Wicked seems to have cast a spell of attraction on audiences, from the 1995 bestselling novel to the Tony-nominated Broadway musical to the wildly popular movie adaptation, which opened its first installment as one of last year's biggest blockbusters. The second part, Wicked: For Good is widely expected to work similar magic when it opens this weekend. But what do actual self-identified witches think of Wicked?
From an early age, it was evident that she had a powerful singing voice. She attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, but felt like an outsider. "It was a tough experience to be there. I just didn't think I fit," she says. "And I think there was sort of a lack of wanting to understand where I was coming from or who I was as a person.
When Sesame Street first appeared on television in 1969, it rearranged the architecture of childhood. The show looked like pure joy, a neighborhood of color, rhythm, and creatures who seemed to belong to no one and everyone at once. But underneath the laughter and songs was something more radical. A handful of educators and psychologists came together with a quiet conviction that television could be a classroom for children who didn't have one. They weren't simply trying to teach the alphabet.
Big themes swirled in thoughtful, even intimate, conversations Saturday at the sold-out Portland Book Festival. Headliner Rebecca Yarros talked about how her work centers on themes of inclusion, representation, and authoritarianism, as well as about what it's been like to ride a huge wave of book sales that has altered the publishing industry in some ways. Nicholas Boggs and Mitchell S. Jackson mused about love and the creative process.
To be clear, you can easily buy a skeleton dressed like a schoolgirl, or a mermaid skeleton (-maid, that means girl, right?), but those, as far as I can tell, are just normal skeletons that have been dressed in schoolgirl drag or had a tail attached to them. And a normal skeleton-the thing most of us picture when we picture a skeleton-is, I'm increasingly convinced, more often than not going to be a male skeleton.
Welcome back to another week of The Curvy Fashionista's Plus Influencer Spotlight, our series celebrating the boundary breakers, tastemakers, and changemakers redefining plus size fashion and culture, like Latoya of The Fat Girl of Fashion. Each feature in this series highlights a voice that's helping shape the future of plus size fashion, one unapologetic look, one powerful post, and one bold statement at a time.
Cait Jacobs started talking about books on TikTok in 2019 and now has over 310,000 followers. In that time, they have seen the power of the BookTok movement and how it has grown, with a new brand of influencers proving that reading is cool. The impact has been undeniable, with people rediscovering, or discovering for the first time, their love of books, the rise of book subscriptions, and many BookTok authors being picked up by traditional publishers.
There's a particular ache familiar to many Black residents in San Jose and across Silicon Valley: the uneasy realization that when you enter a room, you will likely be the only one who looks like you, while your story fades into the background as others take center stage. For decades, as new communities have thrived in the world's tech capital, the deep roots, culture and resilience of Black life in the South Bay too often go unseen.
In 2002, Thelma Golden curated a show at the Studio Museum in Harlem titled "Black Romantic: The Figurative Impulse in Contemporary African-American Art." It was a survey of Black artists who were interested in representing the Black figure in a way that refuted narratives that made exotic caricatures of Black people. These were artists whose work was popular among Black audiences but largely shut out of white, mainstream art circles.
Folks, if I know one thing in this world, it's the lived experience of being a short king. My 5'3" ass has always seen the world from a lower standing than my peers, and it's rare for me to come across heroes in media who see the world from that same point of view. Wolverine, the X-Man who has pointy metal claws in his knuckles, is one of the few short kings I have to cling to in popular culture,
In primary school I wasn't very cool. I never got Hula Hoops in my packed lunches because my Polish mum would give me cucumbers and I hadn't seen High School Musical because we didn't have Sky. Without those two major assets, you had to find a thing and mine became trying to make people laugh. I made a YouTube channel when I was 14, then eventually worked at the Edinburgh fringe when I was 18, and saw some amazing standup.
The lyrical register of pop music demands imagery that's direct and broadly relatable, the kind of message that can be easily understood over a thudding bass line. So too does gospel, where the communion arrives not on Saturday night at the club but at a service the next morning. In either case, the roof might get blown off, and in a moment of mass worship, you're able to believe for a few minutes at a time in a collective euphoria.
"I love Pete," Harris writes in an excerpt obtained by The Atlantic. "I love working with Pete. He and his husband, Chasten, are friends. But we were already asking a lot of America: to accept a woman, a Black woman, a Black woman married to a Jewish man. Part of me wanted to say, Screw it, let's just do it. But knowing what was at stake, it was too big of a risk. And I think Pete also knew that-to our mutual sadness."
It's this tonal tweak that gives us elements like the puppet sequences from Sam's point of view, or the interpersonal drama that feels straight out of Riverdale, and that's a refreshing change of pace from The Boys ' high octane action. A related and underrated strength is how Gen V handles real-world issues, often using its superpowers to provide a model for the problems of young adults. Marie uses her bloodbending powers by cutting herself, which reflects self-harm.
You remember what you want to remember. You make time for what you want to make time for. Do the work. Show up. And most importantly, for the love of God, don't embarrass me in public, Tillman said. My first acting coach was tough, ya'll, but all great mothers are. Mama, you were there for me when no one else was, Tillman continued. Your loving kindness stays with me, and this is for you.
I am so grateful that Disney continues to allow us to see ourselves through these Disney princesses," said Auli'i Cravalho, the voice of Moana. "And so, I hope you find the princess that resonates the most with you.
As a young Taiwanese girl living in the Inland Empire, former singer and import model-turned-writer Kaila Yu said she often felt uncomfortable in her skin, growing up around Eurocentric beauty standards. I felt like my features weren't desirable, Yu said of her childhood. I felt very insecure about all of that. The now 46-year-old L.A.-based author explores themes of sexuality and race in her debut memoir, Fetishized: A Reckoning with Yellow Fever, Feminism, and Beauty, out everywhere books are sold.
In 2020, during the midst of COVID-19 pandemic, Black Lives Matter, the murder of George Floyd and a surge of Confederate statue removals, discussions about monuments became frequent in teacher David Felsen's New York City high school history class. The discussions struck up a series of questions-like who was the first Black American to have a monument in NYC, the total number of Black monuments in the city, or how many Black women have statues dedicated to them.
Over the weekend, a private, family-friendly Drag Queen Storytime event at Holywood Arches Library, part of the EastSide Arts Festival, became the subject of targeted misinformation and online abuse.
Owning being trans has become a source of pride for Alex Consani, who feels empowered to embrace her identity and recognizes the strength in being different.
Growing up, I spent my summers devouring Children of the Sun and Great Kings and Queens of Africa. While my classmates were learning about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, I was curled up with books that introduced me to Mansa Musa, Queen Nzinga, and Kwame Nkrumah. Back then, it sometimes seemed I was just doing double the homework, but now I know my parents were planting in me imagination, belief in myself, racial pride, and truly resilient roots.
The tapestry unwraps the painted wooden skin of the chair into a digital texture made tangible through weave. The chair, a Shaker chair by Atelier Van Lieshout, becomes a canvas where this digital texture is traced back onto wood by the human hand.
You inspire fear in those that are afraid of being their true selves. I think that's the threat, your joy, and your radical bravery in living your life in joy.
