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Sen. Kamala Harris Handpicked 45 Songs To Create A Black Music Month Playlist

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Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) recognizes the resounding power black artists have had over the years and she’s paying tribute to them with a special music playlist she curated herself. 


In honor of African-American Music Appreciation Month, which is recognized in June, Harris released a public playlist on the music-streaming service Spotify that includes some of the most talented and influential black musicians.


“Our nation has an indelible soundtrack, songs that have become anthems recognized across the world,” Harris said in a statement to HuffPost. “Much of that soundtrack is inspired and informed by the vast contributions of African-American artists in jazz, R&B, rap, hip-hop, and beyond.”


The playlist features 45 songs from timeless artists like Lauryn Hill, Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone and Prince, as well as hits from more contemporary artists like Andra Day, Janelle Monae and Chance The Rapper. There are popular rap songs by hip-hop artists like Migos and soulful slow jams from songstresses like Aretha Franklin ― whatever the mood, Harris’ playlist has you covered. 


“No matter where you are from or what you look like, music is a bond that can bring us all together,” she said. “To celebrate African-American music is to dance, sing, and even march to the rhythms that have long served as vehicles for honesty, inspiration, struggle, success and joy.”


Check out the playlist in its entirely below: 




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Get Excited! 'Good Night Stories For Rebel Girls' Is Back For Volume Two

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Fans of Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, rejoice! The popular book is back for volume two.


The team that brought kids beautifully illustrated stories of empowering women is back to spotlight 100 more game changers. In a matter of hours, the Kickstarter campaign for Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls 2 has successfully reached its goal of $100,000.



The new book includes stories about singer and activist Beyoncé and Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, along with Dorothy Vaughan, Katherine Johnson and Mary Jackson, the mathematicians portrayed in the Oscar-nominated film “Hidden Figures.”


Elena Favilli, one of the creators of Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, told HuffPost how volume two will stand out from the first release. For the new book, the team included women suggested by their community of readers. 


“Volume two is about the women that our community helped us discover, so it’s even more inclusive and diverse than the first one,” Favilli said. “It also has a map and a glossary that volume one didn’t have.”



Kickstarter backers will receive volume two, which will first be released in English, in November. Other translations will be out in 2018. 


The team behind Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls will also release a podcast, so fans can listen to the adventures of the monumental women celebrated in the books. The first season will feature 10 12-minute episodes and a bonus episode for Kickstarter backers. 



Staying true to its mission to elevate women, the bedtime stories are illustrated by 70 female artists.


Looks like bedtime just got even better. 


For more information, head to the Kickstarter page for Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls 2.


The HuffPost Parents newsletter, So You Want To Raise A Feminist, offers the latest stories and news in progressive parenting.  

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Every 'Simpsons' Superfan Should Follow This Surreal Instagram Account

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When it comes to TV shows with hallucinatory visuals that verge on abstract art, “Twin Peaks” gets all the credit. But in the small suburb of Springfield, between the delicious donut breaks and mischievous youths, there are brief moments of confounding beauty, too. Yeah dude, we’re talking about “The Simpsons.” 


A “Simpsons” fan who prefers to remain anonymous has been compiling the most quietly captivating moments from the show under the Instagram handle @scenic_simpsons.


Some of the still scenes he or she posts zoom in on background objects, turning them into momentary paintings ― a television screen or the interior of a fridge. Others depict an unfixed wash of pastel colors, the abstract smattering of cartoon hues that feels both nostalgic and unknown. We imagine Salvador Dali and Philip Guston would be very down. 




The curator began the passion project after being mesmerized by a particular frame in the show, in which Homer’s face is reflected through a glass of water. “I just loved the way that the animators created this image and all the details within the scene,” the curator told It’s Nice That.


“The plant in the corner, the strip lighting, the blind and calendar on the wall in the background. It just went from there really. I began to appreciate the scenes and setups on a whole other level. Now the ones I like the most are those without characters.”


The account is updated every few days, focusing on the show’s “golden years” between Seasons 1 and 10. If you’re a Simpsons superfan or a sucker for some abstract cartoon trippiness, give it a follow.  
























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Ken Doll Gets A Makeover With New Body Types, Skin Tones And Hairstyles

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Last year, Mattel gave Barbie a long overdue makeover with three new body types and a variety of skin colors and hairstyles. Now the toy company is announcing another move toward inclusiveness with “new and diverse” Ken dolls.


On Tuesday, Barbie expanded its ‘Fashionistas’ line with 15 new Ken dolls, featuring three body types ― “slim,” “broad” and “original” ― as well as seven skin tones, eight hair colors and nine hair styles (like the man bun, cornrows and more). 



“By continuing to expand our product line, we are redefining what a Barbie or Ken doll looks like to this generation,” senior vice president and general manager for Barbie, Lisa McKnight, stated in a press release. “Evolving Ken was a natural evolution for the brand and allows girls to further personalize the role they want him to play in Barbie’s world.”


The original Ken doll was introduced in 1961 and over the past half-century has become a staple for Barbie-loving girls and boys. 



While 10 of the new dolls are available now, five more will join in the coming months. In addition to the 15 new Ken dolls, there are now 25 more diverse Barbie dolls in the Fashionistas line. 


You can take a look at the new doll options on Barbie.com and at retailers nationwide.



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Brace Yourself For A 'Dracula' Revamp, From The Creators Of BBC’s 'Sherlock'

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Mark Gatiss and Steve Moffat ― the duo behind BBC’s popular Sherlock Holmes adaptation, “Sherlock,” starring Benedict Cumberbatch ― are working on a new project, Variety reported.


The writer-producer team will update another literary genre story: Bram Stoker’s Dracula.


Like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories, Stoker’s book was published at the end of the 19th century. Stoker, also like Doyle, spent much of his life living in London. Whether the shows will bear as many similarities as the source material remains to be seen. Will the Dracula reboot also take place in the modern-day U.K.? Will fun flashback episodes aimed at diehard fans? Will it launch the career of a new heartthrob like Cumberbatch, or will Cumberbatch himself play the lead?


There’s no word yet ― but here’s hoping.







What we do know is that Dracula adaptation will also air on BBC, likely in 2019, and will take on the same structure of longish, 90-minute episodes and shortish seasons.


As Variety points out, there may be a dwindling appetite for vampire shows, after the genre saw a post-Twilight surge. In 2013, an attempted NBC “Dracula” revamp didn’t get renewed for a second season.

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'Transparent' Gives Fans A Window Into The Musical It Could Have Been

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Transparent” has made a pretty good TV show, nabbing dozens of award nominations in its three-season life thus far, including eight Emmys. 


But could it be even better ― if it had been a musical?


Turns out, it actually might have been one. Faith Soloway, sister to series creator Jill and longtime musical theater devotee, staged a meditation on the potential missed opportunity during her production at New York’s Public Theater on Monday evening. Soloway serves as a writer on the show alongside her sister.


“When we were first thinking of ‘Transparent,’ believe it or not, one of the first ideas was a musical documentary, even before Jill wrote the pilot,” Soloway told HuffPost before the show. “Jill had just won Best Director at Sundance, and she wanted to direct ― that was always her dream. And so she wrote up the pilot. It was a beautiful pilot, and then the show started rolling along, but we always had this little dream of a musical just because it’s where I’ve lived for all my life, the comedy-musical-theater world, composing and all of that.”


“Should ‘Transparent’ Be a Musical?” featured eight songs by Soloway, some that could’ve found a home in the alternative vision for the Amazon hit, alongside others that were presented just for fun by the cast of Pfefferman stand-ins. 


