Glory Edim just wanted to talk about books with her friends.

At least, that’s how her book club, Well-Read Black Girl, got started. She began posting about new books she looked forward to reading on Instagram, and decided to do an in-person discussion of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me. That meeting was transformative for Edim and the other women in attendance. “Some people were crying, people just really got into what made the book emotional for them,” she told The Huffington Post in an interview.

It was an intimate gathering of 10 or so avid readers; now, two years later, the group has ballooned to over 40, not counting the growing online community Edim has garnered, or the book lovers who turned out to her recent events at the Brooklyn Museum or The Strand. In the future, Edim wants to open satellite chapters in Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta and anywhere else there’s interest.

But for now, she’s just excited to spotlight authors, both established and forthcoming. Below, she raves about some of her favorites. 

How did your book club come about?

Originally, it was something that I had started with the intent of just making new friends and having it be a small thing I was doing with friends from college. My boyfriend, for my birthday, had made me this shirt that said “well-read black girl” ― I’ve always been a little bit of a bibliophile, books everywhere. So when people would see this shirt, they’d inquire about it and want to know, “Oh, where did you get it?” So I was like, oh, this is a catchy name, this is something I could use for the book club.

I work in marketing, so it was my natural inclination to end up using Instagram to spark conversation. I noticed that other people started following along, asking for suggestions or my book recommendations, so I started to do a newsletter dedicated to this idea of paying tribute to black women writers and to amplify their voices. So that’s how it got started, from a T-shirt to an Instagram to this whole movement two years later. For lack of a better word, it was kind of a selfish idea. I just love books.

So it started online, and then you started meeting in person.

One book that I was reading at the time was The Star Side of Bird Hill by Naomi Jackson. The Ta-Nehisi Coates book was kind of a test run, but then with Naomi’s book, I ended up meeting her [...] and asking her to participate. When I made that ask, I didn’t anticipate that she would say yes. And she decided that she would come and talk to us about the book. That was the first Well-Read Black Girl event. She read a passage from the book, and she told us about her creative process, and even what happened when she had the book as a draft. I give so much credit to Naomi, because without her encouragement I probably wouldn’t have gone full-fledged and continued so adamantly about inviting people and building a community. And her friend Natalie Diaz joined her at the discussion, so it was like, two-for-one.

So Naomi was like, you should talk to Angela Flournoy, she has her new book The Turner House coming out. So then that became our next book and we invited her to come speak. So it kind of snowballed, gaining momentum slowly.

It wasn’t this massive group of people. It was very intimate. It felt like you could ask questions that were just in context. Some of the questions weren’t about Naomi’s book, it was like, how did you feel when you were a 13-year-old girl? It became a larger discussion about mental illness, and how you define black girlhood. All these things started to emerge from the book club. It was very affirming to have other women nodding, saying, “Yes, I felt the same way when I read this paragraph.” Clearly you want to talk about the book, but it’s also a great space to be like, “Hey, girl, what’s happening in your world? We support you and help you through whatever you’re going through.”

It sounds like an intimate space. How do you maintain that as the book club grows?

It’s 35 or 40 people ― it’s a lot larger. This year we kicked off a partnership with New Women’s Space, a community center, almost. They host workshops and do panels. It kind of runs the gamut. We changed the schedule so we meet the last Saturday of every month. Our first meeting there was in January, when we did Brit Bennett’s book The Mothers. And we’re reading Zadie Smith’s book Swing Time right now.

When I think about the intimacy, it is harder to maintain when it compares to the 10 women I started with. But those 10 women are still part of the group. They help facilitate the conversation. It’s very democratic, so we rotate who moderates. I’m very into fluid conversation. We break into groups to have conversations one-on-one, then come together to have a group dialogue. We go to the movies together, go to concerts together, do other things outside of the book club. Friendships are forming.

It’s also very intergenerational. I’ve had moments when moms and daughters come, too. Last summer we were reading the book We Love You, Charlie Freeman, and this girl came with her mom. Like, oh, this is so cool.

Is there any way for readers who aren’t in New York to participate?

One thing I’m testing out this year that I’m really excited about is using Facebook Live more, live streaming in order to share the experience. I’m also hoping to spread more chapters throughout the U.S. I’m going to be in LA in April, and I’m planning to host a book club and a few events up there. The same idea for D.C., Chicago and Atlanta. I’m laying the groundwork for it and finding people that are ambassadors. 

How do you choose the books you read?

Initially, it was a little bit of the Oprah’s Book Club mentality. But now I’m fielding requests from different people, especially members of the book club, if they have suggestions around genres we should read. I tend to really love historical fiction and contemporary fiction, but there are so many genres ― mysteries, sci-fi, romance novels ― so I am trying to be more democratic about the process and how I select books. I don’t have a precise way, I just read a book and if I enjoy it, I want to share it.

The two primary things are emerging authors, so people who have debut books. I am looking to build space for authors who may not get a lot of mainstream press and publicity. It’s kind of tied with popularity, what does everyone want to read right now? So everyone was excited about Swing Time. Zadie Smith will not be at the book club tomorrow [laughs], but it was such a popular book last year.

Have you ever considered working classics into the fold, or do you want to focus more on new books?

Well, this month, because it’s Black History Month, I’ve been doing additional events, because not everyone can come to the book club, and I do want us to be a space where everyone can participate. So I did something at the Brooklyn Museum, and we read Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider. We had a massive turnout. It happened right after the Women’s March, so there were a lot of great conversations about, what were the benefits, and how can we be more mindful of including everyone’s voice when it comes to activism and protest. We used Lorde’s essay, “The Uses of Anger,” as a blueprint, looking at how to approach things when you’re frustrated and angry.

I am looking more at more academic presses, and what they’re publishing, especially post-election. It’s paramount for us to be aware of how to shape our activism. So I had a discussion with Dorothy E. Roberts at Strand last week ― it was the 20th anniversary of her book Killing the Black Body, a much heavier, more academic book. It really tied in well with everything that’s happening right now around reproductive justice. So I am being very conscious about the books and the conversations in the context of our larger political landscape, which originally was not a goal of mine. It was more of a leisurely entertainment space. But like most people, after November I saw a shift in my consciousness and what I wanted to put out publicly.

What are some of the forthcoming titles you’re excited to read?

Let me think. Oh ― oh, I mean: Roxane Gay. Come on. Roxane Gay’s Difficult Women, I’m absolutely obsessed with. I just started it. I just love her work, as an author, an activist, and just being so bold and outspoken. I haven’t had an opportunity to meet her, but just reading from Bad Feminist to Untamed State, her work is incredible. That’s something that’s on our horizon for the book club.

There’s also a book that I’ve talked about a couple of times, but it’s just so beautifully written. It’s called Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? by Kathleen Collins. She actually passed away several years ago, at around age 40. Her daughter found her journals and old writing samples, and pulled it together and made this book on behalf of her mother, and it’s absolutely riveting. Kathleen was also a filmmaker, so her stories are these really tight scenes, and you can visualize everything she’s writing. That’s also a book that we’re planning to read.

There’s a book called The Woman Next Door, by Yewande Omotoso. I just got that book, and it looks really good. The epigraph is this whole statement about walls, and if that is not timely, I don’t know what is.

Both of my parents are Nigerian and I’m first generation, so I have a fondness for Nigerian writers. There’s an author, Ayobami Adebayo, her book is called Stay With Me, and this is her debut book. It’s about the political turbulence in the 1980s in Nigeria. Both of my parents were in this war ― it was our Civil War; Chimamanda Adichie has written about it. Jesmyn Ward is coming out with a new book in September, Sing, Unburied, Sing. She’s amazing ― Salvage the Bones, what? She’s on my dream list of people to meet and interview.

