fight”: Brittany Howard blends blues, roots and rock in “Don’t Wanna Fight,” a song off the band’s latest album, “Sound & Color.” From the moment she begins singing, she rips her own range apart, swinging from screams to croons with ease. She has, arguably, more presence on stage -- in volume, expression and killer guitar skills -- than any other band front(wo)man today.
   
   


4. Mavis Staples, “Take Us Back”: Born in 1939, Staples has been revolutionizing the R&B, folk and activist realms since the 1950s with her deep vocals and gospel roots. She released “Livin' On a High Note” in February of this year, proving that the future of music is not only built on -- but carried forward by -- the successes of women artists who’ve been performing for decades.
   
   


5. Anohni, “Manta Ray”: Made in collaboration with J. Ralph, the song was featured in the documentary “Racing Extinction” and subsequently nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Song. (She became the only transgender performer ever to have been nominated for an Academy Award as a result, and wrote about her decision not to attend the ceremonies after her performance was cut “due to time.”) The song itself celebrates Anohni’s languid lyricism, that drifts along the delicate sounds of a piano, bemoaning a dramatic oceanic scene. It’s a beautiful example of how music can elevate films dedicated to big issues -- like the potential loss of at least half of the world's species.

Claire Fallon, Culture Staff Writer

1. Thao & the Get Down Stay Down, “Meticulous Bird”: Thao Nguyen marries folksiness with jangling discordance, and the symbiotic relationship between the two styles shines in this rhythmic, chanting ditty -- interspersed with breathless, belligerent exclamations of “oh my, oh my.”
   
   


2. Kesha, “Tik Tok”: For reasons you may have heard about, Kesha hasn’t been releasing new music recently, but her hits keep going, ahem, right round our heads, with her juddering, sneery vocals and buoyant choruses. If she were able to keep creating new music, we suspect it would be the next generation of great party jams.
   
   


3. Nicki Minaj ft. Beyoncé “Feeling Myself”: Everything about this collaboration is a win, especially the swaggering confidence with which Nicki raps about sex, money and fame, while Beyoncé’s sultry, self-assured tones remind us that she’s “feeling herself.” Beyond the old-school girl group, this is a joint project between two bonafide lady superstars, carried out with both genius and verve, and that smacks of the future to us.
   
   


4. CHVRCHES, “Leave a Trace”: This is a band, but it’s identifiably fronted by singer Lauren Mayberry, whose soaring, crystalline voice forms the centerpiece of its best songs. “Leave a Trace” encapsulates the band’s injection of synth-driven, ‘80s-inflected dance-pop with anthemic, emotional choruses.
   
   


5. Lorde, “Buzzcut Season”: The New Zealand wunderkind was inescapable when her first hit “Royals” climbed charts a couple years back, and her whole first album is redolent of the poetic approach that made “Royals” so startling and stripped-down. Language-driven, but more repetitive and simplistic than rap, Lorde’s dreamy, haunting melodies capture attention with startling images: “I remember when your head caught flame / It kissed your scalp and caressed your brain / Well you laughed, baby it's okay / It's buzzcut season anyway.”

Maddie Crum, Culture Staff Writer

1. Lana Del Rey, “High By the Beach”: When Lana Del Rey first burst on the scene, no one could tell whether or not her whole schtick -- the droning vocals, the juvenile, maudlin lyrics -- was a joke. Was her sadness over her boyfriend’s video game-playing negligence sincere, performative, or both? Years later, her slacker girl crooning is as popular as ever, bringing to life the feeling of listless youth.
   
   


2. Beach House, “Space Song”: Your favorite ethereal band explores the most ethereal place of all: space! Fluid, dreamy instrumentals create the effect of floating, and Victoria Legrand’s rich voice juxtaposes the song’s airiness. It’s not exactly new ground for Beach House -- putting on one of their albums is an easy way to get lost in repetitive, slowly shifting sounds. The band dares to not experiment, sticking instead with a cohesive body of work.
   
   


3. Taylor Swift, “Bad Blood”: The breakup queen veers away from upbeat longing to sing about something totally different: female rivalries. While Swift’s choice to pit women against women in the wildly popular music video is off-putting for some, her rally cry is a welcome departure from her usual boy-driven ballads. Plus, it’s catchy as hell.
   
   


4. St. Vincent, “Digital Witness”: From its first second, this song -- like many of St. Vincent’s -- bursts with energy. A funky trumpet welcomes in her voice, immediately recognizable due to its range. The song is part of her latest album, which is heavily critical of our recent reliance on electronic forms of entertainment. “People turn the TV on,” the chorus goes.
   
   


5. Mitski, “Townie”: Mitski isn’t afraid to sing about her pain, an avenue for expression that only became an option for women rockers in the '90s. But she’s no Alanis; her raw, dangerous lyrics are sometimes sounded off amid a sweet sheen of echoes and distorted vocals. Even in “Townie,” which could squarely be classified as garage rock, she doesn’t succumb to the nasally conventions of the genre -- her powerful, feminine voice shines through.