Themes included the separation of church and state (not a “Transparent” song), pondering the precise definitions of gender, and the emotional boundaries between a mother and daughter (definitely “Transparent” songs). “Your boundary is my trigger,” a Shelly Pfefferman character belted out onstage in that fiery, discordant number after her daughter Sarah had introduced her to both terms.


The evening was co-hosted by Alexandra Billings, who plays Davina, the trans confidante of Maura Pfefferman, the character played by Jeffrey Tambor who is based on the Soloway sisters’ real-life family ― like several others on the show. The Soloways’ father came out as transgender in his daughters’ adult lives. 


In a sweet moment toward the end of the night, Soloway introduced a poignant song meant for Maura to sing on “Transparent,” explaining her initial attraction to Shelly while still living as a man. Soloway explained how her own father (her “Moppa,” a portmanteau of “Momma” and “Poppa”) chose her mother in part due to her small stature, reasoning that, as a tall person, he would have trouble fitting into her clothes and thus might be able to stop his “obsession” with gender.


In the song, the Maura character croons an ode of love to Shelly ― “and your shoes.” It revealed the genuine pain of inner conflict while still earning some laughs, just as the Amazon show does so well.


“For me, I can see it,” Soloway said about doing the show as a musical, for real. “I can see the blends of the tone ― the comic and serious ― and I can hear the music.”


“But it’s interesting to ask people, well, do you think it should be a musical?” she continued, adding, “There’s also that joke that everything does become a musical.”


“Transparent” is likely sticking to its successful, less-melodic formula, even after Shelly’s (Judith Light) magnificent one-woman performance in last season’s finale. But Soloway hinted that fans can expect a few more musical theater references in Season 4, as her original vision lingers in the background.

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Art Of Iranian Immigrants Reveals The Creative Potential Of Inclusivity

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In January, President Donald Trump issued an executive order denying citizens from seven Muslim-majority nations entry into the United States. In the months since, multiple courts have deemed the ban unconstitutional, arguing that it discriminates against Muslims. 


Yet Trump is still pushing strongly for the directive, filing an emergency request with the Supreme Court earlier this month and penning increasingly incensed tweets expressing his frustration with the Justice Department. 


Not long after Trump first announced his plans for the ban, art institutions around the U.S. responded to denounce the executive order as fundamentally opposed to values of inclusion, diversity and liberty. New York’s Museum of Modern Art made its convictions known by hanging work made by artists hailing from affected nations on its walls. The Davis Museum at Wellesley College used a different approach to convey a similar message. The museum temporarily removed all artwork made by or donated by immigrants from the museum walls. 


The message behind both art world protests came through loud and clear: immigrants are indispensable parts of the fabric of this country, and their contributions to American civilization and culture are invaluable.


Or, as Iranian-born, New York–based artist Nicky Nodjoumi put it: “Understanding the cultural exchange is very important at this moment. And so we have this show.” 


The show is “Beyond the Ban,” on display at Susan Eley Fine Art in New York. A direct response to Trump’s order, the exhibition offers a lush visual argument for the benefits of inclusion, plurality and free expression, featuring work by 10 Iranian-born artists living and working in the U.S. 



Nodjoumi, who curated the exhibit, was born in Iran in 1942. He relocated to New York City in the ’60s and became actively involved in protesting Iran’s Pahlavi regime.


“When I came to New York I worked with political organizations,” the artist told HuffPost. “I didn’t do paintings for three years; I felt like painting was not enough. But at the end I realized this is my capacity. This is what I do best.”


The artist received his master’s in fine arts from The City College of New York in 1974 before moving back to Iran to teach at Tehran University of Fine Arts. There, Nodjoumi motivated his students to be outspoken in criticizing dictatorial regimes and designed political posters visualizing the ethos of the Iranian Revolution. In 1981, he returned to New York but continued to tease out the trauma of his experiences with political oppression through painting. 


Nodjoumi’s works are graphic but not straightforward, plopping familiar yet enigmatic images of wild animals, men in suits, long sticks and bright balloons into uninhibited backdrops. The carnivalesque images wrap political commentary in an absurd and slightly surreal fog, alluding to the eternal threats of power, tyranny and greed, untethered to a specific time or place.


“I like my works to have a story, to have some drama, like they’re onstage,” Nodjoumi told HuffPost. “When I do larger scale paintings, the paint becomes dominant and takes over. I follow the rules of painting when a piece starts.”



The New York nonprofit Center for Human Rights in Iran reached out to Nodjoumi to curate the “Beyond the Ban” show, with all proceeds benefitting the organization.


“I didn’t want all the work to address the subjects of human rights and immigration,” Nodjoumi clarified. “I thought we should let the artists do whatever they want to do. There is a diversity of subject matter in the show. All of us are immigrants, and you can see the range in our cultures and the stories.”


One such artist is photographer Hossein Fatemi, who, for a series titled “Veiled Truths,” photographed 20 women through a veil ― as in, he literally draped each subject’s hijab over his camera lens. The series responded to the controversial Iranian government dictate requiring women’s heads be covered in public regardless of how they identify religiously or how they comport themselves at home.


Some of Fatemi’s more religious subjects wear the hijab on a daily basis, while some of his secular subjects felt repressed by the reigning government’s enforced modesty. In his photos, strangers’ portraits are overlaid with the embellished patterns of the hijab, obscuring the woman’s identity while enveloping her in a visual mandala. The simple formula questions the limits of religious observance and political mandates, examining the imprint they leave on one’s personal identity. 



When selecting artists to feature in the show, Nodjoumi explained that his greatest worry was potentially endangering any participating artists.


“In Iran, they don’t like my paintings,” NodjoumiI said. “If I go back to Iran, they might arrest me. When someone actively and openly criticizes the regime or asks for more tolerance, they don’t like it. It might be a problem for someone trying to go back and forth between Iran and the U.S.” 


And yet he’s troubled by the threats of censorship currently confronting artists in America, as well. “I’m very concerned about freedom of speech here,” Nodjoumi said. “I’m here as an Iranian American to be part of that act of activism.”


“Beyond the Ban,” then, tells no singular story and advances no particular agenda. In paintings, photos and prints, the works interweave Iranian artistic traditions with contemporary Western trends and innovations. The show hopes not only to encourage reflection on how we perceive Muslim-majority nations under Trump administration, but to emphasize the role art can play in uncertain political times. 


“I’ve been here for a long time,” Nodjoumil explained. “I have experienced prejudice and discrimination with my work. I am familiar with being placed in a box; it’s a problem. But to be honest, I think there has been an attempt in recent years to expose more Middle Eastern artists, and that’s really great.”








“Beyond the Ban” features work by Shirin Neshat, Nicky Nodjoumi, Nahid Hagigat, Shoja Azari, Shahram Karimi, Jason Noushin, Afshin Naghouni, Nazanin Noroozi, Raha Raissnia and Hossein Fatemi. The exhibition runs until August 30, 2017 at Susan Eley Fine Art. Those interested in donating to the Center for Human Rights in Iran, click here.



Welcome to Battleground, where art and activism meet.


 


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'Bachelor In Paradise' Season 4 To Resume Filming After Scandal

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Bachelor Nation’s favorite summer show will return.


ABC has decided to resume filming on Season 4 of “Bachelor in Paradisefollowing the investigation into “allegations of misconduct” reportedly involving contestants DeMario Jackson and Corinne Olympios.


