When you are a woman who writes online -- be it for a big publication like The Huffington Post or in 140 characters on Twitter -- the conventional wisdom is, "Don't read the comments." Anita Hill, a woman who is no stranger to public vitriol, has the opposite suggestion. 

In an interview with Broadly, the attorney and professor, who is also the subject of HBO's upcoming film "Confirmation," said that she would tell female writers and bloggers "to read as much of [the hate mail] as you can stand," for one very important reason:

I think the mail is quite revealing. It's revealing of a certain kind of anger towards women, and it's revealing of a fear of equality -- a misunderstanding, a myth of what gender equality means, as some sort of unwarranted threat to men. To some extent, it's healthy to read them.

I've held on to all of my negative [letters]... I do have them, and I do read them. I keep them for a purpose, to learn something.

Writers who aren't straight, white men tend to bear the brunt of online harassment. The Guardian recently did an analysis of their own comments and found that the 10 writers who faced the highest levels of abuse were eight women (four women of color, four white women), and two black men. 

As one of those women writers/bloggers/editors, for whom online vitriol has become a near-daily part of my job, Hill's words ring true. After tweeting a (fairly innocuous) explainer about why the wage gap is not a myth yesterday, my mentions quickly filled up with vicious commentary from men who needed to tell me just how wrong I was.

The most charming of the rebuttals looked like this:

The vitriol Hill faced is far worse than anything I've experienced. After all, she came forward with allegations of sexual harassment against a very powerful political figure (soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas), during a time when the term "sexual harassment" had yet to be embedded in the public consciousness the way it is now. But the idea that there could be some sort of revelation -- albeit a depressing one -- in the muck of hateful comments is somewhat uplifting. 

Of course, if reading the comments -- or tweets or Facebook posts -- is going to harm your mental health, it's best to just... not. ("Read only as much as you can," said Hill.) But sometimes by reading people's hateful words, you can learn just how little substance there is behind them. It's more about generalized ignorance and anger than about YOU. 

"I think some ways it might be helpful to see where [the detractors] are coming from," said Hill. "To say, 'well, I guess it's not even about me personally.'"

Head over to Broadly to read their full interview with Hill.

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When it comes to wedding first dance songs, there are the tried and true: "At Last" by Etta James, "Thinking Out Loud" by Ed Sheeran, "Marry Me" by Train -- just to name a few. But why not choose something as unique as your relationship?

Below, we've compiled some reader suggestions that haven't been played at every wedding on your newsfeed. If you need more convincing, look no further than the super sweet lyrics from each.

1. "I Choose You" by Sara Bareilles (acoustic version)

"My whole heart // Will be yours forever // This is a beautiful start // To a lifelong love letter"

2. "I Won't Give Up" by Jason Mraz

"I won't give up on us // Even if the skies get rough // I'm giving you all my love"

 3. "Love Me Tender," the Norah Jones version

"Tell me you are mine // I'll be yours through all the years"

4. "Over And Over Again" by Nathan Sykes

"Just put your heart in my hands // I promise it won’t get broken"

5. "Never Stop" by SafetySuit (wedding version)

"You are my life, I don't deserve you // But you love me just the same"

6. "From The Ground Up" by Dan + Shay

"Just take my hand // And I'll be the man your dad hoped that I'd be"

 7."Sparks" by Coldplay

"But I promise you this // I'll always look out for you // That's what I'll do"

8. "Harvest Moon" by Neil Young

"When we were strangers // I watched you from afar // When we were lovers // I loved you with all my heart"

 9. "Lighthouse" by Ernie Halter

"Let me be the one // Standing when you come // Lay your anchor down // And let me wrap my arms around you"

10. "History In The Making" by Darius Rucker

"Aw look at you, I just want to take this in // The moonlight dancin' off your skin"

11. "Feels Like Home," the Chantal Kreviazuk version

"Somethin' in your eyes makes me wanna lose myself // Makes me wanna lose myself in your arms // There's somethin' in your voice, makes my heart beat fast"

12. "More Than Love" by Los Lonely Boys

"We were in love before // But now it's so much more // Cause when I kiss your lips I can't explain // What I feel in my heart for you"

13. "The Luckiest" by Ben Folds

"And where was I before the day // That I first saw your lovely face // Now I see it every day"

14. "Bright" by Echosmith

"And I see colors in a different way // You make what doesn't matter fade to grey // Life is good and that's the way it should be"

15. "Got It Right This Time" by Keith Urban

"True believers always find each other and here we are // Always knew that you were out there just waiting on me // For me to find my way, find my way to your heart"

16. "Promise To Love" by Kem

"You're the song of my heart // The joy of my soul"

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When I was 7 years old -- during that crucial, game-changing summer between second and third grade when you figure out who you are and what you want to be -- I spent nearly all my free time watching Grease. I'd profess my love for Danny Zuko and his tight T-shirts and greased up curls to my closest confidantes (read: little sisters barely old enough to speak).

But, looking back, I was clearly magnetized, almost addicted, more so to Sandy. Not as the goody-goody cheerleader, please. But in her post-makeover, sexed-up cat woman look, carefully crafted to attract the T-Bird of her affections. I'd watch transfixed as Sandy slinked on the scene, pouty and self-assured and apparently rid of her Australian accent. I'd pause and rewind to study the wildly cool way she clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, as piercing as a silent, scandalous "checkmate," and the dumbfounded Hoo boy! expression on Danny's face. 

Basically, I was Jan, who appears to be touching herself in the background of this scene.

It's not quite accurate to call Sandy my first crush, because she was something far more powerful. I both idolized her and desired her, but mostly idolized the intensity with which she was desired. She was the first manifestation, for me, of that intense combination of lust, envy and inspiration that makes ladies want to please a man so badly they can't stop desiring women. I call such objects of desire sex muses, and imagine them as the contemporary feminist response to Socrates and all the young, hot pupils he inspired and banged. Sandy was my Socrates.

This morning, approximately 20 years later, I scrolled through my Instagram feed, saw a post on one of the many Rihanna fan accounts to which I am but a meager minion. I paused on one, featuring Rihanna and "dat a$$," as the caption states, moving like a maple syrup ninja to the beat of her hit song "Work." I watched it about 14 times, put on the song, danced in the mirror, considered doing more butt-toning exercises and buying purple lipstick. I eventually returned to work, ashamed yet invigorated. These are the terms of our relationship. 

