A Visual Depiction of Lactation Rooms in the U.S.: Inside the Spaces Where Mothers Pump

PUBLISHED 6/6/2026 by

My latest book Milk Factory is the first visual study of America’s lactation rooms. Photographing spaces where mothers pump—disparate sites such as a prison, corporate offices, a farm laborer’s tent, schools, an airport and the U.S. Capitol—I reveal the hidden architecture of care. I wanted to give participants a record of their labor and make that labor visible to others.

Born out of my own experience, Milk Factory is personal and political. It challenges romanticized portrayals of motherhood and breastfeeding, underscoring the complexity and labor behind an act that is widely expected but rarely supported.

Remembering the Senate’s Passage of the 19th Amendment; June Primary Wins and Losses for Women; and Why Women Are Leading the Fight Against AI Data Centers

PUBLISHED 6/5/2026 by

Weekend Reading on Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation in politics, on boards, in sports and entertainment, in judicial offices and in the private sector in the U.S. and around the world—with a little gardening and goodwill mixed in for refreshment!

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This week marked the 107th anniversary of the U.S. Senate’s passage of the 19th Amendment, a reminder that democratic progress is rarely swift and never inevitable. Forty-one years after it was first introduced in Congress, the amendment’s passage reflected decades of organizing, advocacy and persistence by women determined to claim a voice in American democracy.

More than a century later, the anniversary offers an opportunity not only to celebrate that achievement, but also to reflect on the unfinished work of building a democracy that truly includes everyone.

That work continues to shape elections today. From consequential June primary contests across the country to debates over voting systems, women’s representation and democratic participation remain central to the political landscape. This week’s Weekend Reading on Women’s Representation roundup highlights key election results, emerging candidates and reform efforts that could influence who runs, who wins and whose voices are heard in the years ahead.

Also featured are new research connecting attacks on women’s and LGBTQ rights to broader threats to democracy, growing opposition to AI data centers led by women organizers, barriers facing women candidates and officeholders, and inspiring examples of women advancing political change around the world.

Together, these stories underscore a simple but enduring truth: Democracy works best when it is designed to include all of us.

What if Women Really Went Back? Viral Thriller ‘Yesteryear’ Deconstructs the Dark Side of Tradwife Culture

PUBLISHED 6/5/2026 by

At first glance, Natalie Heller Mills has everything the tradwife internet promises: a beautiful home, a growing family and a devoted audience eager to consume her carefully curated vision of traditional womanhood. But in Caro Claire Burke’s viral debut novel Yesteryear, that fantasy begins to crack.

As Natalie is forced to confront the realities behind the lifestyle she promotes, Burke reveals just how much labor, sacrifice and self-deception are required to sustain the image.

Through Natalie’s unraveling, Yesteryear becomes more than a gripping thriller. It is a sharp feminist critique of tradwife culture, exposing the gap between nostalgic online performances and the lived realities of women whose economic dependence, reproductive choices and personal autonomy are constrained by expectations of motherhood and submission.

Burke ultimately asks a simple but unsettling question: If women truly returned to the past so many influencers romanticize, would they still want to stay there?

Of Course Trump Is Going After E. Jean Carroll

PUBLISHED 6/5/2026 by

Last week, multiple outlets reported that the Justice Department would be opening a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll, the 82-year-old iconic journalist who successfully sued Donald Trump—twice.

It has been more than two years since she prevailed in back-to-back civil lawsuits against him, winning a $5 million verdict in May 2023, followed by another $83.3 million in January 2024. The first jury found Trump liable for committing sexual abuse in a department store dressing room in 1996, as well as defamation for saying Carroll lied about it. The second case, brought because he just wouldn’t stop with the defamation, multiplied the damages exponentially.

The timing of the DOJ announcement should come as no surprise, at least from a public relations point of view. Ask E. Jean, the new documentary about Carroll’s life, including the court cases, premiered days prior. After debuting at the Telluride Film Festival last year without much fanfare, the film is now selling out theaters, garnering high-profile coverage and reviews, and likely embarrassing the president even more than his colossal legal defeat.