Warner Bros. announced Tuesday that their investigation concluded that no sexual assault took place and that the safety of all cast members was not harmed during filming. The studio initially suspended production of the show after a field producer filed a complaint about a seemingly nonconsensual sexual situation


Warner Bros.′ new statement reads:



“As we previously stated, we recently became aware of allegations regarding an incident on the set of Bachelor in Paradise in Mexico.  We take all such allegations seriously.  The safety, security and well-being of the cast and crew is our number one concern, and we suspended filming so that the allegations could be investigated immediately and thoroughly.  Our internal investigation, conducted with the assistance of an outside law firm, has now been completed.  Out of respect for the privacy interests of those involved, we do not intend to release the videotape of the incident.  We can say, however, that the tape does not support any charge of misconduct by a cast member.  Nor does the tape show, contrary to many press reports, that the safety of any cast member was ever in jeopardy.   Production on this season of Bachelor in Paradise will be resuming, and we plan to implement certain changes to the show’s policies and procedures to enhance and further ensure the safety and security of all participants.” 



An ABC spokesperson also told HuffPost in a statement: “We appreciate the swift and complete investigation by Warner Bros. into allegations of misconduct on the set of ‘Bachelor in Paradise.’ Given their results, the series will resume production, and will air this summer on ABC.”


Last week, a contestant, who chose to remain anonymous, told People that the whole mess began last Tuesday after producers put the cast on lockdown at a resort in Mexico following news of “misconduct” on set. 


“We knew something bad had happened; there was a dark energy that came around the house,” the contestant explained. “They stopped taping anything, and we were just kind of there, waiting in limbo. We couldn’t talk to each other about what we knew. On Thursday, one of the camera guys told me that they were probably going to shut down production. I didn’t realize that it was that serious until then. I was like, ‘Wait, they’re thinking of canceling the show?’ It hadn’t even crossed my mind that they’d do that.”


The cast members then found out they’d be sent back to the U.S. amid an investigation and that their time on “Paradise” was ending. 


Now, they’re thrilled to be returning. 










“Bachelor in Paradise” brings together former contestants of “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette” for another shot at love.


No word yet on if Olympios or Jackson will be back.

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30 Perfect Tweets About 'The Bachelorette' Season 13, Episode 4

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For more on “The Bachelorette,” check out HuffPost’s Here To Make Friends podcast below: 


 





 Subscribe to Here To Make Friends: Apple Podcasts / Acast / RadioPublic / Google Play / Stitcher / RSS


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


Want more “Bachelor” stories in your life? Sign up for HuffPost’s Entertainment email for extra hot goss about The Bachelor, his 30 bachelorettes, and the most dramatic rose ceremonies ever. The newsletter will also serve you up some juicy celeb news, hilarious late-night bits, awards coverage and more. Sign up for the newsletter here.

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Hey ABC, Racism On 'The Bachelorette' Isn't Entertaining, It's Gross.

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We knew the racism was coming, because the show told us it was. After several weeks of hints and microaggressions, “The Bachelorette’s” Lee Garrett’s racial biases were laid bare on the show this week through a series of subtle ― and not-so-subtle ― dog whistles. This racism was then played for dramatic effect, a move that is ultimately meant to net ABC viewers and dollars.


Well, guess what, guys? We are not entertained.


Garrett’s old tweets, which detail his negative views about the NAACP, Black Lives Matter, feminists and Islam, had already spread across the internet before Monday night’s episode. But even without that added context, the country singer’s storyline was clearly centered around the intentional baiting of black men in the cast.


During a pre-rose ceremony cocktail hour, Garrett interrupted fellow contestant Kenny King to get more time with Bachelorette, Rachel Lindsay. King, who had thought he and Garrett were friends, tried to calmly broach his annoyance over this, but he was faced with open disrespect. When he paused to gather himself, Garrett condescendingly barked at him to “get to it,” then smiled and laughed in King’s face while dismissing his purported friend’s feelings.






Though the confrontation never became physical ― in fact, King never came physically close to the other man in any footage shown on the episode ― Garrett preemptively brought the episode up with Lindsay, going so far as to tell her that King was “aggressive.” (Meanwhile, Garrett described the “joy” he takes in crumbling these men’s worlds, and making them angrier while he laughs in their faces.)


His approach was textbook gaslighting: Overtly insisting on one reality (he loves King and just has to be honest) while subtly contradicting that reality (with dismissive body language and dog whistle bigotry). Nor was this exactly an accident; during “in-the-moment” interviews, Garrett repeatedly admitted that he doesn’t care about King and actually takes pleasure in making him upset.


Worse, Garrett dropped a major bomb by describing King, a black contestant, as “aggressive.” Not only was it inaccurate, it evoked a nasty stereotype about black men, who are often framed as violent and physically dangerous. To wit: Garrett previously described another black contestant, Eric Bigger, as explosive and out of control (which, he wasn’t) and this episode seeded the same doubt about King. (On the other hand, white cast members Lucas “Whaboom” Yancy and Blake Elarbee got into at least one shouting match but were portrayed as harmless goofballs.)






As the episode drew to a close, Garrett found himself sitting at a bar with a couple of the other men ― two white contestants, Peter Kraus and Alex Bordyukov.


“I could say something shitty about you guys any day of the week that irritates the fuck out of me. But I’m not going to do that, because I choose not to,” he said. “Like, you guys, you’re great. I don’t have a problem with you guys. You’re great.”



While Kraus and Bordyukov responded by staring blankly at Garrett, and Kraus told the camera that Garrett made him “uncomfortable,” King is left to grapple with the idea that Garrett’s gaslighting could cost him his budding TV relationship, as well as his eventual arc on the show.


“I spent most of my time with Rachel… trying to assuage her that I’m not some aggressive, dangerous human, which is absurd,” King tells the camera. “Maybe I’m crazy, but I just legitimately felt like nothing I said made a dent in what she felt about me, because of what this little son of a bitch said. Lee’s a liar, a fabricator. He’s an alternative facts piece of garbage. He lives in alternative facts and it sucks that someone like that has got me in this spot. Because if I go home, I’m going to feel real fucked up about this entire process.”


This entire exchange speaks to a sobering truth ― one that King, as a black man, is likely acutely aware of. When black men deign to express natural emotions like anger and frustration, they are often unfairly punished for doing so. Black men are generally perceived to be more “aggressive,” physically imposing and threatening than white men are. And these false perceptions can have dire consequences.






As the LA Times reported in March, a 2017 study published in the  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that “across a range of different stimuli and dependent variables, perceivers showed a consistent and strong bias to perceive young Black men as larger and more capable of harm than young White men.” The study’s authors went on to outline how dangerous these misconceptions can be: “Such perceptions may have disturbing consequences for how both civilians and law enforcement personnel perceive and behave toward Black individuals.”


This reality puts Garrett’s appearance on the show ― a contrived environment in which production has control over who is there ― in a particularly dark light. From everything we’ve seen, Garett’s presence resulted in real strain being put on the men of color who were forced to live with him, as well as Lindsay, the black woman who was meant to be dating him.



America has an ugly history of white people making money off of black people’s pain. Perhaps it was too much to hope that “The Bachelorette” would set the bar higher.



And even when Garrett’s microaggressions and racist behaviors are called out on the show, it’s black men who most often bear the burden of doing so. (Dean Unglert, a white contestant, came close in one of his “in-the-moment” interviews, but has yet to say anything to Garrett directly.) We’ve already seen Garrett successfully bait both Bigger and King when they tried to confront him ― each of them calmly at first, and then with increasing energy and frustration as he dismisses their concerns and condescends to them. And a teaser from last week’s episode revealed that Will Gaskins is going to pull Garrett aside in a future episode to explain to him the particularly vicious and dangerous history of labelling black men “aggressive.”  