The special bond between a woman and her sex muse, however intimate and rapturous it may be, is in part emblematic of a patriarchal culture, one that places male desire as so paramount to a sexual encounter it can supplant, or at least skew, a woman's own. On the surface, our infatuation with sexualized celebrities stems from the urge to be desirable ourselves. I want to be Sandy to attract Danny, and yet it's Sandy I can't look away from. Adoration begins to resemble attraction, and what may appear at first glance as a dearth of women's sexual agency actually speaks to the complexity of our sexual desires. 

Rihanna is but one of a sea of hot babes women fantasize about fucking, but also fantasize about fucking as. Writer Tess Barker coined the term Bey-Sexual to describe the nearly ubiquitous straight girl syndrome of lusting after the Queen B. "I sometimes refer to myself as a Bey-Sexual," she writes, "meaning that I’m such a typical straight woman I would absolutely sleep with Beyoncé. When I watch her expertly and confidently gyrate her leotard-clad rear as her perpetually fan-blown hair waves, I am really fantasizing less about having sex with Beyoncé, and more about having sex as her. What she represents is the ultimate combination of autonomy and desirability, which is so appealing to me that it’s barely distinguishable from literal attraction."

Women are encouraged to obsess over sexualized celebrities, to a degree that rivals yet remains separate from sexual attraction. Terms like "girl crush" serve as a distancing mechanism -- saying I admire her but not like that. Then why are so many women so damn infatuated? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that women don't just have sex, they see themselves having sex, and thus their own self-actualized sexualization is folded into the experience of pleasure. 

"A woman must continually watch herself," John Berger writes in Ways of Seeing. "She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself ... From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman."

This holds true, of course, in sex. Women are conditioned to see themselves, and arouse themselves, through the way they look, the way they sound. "One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear," Berger summarizes. "Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object -- and most particularly an object of vision: a sight."

Although I will never have sex from the perspective of a man, I turn to the hilarious (very NSFW) adolescent fantasy in the band Is Tropical's "Dancing Anymore" as a guide. In the music video, featured below, a preteen boy masturbates during a housesitting gig, while, in his imagination, he has sex with a variety of computer generated VR partners, ranging from a hot blonde to a redheaded mermaid to a literal giant, the fantasies growing stranger as the video progresses.

Throughout the video, however, the boy remains clad in his red polo, containing his prepubescent frame. He is not folded into the fantasy, as outlandish and all-engulfing as it becomes. He has no interest in watching himself have sex. 

For women, however, incorporating themselves into the fantasy can be part of the fun. If Berger is correct that women can't help but see themselves all the time, sex included, then a woman's sexual persona caters not just to her partner but to herself, as well. After a lifetime of watching music video vixens bump and grind with envy and awe, when a woman feels seductive and in control during sex, it benefits herself as much as her partner. What may have initially started as a desire to please a man -- to be sultry, confident, magnetic -- has morphed into an authentic point of pride and pleasure. 

Celebrity worship can empower a woman to be her best sexual self, channeling her sex muse to please her partner and herself. Yet as more and more individuals become aware of the fluidity of sexuality, the more terms like "girl crush" seem out of date. Pop culture may not have intended for women to acknowledge their physical attraction to their sex muses, stripped of the male intermediary, but it's happening. 

In a recent episode of "Broad City," resident queer queen and Rihanna believer Ilana Glazer expressed her confusion over her feelings for a badass investor visiting her place of work, played by Vanessa Williams. "I don’t know if I wanna be her or be in her," she says. Eventually, Glazer decides that, actually, she wants to have sex with Williams, tells her so, and is promptly told to go home. With the same casual ease the "Broad City" ladies often employ to subtly shift the expectations young women face today, Ilana acknowledges the ambiguity of her girl crush feelings as well as the reality that, yes, you can have your idols and fuck them, too.

Perhaps the ubiquitous cultural obsession with feminine sexuality speaks to the fact that the purely straight girl is seeming more and more like a myth, as the satirical Reductress article "Is Everyone Super Attracted to These 6 Female Celebrities or Is This Me Finding Out I’m Bisexual?" playfully suggests. 

"25-year-old Australian starlet Margot Robbie has a very symmetrical face and what appears to be very soft skin and I would definitely roll around naked with her. Not sure whether or not this means that I am bisexual. I’d love for someone to rate how normal this is on a scale of 1-10. Anyone?"

The narrator grows progressively more frantic -- "Guys??? A LITTLE HELP HERE????" -- speaking to the silence that often surrounds women's sexual desires. And though celebrities may be the gateway to not so straight fantasies, the widespread adulation of women, teetering between the urge to look and to touch, extends to mere civilians as well. 

A personal essay on Slutever by Misha Scott, about her first time actually sleeping with a woman after years of considering herself bisexual, expresses a similar confusion regarding woman's sexual urges and where exactly they stem from. "Was I gay enough not to be straight? What if I was just trying to fulfill a taboo manufactured by the porn industry?" Scott asked. "What if I thought I was being a sexually liberated woman but was actually participating in a historically sexist pattern of lesbian eroticism as performance for the male gaze?"

We're constantly fed images of women we're meant to worship but not want, and then left in the dark if the two start to become confused. Of course, we're confused. It's as if the patriarchal machine designed to make women hate themselves has somehow malfunctioned. Instead of minimizing female desires, it ends up awakening a more fluid understanding of sexual attraction. And now, more than ever, women are understanding that they both want to be and be in their celebrity dream girls. As explained in a recent Broadly piece, 48 percent of Gen Zs identify as exclusively heterosexual, compared to 65 percent of millennials aged 21 to 34.

I am not trying to say that a teenage girl saying "I'd tooootally do Beyonce" qualifies as coming out, or conflate the queer experience with celebrity worship. Nor do I believe that any celebrity, however sexy she may be, has the power to "turn anyone gay." As Ruby Rose said around the time everyone in the world was falling in love with Ruby Rose: "When people say to me that I turned them gay, I just laugh, because that’s not really even a possibility. It sounds like I did something against their will in the middle of the night, as if I crept into their brain and pushed the gay button." 

I am interested in how fluid and complex our sexual desires always already have been. That since we were single-digit girls, flipping through magazine pages and ogling the pop stars plastered on their glossy spreads, forces of attraction, fear, desire, insecurity, aspiration, envy and lust are at play. A sexual spectrum where a relationship as intimate, deranged and totally delusional as a sex muse is commonplace for women who identify as straight in a world too convoluted for such a simplistic label. 