Priscilla Frank, Culture Staff Writer

1. FKA Twigs, “Glass & Patron”: Twigs’ ode to voguing is a formidable example of paying tribute to your influences, especially those who don’t have the same visibility or scope. Rather than appropriating voguing culture, Twigs identifies herself as a newcomer and shares the stage with those who paved her way, working the homage into a wildly danceable warrior jam that will inspire you to form your own magical-freaky vogue troupe in the woods.
    


2. Grimes, “Kill vs. Maim”: “Cuz I’m only a man, I do what I can,” Grimes sings in her demented cheerleader chant, bridging the space between a brutal warrior and a teenage girl. The amped up anthem is part Ace of Base, part K-Pop, part “Bring It On,” the perfect mix of girliness and badassery not to be messed with.
   
   


3. Alessia Cara, “Here”: The 19-year-old singer got famous posting cover songs on YouTube, and her hit single “Here” shows that sometimes the wisest, oldest souls are those judging you at a high school party. With soulful power, Cara describes the overwhelming lameness of her peers getting stupid hammered at a party she doesn’t want to be at in the ultimate rebuke to “get faded in the club” hits. Finally, a party anthem for hermits who like to be in bed by nine.
   
   


4. Tinashe, “All Hands On Deck": “All Hands On Deck” was the first song since probably “I’m A Slave 4 U” that had me dancing like an idiot in front of the music video, trying to learn all the moves. Tinashe is the quintessential contemporary R&B goddess, whose sheer star power (and ungodly abs) have me fangirling like a 13-year-old begging my parents for concert tickets.
   
   


5. Erykah Badu, “U Use To Call Me”: Queen Badu responded to Drake’s super viral “Hotline Bling” with a mixtape called “But You Caint Use My Phone.” The song “U Use To Call Me” even features a Drake imitator rapping over a warped riff on Drake’s hip-hopified salsa beat. Combining the hyper-timeliness of the Internet age with classic old school soul influences, Badu’s album is a glorious example of the Internet eating itself and busting out something convoluted and gorgeous.

Tricia Tongco, Culture Social Media Editor

1. Waxahatchee, “Under a Rock”: When listening to “Under a Rock,” it feels like frontwoman Katie Crutchfield is singing to you in her bedroom. The natural, real intimacy of her lyrics and the song’s soaring chorus convey a moment of transition most young adults have felt or are still experiencing. With its familiarity and hybrid sound of folk and punk, the song is accomplished in its own right, sounding like the best of ‘90s indie rock without feeling forced.
   
   


2. Carly Rae Jepsen, “Warm Blood”: “Warm Blood” is a warbling, sensual pop song off of Jepsen’s criminally underrated album "Emotion."  Produced by Vampire Weekend's Rostam Batmanglij, the song shows us how a pop star can emulate '80s synth sounds and yet still sound fresh. If her voice sounds grittier than usual, it’s because she was vaping too much while recording her album. This dose of pop genius is perfect for tipsy gyrating, obsessive replaying and late night driving.
   
   


3. Savages, “Adore”: “Adore” by Savages is a slow release of life-affirming love for life in the face of certain death. Sound intense? Well, their entire album “Adore Life” is a dark, powerful exploration of love in many forms -- from sexual fluidity to sexual power. “Adore” cements the album as a positive one, embracing the choice to live and the sense of gratitude, freedom and urgency that goes along with that.
   
   


4. Ellie Goulding, “On My Mind”: “On My Mind” is the epitome of pop music for adults. While still fun, the song is more sophisticated than teen pop and gets major points for realness. Goulding is a talented storyteller with a unique ability to create mature yet dramatic dance music.
   
   


5. Missy Elliott, “WTF”: Oh, how we’ve missed Missy Elliott. Marking Missy’s return to music after a decade, “WTF” hit us hard and fast. Her lyrics might sound merely like shaming or throwing shade at tongue-waggling girls, but instead she’s bringing up the issue of cultural appropriation (Miley, what’s good?). But in true Missy fashion, she also infuses humor into the song, comparing herself to a Big Mac and dismissing competition with “Blah-blah-blah.” 

Bonus -- you can check out the latest from any of these women and women-fronted groups to see glimpses of what music is and will be:

Haim
Esperanza Spalding
Cardi B
Sleater Kinney
Adele
Tune-Yards
Angel Haze
Demi Lovato
Sharon Jones
Esperanza Spalding
Sharon Van Etten
Holly Herndon
Anna Meredith
Kim Gordon
Florence & the Machine
Purity Ring
Sharon Van Etten
Neko Case
Robyn
Azealia Banks
Janelle Monae
Kehlani
Bjork
Julee Cruise
Angel Olsen
Trina
Ciara
Kelala
Brandy
Lady Gaga
Jenny Lewis
Wet

Add your own favorites -- and listen to the selected songs (at least, the ones available on Spotify) -- to the playlist:

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When an author confronts a pervasive issue in her writing, it’s often most evocative for her to employ a supernatural element: A misty fog hanging over a medieval land, representing collective memory and forgetting; a curse as a stand-in for a dictator’s power.