Historically, “The Bachelor” and its sister shows have had overwhelmingly white casts, white production teams (at least at the upper levels), and white audiences. Until Lindsay, the franchise had never had a black lead. The show has faced sustained criticism for its lack of diversity, and in 2012 a lawsuit was filed against the show for racial discrimination. The most recent two seasons of “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette” have pointed to a modicum of progress in the casting realm, but the fact remains: “The Bachelor(ette)” is a predominantly white franchise. 






There is something especially insidious about a show with such a checkered racial history using racism to drum up drama, ratings and, ultimately, dollars for the entertainment of white people. It goes without saying that America has an ugly history of white people making money off of black people’s pain. Perhaps it was too much to hope that “The Bachelorette” would set the bar higher.


For more on “The Bachelorette,” check out HuffPost’s Here To Make Friends podcast below: 





Subscribe to Here To Make Friends: Apple Podcasts / Acast / RadioPublic / Google Play / Stitcher / RSS 


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


Want more “Bachelor” stories in your life? Sign up for HuffPost’s Entertainment email for extra hot goss about The Bachelor, his 30 bachelorettes, and the most dramatic rose ceremonies ever. The newsletter will also serve you up some juicy celeb news, hilarious late-night bits, awards coverage and more. Sign up for the newsletter here.

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Lauren Lovette Is Flying High, And She's Not Afraid Of Falling

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WASHINGTON ― Lauren Lovette has taken thousands of ballet classes in her life. The New York City Ballet principal dancer, 25, started ballet at age 10, and has for years started almost every day with the same routine: plié, tendu, port de bras. Left hand on the bar, then right. At this point, the days on which she’s gone to ballet class vastly outnumber the ones on which she hasn’t. But today, she’s teaching ballet class, something she’s only done a couple of times in her life, and she’s nervous.


So are the kids waiting outside the studio. Out in the lobby of The Washington School of Ballet, some 30 girls aged 8, 9 and 10 in leotards and pink tights (and one boy in a white t-shirt and black tights) are stretching and jumping and spritzing last-minute hairspray on their sleek high buns. They were nervous last night, too, at the meet-and-greet that followed Lovette’s performance at The Kennedy Center on June 10. After watching Lovette sparkle and spin to the strains of George Gershwin’sRhapsody in Blue,” a dozen baby ballerinas stood with their parents under the giant bronze head of former President John F. Kennedy, waiting for Lovette to materialize from backstage. “I hope I don’t say something stupid in front of her,” one girl fretted to her mother, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “What if I say something stupid?”


The young dancers in the lobby don’t know, and probably wouldn’t care, that Lovette has barely taught ballet before; they’re here to spend a few hours learning from — and hopefully impressing — their idol. Lovette doesn’t hesitate to tell them the truth, though. After they’ve all taken their places at the barres that line and dissect the large, bright studio, as they’re all looking at her expectantly, anxiously, she says, “I haven’t really done this before. So it could go really wrong. But I think it’s going to be OK.”


And so it is. The class proceeds without incident. For 90 minutes, she puts the ballet students through their paces, correcting their arm placement (“No chicken arms,” she warns, when outstretched elbows begin to droop) and urging them to remember that even their standard, repetitive daily exercises are, in fact, dancing, and should be performed, not simply completed.



At one point, she’s talking the students through the port de bras arm-stretching exercise she’s set for them; it’s a languorous, luxurious reach toward the barre, and then away from it. The second part requires taking their supporting hand off the barre and floating it over their heads, bending sideways at the waist as far as they can. “Don’t be afraid to fall over,” Lovette says, stretching her head far past the midline of her body. “What’s the worst that can happen, you fall on the floor?”


The girls around her giggle, but Lovette is serious. As it turns out, her little pre-class warning is something of a motto for her. “It could go really wrong, but I think it’s going to be OK” is the kind of thing you could see her stitching onto a throw pillow. (She loves crafting, she tells the students in a post-class Q&A session.) The same goes for what she tells the students about the port de bras, a phrase she’ll repeat several times throughout the class: “Be brave.”


Jessica Wallis, the executive director of Ballet in the City, which organized the weekend of masterclasses, said she wanted to work with Lovette because she is a positive role model for young dancers. Wallis particularly admires how Lovette uses social media ― one major way in which dancers across the country get to “know” their favorite ballet stars. “Dancers feel compelled to put themselves out there and a lot of it is all about me and how great I am,” Wallis told HuffPost. “Every day it’s another image of them with an arabesque and whatever. But when Lauren shares herself on social media it’s very much her thoughts about her self as a dancer, as a person, as member of society, and that translates on stage and in her teaching.” 


Lovette grew up 40 miles outside of Los Angeles, the daughter of a conservative Christian pastor; she and her three siblings were all home-schooled. One day, when she was 10, Lovette was visiting the dance-wear store owned by her aunt when the owner of a local dance school saw her playing around among the leotards and wrap skirts. Kim Maselli, the Artistic Director of the nearby California Dance Theatre, noticed Lovette’s feet, and suspected the young girl might have the right body, or at least the right feet, for ballet. She offered Lovette a week of classes for free. Then a month, then a year, and on it went, until Lovette was 14 years old and moving away to Manhattan to board and take intensive classes at the School of American Ballet, the feeder school for New York City Ballet.


“It was a gift,” Lovette says of Maselli’s offer. “I owe her a lot.”



For Lovette, who was a shy and self-conscious child, the prospect of performing in tights and a leotard, of being lifted in the air, of failing in front of people, was daunting. Her family was tightknit and nurturing, and she was encouraged to play outside and use her imagination ― a necessity in a family with little money that largely shunned television ― but Lovette was an anxious kid. “I was afraid of the water, I was afraid of heights, I was afraid of any game I didn’t know how to play, afraid I would be bad at it,” she recalls.


She’d skip pool parties, because she was afraid of swimming. She’d miss out on sleepovers because she was afraid of being around so many kids. “Taking my first ballet class was the first really brave thing I did. I didn’t know what I was doing and everybody else did, and I felt very overwhelmed,” Lovette recalls.


But she felt a desire to push through it, because she knew that her teachers saw potential. When she was one of the few people in the nation selected for the School of American Ballet, she was terrified. “I was going to move away from my family, I never went to school in my life, and now I was going to live in New York City with all these other kids and go to a boarding school?” It was, she says, “this really big moment when I knew I had to brave.”



Lovette says she gets her outlook on life — the imperative to seize opportunities, to better herself continuously — from her father, who was an avid reader of self-help books when she was a child. “He’d read them to us, and I started reading books like that around 14, and one of the things I read was that you should do something scary every day.”


The tone of her Instagram feed, which Wallis praised, has noticeable “self-help” feel. A post this month about deciding to start running again reads, “Sometimes you don’t feel like it... Sometimes you are sore, tired, uninspired, or any number of different excuses. The only way to silence that negative pattern is to look your mountain square on and shout the time is now! Then start climbing.” It’s accompanied by a photo of a grinning Lovette in a black bra and panties and pink pointe shoes, hair down and flying around her as she leaps in the air.