So cheers to the sex muses of the world, the sexualized pop culture knockouts who sneak their way into our fantasies, top our celebrity would-fuck lists, and inspire hours of booty shaking in our bedrooms. May they make us more confident and adventurous in the bedroom as well as in the giant bedroom of life. And may we all be so lucky as the audience member in the video below and feel the gentle bump and grind of Rihanna in the flesh. 

You can be highbrow. You can be lowbrow. But can you ever just be brow? Welcome to Middlebrow, a weekly examination of pop culture. Sign up to receive it in your inbox weekly.

Follow Priscilla Frank on Twitter: @badgirlpripri

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If you're anything like us, you love a good bookish T-shirt (or scarf, or tote, or whatever). The only problem with our stash of shirts emblazoned with F. Scott Fitzgerald quotes and Harper Lee references, of course, is that it makes the rest of us aspiring authors wish we could wear our own words with equal panache. Well, now we can.

Litographs has been making entire books look stylish and of manageable length for several years now, and welove their designs that cram all of Ulysses and Jane Eyre onto one T-shirt or tote bag -- while using clever formations of the text to create thematically appropriate art.

The company's new Kickstarter, in conjunction with the launch of new infinity scarves, offers proud scribblers the opportunity to go a step beyond computer-generated word clouds of their work. Backers of the Kickstarter, if they hit the $40 benchmark, can opt for a T-shirt or infinity scarf decorated with the text of their dissertations, first published stories, NaNoWriMo novels, and even, if they so choose, a stack of really on-point office memoranda. (If there's another writer's work you'd prefer, any work in the public domain also qualifies.)

Backers will also be able to choose between several fonts, like Baskerville and Helvetica, and font sizes depending on how easily they want to be able to read their clothing in quiet moments.

Sure, not everyone has the narcissistic urge to wrap themselves in their own words. (We here at HuffPost Culture certainly do, but we can't speak for everyone.) Still, it can be nice to have the option. More words in the world never seems like a bad thing to us.

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Sometime in the summer of 2013, a New York City-based writer named Fiona Duncan began noticing an abundance of jeans, fleece and sneakers in the historically fashion-fanatic neighborhood known as Soho. To help explain the unnerving prevalence of "stylized blandness" and "dad-brand non-style" hanging about, she borrowed -- and subsequently popularized -- a term that's all but commonplace now: normcore. 

The term is simple and concise, easily packaged next to a pound sign, ready to fall from the lips of a trendy teen. Adidas tennis shoes, "Seinfeld" and President Obama all became part and parcel of the normcore aesthetic, originally outlined as less a way of dressing and more a way of being. K-Hole, an ambiguously described "trend forecasting group," gave birth to the word, defined loosely as a move "away from a coolness that relies on difference to a post-authenticity coolness that opts in to sameness." Essentially, it separated a time of yore -- when punks tried with all their might to break free of their homogenous roots -- with the modes of today: now we're all born tiny snowflakes, itching to place ourselves into a comfy, khaki-clad community.

A few years after Duncan proselytized the ubiquity of ubiquitousness, sometime in the late winter and early spring of 2016, K-Hole member Sean Monahan slipped another two-syllable buzzword into Internet lexicon. Slowave, he posits, is not so much a descriptor of how things are, à la normcore. Slowave is a prescription for how things should be. And that prescription involves sleep.

"The Slowave movement is reframing sleep as an essential experience rather than a dead loss," he wrote in a manifesto online. "What’s the hidden potential of the unconscious third of our lives?"

Sleep, in today's 24/7 workplace, is either something we yearn for with little expectations or fight against in haughty displays of productivity. There are drugs to keep us from nodding off and drugs that force us into shoddy REM-less cycles. But sleep in its purest form, Monahan suggests, should not be seen either as "a luxury product" or "a necessary evil." Slowave says sleep should be viewed for what it is: an essential activity that takes up one-third of our human lives. "The future of sleep won’t be its absence," Monahan declares, "it will be a new class of people leveraging its creative potential."

It's no secret that the founder of The Huffington Post is a sleep evangelist. Her new book The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time speaks for itself. Other companies like Google and Casper (Monahan's partner for sleepsleepsleep.com) have jumped aboard the Slowave train too, expressing an interested in the radical side of sleep. It's tricky though, because class and race tend to correlate with sleep quality (or, as NPR put it, nobody sleeps better than white people). So Monahan has an eye toward economically underserved individuals, as he noted in our interview below, and Big Pharma and start-up culture and life hackers. Like normcore, Slowave is a term that seems to just so accurately encompass a long-throttling part of our culture, addressing both those who accept and reject the necessity of sleep.

Here's a brief primer on Slowave, the movement that wants to disrupt the way we think about sleep:

Why are you, in particular, focusing on sleep?

My background is in analyzing language and consumer behaviors, so the basis of my research was parsing the cultural innuendo of how we discuss and think about sleep. Why is it such a point of anxiety and struggle for so many people? 

If you were to define Slowave in a sentence or two, how would you describe it? 

Slowave is a rejection of the idea that sleep has to be understood as an economic input (to productivity) or output (i.e. the perverse idea that sleep itself is a luxury). Sleep has latent creative potential -- it’s more than just recharging our batteries for another round of tasks.

What does sleep as resistance mean?

Sleep has a proto-political potential. It’s literally the last thing you are encouraged to do. Our economy, culture, and media all encourage us to function on the same 24/7 timeframe as global capitalism. It’s easy to forget that there’s not a 1:1 relationship between our digital selves and our bodies. Sleep forces us to remember that we’re still just people with bodies at the end of the day.

In your Codes of Sleep table, you outline four different approaches to sleep: workaholics, life hackers, effective hedonists and Slowave. Can you summarize how they relate to each other? Do these four groups epitomize a progression of our attitude toward sleep, or do they coexist today?

We see a historical progression from workaholics to life hackers to effective hedonists to Slowave. Over the past century, we have seen diminishing returns on focusing on how to sleep less. Hence the shift from workaholics and life hackers' interest in sleeping less, to effective hedonists and Slowave’s interest in sleeping better. But all of these approaches co-exist in the present. Cultural shifts are slow and fragmentary.

In your writing, you ask: "Can we reject the awake/asleep binary, and plot sleeping and dreaming on an expanded spectrum of consciousness?" What would this spectrum look like? 

In the beginning of the report, I joke that the actual poles on the spectrum of consciousness are omniscience and death: total knowledge and non-existence. They’re both impossible to contemplate, but maybe opening up what we mean by "being conscious" can help us have a more nuanced relationship to all the different states of consciousness we experience in our lives.