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In the wake of its Best Picture win at last Sunday’s Oscars, “Moonlight” enjoyed a healthy second wind at the box office this weekend. 

Barry Jenkins’ coming-of-age drama added $2.52 million to its grosses, which now total $25.4 million, an impressive sum for a movie that cost a mere $1.5 million to make.

This was its most lucrative weekend yet. “Moonlight” played in 1,564 theaters, its highest count since first opening on four screens in late October. 

Movies are regularly re-released or expanded to wider theater tallies after scoring Best Picture, but the “Moonlight” revenue tops that of the past four Best Picture champions. Last year’s titleholder, “Spotlight,” collected $1.8 million, according to Box Office Mojo. Before it, “Birdman” made $1.9 million, and “12 Years a Slave” and “Argo” each accrued about $2.1 million. All four saw smaller expansions than “Moonlight.” To find a Best Picture re-release that grossed more than “Moonlight,” we have to go back to 2012 winner “The Artist,” which drew $3.6 million in 1,756 locations.

While some of the “Moonlight” victory has been overshadowed by the envelope snafu that resulted in presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway at first crowning “La La Land,” this win should not be undersold. “Moonlight” climbed almost 260 percent compared to the previous week’s grosses, by far the most of any movie this weekend. That’s especially impressive considering it had already hit VOD platforms. A24, the independent studio behind the film, also reported strong digital sales over the past several days. The movie currently sits at No. 4 on the iTunes chart. 

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Emma Watson’s revealing outfit on the March cover of Vanity Fair has people criticizing and questioning the actress’ feminist credentials. 

But, of course, Gloria Steinem set the record straight in a succinct and spot-on statement.

In a quick interview with TMZ at LaGuardia airport on March 3, Steinem reminded the world that women can be feminists and express their sexuality. “Can feminists wear sexy outfits?” the TMZ reporter asked Steinem.

Her response? Perfection.

“Feminists can wear anything they fucking want,” the iconic feminist answered, while laughing at just how absurd the question was. She later added that maybe the people criticizing Watson “have an incomplete idea of who [feminists] are.” 

On Sunday, Watson responded to the criticism in an interview with Reuters. 

“It just always reveals to me how many misconceptions and what a misunderstanding there is of what feminism is,” the 26-year-old actress said. “...Feminism is not a stick with which to beat other women with. It’s about freedom, it’s about liberation, it’s about equality. I really don’t know what my tits have to do with it. It’s very confusing.”

Watch the full Reuters interview below. 

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According to the rhetoric used by Donald Trump during the presidential debates, women can “rip” babies out of their wombs moments before birth. This imagery runs counter to current laws, which in most states allow abortions only before a fetus has reached 24 to 26 weeks. Some states outlaw abortion as few as 12 weeks after a woman’s most recent menstrual period; North Dakota’s cutoff is six weeks.

The president’s language on the issue led pro-life proponents to fear an overturn of Roe v. Wade, a law that younger women may take for granted as a basic right. But stories like Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, a speculative fiction book from the 1980s that’s getting adapted this year for Hulu, work to remind us that few rights are truly inalienable, and a perfect storm of circumstances could undo the freedoms of millions.

While dystopian stories like Atwood’s help readers contextualize the here and now, there’s also a stable of science fiction authors using the genre to explore possible solutions to current problems. So, we asked authors to imagine how reproductive rights could be protected, and improved, in the future. Their answers, below, include birth control injections distributed to both men and women, and socializing kids to take ownership of their own bodies. 

Kameron Hurley, Hugo Award winner and author of The Geek Feminist Revolution

“’Women’s health’ is often used as a euphemism for ‘issues related to contraception and abortion.’ Certainly, there are many other health issues faced by cis and trans women alike, but it’s fertility that is often the most heavily legislated and taboo. How does technology solve a problem that is, at its core, a social problem?

“Sure, the creation of artificial wombs sounds nice, but it does not remove the reproductive function of those who do have wombs, and it doesn’t erase the social stigma that many women endure. I’m often asked why I write all-women space operas like The Stars are Legion, or imagine fantastic societies with eight different genders and wild social taboos. I do this because many of our fundamental problems as human beings won’t be solved by creating a widget. There have been all sorts of useful widgets that failed because we could not make them socially palatable (Google Glass, anyone?). But what we need to change first is the stories of ourselves, and what it possible.    

“As we’ve seen over the last few months, who controls the narrative over a story has a huge impact on who creates the future. The future of women’s health does not require an artificial womb or a 100 percent effective contraceptive (though both would be nice). Instead, securing a future where cis and trans female bodies are afforded equal respect and research dollars requires a harnessing of the story of who matters. Create the story of who matters, and who is human, and the investment in the right widgets will follow.”

Meg Elison, Philip K. Dick Award winner and author of The Book of Etta

“The erosion of women’s rights to bodily autonomy begins early in life and must be approached at the root cause. We must uncouple the relationships between the body, sex, shame, and morality through compulsory education that rightly treats gender, sex, and sexuality as separate and independent subjects. We must reject all notions of the body as dirty or nudity as inherently sexual, desire as uncontrollable and unilateral or coercion as normal in intimate settings.

“This starts with granting children their own bodily autonomy; giving them the right to say no, to refuse kisses or cuddles, and never forcing them to show any kind of physical affection to anyone. This starts with toilet training kids without shame and using correct anatomical terms for their bodies. This starts with refraining from color-coding infants and projecting their entire futures and personalities based on their genitals. This starts with outlawing all circumcision, regardless of biological sex.

“None of this is unique to women or girls because women’s rights are human rights. We begin to lose them before we’re born, and the rest are given away or stolen later in life because we’ve been conditioned to believe they were never really ours to begin with. Stop that conditioning. Save girls and save the world.”

Elizabeth Bonesteel, author of the “Central Corps” series

“Throughout history, women’s health has been contentious for reasons entirely cultural. Humanity seems to have a deep, persistent discomfort with sexuality, and female sexuality in particular. While this is easing — slowly, and non-linearly — I expect we’re looking at more centuries than I like to think before we all grow up.

“As much as it seems reductive to say it, the issue revolves around women’s role in the human reproductive cycle. In order to depoliticize basic health issues, we need to get to a point where women have control over when (or if) they become pregnant, and how often. The simplest way to do this is through effective, easily-administered birth control. Despite the much-derided results of the trials of male chemical birth control, there’s no doubt we’re moving in a direction where there will be more options for everyone. As these methods become available, use will widen, and eventually they will have an effect similar to a vaccine, establishing a herd immunity against unplanned pregnancy. Eventually, accidental pregnancy will be seen as a medical failure, rather than some kind of cautionary tale — and at that point, perhaps the issue of bodily autonomy won’t be considered so controversial.”

Nalo Hopkinson, Hugo Award nominee and author of Falling in Love With Hominids 

[Hopkinson offered to provide an absurdist fictional scenario.]

“Science progresses swiftly to the point where transitioning from one gender to another is a complete change which happens at the chromosomal level. 45* comes out as female, becoming the U.S.’s first woman president. Health laws suddenly become more favorable towards women.”

“*I won’t call that man the president, so I’m using the term that’s becoming the accepted one for people who feel as I do.”

Amy S. Foster, author of “The Rift” trilogy

“What could the future hold for reproductive rights? They’ve already tried (and failed) to bring a birth control injection for men to market. Too many side effects ― though they were nominal and possibly caused by other drug interactions. I have to imagine that in the future we might see an improvement on bioidentical hormones, in general, so that women of all ages could not only control when they get pregnant but menopause could be experienced with no symptoms at all. Perhaps doctors could even find a way to keep eggs viable for longer so that women could have children at a much older age ― though in this scenario, aging itself might have to be dealt with!