When Lovette left home to study ballet full-time, she made a personal rule for herself: whenever there was a sign-up sheet, no matter what it was for, no matter if she thought she stood a chance of being picked, she’d put her name on it. “Even if you didn’t know if you could do it, just go for it, and kind of leave it up to the universe,” she says. “So I forced myself to sign up for things.”


That was how she ended up emceeing a school fashion show, even though she was scared of public speaking. And it’s how she ended up choreographing for the first time.


In the post-class Q&A, she tells the class that she’d never really intended to choreograph; she’d just followed the rule and put her name on a sign-up sheet once, as a student at the School of American Ballet. To her surprise, she was chosen to make a piece for her classmates.


Certain she was going to fail, she went to the school principal and explained that she wanted to bow out. But the principal told her that she’d made a commitment, and she had to follow through on it. She had to pick her dancers last, and was left with a group of people she didn’t think she could work with.


“I had this random group of dancers of all different heights,” she recalls, but they ended up having fun together. Now, she’s once again choreographing on her peers, but her peers aren’t students anymore: they’re dancers in one of the highest profile ballet companies on the planet.



The dearth of women choreographers in ballet is a longstanding problem, and ballet companies’ failure to solve it has drawn complaints in recent years.


In the 2016 spring season, in major companies in the US and around the world, works by women were a tiny fraction of the dances permitted on stage. But when people in the ballet world argue that the overrepresentation of men is waning, they often point to New York City Ballet’s 2016 fall season, which featured works by two women choreographers. Lovette was one of them; her first ballet “For Clara,” made on City Ballet dancers, premiered at Lincoln Center. The New York Times dance critic was unimpressed, calling the staging “cluttered,” the partnering “sexist,” the music unsuitable for dancing and concluding that Lovette’s work “showed talent without looking ready for presentation by one of the world’s foremost companies.” Still, she’ll premiere her second ballet at the company’s high-profile fall gala later this year.


The stakes are high when Lovette choreographs. There are lots of eyes on her, and she’s been unwillingly turned into something of a poster child, or at least, one of the few data points in the case that things really are getting better. “It’s a lot of pressure,” she says. Making “For Clara” was especially hard, because she hadn’t choreographed since her school days.


“Not only did I have to choreograph after not practicing for six years, I had to make it on the big stage, with lights and costumes and everything, stuff that I hadn’t been practicing,” Lovette explains.


The critics were watching, and so was the Ballet master in chief, Peter Martins, who decides which ballets the company performs. “I tried to ignore it as much as I could and just get the job done, but now looking at it I feel like it is a lot of pressure,” she says. Lovette’s cheered, though, to see more young women expressing interest in choreographing. “It’s hard, and it shouldn’t be that way. I don’t think it’s going to be like that forever.”






Wendy Whelan, who danced for City Ballet for 30 years, and whom Lovette names as a role model, has concerns about women like Lovette being thrown into the glaring spotlight with relatively little choreographic experience.


“Of course it’s wonderful to develop young female choreographers,” Whelan told HuffPost. “But I don’t know if they’re necessarily ready for making something for New York City Ballet.”


Whelan places the responsibility of fixing the gender imbalance in programming at the feet of artistic directors (Martins has indeed been a longtime supporter of Lovette’s choreographic efforts), and says that the choice to bypass more seasoned choreographers could be to the detriment of the company and the choreographers themselves ― the older ones and the newer ones. “They’re awfully young,” Whelan says of some of the women being granted a chance at ballet immortality, “and less experienced than the ones who are out there. So that’s my question: Why aren’t you bringing in ones who’ve had lots of experience already? Rather than somebody who’s making their first ballet?”


Lovette acknowledges that not all her ballets will be successful, just as not all her performances are flawless. One of the things she’s been practicing since her early teen years is “casting the line out, before you’re really ready to fish.” And sometimes, it doesn’t work out. She told the class about how, once, she fell onstage while she was dancing the role of the Sugarplum Fairy in the company’s flagship production, “The Nutcracker.” The Lincoln Center house was full; a dozen little girls in angel costumes were gathered around her, and she ate it, tearing a ligament. “But at least I went for it,” she says, as the students laugh at the image of their suddenly humanized heroine splatting onto the stage. As for choreographing, “I know I’ll fail at that too, if I keep going. You’re going to lose some fish on the line.”



She still gets scared performing, she admits. “That hasn’t gone away. And I still have shows where that gets the best of me.” Stepping into the role of Aurora, the technically gruelling lead in “Sleeping Beauty,” was frightening, and upsetting. “I remember being in tears after my first dress rehearsal,” Lovette recalls. “And really broken up about my first show [of “Sleeping Beauty”], because I watched the tape of it and I thought it was so terrible.”


Lovette finds roles that involve plenty of acting to be the most freeing, because being someone else helps with the fear. “Lauren is afraid of heights, but Juliet isn’t,” she told the class in Washington, D.C. Lauren might balk at the big lifts in the balcony scene pas de deux, but Juliet throws herself into them.


For a former anxious kid who’s now an anxious adult, flawlessness isn’t always the point: trying is. In an artform that prizes perfection, Lovette tries to remember that the victory can be in the attempt. “I feel good when I put myself out there and I make the attempt,” she says. “Because when you’re somebody who’s filled with a lot of fear and anxiety, even putting your neck out there is a success. If I turn down an opportunity because I’m afraid, that feels like more of a failure than getting a bad review or falling on stage.” 



Back in the studio in D.C., Lovette tells the students that choreographing requires courage. It can be a little “unusual and uncomfortable” not being told what the steps are ― especially for ballet dancers, who are used to following instructions to the letter. It was odd “to not be told what to do, like, uh, what do I do with my arms?” In the second half of the class, she runs some choreography exercises with the students, encouraging them to make up their own steps and instructing them teach the moves to each other. “I want you to do what the music makes you feel,” she says, “even if that’s ballet, steps you know.”


When she turns the music on, switching from one song to another after 30 or so seconds, a lot of the girls play it safe, repeating phrases of dances they clearly already know. “This is not being graded,” Lovette reminds them. “I want you guys to practice being brave.”


It’s something she’s been practicing since she took Maselli up on the offer of a free ballet class at age 10, but she admits that her bravery is still very much a work in progress. “I don’t know if you ever really know when you get brave,” she explains. And while she’s still afraid of heights, and still nervous about teaching a ballet class, she’s no longer afraid of falling in class, or on stage. “I get over falling very easily now,” she says. “I’m like, that’s OK: I went for it.”

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Kickstarter Aims To Give Book On Black Boy Joy To Public Schools

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At some point in their lives, black men are forced to realize that no matter what they do, some people will never see their humanity.


To counter the negative perception of black men and boys, Chicago native Valerie Reynolds authored “The Joys of Being a Little Black Boy.” The book follows a blissfully innocent adolescent named Roy in Chi City as he gets to interact with historical black figures like Barack Obama, Frederick Douglass and Jackie Robinson.


“Roy takes readers on a journey of joy through a historic adventure reminding us that many remarkable black men were once joyful little black boys,” the book’s publisher, Hurston Media Group, said in a statement to HuffPost.



Reynolds told HuffPost why her book is so relevant to the present social climate. 


“It is very important to ensure little black boys are aware of the joy that they possess, much like the historical figures highlighted in the book,” Reynolds told HuffPost in an email Tuesday. “Now, more than ever, it is critical to counter the dominant narrative that mostly portrays black men and boys as dangerous, violent and criminal.”


In order to ensure her message reaches the masses, Reynolds began a Kickstarter campaign. She aims to raise $7,500 not only for the book’s printing costs but also to donate copies to public schools throughout the country. As of Tuesday, the campaign has reached 70 percent of its goal. 