How does the Slowave movement seek to avoid fetishizing or commercializing sleep? Or, are these not inherently bad things?

Commercializing sleep isn’t inherently bad as long as we appreciate that, on a base level, sleep is a public good. I’m not so worried that we’ll suddenly begin fetishizing sleep -- after all, it’s pretty low on the totem pole of importance in 2016. Researchers have been arguing for later start times for high schools since I was a kid, and they’ve always been ignored due to scheduling conflicts with parent work schedules and intramural sports. 

You mention that "people with the most privilege, power and money get the most sleep." How does privilege function in the Slowave movement? 

There is an obvious divide across class and race when it comes to sleep quality. No one was surprised when the CDC released their study on healthy sleep duration -- it’s intrinsic knowledge that you need time and control to really sleep well, which are things that more marginalized communities don’t really have. Privilege has no place in Slowave. If normcore was an attempt to modulate our individual visibility, Slowave is an attempt to modulate the speed of our lives. It is about rejecting sleep as a means to an end, and embracing it as an integral and enjoyable part of a fulfilling life.  

In your opinion, what is Big Pharma's relationship to Slowave? 

Big Pharma is a big part of the problem. Amphetamines and eugeroics (wakefullness-promoting agents, like Provigil) are literally produced to keep us up and productive: Sleep as economic input. Hypnotic drugs like Ambien and benzodiazepines like Xanax, on the other hand, are designed to put us down. But sleeping on drugs like that is not “good sleep,” nor is it respectful toward sleep. Instead, it feels like you’re dead for a few hours, which leaves you on the wrong side of the spectrum. Slowave is about creativity. You can’t be creative when you’re dead.

If start-ups start embracing Slowave, how do you envision them functioning? Are there examples of companies today that are leveraging sleep's creative potential already, or pursuing active dreaming?

Studies have shown that when you first wake up you are more creative than later in the day. The hypnagogic effects of dreaming haven’t quite worn off, and you can still take advantage of sleep’s latent creativity. This is why many artists and writers like to work as soon as they wake up. Smart start-ups understand this, and the most successful ones take advantage of it.

I’m not sure most start-ups can actively embrace Slowave -- it is inherently anti-business. I could argue that the only start-up that actually embraces Slowave is Casper, as it's focused on fulfilling sleep and rest. Google has nap pods in their offices. David Radcliffe, vice president of Google's Real Estate & Workplace Services, once said that "no workplace is complete without a nap pod.” A company in San Francisco called Doze leases and rents nap pods to co-working spaces. But these are the types of things that happen when Harvard releases studies, like they did in 2009, that say that napping promotes productivity. It becomes an economic tool.

What does your partnership with Casper entail? 

Casper originally reached out to me about moderating a panel for their Sleep Symposium (in New York, April 17), and I started to think more about the cultural shift in productivity and rest. We discussed the Slowave idea together, and they encouraged me to put pen to paper and unpack the societal changes that have led to sleep as a commodity. It's something we have all felt, but had not yet identified as a movement. 

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Two girls lounge on a picnic blanket, basking in the sun. It’s clear that they’re intimate friends, if only because they’re comfortable lazing around wordlessly together. They’re sharing a box of donuts, chomping unabashedly on doughy chocolate and jelly.

The artist of the scene, Sally Nixon, says female friendships are a theme that resonates throughout her work -- colorful, cartoon-style prints that display slices of girlish life. “I have four older sisters, so female friendship has always been a big part of my life,” Nixon said in an email to The Huffington Post. “You gotta have someone to talk about periods with and dudes just don’t get it.”

It’s important to Nixon to draw subjects who are both relatable to her viewers, but specific in their nuances, habits and desires. She draws a crew of young women gathered on a floral print couch, sharing bagged wine and pizza, cuddling up and bonding in the sort of listless manner reserved for the closest of friendships. Talk about #SquadGoals.

“I hope [viewers] can relate in some way and find the humor in them. One of my absolute favorite comments is ‘Oh my God, it’s me!’” Nixon said. “I like using objects and small details to tell a story about each of the girls in my drawings. The more specific I am with those details, the more relatable the girls are to the viewer.”

Box wine nestled in fridge drawers, rom-com labels situated atop video rental store shelves, margarine labels strewn across kitchen counters. The details in each scene contribute to their realistic air. In another, a girl sits on her toilet, and her dog looks on inquisitively. There are rolls of toilet paper in the bathroom, but they aren’t hanging on the toilet paper holder, making the subject seem human in her small flaws. “I think my style adds a little whimsy to ordinary or mundane situations," Nixon said.

In yet another, a girl takes a morning shower, brushing her teeth, and showing off her sunburned body. With her hand on her hip, she looks comfortable in her own skin. “It’s important that the women I draw aren’t rail thin with huge boobs,” Nixon added. “I think there are enough images of bodies like that out in the world. The ladies I draw typically have small-ish, droopy breasts and thick thighs. They’re kind of lumpy but in an attractive way. Just like real people.”

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Warning: This article contains erotic depictions of cute, furry animals and may not be appropriate for work environments. 

In the human world, a sex kitten is a grossly misogynist term used to describe a young woman who exudes a mythical combination of innocence and sexuality, a synthesis primed to arouse dudes. In Irena Jurek's hand-crafted world, a glittery, X-rated bizarro zootopia, the sex kitten is replaced with a grown-ass cat woman. While the sex kitten is submissive and sweet, seducing her suitors with a coquettish babydoll pose, Jurek's cat woman dominates the scene, taking charge of her sexuality with a wild, almost frightening intensity.

In the image above, titled "This Lil Piggy," two fierce cat women heckle a pristine little piggy, who seems to seriously regret venturing to market. Donning thigh high boots, fingerless gloves and tassel pasties, one cat brandishes a shocking pink whip above her head, while the other dangles a mouse before the petrified piglet. These cats are not just sexual, they're rowdy, savage, feral. It almost seems as if Jurek's attempt to give her figures sexual agency was derailed by their untamable ferocity, and now they've run amok. 

"There is a very feminist idea behind them that can’t be denied," Jurek explained to The Huffington Post. "It’s taking these figures -- sex kitten, the sex bunny -- and changing the power dynamic. There's always so much going on in terms of power, sexuality, and even cruelty, in the way people interact with one another. The images look very fantastical but underneath it's all very familiar." 

