Toxic masculinity takes center stage in Lisa Jewell’s latest domestic thriller, Invisible Girl. Driving the narrative are three very different individuals: Saffyre, Cate, and Owen. Saffyre is a 17-year-old holding onto something terrible that prevents her from connecting with the world around her. Cate is a middle-aged stay-at-home mom working to keep her strained marriage intact. And Owen is a lonely, recently unemployed 30-something with unexamined misogynistic tendencies. When Saffyre goes missing on Valentine’s night, their lives collide. In order to untangle, they must pull...

With musical inspirations including Maggie Rogers, Rex Orange County, and Lizzo, Maia, or mxmtoon, is a young woman who became famous after the song “prom dress” went viral on TikTok. Streamed over 100 million times, her 2018 self-released EP plum blossom was recorded on her laptop in her parents’ guest room. Maia, like many other musicians, has released her own coronavirus music influenced by quarantine isolation, like her otherworldly song “walk but in a garden” with musician Llusion. During her own quarantine, Maia has been playing...

Mickey Guyton is changing the country music world. On Wednesday, she became the first Black woman to ever perform solo at the Academy of Country Music Awards, which is in its 55th year. Guyton took this opportunity to sing her recently released song, "What Are You Gonna Tell Her?," live from the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.  The song questions the listener about what they will tell their daughters in the face of harassment, abuse, and oppression. In the chorus, Guyton sings, “Will you just shrug...

Danny Denial Fuck Danny Denial (Cruisin)  The first track on Fuck Danny Denial drops you off at “Mercer Summit Block Party/Brand New Skirt,” a place where the stars align and the singer realizes that “everyone I love on Earth is here”—basking in the momentary bliss of feeling like part of a community. That sentiment never lasts forever, of course, as the emerging Seattle artist’s third album also journeys through anxiety, isolation, imposter syndrome, and heartbreak, as seen through the lens of a queer Black Scorpio. “Totally Fucked Up”...

Q. Gibson writes what she knows – and feels. Her powerful, heartening words speak hard truths and resonate with a global community of readers who are in search of comfort, healing, and inspiration. Gibson brings it from a place of love and tenderness, a place many of us are delving deeper into amidst the unknown of our current world situation. Below, Gibson shares with us her take on the importance and power of words, what and who inspires her work and how we can find...

BlackbirdDirected by Roger MichellOut September 18 Minutes into Blackbird, we know how it will end: Lily (Susan Sarandon) is going to die. Diagnosed with a terminal illness that will cause gradual physical deterioration, Lily decides that she’d rather take her death into her own hands—she’s going to swallow a lethal combination of pills. But first, she wants her whole family to visit for one last weekend. Lily and her husband are joined by her longtime best friend, Liz (Lindsay Duncan), and her two clashing daughters, the...

ANTEBELLUMWritten and directed by Gerard Bush and Christopher RenzOut September 18 Janelle Monáe stars as the author and academic Veronica Hensley in Antebellum, the latest horror movie produced by the team behind Jordan Peele's Get Out and Us. We first see her identified, however, as Eden, and in very different circumstances: as an enslaved woman in the Antebellum South. Monáe, who previously appeared in Moonlight and Hidden Figures, gives us another incredible performance in Antebellum. Her ability to disappear into her character and perform within two different time...

The first time the word “bulimic” caught my attention was while watching The Perks of Being a Wallflower when I was twelve. Early on, we are introduced to Sam (Emma Watson), the main character’s enigmatic love interest. At the end of the scene, she randomly says, giggling, “I’m not bulimic, I’m a bulimist…I love bulimia!” I remember being confused as to what exactly this meant, and why it was funny.  Eight years later, I’m still not sure. Nowhere in the film is she shown to have an eating...

Two weeks ago, The Whitney Museum of American Art cancelled its exhibition after obtaining Black artists work at a discounted price, which was initially indented to raise money for racial justice charities. The exhibition, “Collective Actions: Artist Interventions in a Time of Change,” planned to feature artists whose work focused on the coronavirus pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement. Most of the work displayed was stolen from BIPOC artists, without their knowledge and without any credit given. As museums are beginning to reopen, artists...

A group of around 20 FEMEN activists gathered topless outside Paris’s Musee d’Orsay after a woman was banned from entering the museum for showing cleavage. Protesters immediately showed up at the scene chanting breasts “are not obscene”, determined to confront the sexist discrimination that took place.  TOPLESS PROTEST IN PARIS: Watch Femen Activists Hold "Flash Demonstration" at Museum - **WARNING: EXPLICIT NSFW** - https://t.co/QCxzZG5RYr pic.twitter.com/oZjpXsiNxO — Breaking911 (@Breaking911) September 14, 2020  The student, alias Jeanne, who was turned down by the museum’s security personnel came forward in an...