On the book’s Kickstarter page, Reynolds points to the killing of Terence Crutcher by Officer Betty Shelby to illustrate the necessity of positive representations of black boys. In audio footage from a helicopter that hovered over the scene of the killing, a police officer is heard typecasting Crutcher by saying he looked like a “bad dude.”


“This ‘big bad dude’ scared her because her understanding of Black men has been shaped by distorted images, stories, and depictions of Black men that are conjured by the media ... media misrepresentations have real and tragic consequences,” Reynolds wrote on the campaign page. 


“We want this book to remind little Black boys who they are and whom they come from,” she continued. “We also hope that this book illuminates the humanity of Black boys and reminds everyone that we are more alike than we are different.”


The pledge levels start at $5, and each donation of $27 or higher comes with one or more copies of the book, along with other small items. Some pledge levels are named after young black men and boys who have lost their lives to police shootings or other racially charged violence. 


Reynolds hopes that by August, the book will make its way to classrooms and be available in retail stores. 

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Is The Quintessential Rom-Com Dead?

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Nothing’s better than having your friends over, applying hydrating face masks, making some popcorn and popping in a good rom-com, right? 


Eh, maybe.


These days, it appears the age of romantic comedies is behind us. No longer are we dedicated to following the hijinks of a couple as they try to make it work. We don’t want to pay $15 to watch two people fall in love over the course of an hour and a half. But why?


With the 20-year anniversary of “My Best Friend’s Wedding” on June 20, it got us thinking: has there really been a rom-com in the past 10 years that’s gained the repeat-watching status of the Julia Roberts-fronted movie? Sure, we’ve had “Bridget Jones’s Diary” and “13 Going On 30,” “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” and “The Holiday.” But since the mid-aughts, there really hasn’t been a romconaissance, even if indies like “What If” or “Obvious Child” have tried to give the genre a boost.



There was a reason movies like this were so successful in the ’90s. They were romantic, hopeful, endearing. The quintessential rom-com could be described using all those adjectives, pulling at our heartstrings while making us root for a dreamy pairing. “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” in particular, really played with viewers’ emotions, teasing a happy ending yet finishing with an unexpected twist. This, star Dermot Mulroney says, is the reason it earned almost $300 million worldwide. 


“It wasn’t about getting the guy, it was about her failing to break them up. And it kills people,” Mulroney told HuffPost last year.


“It took me this long to analyze why that movie stands out from the crowd of romantic comedies, it’s she’s a sad clown,” he added. “It’s a melancholy movie. You watch it and you think, ‘Oh God, she’s not going to ... oh, no!’ And that’s what’s funny about it. It’s like somebody slipping on a banana peel, we love that.”


No one can deny that it’s nice to see the lead players end up together at the culmination of a movie. But what “My Best Friend’s Wedding” did was flip the script, something that’s much more common now than it was when the movie first debuted. Audiences expect a surprise ending these days ― whether it be in movie-musicals like “La La Land” or in suspenseful TV shows like “Game of Thrones” ― which might explain why the typical rom-com formula no longer works as well as it used to.



So maybe “My Best Friend’s Wedding” changed audience preferences, inspiring moviegoers to pine for the less predictable and ache only for the kinds of rom-coms that provide that perfectly surprising ending. The question is: are studios willing to make those films?


Nowadays, it’s harder to find original scripts, be it any genre in the industry. We’re living in a time of the sequel, where spinoffs and reboots own the headlines before succeeding or totally flopping at the box office, on streaming sites or premium channels. Rom-coms don’t necessarily get remade or rebooted ― new stories recycling the formula just have to fight against old faithfuls in a way that other genres don’t. One can simply rewatch a classic love story before running to see another. 


“Annie Hall.” “When Harry Met Sally.” “While You Were Sleeping.” “Sleepless in Seattle.” “What Women Want.” “How Stella Got Her Groove Back.” “The Wedding Planner.” “Sixteen Candles.” “You’ve Got Mail.” “Clueless.” “Love & Basketball.” “Notting Hill.” To name a few. 


Big-budget films ― think superheroes, action ― are what every company is after, and it appears those flicks in the mid-range are no longer important in the grand scheme of things. With so many people watching content in the comfort of their own homes, studios are looking to bet more on big-budget projects in hopes they’ll lure fans to the theaters. Again, not many people are wasting their hard-earned dollars on a movie theater ticket, unless it’s something worth seeing on the big screen, or in 3D and IMAX.


Take 2011’s “Something Borrowed” for instance: Warner Bros. spent $35 million on production, but the film only earned $60 million worldwide. Compare that to 1990’s “Pretty Woman,” which was made on a budget of $14 million but grossed over $463 million. As of late, flicks like “Just Go With It” (2011) and “Trainwreck” (2015) have made solid returns at the box office, but not one has landed in the top 10 highest-grossing romantic comedies since 2009’s “The Proposal,” which earned over $317 million worldwide. 


And although the late Garry Marshall had success with his holiday-themed rom-coms like “Valentine’s Day” (2010) and “New Year’s Eve” (2011) ― thanks to some serious star power ― his most recent try, “Mother’s Day,” had a production budget of $25 million and only grossed $32 million worldwide. (”Valentine’s Day” earned $184 million more than that.)



Let’s also call out the rom-com mainstays who left the genre in the dust without finding ample replacements. Actors like Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts moved on from rom-coms, leaving Katherine Heigl to step in ― and that didn’t help anyone. Plus, Matthew McConaughey ― the category’s it guy ― started taking on grittier, well-rounded roles, and even won an Oscar. But did anyone fill his shoes? No. Because it appears young Hollywood isn’t interested in this area of filmmaking, but are more so looking to work with the top writers and directors in the industry. Just look at Rachel McAdams, who pretty much carved a path in the rom-com genre ― “The Notebook,” “Mean Girls,” “The Vow,” “About Time,” (let’s leave out “Aloha”) ― only to follow it up with critically acclaimed movies or box-office gold like “Spotlight,” “Southpaw” and “Doctor Strange.”


She sensed the shift early on in her career, telling Radio Free in 2005, “Most of the roles out there for women are the ingenue, the girlfriend, the daddy’s girl ... you know, it’s all pretty sweet and straightforward. So I’m just really looking for roles whether they’re so-called ‘attractive people’ or not. I’m more concerned with the depth of the role and the uniqueness of the character.”


You can’t blame McAdams, it’s just, who’s willing to take on the task for the sake of rom-com history? (Again, no more Heigl, please.) Yes, studios aren’t making films that fit in this genre anymore, but actors don’t necessarily want to star in them, either. And let’s face it, A-list actors always help. 


With the help of team players like Roberts, Ryan, Mulroney and McConaughey, rom-coms made a mark. But as viewers, studios and actors grow smarter, the draw of the rom-com dims. And that, my face-mask-wearing friends, is no fun. 



You can be highbrow. You can be lowbrow. But can you ever just be brow? Welcome to Middlebrow, a weekly examination of pop culture. Read more here.

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'Daily Show' Investigates The Slants And Their 'Offensive' Band Name

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The Supreme Court made an important ruling on the First Amendment Monday that could help the NFL’s Washington Redskins keep its controversial name. To better understand the case, “The Daily Show” sent senior correspondent Ronny Chieng to investigate the other group that fought ― and won ― the trademark battle to keep using its “racially insensitive” name: The Slants.