Jurek's work is currently on view in an exhibition titled "Body Talk" at Mass Gallery, featuring three artists exploring the visible and invisible oddities that spring from the universal experience of existing in a body. "We all tap into a psychological space, in addition to the physical," Jurek said. "Although I can only speak for myself, I do get the impression that we are all talking about how bizarre the experience of navigating through the world in a physical, impermanent body actually is. Within all of the work there is this surreal sense of ferocity which taps into the grotesque."

The exhibit features work by Johnston Foster, who creates brightly colored sculptures that resemble hallucinatory doppelgängers to scientific models, breaking down the human body into objective parts that then balloon into fanciful absurdity. And then there's Jared Theis, whose video works explore imagined mythologies in which organisms evolve through their own fanciful rituals. For Jurek, the focus is on the feminine perspective. "You cannot talk about the body without talking about gender, and my work is very much about the experience of being alive as a woman."

Born in Krakow, Poland in 1982, Jurek moved to Chicago when she was just over 2 years old. As an only child, she spent nearly all her free time reading and drawing. Even as a kid, she mostly drew what she describes as "furries" -- anthropomorphic animals engaging in humanlike activities. Specifically, Jurek drew "a lot of bird princesses" -- princes and princesses with beaks, which helped assuage the problem that she couldn't quite draw faces yet. 

As a teen, Jurek recalled sex ed as an unnerving experience, teaching students to fear their bodies and desires. "It was all AIDS, dying, death," she said. "We were pushed to be terrified of our bodies." The only class that meant something was art class, and thus, that was the only homework that ever got finished. 

Later, in art school, Jurek felt pressure to make "serious work, whatever that means." Before the Internet provided unlimited access to the expansive landscape of contemporary art, Jurek felt pressure to emulate work from an older, Modernist generation. "It was awful, it wasn’t really at all my personality," she said. In her sketchbooks she'd doodle cartoon characters similar to the ones that now occupy her work, but for a while she didn't consider them "serious art" material. 

It was a Jeff Koons retrospective in 2008, oddly enough, that helped Jurek realize there were artists who took playful art very seriously. She had just finished graduate school and was inspired by Koons' "over-the-top decadence and absurdity." Another influence was painter John Currin, whose portraits of women combine classical Renaissance softness with lurid pornographic details that skew his subjects to appear sexualized, awkward and grotesque. "I remember at age 20 realizing these women hanging in museums were these dumb things for men to have their way with," Jurek recalled. "It really bothered me."

Though Jurek was disturbed by the misogynist bent of Currin's work, she's hesitant to moralize when it comes to individuals' tastes. "What we’re turned on by and what we believe in doesn’t always add up," she said. This dogged ambivalence appears constantly throughout Jurek's work, which alludes to the often confusing complexity of sexuality through her furry allegorical friends. "It’s not always as simple as 'men objectify women.'"

There are no strict laws governing Jurek's animal kingdom. In some images, for example, a wolf embodies the stereotypical persona he's often allotted in cartoons and folklore: sneaky, sexual, dangerous. But in some images, wolves are portrayed quite the opposite, as cowardly and meek. "What you see is not always what you get," Jurek said. "We take a shorthand approach to things and we stereotype. Just based on what people dress or the way they speak, sometimes the surface doesn’t really add up with what’s underneath. Sexuality is more complicated than people want to admit."

I ask Jurek if she's seen "Zootopia," the animated film about a world full of animals who've evolved past their stereotypes, though are still often reduced to them. While "Zootopia" revolves around the roles of predator and prey, Jurek's zoological realm is perhaps governed by the laws of attraction, with the roles of dominant and submissive, Madonna and whore, sexy kitty and big bad wolf, all thrown out of whack. 

For Jurek, the humor that comes across in her drawings, which take on average about 40 hours to create, comes relatively naturally. "I joke about everything," she said. "It’s a defense mechanism." As for the narrative concepts, she obsessively keeps lists of ideas, source images and potential inspiration. "Right now I'm working on an idea of a female pig devouring a sausage man on a plate," she explained. "Obviously its phallic and sexual but it’s also a form of cannibalism. I often have all these things flying around in my head, it can be a mess in there."

In relation to the larger "Body Talk" exhibition, Jurek's work speaks to the animalistic instincts that govern our bodily existence. While Jurek's view of sexuality and physicality growing up was governed by shame, judgment and fear, today, she described, is a different, more sex-positive world. "It's about health, sexual pleasure, and enjoyment," she said.

Welcome to the jungle. 

"Body Talk," featuring work by Johnston Foster, Jared Theis, and Irena Jurek runs until April 16, 2016 at Mass Gallery in Austin, Texas. 

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Disney is on the reboot warpath, rejiggering just about every primo animated property in glistening live action. It started in 2010 with Tim Burton's candy-coated "Alice in Wonderland" and became considerably more promising last year when "Cinderella" swirled to life at the hands of Shakespeare maestro Kenneth Branagh. Both were immensely lucrative, and the formula was crystallized: coat a few A-listers in hyper-saturated hues, nix the synonymous sing-alongs and make sure the villains are teed up to maximum camp (Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter, Angelina Jolie's Maleficent) or contemptibility (Cate Blanchett's Wicked Stepmother). But with Disney's newest live-action concoction, the partly CGI "Jungle Book," the studio has already, in some sense, upended the formula. No schmaltz to see here, folks. This is by far the best of the bunch yet.

The quirky creature comedy inherent in adaptations of Rudyard Kipling's story doesn't have the fantasy of magic pumpkins, cursed spindles or shape-shifting syrups to heighten its extravagance. Talking animals or not, "The Jungle Book" has a far more naturalistic backdrop than "Alice" or "Cinderella." That's especially true in Jon Favreau's version, written by Justin Marks. In "Elf," "Iron Man" and "Chef," the director blended mature humor with childlike wonder. He does the same in "The Jungle Book," which coasts along with a serenity that's foreign to most contemporary blockbusters. 

"The Jungle Book" opens with a shot of its young hero, Mowgli (Neel Sethi), racing through the forest. The sun shines, but trees cloud its reach throughout much of the movie, lending the visuals a desaturated peacefulness. Favreau seizes every opportunity he can to achieve a quiet awe, often tracing the action instead of shoving the camera in its face. The manic energy of Mowgli's jaunt slows almost instantly as a narrator (Ben Kingsley) recounts the man-cub's childhood with the wolf pack that raised him. After only a few minutes, the movie plays like a meditation. We become delighted participants as Mowgli carouses with his makeshift family, evades the wrath of the tiger Shere Khan (voiced by Idris Elba), learns about life's "Bare Necessities" from the boisterous bear Baloo (Bill Murray) and wards off a ferocious flock of monkeys governed by the corpulent King Louie (Christopher Walken).