“I think for me, as a mother of teenage girls, I would love to see a birth control injection that lasted for years and was mandatory throughout the world. It sounds completely totalitarian, I know, but I believe that no child, anywhere, should have to deal with the fear of parenthood, the emotional upheaval of abortion, or the trauma involved in adoption. I think allowing girls to grow up before becoming mothers would truly change the cultural, emotional and economic landscape of the entire planet for the better.”

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“Game of Thrones” author George R. R. Martin is known for bringing serious gore to screens everywhere. So, naturally, his dream version of “Beauty and The Beast” would involve a murderous Beast.

Thanks to the much-anticipated release of Disney’s new live-action movie, “Beauty and the Beast” has made a resurgence this year and has us reminiscing about the classic tale. And we’re not just talking about the 1991 animated film.

In 1987, there was a CBS TV show entitled “Beauty and the Beast” that starred Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman as a lawyer named Catherine Chandler and an underground tunnel-dweller named Vincent (aka Beast), respectively. Martin worked on the series as a writer (he’d later become a supervising producer).

The show took place in a magical version of New York and involved the duo fighting crime and falling in love. The show had Perlman playing knight in shining armor to Hamilton, but with no twist at the end ― as in, Beast stays beastly the whole time. Love affair and all.

There are no whimsical and lifelike candelabras, clocks or teapots. Just some casual bestiality and taking down bad guys. This, apparently, wasn’t enough for Martin, who reportedly wanted more darkness in the series.

“There were constant limitations. It wore me down,” Martin said in a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone about his desire to push the show into edgier territory. He continued:

There were battles over censorship, how sexual things could be, whether a scene was too “politically charged,” how violent things could be. Don’t want to disturb anyone ... The Beast killed people. That was the point of the character. He was a beast. But CBS didn’t want blood, or for the beast to kill people. They wanted us to show him picking up someone and throwing them across the room, and then they would get up and run away. Oh, my God, horrible monster! [Laughs] It was ludicrous. The character had to remain likable.

The CBS show ultimately didn’t survive after (spoiler!) Catherine was killed, and the Beast became a mopey mess. In the end, he never got to revel in the gore and glory Martin wanted for him.

We’ll just have to leave the “Game of Thrones”-esque version of “Beauty and The Beast” ― where Beast slits throats, fights White Walkers, and leads an army of anthropomorphic household items to prepare for winter ― to our dreams.

H/T The Telegraph

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Janelle Monáe is here for period pride. 

On March 3, the “Hidden Figures” actress tweeted about why women’s periods are nothing to be ashamed of. “Menstrual Period Blood,” Monáe began her Twitter conversation, adding five minutes later: “It’s sad that there are prob [sic] folks more grossed out by and/or ashamed of menstrual period blood than they are the current administration.”

Scroll below to read Monáe’s awesome thoughts on periods and period-shamers. 

About ten minutes later, Monáe began retweeting people who disagreed with her and responded to their points. One Twitter user tweeted at Monáe, writing: “Menstrual blood is gross.” 

The actress responded to the Twitter user, explaining why menstrual blood is something to “celebrate.” Monáe also broke down exactly why calling menstrual blood “gross” or “disgusting” is so problematic. 

“When a person uses language like... ‘Gross’ this causes the person on the receiving end to feel ashamed, embarrassed, humiliated, etc,” Monáe wrote. Scroll below to read her full thoughts. 

Monáe’s in-depth Twitter conversation sparked other users to tweet their support and thank the actress for speaking out about the issue.   

Monáe for President? 

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Viola Davis is just murdering the 2017 awards season. 

Less than a week after receiving an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, Davis was recognized as Harvard’s Artist of The Year on Saturday during the university’s Cultural Rhythms festival. 

Davis began her acceptance speech at the Sander Theatre with humble remarks.

“Oh, my God, these beautiful singers and dancers,” Davis said, referring to the performance acts that preceded her speech. “I’m like, ‘Who is this Viola Davis?’ You guys are awesome.”

The actress then went on to talk about the sensitive yet invaluable nature of acting. 

“It’s a very sacred place, the stage and the screen,” Davis said. “Because really, at the end of the day, even what I do as an artist, when I channel characters and people and their stories, and those moments in their lives that we sometimes hide, that we feel like is just our mess, our shame.” 

“I want people to be seen,” she continued. “I want them to feel less alone ... Your job as an audience is to bear witness. To come open and willing to transform.”

Watch Davis’ speech below:

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In an interview with The Huffington Post, photographer Leah DeVun described her experience with pregnancy and birth as complicated. Really complicated.

As a mother and an artist, DeVun has been struck by how cultural conversations surrounding childbirth emphasize the process as a natural one ― so much so that medical intervention and technological assistance are sometimes interpreted as signs of failure. As a result, the photographer became interested in the many apparatuses and devices that assist mothers’ bodies; instruments that, even more so than breastfeeding itself, are often kept hidden from public view.

“People have a lot of complex feelings about the ‘success’ of their birth,” DeVun said. “It’s interesting to encounter people’s perceptions about what their bodies are supposed to do. It struck me, how much technological aid it actually takes to assist in these processes that we think of as natural.”

DeVun had already been active in a variety of Listservs for mothers and parents in Brooklyn when she embarked upon her photography project, “In the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” To start, she put out a call for mothers willing to sit as her photographic subjects while demonstrating the materials they use to breastfeed. The series showcases women adorned with various pumps, shields and tubes, a stark contrast to the images of unmediated breastfeeding often shared to empower and exalt motherhood.

There is a unique beauty to DeVun’s photos, which depict human bodies and medical machinery without clear boundaries between them. “I was struck by the fact that these are so commonplace and yet completely unfamiliar to me,” DeVun said of the machinery she encountered. “They looked so alien in a lot of ways, but they are so quotidian, so ordinary. It’s like [upon using them] you get initiated into this secret club, and before that, everything is a complete mystery.”

Once you engage with a breast pump or nursing system, DeVun explained, the tools immediately change from unknown to intimate. “There is such an entanglement with your body and these things,” DeVun said. “They become literally second nature. The photos, I think, challenge how odd these appliances are; how odd they look and how odd you look wearing them.” 

The photographs, like the subject matter they depict, possess a distinct balance of familiarity and mystique, coldness and warmth. This too mirrors DeVun’s complicated relationship with the experience of motherhood in all its strange complexity.

“The tone emphasizes some of the discomfort I’ve had with the experience of motherhood,” she said. “I’m not trying to say that this represents some kind of failure of adhering to nature. I just want to think about the complexity of our bodies, all the ways we are knit together with our environment, and all of its contradictions. Pausing to think about these networks between our flesh, all this plastic, and what it even means to do a natural thing.”

DeVun’s work is featured the group exhibition “Chimeras,” on view at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts until April 29. 

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In 1914, Canadian suffragette Mary Raleigh Richardson entered the National Gallery in London and attacked Diego Velazquez’s famed painting “Rokeby Venus,” which depicts a reclining nude woman gazing at her own reflection. 

Richardson, in a statement issued shortly after the attack, explained the slashing was meant to symbolize the violence enacted systematically against women, including their inability to vote. “I have tried to destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the government destroying Mrs. Pankhurst, who is the most beautiful character in modern history,” she said, referring to Emmeline Pankhurst, a prominent British suffragette. 