In her debut novel We Love You, Charlie Freeman, Kaitlyn Greenidge uses a silent language to discuss the way Americans talk about race, and how insufficient our conversations often are.

The story centers on the Freeman family -- a crew of four that’s recently left their home in Dorchester, Massachusetts, to live and work at the mysterious Toneybee Institute, a research center focused on primate language acquisition. Its founder, Julia Toneybee-Leroy, is an heiress whose image and reputation loom over the eerie space. Its director, Dr. Grayson, manages to greet the Freemans warmly, in spite of her meekness and peculiar tics. Already, protagonist Charlotte is wary of the place, and not just in a preteen-moving-blues sort of way.

Her father, Charles, is a cautiously optimistic geometry teacher, and a believer in neat solutions for complex problems. Her younger sister, Callie, is bold, brave and hungry. And her mother, Laurel, is the reason the family landed at the institute: ever since she was raised as the only black kid in her rural Maine hometown, she adored sign language, feeling that it reflected her nature-bound roots and active, altruistic personality better than verbal speech. When she had a family, they all learned to sign, too, despite their hearing abilities.

The Freemans' skill set serves a few purposes at Toneybee. Its founder is convinced that apes are capable of learning to speak, and believes immersing an abandoned newborn ape, Charlie, in a sign-centric family may be a step toward proving her theory. So Laurel, Charles, Charlotte and Callie learn to live with spurned, moody Charlie, and welcome him into their family in spite of his occasional fits. As weeks pass, however, Charlotte learns that Julia Toneybee-Leroy and Dr. Grayson may have mixed motivations for their presence at the institute. As Toneybee’s horrific, buried past surfaces, the Freemans’ warring interests in forward progress and historical reverence slowly rips them apart.

These scenes are punctuated by chapters narrated by a woman involved with the institute in the 1920s. Nymphadora -- named after a character in a misprinted Bible -- is a misfit in her black religious group. She mingles with a researcher, Dr. Gardner, who asks to draw her naked figure, studying her alongside his primate subjects. While his intentions for this aren’t clear, the effect is decidedly racist, and a takedown of Toneybee is published decades later, rightfully tarnishing its reputation.

Greenidge seamlessly weaves together the two plots, which culminate in a rich examination of America’s treatment of race, and the ways we attempt to discuss and confront it today.

The story’s thesis is wrapped up in when and how the Freemans choose to use sign language rather than spoken words; often, it serves the purpose of communicating what’s difficult or impossible to articulate. For Greenidge, it’s a perfect metaphor for the often nebulous nature of racism. 

The Bottom Line:

Mirroring the way racism functions in America today, Greenidge’s debut novel embeds judgments both within the text and between the lines. Smart, timely and powerful.  

What other reviewers think:

Bustle:“This sharp and powerful debut novel will floor you.”

Kirkus:“A vivid and poignant coming-of-age story that is also an important exploration of family, race, and history.”

Who wrote it?

Kaitlyn Greenidge is a graduate of Hunter College’s MFA program. This is her first novel.

Who will read it?

Anyone interested in literary historical fiction, heartfelt familial dramas, or examinations of race.

Opening lines:

“This car doesn’t feel like ours,” I said.

“Well, it is now,” my father replied. “So get used to it.”

Notable passage:

"Miss Toneybee-Leroy’s eyes were more unnerving than her hair or her skin. Her eyes flitted between all of us, with the tip of her tongue resting between her half-parted lips, her expression less like an old woman’s and more like a wrinkly little girl’s. She looked at all of us as if she already knew us.

"I watched her watching my family and I tried to steel myself, like Adia told me to. 'She’s the cause of everything,' Adia had coached me the night before. But I could hear her breath leave her lungs from across the room. And it was hard to hate a woman who gazed at my sister with such affection."

We Love You, Charlie Freeman
By Kaitlyn Greenidge
Algonquin Books, $25.95
Published March 8, 2016

The Bottom Line is a weekly review combining plot description and analysis with fun tidbits about the book.

Also on HuffPost:

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According to the rumor mill, actor Aaron Paul will be signing on for the film adaptation of "The Dark Tower." But when the former star of "Breaking Bad" stopped by HuffPost Live on Wednesday, he stayed tight-lipped about the reports.

"I cannot confirm or deny," he told host Alyona Minkovski. "These rumors keep resurfacing and I always, deep down, think, 'Do I not know everything?'"

Paul said he was itching to be included in the on-screen version of Stephen King's book series, so he reached out to the writer on Twitter to ask for a role in the project.

"It would be absolutely a dream of mine. I've been such a fan of those books for many years, huge fan of Stephen King," he said. "I talked to Stephen last night about it. I hit him up on Twitter. It's incredible the people you can talk to on Twitter."

King responded back, remaining unsurprisingly cagey about whether Paul would be joining the ranks of actors, including Idris Elba, Matthew McConaughey and Tom Taylor, who have reportedly been cast in the film. 

Watch the full HuffPost Live conversation with Aaron Paul and director Gavin Hood here. 

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

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