The engagement of Britain’s Prince William to Catherine Middleton was announced this morning by royal officials. This engagement is one that has been long anticipated by spectators, the royal family, and William himself. Waiting William (as he’s known around BUST HQ) first met Catherine Middleton 8 years ago when they were both in school at St. Andrew’s University in Scotland. The couple has had an on again and off again relationship ever since, leading many American and British media hubs to give Catherine the...

  “I prefer the women because we have a different aesthetic than the men” My great-aunt passed away last month, but because she chose to be cremated the ceremony was this weekend. It was a two parter, with a party to celebrate her life on Saturday and a proper burial on Sunday. I lived with Carol for several months last year and got to know her well. She was an artist and an adamant feminist. She grew up like a woman born in the 1930’s should; she...

Thirteen-year-old fashion blogger Tavi Gevinson and founder of Sassy magazine (and former JANE editor-in-chief) Jane Pratt have announced their collaboration on a brand new Sassy-esque teen magazine. Tavi, known for her outspoken feminist views, wacky-teen-by-way-of-Comme-Des-Garcons outfits, worldly writing style, and infamous wearing of an oversized hair bow hat in the front row of some fashion show, has never been your typical precocious tween role model, from her swift denouncement of Terry Richardson to her obviously formidable PR skills. Since the fall of ElleGirl, there has...

  Next week, the Third Wave Foundation will be hosting a little evening get together for feminists, young and old (although 21+), at Lolita Bar. On Friday, November 19th come down to the Lower East Side to join the staff, local grant partners and board members from Third Wave Foundation for a night of drinking, dancing and other antics to support young feminist activists.   Third Wave Foundation works nationally to support young women and transgender youth between the ages of 15 and 30. Third Wave supports groups...

     As the New York Times continues to worry about me even more than my mother does, concerns over a generation, drifting are also being voiced by feminists--with baby-boomers who defined themselves in active protest often left perplexed by twenty-somethings who define themselves in semi-anonymous blog posts.  The generation gap is widening when it comes to reproductive rights in particular, and it's true that today both abortion clinics and the political groups that work to ensure their existence are mostly run by people of...

With our Science Issue currently on newsstands, we are excited about a new play, Photograph 51, that tells the story of Rosalind Franklin, the incredible scientist who played a crucial- and widely unacknowledged- part in he discovery of DNA's double helix. Presented by the Ensemble Studio Theatre and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, in a motion to enhance our understanding of science and technology, the play is written by Anna Ziegler and directed by Linsay Firman. I was first drawn to the play after reading this...

I interviewed a friend of mine who is a dominatrix, because I was curious about whether she finds her job empowering and what made her get into it. She was kind enough to answer my questions candidly, providing insight into a world I know relatively nothing about.  1. How did you get into being a dominatrix? I've always been a pervert. When I moved to New York, I pretty much immediately started going to burlesque shows, which are closely tied into local fetish parties. I was...

I am unapologetically fat. In this new age of weight-loss everywhere, of low-fat, low-carb, no-carb food, I refuse to stoop to the level everyone else seems to want me to. Fat is the last acceptable form of discrimination in American society. "Thin" has a connotation of beautiful, gorgeous, and successful, "fat" signals lazy, undisciplined, and ugly. Maybe some of the criticism of fat people comes from a "good place," and maybe I'm unhealthy in my fatness. But why is that anyone else's business? It isn't. I...

Apparently rape "jokes" are the trend among men (can we call them that?) in higher academia lately. As if Yale's fraternity stunt wasn't enough for this month, Columbia's a cappella group, Kingsmen, came out with a flyer advertising their upcoming show that featured one of its members pursing his lips and, underneath the photo, the tag line: "Rape Me." The Columbia community responded with indignation and criticism, statements including, "The Kingsmen and their posters fail to acknowledge or address the gravity of rape and sexual...

The New Beauty Magazine advocates plastic surgery as the sole way to become “beautiful”. In the current issue Megan Fox’s face is dissected using Leonardo da Vinci’s rule of thirds to summarize “why she is hot”. Essentially, her brow arches up at the highest point of her “feline-like” eye. She has high cheekbones. Her lower lip is slightly larger than the top. Her neck has a youthful contour, and her jaw is square. She is the paradigm for beauty in the magazine that...