Contemporary artist Amy Jorgensen was inspired by Richardson’s act of civil disobedience, one of many enacted by early British suffragettes fighting for the right to vote. In her series “Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue,” Jorgensen honors the legacy of those who paved the way for women’s rights in the 19th century, including her very own great aunt Edna Berg.  

“As a young person, the stories of my great aunt Edna Berg were a staple in family lore and populated many family gatherings,” Jorgensen wrote in an email to The Huffington Post. “She was an extremely outspoken and political member of the family who left rural life in the West and moved to New York City where she was an advocate for women’s rights and a suffragette during the early part of the 20th century. Recognizing myself as a feminist at a young age, my great aunt became a bearing point as I navigated adolescence, even though we never met. In my imagination she became both myth and mentor. Edna Berg was an outlier in the family, as am I.”

While researching the details of Berg’s life, Jorgensen came across a trove of surveillance images compiled by the Scotland Yard of British suffragettes at Holloway Prison, which, though now permanently closed, was once the largest women’s prison in western Europe. Intrigued by these photos, and the way they connected themes of protest, women’s rights and surveillance, Jorgensen used the images as source material for her series. 

“Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue” features 18 blue portraits printed on vintage handkerchiefs, balancing ideas of daintiness and resistance, past and present, surveillance and self expression. Each piece in the series features a surveillance photo of a British suffragette, rendered as a cyanotype print atop a vintage handkerchief.

Cyanotype printing, an early 19th century photographic process popularized by Anna Atkins, the first female photographer, turns each suffragette’s likeness into a vivid, cobalt-hued image. “The way the stain of cyan spreads across the cloth [mimics] the stains of blood during the menstrual cycle,” Jorgensen explained. 

Jorgensen was drawn to handkerchiefs as her canvasses because of their longstanding associations with intimacy, female camaraderie and domesticity. “I was interested in working with a material and object that linked to the historical traditions of women’s work and clothing, the element of handcraft,” she said. “The handkerchiefs were meticulously embroidered by the hands of women, and as objects were worn close to the skin, often in the folds of underclothing.”

The title of the series riffs off the wedding tradition of adorning a bride-to-be with various worn trinkets for good luck. “In pairing the surveillance images of militant suffragettes, the wedding rhyme, and the delicacy of a handkerchief, I was interested in creating a collision point for patriarchal structures,” Jorgensen said. “Does this traditional exchange become a form of subversive protest?  Many of the suffragettes imprisoned at Holloway, embroidered their names on a handkerchief as a record of their experiences.”

Over 100 years have passed since Richardson slashed the surface of Velazquez’s iconic painting, taking a knife to the male gaze, as well. Jorgensen’s artworks ― delicately riddled with contradictions ― communicate just how far women have come, and how much more work needs to be done. 

Amy Jorgensen’s “Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue” runs until March 12, 2017 at Elizabeth Houston Gallery in New York. 

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This being a digital age, our lives are suffused with fonts. Just about every word we read is set in a font crafted by an artist, a team of them, or even multiple generations of designers. But for the non-graphic designers among us, who mostly interact with font without a second thought, the medium’s possibilities may not seem particularly exciting.

Futuracha Pro is poised to change that.

Typing with Futuracha Pro, designed by graphic designer Odysseas Galinos Paparounis of Greek branding agency høly, is no static, predictable experience. That’s because the font responds to context, flipping between different letter designs depending on the makeup of a word. It’s chameleonic and mesmerizing to watch in action ― and the result can make anyone’s typing look like the work of a practiced designer. 

The font itself, a fine-boned classic Futura embellished with Art Deco-inspired swirls, was inspired by an unlikely muse: the Caribbean cockroach.

Futura, Paparounis told HuffPost in an email, had become “something like an obsession” during his graphic designer studies. When he was tasked with creating a typeface as a class assignment, he found himself examining two Caribbean cockroaches he was using for an illustration class. Inspired by “the antennae and thorns on their feet,” he garnished the Futura framework with rounded spurs and swooping ligatures.

Thus was born Futuracha, a marriage between Futura and the “cucaracha” ― “cockroach” in Spanish. “One could say that Futuracha is a sans serif font that transformed into a serif one in a mood for exaggeration,” he told HuffPost.

Originally, the font ― which featured numerous variations of different letters to allow for optimized combinations ― was only available in a format that required individual positioning of letters in a graphic design interface. Thanks to a new crowdfunding push, that’s about to change with the launch of Futuracha Pro, an Open Type Font that users can simply type with. 

Futuracha Pro isn’t the first font to offer adjustments as people type, but it is a step beyond the usual. “Most fonts take advantage of ligatures and embellishments in an attempt for visual corrections,” Paparounis said. “Futuracha on the other hand, not only provides ligatures, but a wide variety of them to choose from. It places creativity beside functionality, play before instructions, experimentation before manuals.”

Designers and typography nerds aren’t the only ones who should have fun with fonts ― and with a magical type like Futuracha Pro, everyone can play along.

To check out the font in action, visit høly’s Indiegogo page. 

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Janelle Monae is having a banner year and she’s making sure to pay tribute to the black women who have inspired her to get to where she is now.

Monae, who starred in two blockbuster films “Moonlight” and “Hidden Figures,” was honored with the Breakthrough award at Essence’s tenth annual Black Women in Hollywood event on Feb. 22nd. The event, which aired on OWN on March 5, recognized Monae as a trailblazer for her remarkable success in the entertainment industry.

Monae, in turn, made sure to uplift and pay tribute to other black women in an emotional speech she delivered as accepted the award.

“We’ve birthed this nation, we helped contribute to some of the greatest, American, extraordinary things that have happened here in this nation,” she said onstage. “We have been the backbones in communities from the ghetto to Silicon Valley. We are not monolithic. We’re multi-dimensional and we have a right to have our stories told.”

Monae referenced her role in “Hidden Figures” when she spoke about black women. 

“It was black women like Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn, Mary Jackson who took you to space. We did that,” Monae proclaimed as she paid tribute to the protagonists in the film. “Black women like Raye Montague who engineered the US Navy Ships. We did that.”

“The more we realize we are stronger together,” she added, “that’s when the change will happen.” 

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Have “La La Land” fatigue? Well, they’re just getting started. 

The masterminds behind the Oscar-nominated movie musical are set to bring the music of Mia and Sebastian to a city near you with “La La Land in Concert: A Live-To-Film Celebration.”

As live singing isn’t necessarily their forte, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling will not be touring with the production. Instead, a 100-piece symphony orchestra, choir and jazz ensemble, featuring the film’s original vocal recordings, will have to suffice. Composer Justin Hurwitz, however, will be on hand to lead the orchestra in a performance of the film’s Oscar-winning song, “City of Stars.”

Fittingly, the tour’s first stop will be at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles over Memorial Day weekend. From there, the show will tour the country, as well as the U.K., Canada, Mexico, Italy, Turkey and Switzerland. 

“For me, one of the most thrilling and fulfilling parts of making ‘La La Land’ was scoring the film to a live orchestra: a hundred phenomenal local musicians playing in real time to the Technicolor images, bringing Justin’s compositions to vivid life,” director Damien Chazelle said in a statement. “I couldn’t be more excited to share that experience with audiences this summer, let alone in a setting as epic and as quintessentially ‘L.A.’ as the Hollywood Bowl.”

Tickets go on sale Friday, March 10, at 12:00 p.m. PST, so set your alarm now if you’re into this kind of thing. 

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Dream team commence: Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg are making a movie about the Pentagon Papers leak, Deadline reported Monday. 

This will mark the first time Streep and Hanks have shared the screen. It’s also Streep’s first live-action movie directed by Spielberg, though she did voice the Blue Fairy in an “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” cameo. Hanks and Spielberg have met a time or two. (Those times include “Saving Private Ryan,” “Catch Me If You Can,” “Band of Brothers,” “The Terminal” and “Bridge of Spies.”) 