During Tuesday’s episode, Chieng sat down with the rock band, which is made up of four Asian-American musicians, to find out why they took their fight all the way to the Supreme Court after the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office denied their trademark application.


“The court said that we’re too Asian to use the name,” Simon Tam, the band’s frontman, told Chieng.


It said that anyone can register “The Slants” as long as they’re not Asian,” Tam added.


Confused, Chieng asked, “You’re saying that if you were white, you could register ‘The Slants?’”


“Yes,” Tam replied. “They said our race provides the context for it being a racial slur.”


“So, by protecting you guys against racial discrimination, they’ve actually discriminated against you racially,” Chieng said. “How the hell does that make any sense?”


Chieng grilled The Slants further by asking why they didn’t just go with a band name that’s more offensive to Asian people.


“The Slants aren’t even that offensive a name,” Chieng complained. “If you want to make a statement, why don’t you go all the way?”


The senior correspondent then offered a few colorful suggestions, including “Ching and Chong Sing-A-Longs” and “Pork Bun and Roses.”


Watch Chieng’s full list of offensive band names in the segment above.

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LGBTQ People Share How They Came Out In Powerful Photo Series

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A striking and emotional photography project is pairing photos of LGBTQ individuals with their personal stories of coming out.


Photographer Alejandro Ibarra was inspired to shoot the “Coming Out Stories” photo series after a friend came out to his family and relayed the experience.


It was then that Ibarra realized that no matter how someone identifies or what their experience was like, “coming out” is a universal rite of passage that all LGBTQ people who open up about their sexuality or gender identity share.


Each account, while brief, captures a pivotal and cornerstone moment in the lives of LGBTQ people Ibarra photographed ― memories filled with a mixture of pain, liberation, joy and sorrow.


“Even though [my friend’s coming out experience] was very different from mine, I really related to it: to him, his emotions, his concerns,” Ibarra told HuffPost. “It was almost like it had happened to me. I knew then that it would have the same effect on pretty much most of the community because, whatever you happen to identify as ― this is one thing we all have in common.”





Ibarra explained that he knows how terrifying coming out can be for LGBTQ people and that some people may not even have the option to come out due to issues related to safety and survival. But, for him, coming out of the closet is a choice that he has never regretted.


“It’s the best decision I ever made,” he told HuffPost. “No more staying up at night worrying if anyone suspects; no more overthinking how you’re behaving around people because you’re afraid they’ll notice; and no more depriving yourself of the opportunity to put yourself out there and fall in love and have a real and acknowledged relationship if you want one. If you need support prior to coming out, you can find it either over the phone or at LGBTQ community centers if your city or town has one.”





As a creative pursuit, Ibarra wants “Coming Out Stories” to be both a testament of the power of storytelling and also perhaps a way to relieve some anxiety for LGBTQ people that may still be in the closet.


“I’m hoping that people who are struggling to come out can find comfort in seeing these stories by people from all over the world,” he continued. “When I came out, I had one friend who had come out a few months before me, and even just that made me feel so much more comfortable and confident and allowed me to gather the strength to just do it. With this project, people can hopefully be inspired by dozens of other people’s stories and realize they’re not alone.”


As for allies and those who aren’t in the LGBTQ community, Ibarra says this project is for them too.


“For people who don’t identify as LGBTQ+, I’m hoping this will give them some insight into what we go through, and hopefully turn them into allies of the community if they aren’t already,” he said. 


Check out more of the “Coming Out Stories” project below and head to Ibarra’s website to see more of his work.








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Teen On 'America's Got Talent' Brings The Tears As She Performs For Her Father With Cancer

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You’ll need all the tissues you can find watching Evie Clair’s performance from Tuesday night’s “America’s Got Talent.”


While onstage, the teen singer tearfully revealed that part of the reason she’s performing is for her dad, who was diagnosed with colon cancer about a year ago.


The audience was in tears even before Clair sang one note of Christina Perri’s “Arms,” a song she sings to her father when he’s going through rough days. When she started singing, and shots of her family watching offstage appeared on screen, it was just too much.


Even Perri took notice: 






Just try not to cry all over your keyboard. Then you’ll be sobbing for other reasons.

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Florida Rockers Remember Orlando Tragedy With Heartbreaking Song

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Alternative rock group We the Kings pay tribute to the 49 victims of Orlando’s Pulse nightclub massacre with their heartfelt new single, “Ally.” 


The Florida-based band released the track on iTunes and other streaming platforms June 16, days after the anniversary of the June 12 tragedy, in honor of LGBTQ Pride Month. They followed it up Monday with a video clip of lead singer Travis Clark performing an acoustic take on the song, which is perfect in its simplicity. 


“Sometimes it feels like we’re nowhere fast. For every step forward, take two steps right back,” Clark croons in the clip, which can be viewed above. “I am an ally and I am a friend, and you have my heart and my voice and my hand.”


The 32-year-old, who hails from Bradenton, Florida, told HuffPost in an email that he and bandmates Charles Trippy, Hunter Thomsen, Coley O’Toole and Danny Duncan wrote the song “with hope for human rights and equality for the world we live in and all the worlds after.” 


“We love you all and appreciate all the love and support you’ve shown us over the years,” he said, adding, “It’s time to give that same love and support to every soul on this earth.” 


We the Kings recently wrapped a 2017 tour to mark the 10th anniversary of their debut album, which spawned the hit single “Check Yes Juliet.” They’ll hit the stage once again July 23 at Chicago’s Sheffield Music Festival


Don’t miss the studio version of “Ally” below. 





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LeVar Burton Has A Podcast For The 'Reading Rainbow' Generation

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If you’re a bookworm who grew up between 1983 and 2006, there’s a good chance you were partially raised by LeVar Burton’s soothing voice as he guided young readers through the thrilling world of a book. “Reading Rainbow,” Burton’s beloved PBS Kids show, helped inspire countless kids with a love for reading.


Now, the “Reading Rainbow” kids are all grown up ― and, fortunately for us, Burton is back with a new short fiction podcast on Stitcher. In each episode, he selects a short story and reads it aloud, dramatically, with the aid of sound effects and music to bring the story to life. It’s “Reading Rainbow” for adults, if you will.


Of course, the podcast isn’t exactly like the classic show ― it’s audio-only, it features literary and genre short fiction rather than picture storybooks, and you can’t get picked to go on the show and read a review of your own favorite short story.





(Those kids were so lucky.)


But of course it’s different ― we’re not kids anymore! The important thing is that we still need Burton to remind us about the magic held in a book, and he’s still here to do that for us.


Not only does he read great fiction, like Daisy Johnson’s “The Lighthouse Keeper” from her new collection, Fen, he puts his rich, fluidly expressive voice to the task of drawing listeners into a different world ― the world of the story.







And if you miss having Burton explain the themes of a book to you, you’re in luck: At the end of his reading, he talks a little bit about what he took away from the story. After reading “The Lighthouse Keeper,” he explains that the story “highlights one of the ills of our culture, which is the idea that women have a specific place and specific roles in society and that it is unacceptable for them to cross over.” His family, he adds, has been full of strong women who inspired him, like his mother. 


Listening to the new podcast feels sort of like finally developing a friendship with your parent. Burton isn’t just teaching us anymore; he’s sharing his feelings and life story. While the “Reading Rainbow” Burton might have delved into the themes of a book by showing us how to bowl or explaining photosynthesis, his fans are grown-ups now. 







Not too grown-up to have Burton read us a bedtime story, of course. That will never get old.