Many big-budget spectacles escalate so rapidly that they become suffocating, even hard to follow (hi, "Batman v Superman"). Audiences exist as excitable observers. But "The Jungle Book" eschews all of that. We are rapt players in Mowgli's journey, agape at the enveloping flora and fauna on display.

This is a family-friendly movie that doesn't pander to its youthful demographic with overblown action. Viewers are plopped into the middle of Mowgli's life story, an immersion credited to "Matrix" DP Bill Pope's roving camerawork and the movie's pristine computer-generated animation. This particular Kipling adaptation luxuriates in Mowgli's point of view, fostering a dreamlike simplicity. It's just startling enough to feel like an actual jungle brought to life, and it's just emotional enough to remain a grounded fable about unity and discovering a true sense of home. 

I don't mean to pan all blockbusters in one fell swoop. Go ahead and funnel hundreds of millions of dollars into behemoth projects, ye studios of the world. (This one has a reported budget of $175 million, not including marketing costs.) But if fewer of these movies were driven by formula -- namely the ceaseless tick-tock between exposition and noise -- they might boast the same majestic quality. Does the world really need a "Jungle Book 2"? No, but it was green-lit days before this one hits theaters, as was a live-action rendition of "Peter Pan." If they're as beautiful as Favreau's movie, the worries and strife of Hollywood's franchise culture will seem a tad less prickly.

"The Jungle Book" opens April 15.

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When it comes to postpartum body image, Zooey Deschanel refuses to accept society's unrealistic standards.

In an interview with Redbook, the actress and mom to 8-month-old Elsie Otter expressed her concern with the belief that women should immediately "bounce back" after pregnancy.

"To expect someone to look like her pre-baby self immediately is odd," Deschanel told the magazine. "Because you just grew a human and then birthed that human -- there's a lot that needs to go back to where it was. All your organs move around, for chrissakes!"

The "New Girl" star, who gave birth to her first child with husband Jacob Pechenik in July, shared how motherhood has changed her world. "I've never really felt like an adult," she said. "But I think it's a huge accomplishment to have a child, so maybe I feel like an adult for that reason."

Having a baby also inspired Deschanel to take a step back and slow down career-wise. "I think it's good for your whole self -- your creative self, your professional self, and just your soul -- to take a little time for yourself and your family," she said. "You can spend your whole life going after things, but I think you risk missing out on some really powerful self-reflection."

Wise words from an awesome new mama.

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If it hadn't been for "Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit," Jay Armstrong Johnson might never have stepped foot on a Broadway stage.

"It changed my life," the 28-year-old actor said of the 1993 movie musical. Growing up in Fort Worth, Texas, Johnson was a standing member of his church choir, and Whoopi Goldberg's performance as the lounge singer-turned-nun Sister Mary Clarence struck particularly close to home during his formative years. 

"It was the movie that allowed me to have my church upbringing and also bring in pop music at the same time," he told The Huffington Post in an interview. "It was something that my mom was comfortable with me watching, and seeing that movie and how they blended pop music with religious music [was everything]." 

Currently seen on the ABC drama series, "Quantico," Johnson said his love of "Sister Act 2" also influenced his new cabaret act, which will feature rock, pop, country and gospel alongside the show tunes for which he's best known. Viewers who root for Johnson as the brainy-yet-socially-challenged FBI agent Will Olsen on "Quantico" may not even be aware of the actor's stints in Broadway musicals like "Hands on a Hardbody" and the 2014 revival of "On The Town." So he wants the show, which plays New York's Feinstein's/54 Below on April 27, 29 and 30, to showcase the song-and-dance skills that made him a stage favorite well before he hit the small screen. 

He'll offer a few personal revelations, too. In press notes, Johnson said that "theater and music saved his life," and that his show explores his journey from a bullied gay teen to the stage star he is today. 

Calling the show his "biggest undertaking personally," Johnson is raising money through an Indiegogo fundraiser in hopes of having his performance preserved as a live album, too. (Check out a video for Johnson's campaign at top) 

Given that network TV has given him an entirely new fanbase, Johnson feels the timing for an album couldn't be better. 

"It feels like my audience has broadened from just the theater world to people who watch network TV from their comfort of their couches in Montana or California," he said. "I'm trying to put myself out there in a bigger way. I've known that I've wanted to do a concert of this nature for a while, and I was just waiting for the right time." 

Even audiences familiar with the actor's musicality will find a few surprises along the way, Johnson said. He'll be joined by fellow Broadway performer Lindsay Mendez and "Glee" actor Billy Lewis, Jr. during all three nights of his run. A longtime pal of Johnson's, YouTube sensation Todrick Hall will make an appearance at the April 30 show. 

"This whole show has been an accumulation of maybe three or four years of just my brain working toward my dream show," Johnson told HuffPost.

And while Johnson now has varied achievements in the arts, there's clearly still a part of him that clings to being the "Sister Act 2"-loving choir boy of his youth. "I’m gonna throw in a little gospel tune and make my mom cry," he quipped.  

Jay Armstrong Johnson plays New York's Feinstein's/54 Below on April 27, 29 and 30. Head here for more details, and check out the Indiegogo campaign for Johnson's album here. 

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French illustrator and graphic designer Marie-Charlotte Yao has been drawing and doodling incessantly ever since she was a kid. Now that she's expecting a child of her own, the mom-to-be is channeling her creativity into some hilarious pregnancy illustrations.

Yao's drawings capture the highs and lows of pregnancy, from the food cravings and hormones to the small physical victories and loving moments with her husband. The artist started sketching her experiences early in her pregnancy, while commuting to work or enjoying some free time.

"I kept finding myself in some pretty unusual situations and thoughts, and I wanted to be able to remember them and share them for example with my close friends who don't have children yet," Yao told The Huffington Post. Recently, she's decided she also wants to share the illustrations with her daughter, who's due in July. ("See what Mommy went through?" she joked.)

Yao hopes that fellow pregnant women get "a little comfort" out of seeing her drawings. "You are not alone!" she said, adding, "Go, go, mommies! You are beautiful." 

Keep scrolling and visit Yao's website and Tumblr to see her all-too-real depictions of pregnancy.