Titled “The Post” and based on a spec script by Liz Hannah, the movie chronicles the Washington Post’s early-1970s efforts to expose the Pentagon Papers, which unmasked the United States government’s deception about the scale of the Vietnam War. Streep has signed on to play WaPo publisher Kay Graham, and Hanks is on board as editor Ben Bradlee. Together, Graham and Bradlee battled the Nixon administration over their right to publish information from the documents.

Lending this project added timeliness, Streep and Hanks have been outspoken about media rights in the wake of Donald Trump’s consistent attacks on the press.

“We need the principled press to hold power to account, to call them on the carpet for every outrage,” Streep said while accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award at January’s Golden Globes. “That’s why our founders enshrined the press and its freedoms in our constitution. So I only ask the famously well-heeled Hollywood Foreign Press and all of us in our community to join me in supporting the committee to protect journalists. Because we’re going to need them going forward. And they’ll need us to safeguard the truth.”

Hanks first donated an espresso machine to the White House press corps during George W. Bush’s administration, then replaced it while Barack Obama was in office. He gave the Washington journalists a new brewer last week, paired with a note that read, “Keep up the good fight for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Especially the Truth part.”

Here’s a photo of the actors on the Screen Actors Guild Awards red carpet in 2014 with Rita Wilson:

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Laurie Hernandez knows that her accomplishments could inspire young Latinas hoping for Olympic greatness. 

The 16-year-old gymnast, gold medalist, best-selling author and “Dancing With The Stars” winner is one the many subjects of MTV and the Association of National Advertisers’ #SeeHer campaign.

In her video for the campaign, Hernandez noted she didn’t have U.S. Latina gymnasts at the Olympics to look up to when she was growing up. 

“I feel like it’s a big responsibility to represent my heritage and the United States at the Olympics, growing up I didn’t see too many Hispanics and I was really excited to be a role model for not just my generation but generations ahead,” Hernandez says in the video. “It means the world to me to be the second [U.S.-born] Latina to be a part of the women’s gymnastics team.”

The #SeeHer initiative, which is highlighting women’s accomplishments in one-minute videos in honor of Women’s History Month, will also spotlight Rihanna, Gina Rodriguez, fashion designer Lucy Jones, author Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, and and student Keiana Cave. 

Watch Hernandez’s vide above. 

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Broadway playwright and novelist Marc Acito and Grammy-nominated songwriter Amy Engelhardt are teaming up for a new musical project with a socially-conscious slant.

The pair have written a new musical, “Bastard Jones,” that is aiming for a spring premiere at The Cell in New York. The comedy is based on The History of Tom Jones, Henry Fielding’s 18th century novel which follows “an outsider’s quest for acceptance.” The book’s titular character, played by Albert Finney in the 1963 film, “Tom Jones,” is repeatedly rejected for being illegitimate. Both Acito and Engelhardt feel that plot point will particularly resonate among contemporary audiences given the struggles the LGBTQ community and other minority groups are facing under President Donald Trump’s administration.  

“In 1749, being illegitimate made you a second-class citizen. We’re channeling our rage at social injustice into a door-slamming sex farce,” Engelhardt, who likened the music she’s written for the show to “Candide, Spring Awakening and Meat Loaf,” told The Huffington Post. Added Acito, “Substitute any oppressed minority with the word ‘bastard’ and it’s the same story, different characters.”

The writers have launched a GoFundMe campaign in an effort to cover production costs. They’re also planning to donate all royalties and proceeds from the show to Cyndi Lauper’s True Colors Fund, an advocacy group for homeless LGBTQ youth. 

Acito, who wrote the book for the 2015 Broadway musical, “Allegiance,” told HuffPost that his debut novel, How I Paid For College, was inspired by his own decision to leave home after coming out as gay in high school. “Were it not for a friend’s mother who took me in, I easily could have ended up on the streets,” he explained. “I look at any displaced person—homeless, immigrant, refugee—and I don’t see ‘other.’ I see myself.”

Watch Acito and Engelhardt talk about the project in the video above, then head here to read more about the fundraiser. 

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Musician and songwriter Rob Quist won the Democratic nomination on Sunday to fill the Montana congressional seat of Republican Ryan Zinke, who was sworn in last week as the new U.S. secretary of the interior.

Quist, 69, a mustachioed son of ranchers who rarely appears in photos without a cowboy hat, defeated two state legislators ― Amanda Curtis and Kelly McCarthy ― for the nomination and will face the eventual Republican nominee in Montana’s May 25 special election. The race marks Quist’s first campaign for public office.

Yet his award-winning oeuvre of folk and bluegrass albums has made him “the best known name of the entire Democratic slate,” according to Daily Kos.

“His music is quite political,” Bonni Quist said of her husband in an interview with The Huffington Post on Monday. She said his 2016 song, “.45 Caliber Man,” was one of her favorites: “It’s going to take a .45 caliber man, meaning it’s going to take somebody with a strong will to stand up for the values of the middle-class America.”

Quist was in meetings all day with Democratic Party officials, his wife said. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Republican Party is scheduled to vote on its nominee on Monday. Greg Gianforte, the software entrepreneur who recently lost a costly governor’s race to incumbent Democrat Steve Bullock, has emerged as the front-runner in a race with six other candidates, including two current state lawmakers.

“We don’t need to send [U.S. House Minority Leader] Nancy Pelosi a court musician who’s advocating for a socialized, one-payer medical system,” Gianforte told The Associated Press.

The tone of Quist’s political platform rings closer to that of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the insurgent progressive he backed in the contentious Democratic primary, than to that of Hillary Clinton, who won the nomination.

“The Democratic National Committee sent [Sanders] to the sidelines in favor of Hillary Clinton,” Quist told the Bozeman Daily Chronicle in January, noting that Democrats lack a grassroots network like Republican tea party groups to rally voters to the polls. “They tried to control it from top down.”

The election could be seen as a microcosm of the larger fight playing out in national Democratic politics. The race for Democratic National Committee chair pitted Sanders-backed Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) against former Labor Secretary Tom Perez, who got support from former President Barack Obama and establishment party leaders. Perez won, but named Ellison deputy chair in a bid to unify the party after it was devastated in the November election.

“The Montana special election is one of the first special elections following the Trump takeover/inauguration,” Franke Wilmer, a professor of political science at Montana State University, told the progressive blog Down With Tyranny. “It will absolutely be viewed by the whole country, but especially those in elected office, to figure out which way the political winds are blowing as a measure of Trump’s eroded or continued support.”

Like Sanders, Quist supports a single-payer healthcare system. He stumps for health care reform with a personal story: A pre-existing condition disqualified him for insurance until former President Barack Obama passed the Affordable Care Act, and he was forced to access Social Security benefits early to pay out of pocket for gall bladder surgery, the Daily Chronicle reported. 

Quist opposes banning abortion. In an interview with the Daily Chronicle, he told the story of being an unemployed songwriter when his wife became pregnant with their daughter, Halladay. She lost her job as a flight attendant after United Airlines decided pregnant women could not fly, leaving the pair scrambling to figure out how to afford a child.

“This was a heavy time for us, it couldn’t have come at a worse time,” Quist said in the interview. “We made the decision to have this child, and my daughter is now the light of my life. I don’t know what I would do without her. But on the other hand, I wouldn’t want the government getting in the middle of that decision. That was a decision we needed to make personally.”

Bonni Quist said she was “surprised he shared that” personal story, saying she never seriously considered terminating the pregnancy.