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California Women Dressed Up As Handmaids To Protest GOP Rep's Anti-Woman Views

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For at least the second time this week, women have dressed up as handmaids from Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, to protest far-right legislation. The most recent group to do so included local activists from Northern California who attended republican representative Tom McClintock’s (R-Calif.) Town Hall on Monday in Jackson. 


Atwood’s now eerily-relevant novel picked up steam post-election when its TV adaptation was released on Hulu. People are drawing parallels between the plot, in which women are at the complete mercy of a patriarchal authoritarian state, and the Trump administration. Women started wearing the red handmaid robes and white bonnets in March, when a small group of women showed up at the Texas Senate to protest anti-abortion legislation.   


The women who staged the silent handmaids protest this time were from Foothills Rising, “Who Are We, McClintock?” calling group, and members of the Indivisible movement. One member, Kate Hegé, told HuffPost that there were “about a dozen Handmaids, ages 12 to 70” representing Amador, Calaveras, Alpine, El Dorado, and Placer Counties. 



“We wanted the Congressman to hear our voices because of the attacks on women that he supports and the creeping authoritarianism that he supports,” Hegé told HuffPost. 


The demonstrators also handed out fliers to the 400 or so attendees on Monday. The flier included details about why members chose to dress up as handmaids. 


“Drawing language from the book and [Hulu] series, we are here to reach Commander McClintock. Like the leaders from Gilead, Commander McClintock supports a movement that promises to rob us of our freedom and steal our adulthood, citizenship, and dignity as women,” the flier reads. 



The flier also points to McClintock’s voting history: he has voted against equal pay laws, the Violence Against Women Act, and recently voted in support of the Affordable Health Care Act, which would have catastrophic consequences for women. 


McClintock’s town hall meetings have not gone well for him in the past ― in April, the District 4 representative who supported President Donald Trump’s campaign, was met with 750 angry constituents who accused him of racism, misogyny, and Islamophobia. 


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Clarification: This article has been updated to amend the attribution of quotes to Kate Hegé that were originally provided by another group member, and to include additional participants in the demonstration.

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Meet The 'Nasty Stitches' Making Embroidery And Knitting Political

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Knitting, stitching and weaving have long required skills historically deemed feminine: patience, prudence, diligence, domesticity, docility. The ability to follow directions attentively, to work in the home, to remain relatively quiet and still.


Before the Industrial Revolution and the arrival of mass production, women gathered in knitting circles to painstakingly create clothing, blankets and other soft goods for their homes and families. Knitting and its sister crafts were designated as “women’s work,” implicitly inferior to men’s work, whatever that may be. Yet the activities that indirectly oppressed women, by keeping them indoors and occupied, also served to ignite creativity, agency and rebellion. Women used their time together to exchange ideas and forge connections, to test their abilities and express themselves in new and exciting ways.


The history of textiles, then, is a history of feminine dissent told in a visual language that outwardly conforms to feminine standards and ideals. The radical chronology includes Gee’s Bend quilts, made in the 1800s by female slaves living on a cotton plantation to keep their children warm. And artists like Faith Wilding, Wanda Westcoast and Susan Frazier, who reclaimed the domestic sphere as a point of feminist art activism through the 1972 collaboration “Womanhouse.”



The most recent manifestation of craft’s political prowess appeared in the form of “pussy hats,” worn en masse at the Women’s March protests that swarmed the globe following President Donald Trump’s election. The pink, knitted caps marked with two cat-like ears embodied the spirit of what writer Betsy Greer defines as “craftivism” ― using crafts to create a more peaceful and just world. 


Ed Victori and Celine Mo, of the Bushwick-based gallery Victori + Mo, were among the many protesters who hit the streets in defiance of Trump’s long history of disrespecting and allegedly groping women in January 2017. The streets swarmed with protesters identifying as “nasty women” ― an allusion to Trump’s dig at Hillary Clinton, callously uttered during a presidential debate. 


With their current exhibition “Nasty Stitches,” Victori and Mo honor knitting’s longtime affiliation with feminist activism while broaching political concerns women and other marginalized communities are fighting for today. The show spotlights four contemporary artists whose works are soft in texture and piercing in nature ― Caroline Wells Chandler, Elsa Hansen, Sara Sachs and Katrina Majkut. 



Initially, the seedling concept of “Nasty Stitches” came to Mo in a dream. “I dreamed we did a show called ‘Crochet All Day,’ where we’d serve Rosé all day,” she told HuffPost in an interview. The exhibit’s final iteration swaps unlimited wine for an activist message that pervades the works’ subjects and media.


“Artists are revitalizing the knitting tradition and putting it into a contemporary context,” Victori told HuffPost. “We want to create this story around femininity, while addressing what is at stake under the current administration.”


One featured artist is Caroline Wells Chandler, who crochets rainbow figures who appear to be consistently leaping through the air at all times. The fibrous friends don superhero-esque capes and cowboy chaps, their flattened physiques unable to be categorized by binary understandings of gender.


Chandler, who identifies as queer and trans, learned to crochet while caring for his aging grandparents. He appreciated the communal space the art form provided, its repetition leaving space for reflection and communication. “Crochet is inherently a social way of making art,” he said in an earlier interview with HuffPost.



Artist Elsa Hansen creates hand-stitched tableaus that conjure pop culture personas, tiny renderings that feature iconic figures like Daniel Day-Lewis, Jimmy Buffet and, yes, Trump, reduced to worry-doll size, arranged methodically like pill bottles on a shelf. Katrina Majkut cross-stitches objects related to sexual health in crisp detail, from condom wrappers to IUDs to the surgical tools used in performing an abortion. Perhaps more than any other artist on view, Majkut alludes to the political history of the medium, using a traditionally feminized territory to discuss issues that affect women directly. 


Also on view is artist Sara Sachs, the mother of famed contemporary artist Tom Sachs. She learned to cross-stitch at around 8 years old, taught by her own mother. “She had learned cross-stitching from her mother at a similar age so it was kind of a legacy, though I didn’t think of it in those terms when I was a child,” Sachs wrote to HuffPost. “My fingers just felt good while I was stitching and it put me in sort of a reverie.”


Sachs worked as a nurse; the exposure to human bodies and the tools used to inspect them served as unlikely artistic inspiration. “Instead of being horrified by the gore I witnessed when assisting in surgical procedures, I was struck by the beauty of the human form in all of its aspects,” she recalled. “Also, the design simplicity and craftsmanship of the medical instruments impressed me profoundly.” The soft and handmade quality of her artworks contrasts sharply with the incisive and mass-produced origins of her inspiration. 



Now in her mid-60s, Sachs recalls working in a time when knitting was immediately delegated to the realm of craft, which was deemed subordinate to art, implying that so-called women’s work lacked the rigor and erudition of male-dominated fields like painting and sculpture. “It’s thrilling to see what was, until recently, dismissed as a mere craft now being validated,” she said. 


The younger artists in “Nasty Stiches,” as Victori explained, “didn’t have to experience their work being stomped on” quite as much. But still, they are painfully aware of the perpetuating misogyny, homophobia and inequality that plague both the art world microcosm and the world beyond it. 


“Among the many things that are disheartening about the current political environment,” Sachs said, “is the attempt to silence women and have them revert to their voiceless places in the sewing circles of the past. To the extent I and others can advance needlework as an art, we are pushing back against those that would silence us. As modest as that effort might seem, if we all pushed back in our own way, the impact could be dramatic.” 



“Nasty Stitches” runs until July 23, 2017 at Victori + Mo in New York. 


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