H/T BoredPanda

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With Mother's Day quickly approaching, the internet is filling with heartwarming ads about moms and their special role in their families.

One such video is "Why Do Moms Matter?" from the photo book creation app, Chatbooks. In the ad, a group of kids, ranging in age from toddlers to teens, describe the wonderful things their moms do for them on a daily basis. Their examples include things like providing Band-Aids, having "Frozen" and Adele-themed sing-alongs and making their kids feel safe, protected and loved. 

As one boy succinctly puts it, "She's just different and special from all the other moms because she's my mom."

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The sizzling new images for the 2016 installment of "Broadway Bares" are a very literal interpretation of "boob tube." 

Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS officials released some steamy shots and behind-the-scenes video ahead of "Broadway Bares: On Demand," which hits New York's Hammerstein Ballroom June 19 with a cast of more than 150 of the city's hottest dancers. (WARNING: Some images may be NSFW) 

The 26th installment of the Broadway-meets-burlesque fundraiser will feature a "must-see TV" theme, with saucy vignettes depicting a game show, a sports game and even "The Bachelor." The show will be directed by Nick Kenkel, who was the associate choreographer on the 2011 musical, "Catch Me If You Can." 

"Whether you’re searching for the thrill of victory or just your moment of zen, 'Broadway Bares: On Demand' will feature everything you love about television with a brand 'nude' look," officials wrote in a press release.

The event, which was created in 1992 by Tony Award-winning "Kinky Boots" director Jerry Mitchell, has raised more than $14.3 million for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, a non-profit group dedicated to AIDS-related causes across the U.S., over the years. Previous installments of the show have ranged from 2012’s sexy storybook “Happy Endings” to 2015's "Top Bottoms of Burlesque." 

Check out some teaser photos below, and read more about “Broadway Bares: On Demand” here. 

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Bride-to-be Celina Frenn may have received coolest engagement gift of all -- this amazing Lego love story video her freelance animator fiance, Kevin Ulrich, made for her. 

The video details just about all of the important milestones in their relationship so far -- how they met at work, how Ulrich asked Frenn if she'd like to date him and of course, how Ulrich popped the question on October 14, 2015. 

Frenn and Ulrich work in the same office building, as a writer/editor and freelance animator, respectively, so Ulrich wasn't able to keep the video a secret.

"At first she would come into my office and say, 'Why are you doing that scene? Wouldn't this other one be better?'" Ulrich told The Huffington Post. "I had to tell her to trust me, and that she would like the final product. When I finally showed it to her, she cuddled up to me and teared up, saying, 'I really, really like it.'"

Ulrich has been making Lego videos on his own for years and has a YouTube channel featuring his fun creations. He even did work for The Lego Group's Hobbit toys in 2013. It took him 70 hours over the course of a week to complete Frenn's video.

The pair are getting married on April 17 will show the Lego video at their reception.

“Obviously a 73-second video can’t really sum up a two-year relationship,” Ulrich said. “But both myself and our friends and family feel it does a great job at painting a charming cute little picture of what our love story looks and feels like.”

H/T BuzzFeed

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For centuries, libraries have simply been places that house books. This meaning of the word is embedded right within it; the Old French librairie, used in the 14th century, means “collection of books.” An image of dusty stacks comes to mind, but, of course, the form a book can take is changing, and the ways we learn are changing along with it.

A new Pew study highlighting who uses libraries, how frequently they use them, and what they use them for, reflects these developments.

The takeaway highlighted by Pew: People who go to libraries identify as “lifelong learners,” and people who identify as “lifelong learners” are more likely to visit a library than people who do not. A smattering of stats elucidate this point. Library users, for example, are “more likely to pursue personal learning activities,” and “more likely to cite positive impacts from personal learning.”

Learning doesn’t necessarily mean reading books anymore, however. Educational courses, talks and videos are all methods that appeal to a variety of learning types, and reading is only one way to to acquire new knowledge or a new skill. A kinesthetic learner may benefit from a performance, an auditory learner from a talk, a visual learner from a film or book.

To accommodate these different needs -- as well as visitors’ range of income levels -- libraries have expanded their purpose to include community events and free Internet use; however, according to the Pew study, many visitors aren’t aware that these services are available. The survey notes that while 62 percent of libraries offer online career and job-related resources, 38 percent of adults don’t know whether their library offers them. Likewise, 35 percent of libraries offer high school equivalency classes, and nearly half of adults don’t know whether their libraries offer them. The numbers are similar for programs on starting a new business, online programs that certify people who’ve mastered a new skill, and ebook borrowing.

The latter is an especially glaring example of the dissonance between services provided and knowledge of those services. While 90 percent of libraries offer ebook lending, 22 percent of adults say they don’t know whether their library offers ebooks, and 16 percent say their library does not offer ebooks.

This disparity could be due to the fact that ebook reading isn’t quite as popular as predicted; strain from reading on a screen is proven to hinder learning, and print books are actually preferred, even among digital natives.

Still, librarians who’ve poured resources -- and scant funding -- into new initiatives may wince at these numbers. As The Atlantic suggested in a response to the Pew study, it could be that more funding may help librarians attract more attendees, as attendance has declined by 9 percent since 2012. This figure is bolstered by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which reported an 8.2 percent decrease in in-person visits since a peak in 2009. But, the study notes, virtual visits aren't logged as carefully, so it could be that library-goers -- who statistically are a tech-savvy set -- are more likely to conduct their visits online. 

Still, many of the services provided by libraries are only available in-person, and advertising those services costs money. The Atlantic writer Robinson Meyer observed, “In other words, there’s empirical evidence that usage tracks investment. If libraries receive more public funds, more people use them.”

This makes sense. If libraries are providing the services that visitors want -- learning resources that can be read, viewed, and experienced -- then upping attendance is a matter of getting the word out about exactly what is available.

Libraries have evolved into much more than houses of books, but their original purpose remains intact, and sacred to attendees (in a 2014 study, 55 percent of respondents said losing a library would be a blow to their community). To preserve reading materials, and to promote new ways of learning, would-be visitors must first learn just what a library can be for.

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This note speaks volumes.

Justin Peterson, a 30-year-old from Spokane, Washington, and an avid record collector, purchased Soundgarden's "Superunknown" LP online earlier this month. When he opened it up, he found a note inside from the previous owner Mark's mother.

Mark, who had an impressive record collection, died from a heart attack back in 2002 and his mother, Sabine, wanted others to enjoy the music that meant so much to him. 