“It was more about the fact that middle-class Americans are strapped with difficult financial decisions every day,” she told HuffPost. “Choosing one way or another could tip the scales. That’s why it’s important to us.”

Quist also considers gun ownership “a way of life,” but backs restrictions on assault weapons.

“They’re only meant to kill people,” Quist told the Chronicle. “So maybe there should be some legislation to register those types of things.”

Quist’s interests may overlap somewhat with those of first lady Melania Trump. During a radio appearance in January, he played his official campaign song, a folk ballad he originally wrote to respond to cyberbullying his wife endured. The first lady has said she plans to make combatting bullying a top priority in the White House. 

“Bullies are not just on the playground, they’re everywhere through life,” Quist said of his song, titled “I Will Stand Up For You.”

“I didn’t really have to change too much to be a campaign song,” he said. 

To be sure, Quist faces an uphill battle. Montana’s sole district is 87 percent white and non-Hispanic, well above the 62 percent national average, NBC News reported. The district is also older than the national average, with 44 percent of the population aged 45 or older, compared to 40 percent nationally.

“Think the far-left Quist has a shot in this red state after Montanans have rejected House Democrats in eleven straight elections?” GOP operative Jack Pandol asked in a blog post on the Republican National Congressional Committee website that called Quist “to the left of even Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.”

“Look us in the eye and tell us with a straight face,” Pandol wrote.

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A pair of siblings in Southern California used their school’s “Dr. Seuss Week” celebration as an opportunity to educate their fellow students on the author’s problematic past.

Last week, a South Pasadena elementary school celebrated “Dr. Seuss Week” in conjunction with Read Across America Day, which takes place annually on the author’s birthday. Two students, 11-year-old Rockett and 10-year-old Zoe, were upset to learn that their classmates didn’t seem to know about the racist streak in the cartoonist’s early work.

Before he rose to fame with his children’s books, Dr. Seuss (born Theodor Seuss Geisel) drew a number of political cartoons during World War II. Many of these drawings featured racist portrayals of Japanese citizens and Japanese Americans. The cartoons ranged from stereotypical caricatures to fear-inducing propaganda that vilified people of Japanese descent and justified their internment.

Rockett’s and Zoe’s dad, Steve Wong, is the curator at the Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles and also teaches Asian American History as an adjunct professor at Pasadena City College.

“Early on, my wife and I have instilled in them to have a strong moral compass and sense of justice,” Steve told The Huffington Post.

Aware of Dr. Seuss’ complicated past, Steve and his wife Leslie read the author’s famous books to Zoe and Rockett. “I still remember trying to read Hop on Pop to my to kids as an exhausted father and falling asleep while reading it to them,” he recalled.

About two years ago, Leslie taught their kids about Dr. Seuss’ racist cartoons and role in swaying public opinion of the incarceration of Japanese Americans.

Knowing this piece of history, Zoe and Rockett decided to share the information about the ionic author’s past with their classmates during Dr. Seuss Week. Together, they created informational fliers to pass out at school.

When Zoe distributed the fliers to her classmates, she received mixed reactions. “Most people agreed that his cartoons were wrong and racist,” she told HuffPost. “Most people didn’t know this and thought it was very interesting, while some people did know but still liked it.”

Some students accused Zoe of spreading a fake rumor, tore up the fliers in front of her and told their teacher, who instructed her to stop passing them out.

Rockett said his teacher confiscated his fliers, “raised her voice” in disapproval and reported the incident to the principal. “I only got to hand out one because my teacher took them away, but that one person said it was interesting.”

Added Steve, “Rockett was mad that he was censored, but ultimately he was ‘whatever’ about the whole ordeal.” Zoe had a more emotional experience.

”Zoe’s teacher ‘neutrally’ told her to stop passing out the fliers, and that the request came from the principal after being notified by Rockett’s teacher,” Steve explained. “Knowing the principal was involved, Zoe was fearful the following days that she was going to get into trouble at school for her actions, and told her mom that she cried several times the first day.”

Zoe told HuffPost she wasn’t surprised some people had negative reactions but was “shocked” to learn the flier had spread to the principal and that she had caused such a problem for the teachers. “It wounded me more when friends told me that multiple girls told on me,” she said.

Still, the little girl found comfort in the friends that supported her. “People who truly agreed helped me be brave for getting in trouble and pushed me to go farther with the fliers,” she recalled.

Following the incident, Steve claimed that Rockett’s teacher sent the following email to him and his wife:

Hello Mr. and Mrs. Wong,

This morning, Rockett came to school with a stack of flyers to hand out regarding Dr. Suess. While he is absolutely entitled to his own thoughts and opinions, school is not the appropriate place for him to hand these flyers out. I am going to send them home with him today after school. I do applaud his civic mindedness.

The dad said he wrote this lengthy response:

I do want to begin my response to your email, and our children’s actions of creating the flyer, by stating that we appreciate the non-racist work of Dr. Seuss. We have a collection of his books in home and we read many on them often to our kids when they were younger. A couple of years ago, we wanted to balance our love for Seuss Geisel’s creativity by exposing our children to the darker side of his early racist works. So while we still respect his art, our family understands that Seuss Geisel, like many others we hold in high esteem, can indeed have a sordid past. Rockett wanted a way to express this to his classmates, and we gave him and his sister the okay to create something to achieve this goal of educating people about Geisel’s past racism. They came up with the flyer on their own without much oversight on my own. Nonetheless, Leslie and I approved what they were doing and are ultimately the ones to be held accountable.

Rockett and Zoe’s great-grandmother and great-grandfather who are still with us today, along with 120,000 innocent others (most of them American citizens), were forcibly removed from their homes and sent to U.S. concentration camps due to lack of leadership, rampant racism, and war hysteria. There was no basis or evidence of Japanese Americans involved in any espionage, and the U.S. has since apologized for the unconstitutional act against its own American citizens. However it is important to understand that Seuss Geisel, helped fuel that racism and war hysteria with many racist cartoons that he published during that time. His cartoons targeting Japanese Americans directly contributed to the public support of Executive Order 9066 (the executive order that incarcerated Japanese Americans). This is not an opinion, much like Hitler’s anti-Semitism is not an opinion, for Geisel’s hatred of Japanese is well documented, and is chronicled in American history books. Unfortunately our family has had a direct impact and has suffered directly from Geisel’s cartoons.

We understand it is in your opinion that school is not for this type of “educational” encounter that Rockett attempted to present today. Perhaps trying to educate his fellow classmates with a flyer may have been a little unconventional and has placed you in an uncomfortable position. We respect your opinion and authority of what is deemed appropriate in your classroom, much as I would expect the same in my classroom, and will of course defer to you about what is appropriate. However I do have to say I disagree in principal with your standpoint that “school” is not the appropriate place to disseminate new, or differing ideas. America’s educational intuitions should pride themselves as space for critical thought, as an environment to think outside the box, as an instution to understand that the arts, science, and history (including our American heroes) are not one dimensional subjects with only one narrative, but subjects with differing intersectional layers. As a teacher myself, I try to create a space where students can critically challenge assumptions, a space where students can question history, science, math, a space to propose a new perspective on older models. I was taught in school that the incarceration of Japanese Americans was for their own good. I wish that someone had challenged that perspective.

This is not to say that Geisel did not have a change of heart later in life. Perhaps he was just keeping up with the times when racial intolerance became distasteful in America, nonetheless he did make that turn. If I did have more oversight I would have insisted that they include his turnaround. However, we trusted that the kids did adequate research and based the flyer in facts.

We do appreciate that you applaud Rockett for his civic mindedness, and we appreciate the education you are providing him. I apologize for the length of this email, but I thought it was important to convey.

Sincerely,

Steve

The kids’ elementary school is a “fairly progressive” public school, said Steve, noting that the website boasts of its ethnic and cultural diversity and strong community ties. Notably, the school emphasizes its “Core Values,” which are respect, integrity and diversity.

“Schools should be a space for critical thought, especially in these new times,” Steve explained. “Rockett was first inspired to do something about Dr Seuss week because of these core values.”

Added Rockett, “Drawing racist cartoons are not respectful, do not show integrity and hurt people that are different than you. It does not show diversity because it is trying to gain anger against a person because of their differences.”

The elementary schooler said he wishes his teacher had allowed him to pass out the fliers, or used the incident as a teaching moment to share a lesson about this piece of history. The school did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.

“I hope that people learn that Dr. Seuss was not perfect and that he drew racist cartoons,” said Rockett. “I also hope that people will learn that everyone has a dark side and that nobody, not even very famous people, are perfect.”

Both siblings also noted that Dr. Seuss reportedly later expressed remorse for his depiction of Japanese people and tried to make up for it with his later work.

Zoe said she was “shocked,” “speechless” and “very curious” when she first learned about Dr. Seuss’ racist cartoons. She expected her classmates to have a similar reaction.

“I just wanted to inform them and meant no harm,” she said. “I didn’t want people to deeply hate him for what he did. After all, he regretted his cartoons.”

“In my opinion we didn’t violate any rules or core values,” she added. “Doing this gave me a big lesson: In life, you will always have to take risks, and there are always consequences for having a voice and doing what you believe in.”

H/T Angry Asian Man

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“It’s like that classic horror trope,” the performer known as Fancy Feast told The Huffington Post, “where the kid buys a mask from the creepy costume shop and the mask won’t come off. I’m not portraying somebody else when I’m onstage. That is me.”

Since she was 3 years old, Fancy, like many young kids, was drawn to the spotlight. Her parents, to this day, rehash memories of their daughter leading adults in improvised tour groups around the local aquarium. Also from a young age, Fancy, a conservative, Jewish girl growing up in Washington, D.C., liked to take her clothes off ― a perhaps less common, or at least less commonly-discussed, predilection. 

Today, Fancy is a burlesque performer, which means she combines the art of striptease with other modes of vaudevillian entertainment ― comedy, short skits, perhaps a poem or political rant ― all executed with a sparkling, campy gravitas.

“When I really want to get out of conversations with people, I say I do short form experimental feminist performance art,” Fancy joked in the documentary “Fancy Feast ― The Fat Burlesque Performer,” by Leon Chase. 

“I take my clothes off for money, just not a lot of money,” Fancy told HuffPost, an accomplishment she has worked toward since doodling showgirls in her elementary school notebooks. It’s the distinction of “not a lot,” she believes, which makes mainstream culture more accepting of burlesque than traditional stripping ― which is far more lucrative, and as a result, more reviled. “We’re all selling our bodies, we’re all selling our labor. Saying that stripping is sleazy but burlesque is art is ignorant and offensive.”

The stage name Fancy Feast is derived from the gourmet cat food brand ― a side-eyed wink to the burlesque tradition of sexy cat-inspired names like Kitty and Pussy Cat. As Fancy explains in her documentary, the name is partly a joke ― what is less “fuckable” than globular chunks of sopping fish-meat? But removed from their cat food connotation, the words “fancy” and “feast” conjure an image of luxury, pleasure and abundance ― an extravagant bodily banquet, served hot. 

The moniker is mighty appropriate for a performer whose acts juggle vulnerability and artifice, beauty and ugliness, humor and gravity, desire and taboo in her every quixotic movement. Inspired by drag culture, Fancy performs femininity, sexuality and herself, her fabricated presentations soon toppling any distinctions between the carefully choreographed show and the so-called original. 

Fancy, who now lives in Brooklyn, New York, performs three nights a week on average. During her off time, she moonlights as a sex educator. But it’s her time onstage when Fancy feels like she is most herself, her identity and stage character having fused, “The Mask”-style, into a heightened persona that melds fantasy and reality.

“The character is me — just amped up a bit,” Fancy told HuffPost. “My values onstage reflect my values in real life. Once you get to know Fancy Feast, I always say, you don’t have to know the ‘me’ that goes to the gym or drinks a smoothie. The wishes and dreams of myself in my day-to-day life play out onstage. That’s who I am.” 

In the performance that won her the Miss Coney Island 2016 burlesque beauty pageant title, Fancy ― donning a floor-length gold, sequin gown and feather headdress ― recited a poem that discussed her childhood dreams, tainted by the societal dictate that fat women don’t deserve to feel sexy or be seen. “I stood behind this very curtain and curtailed tears of joy for younger me who thought she’d never see a stage because she did not deserve eyes to look at her,” she said. 

After the poem, Fancy slid out of her evening gown to the tune of Katy Perry’s “Firework” ― well, the first line, “Do you ever feel like a plastic bag?”, remixed and replayed over and over again. Fancy then shimmied and strutted in a handmade bikini made from plastic cat food bags, becoming what she called a “trash queen.” The act ended when Fancy, clad only in plastic bag pasties, pulled a plastic bag out of her vagina and put it atop her head, to the audience’s wild applause.  

“When my mom saw me perform for the first time, she said, ‘to be honest, you have always danced this way,’” Fancy said. “When I was a little girl and I had my Discman, I would listen to different songs and imagine a different image or movie for each one. Everything was very visual to me when I listened to music and I still feel that way.”

Some of Fancy’s acts stem from events that occurred in her life, or conversations she’s had with other performers. Often, an idea will originate as a preposterous passing whim that she then feels an odd compulsion to follow through to completion. Additionally, every year Fancy forces herself to do one thing she’s afraid of onstage. This year, for instance, she challenged herself to do a classic striptease, devoid of the comedic and narrative elements that normally characterize her routines.

Fancy pushes beyond her comfort zone not only in terms of what she performs, but where. She hosts a monthly showcase in Bushwick called the “Fuck You Revue,” but makes sure to venture beyond the Brooklyn art scene for crowds that may never have encountered burlesque ― or nude, fat bodies ― before.

“When I started performing, I made sure I was in a safe place to do that,” Fancy explained. “The first audiences I performed for were in the queer nightlife scene. It felt really wonderful, but I also felt like I was preaching to the choir. I thought, these people know me, they agree with my values, is this really what my goals are as a performer? I want to perform for people who have never seen burlesque before, who have never seen a fat person on stage. I need to get that message out to those people.”

Regardless of where she’s stripping down, Fancy still gets nervous before going onstage. In part, she attributes the persistent butterflies to the burden she bears as one of the few fat women in her line of work. “I do feel the need to do well as a sort of ambassadorship on the behalf of fat girls everywhere,” she says in Leon’s documentary. “Which is a joy and a piece of shit burden.”

In the film, Fancy discusses her use of the word fat, a term she finds still catches her fans and critics off guard. “I use it deliberately, because I know it is a shock to the system for many members of a culture where, for a woman, there is nothing worse you can be than fat,” she said. Although she doesn’t consciously choreograph numbers around themes like body positivity or representation, the ideas end up wheedling their way into her audience’s brains and loins alike.

However, for Fancy, the magic of burlesque rests not just on sexual arousal or a debriefing on the beauty of all bodies. “For me, when it’s done right, burlesque is an art form that creates a dialogue between the performer and the audience,” she said.