"Now it is time to share them ... It is good therapy for me to see this music being shared all over the world," Sabine wrote in the note regarding her son's records. "Thank you for your support. And when you play it, play it loud for Mark!"

Peterson shared the note on Reddit, where it went viral as the tribute to Sabine's late son moved people on the social media site. 

According to the note, Mark, who collected records while attending college, died while running in the mountains in Oregon. Sabine had asked her son in the past about what she should do with the music should something happen to him. Mark responded by telling her to "listen to it." 

Sabine explained that while she had done so after his death, she decided it was time to share his memory with others. The money from the sale, acccording to her note, will go toward schooling for Mark's son, Kai. Peterson said that when he saw the note, he was shocked by the story behind the record. 

"I honestly wasn’t expecting it and I was touched by it. It was amazing to think a mom would hold on to her son’s album for 14 years and then want to sell them to support her grandson's schooling," he told The Huffington Post. "I think it’s an amazing thing to do. Especially to ask the buyer to 'play it loud and think of Mark', which I’ve done."

The 30-year-old said that the note really hit home, especially since he recently got married and has a 3-month-old son of his own. He mentioned that sentimentally, it's "hands-down" his most valuable record. 

"I want to pass the album on to my son, with the letter," he said. "And write one of my own for him so that if he ever needs to sell it (which I hope he doesn’t) for his son or daughters schooling, Mark’s memory can be passed on as well." 

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Welcome to President Cafe, an eatery dedicated to honoring the glory of Putin and Russia. The cafe, which is located in the eastern Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, opened last month.

Dozens of photos of Putin, from his youth all the way up to his prime ministership, line the cafe's walls. The menu, a photo of which was published in Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, features a sketch of Putin riding a bear shirtless. There is even a life-size cutout of the president with which people can take photos.

If and when the restaurant receives its liquor license, it plans to serve a cocktail with vodka, grenadine and blue curaçao, which will resemble the colors of the Russian flag, cafe co-owner Svetlana Lautman told the publication. It will cost just 120 rubles, or under $2.

President Cafe is the first cafe in Russia that is fully dedicated to Putin, Dmitry Zhdanov, the cafe's other owner, told Reuters.

"I myself am a patriot, but I can see that not everyone is satisfied with their lives in the country," Zhadnov told Siberian online journal Sib.fm. "So we decided to provide people with a place where they can eat well and inexpensively, but also recall Russian achievements in a pleasant, patriotic atmosphere."

Some of the cafe's decorations may come across as a little offensive to some visitors, however. Step inside the bathroom and you'll see floor mats depicting the U.S. flag, on which patrons step when they wash their hands. Toilet paper has U.S. President Barack Obama's face printed on it. Pictures of U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are also mounted on the bathroom walls.

The door to a bathroom is labeled "NATO," the consortium of Western countries that was the Soviet Union's Cold War adversary. While Russia and NATO established diplomatic relations in 1991, their alliance remains tense. NATO countries are currently building their largest military presence in eastern Europe since the Cold War in an effort to counter an increasingly aggressive Russia.

But all of these gimmicks are "just business," and "nothing personal" toward the politicians, Zhdanov told Reuters. "I am neutral toward Western politicians," he added.

Everything in the restaurant seems to have a political tinge to it -- even the food.

"Someone asked us for chicken Kiev," a popular dish named after the Ukrainian capital, Lautman told Komsomolskaya Pravda. "At the President Cafe! We can make it, but we'll have to call it something different."

Russia and Ukraine currently have a strained relationship: Russian troops stormed into the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea two years ago, and annexed the area shortly thereafter. Subsequently, pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian troops began fighting, which the United Nations says has killed over 9,100 people. 

Seventy-three percent of Russians trust Putin, according to recent opinion polls. While this figure is 10 percent lower than it was last year, it remains "stratospheric by Western standards," according to Reuters. Just 51 percent of Americans approve of Obama, according to Gallup's most recent weekly poll average. His highest weekly average was 67 percent in 2009, shortly after his inauguration.

Take a look at more of these photos, taken by Reuters photographer Ilya Naymushin last week, below.

Irina Ivanova contributed reporting. 

Read more:

Vladimir Putin Goes Shirtless Again For New 2016 Calendar

What Russia’s Failing Economy Means For Putin’s Legacy And Military Ambitions

It’s Putin’s Birthday So Here Are 17 Photos Of Him With Cupcakes

How Shirtless Putin Became A Rock Star President In Russia

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"Dances with Wolves" "Pocahontas""FernGully" "Avatar" is set to receive four sequels, according to creator James Cameron. 

The "Titanic" director announced the expansion of the franchise at CinemaCon on Thursday. He confirmed his plans to release four new "Avatar" movies over the course of the next seven years with each installment intended to debut around Christmas of 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2023. 

Yep, James Cameron is Santa. 

“We’re making four epic ['Avatar'] films that stand alone but together form a saga. These movies were designed to be seen in theaters first,” he told the audience, according to Deadline. 

“I’ve been working with the top four screenwriters and designers in the world to design the world of 'Avatar' going forward,” he continued. “The environments, new cultures -- whatever it takes to bring it to life. From what I’m seeing of the art on the wall … in pure imagination is just beyond the first film. I’m speechless.”

Zoe Saldana most likely had a similar reaction after learning she'll be speaking Na'vi into her 40s. 

Cameron originally intended to only make two sequels to the 2009 fantasy epic, which garnered immense critical and commercial acclaim upon its release, as well as pioneering new technologies in filmmaking. 

“There is too much story and visionary ideas for two sequels,” Cameron said, via The Wall Street Journal. “So we talked to Fox and expanded it to three sequels. Now that the script work is finishing up, it’s not three. It looks like four. So after talking it through with our partners at Fox and giving it a lot of thought, we decided to embark on a truly massive cinematic project.”

Not much else is known about the saga, except that Cameron is adamant about how audiences will experience it: in theaters.

“Our jobs as filmmakers is to keep making films onscreen,” he explained at CinemaCon. “We’ll continue to make this industry the greatest show on Earth. My producer Jon Landau and I are committed to the theater experience. Despite what the folks at the Screening Room say, I think movies need to be offered in the theater on opening day. So boom.” 

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Being bilingual comes with a world of advantages. You automatically sound worldly and cultured, you can openly gossip in public without anyone understanding you, and you sound hella sexy when you speak a foreign language. There's no denying that your linguistic skills are the crème de la crème, and it doesn't hurt that they also make you appear très cool.

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