“The audience and the performer ultimately are not separate; there is an opportunity, then, to experience joy in community,” she added. “My fear is not being able to make that happen. I think of the transformation that goes on in a striptease as a metaphor. There’s armor coming off successively in stages. I’m revealing my body but I’m also revealing something else. There is a vulnerability in someone seeing you, seeing something beyond your body.”

There is plenty to unpack in Fancy’s hypnotic performances, which employ humor and arousal to help audiences shed their preconceptions as she peels off each layer of clothing. Countering the assumption that nudity is something authentic and true, while makeup is bound up with the fabricated and pretend, Fancy reveals how our masks are just as authentic as our flesh.

Check out Fancy Feast in action at the “Fuck You Revue” on March 21, 2017, and every third Tuesday of the month at Bizarre Bushwick. And watch the documentary on Fancy, by Leon Chase, here. 

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For all its unexpected plot twists, “Jane the Virgin” is a show that’s consistent in its honest and progressive portrayal of strong women. Not only the titular Jane, but her mother, Xiomara, her grandmother, Alba, and Petra, the mother of her son’s half-siblings. (See? Plot twists.)

In the first season of “Jane,” Petra’s cast as the villain, the ambitious ex-wife of Raphael, the man Jane’s having a baby with. She’s a sharp dresser with business acumen and great hair. But she’s more than all that; she’s also lovelorn. As actress Yael Grobglas explained of her character in an interview with The Huffington Post, “she’s not just doing evil to do evil.” The show uses Petra to explore issues like thorny pregnancy and postpartum depression.

“Every time I’ve tried to predict what’s on the show, and I consider myself a pretty creative person, I’ve always been wrong,” Grobglas said. With “down-to-earth characters mixed with huge, telenovela moments,” there’s plenty of room for the characters to learn and grow. This way, they don’t fall into cliche; heroes are never just heroes, mothers are never just mothers, and villains are never just villains.

Below, Grobglas talks about playing a mother on screen, and ― oh yeah ― the show’s bold three-year jump.

What first interested you about the role of Petra?

When I first heard about the role of Petra, I didn’t know what was going to happen with her, I had no idea. I knew she was going to be the villain. I was a little hesitant about taking the role of a villain that could potentially go for ― if you’re lucky ― seven years, 10 years. And then I got on the phone with [showrunner] Jennie Urman, who told me Petra was never going to be two-dimensional, she would always be very complex, she’d be hated one moment and loved the next.

She’s really been so wonderful about keeping up with that. I would have never expected everything with Petra to happen.

Speaking of unexpected turns, last season you were given an extra part on the show, as Petra’s twin sister, Anezka.

I had no idea that was happening. I got the script, like we usually do, one or two days before we started filming, and I read that Petra was disguising herself and getting ready to run away. I thought it was because of her postpartum depression, and I was getting a little worried, because my first go-to thought is that I’m going to get killed off. I think that about everything. And then Anezka shows up at the end of the episode, and suddenly there’s two of me.

For a week beforehand, people who got the script before me were kind of trying to be nonchalant, going, “So, uh, did you read next episode?” And I was like, “No, Jesus, why?”

So I spoke to Jennie and she described her to me, and I was like, what is this character, what is she about? And she spoke about the accent, and she spoke about being a ferocious eater, and having personal space issues, and scratching people, and jumping backwards ― I call it “getting the fear” ― and immediately thought, I know somebody like that. I based her off my cat. And that’s how Anezka came to be.

Is it difficult to toggle between those two very different parts, or is it mostly just exciting?

I have so much more appreciation for people who do this long-term. I never thought about it, but as an actor I depend so much on my costars, and when you’re doing scenes with yourself, you have nobody to play off. You have to come so well-prepared, and predict what you’re going to do.

You touched on this a little already but both Petra and Anezka could be described as the show’s sympathetic villains. How do you approach playing a villain without making her seem purely evil?

I think the most important thing is really in the writing. The way Jennie explained it to me when we had our first conversation was that Petra was the hero of her own story. She really started the show at her most desperate point, she’s in love with someone and he’s leaving her. But she decides to have herself inseminated, and that goes horribly wrong, obviously. So most of her actions, as crazy as they may seem, are justified, to her. It’s not that much of a challenge for me, with such great writing.

She’s not just doing evil to do evil. And if you think about it, most of the crazy stuff she’s done is actually kind of selfless. It’s been to help her mother, or to protect her daughters, protect Raphael.

You mentioned her daughters ― this season we get to see another side of Petra, that of a confident and loving mother. How do you think motherhood fits in with everything else we know about Petra?

I think it’s been so fascinating, because the show manages to capture so many different aspects of what it is to be a mother. Everything went one way for Jane, and then Petra was a way to show a very different approach to motherhood. From the beginning, Jane’s birthing scene and Petra’s birthing scene couldn’t have been more opposite, and then she struggled with postpartum depression, which I thought was so wonderfully done, and such an interesting subject, and something that so many people suffer from.

And she doesn’t have the support system that Jane has; all she has is her crazy mother and crazy sister, left with twins, pretty much alone. I thought it was just wonderful that after the three-year jump, we see her almost dealing with motherhood as if it’s a business project. She’s like, I got this, I can do this.

The three-year jump was such a curveball! Was it a curveball for you, too?

Oh, absolutely. It was so interesting. As a cast, we had a very hard time dealing with knowing that we were losing Brett [Dier] as a cast member, that Michael was going to go. It was kind of a double thing, because we’re so attached to our characters that by now Michael is like a friend of ours. We care about our characters so much, Petra’s like a friend of mine. And that’s how we feel about Michael. It was almost like we’re about to lose someone we very much care about. So we were mourning Michael, and then also mourning the fact that we’re not going to see Brett every day. So that took some time for me to get over.

But then I absolutely loved how they dealt with it. It gave us all a chance to refresh our characters, and find them in a completely new place, and give them this whole new world, from zen Raphael to perfect-mother Petra.

I also wanted to ask about Jane and Petra’s relationship. They don’t always get along, but they don’t get into too many petty catfights, either. Do you have any thoughts on how relationships between women are usually portrayed on TV, and how “Jane the Virgin” manages to combat those stereotypes?

I think there are many different ways that female relationships are portrayed on TV. I think what’s great about Jane and Petra is that they didn’t go in the direction of they hit it off right away, they’re best friends, maybe they have an argument now and then but they’re best friends for life, and they also don’t hate each other. It’s kind of not here, not there. It’s almost like they need each other in spite of themselves.

Petra has a hard time admitting it to herself and to Jane, but she has this great respect for Jane. Jane is someone that she needs in her life. She has a hard time admitting that, because Jane basically has everything Petra doesn’t have.

They have these beautiful moments, and they have hard moments. It’s not a completely natural relationship, but you see that when something really difficult happens, something that’s actually life-or-death, they’re there for each other.

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Cleaning out the dryer’s lint filter is just one of many unpleasant activities we face while doing laundry. 

Apparently the designers at Comme des Garçons aren’t as afraid of the lint filter as we are. Just take one look at the brand’s latest show at Paris Fashion Week on Saturday.

The unconventional collection looks largely made up lint, in industrial-sized quantities.

Fun! 

These are trying times, and we can see the appeal in wanting to drape yourself in a giant pile of, as Jezebel’s Julianne Escobedo Shepherd so eloquently put it, “the de facto fabric that forms when you haven’t cleaned out the lint filter in your clothes dryer and sculpt it so that you’re both comfortable and bulbous.”

For those who don’t want to sacrifice showing off their shape for comfort, another variation of the look features a cinched, belted waist. 

And if lint just isn’t your (laundry) bag, there’s also this piece, which looks like it might belong inside the washing machine itself. 

Check out more looks from the wonderfully weird show below. 

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