Meanwhile, among legal analysts, there is widespread agreement that the DOJ has no legitimate basis for investigating Carroll. But that is hardly the point when it comes to this administration, especially the weaponization of the Justice Department now led by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who represented Trump personally in the Carroll case (and supposedly is recused from this investigation).

The Growing Acceptance of a Movement That Wants to Punish Women for Abortion

PUBLISHED 6/4/2026 by

When South Carolina’s abortion abolitionist bill, the Unborn Child Protection Act (S. 1095), was voted out of committee and onto the full Senate floor in late April—“an unprecedented move toward locking up women who have an abortion,” according to Dana Sussman in Slate—it raised a question: How much influence have abortion abolitionists gained within the broader antiabortion movement?

Abortion abolitionists, who seek to criminalize abortion without exceptions and punish women who obtain abortions as murderers, have long been considered the outer fringe of the antiabortion movement. Their roots can be traced to what Colleen Scerpella described in The Prospect as “a new generation of mostly white, male, conservative Baptists, Presbyterians and Christian Reconstructionists”—or what she calls “extreme Christian patriarchy.”

As I wrote in Ms. a little more than a year ago, the dramatic increase in abortion abolitionist bills filed by state lawmakers after Roe v. Wade fell, signaled the growing influence of this movement.

That extremism has not gone unnoticed: In 2024, the Southern Poverty Law Center identified four abolitionist organizations as “male supremacist hate groups.” Recent research has likewise found that the strongest supporters of arresting women who have abortions are Americans who endorse Christian nationalism, believe “true Americans are white,” and look to the state to enforce a particular ethnocultural social order.

The South Carolina bill, which makes the pregnant woman herself subject to misdemeanor liability, prompted me to revisit the question of whether abortion abolitionists have made more inroads into the mainstream antiabortion movement.

The evidence suggests they have.

The FIFA World Cup and the Art of Looking Away

PUBLISHED 6/4/2026 by

When the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) unveiled the first wave of celebrity promotions for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the messaging was familiar: unity, celebration and global connection through sport.

Held every four years, the world’s largest international soccer (also known as football) tournament brings together national teams from around the globe to compete for the championship title. The right to host the World Cup is awarded through a competitive FIFA bidding process, with the 2026 tournament being awarded to a joint bid from the United States, Canada and Mexico.

But beneath the glossy advertisement campaigns and official anthems lies an institution repeatedly tied to corruption scandals, labor exploitation and human rights controversies that cannot be danced away by celebrity performances and spectacle marketing.  

Loving the game should not require ignoring the systems surrounding it. Because behind every glittering opening ceremony is an uncomfortable question FIFA would rather audiences not ask: Who is paying the price for the spectacle?

Too often it is people whose labor, rights and well-being are treated as expendable.

‘Obsession’ and the Rise of Incel Horror: When Men’s Entitlement Becomes the Monster

PUBLISHED 6/4/2026 by

When I first watched Curry Barker’s Obsession, I assumed the horror was obvious. Not the supernatural curse at the center of the film but the decision that sets it in motion: a man deciding he is entitled to a woman’s love, to a woman’s body, regardless of her consent. 

Online, women have begun calling this kind of story “incel horror.” Particularly on TikTok, women for the first time are naming a terrifying and longstanding element in horror films often left unsaid. The real nightmare being the expectation that men depicted as the hero or the victim believe they are owed the bodies of the women in the story. As one TikToker shares, women’s reinterpretation of past films and casting a new light on modern films like Obsession (2026) through a feminist lens is going to change the future of cinema. 

In Barker’s film, it wasn’t the occult magic in the “One Wish Willow” toy that caused Bear to “control” Nikki—it was Bear’s belief that it was okay for him to make this wish in the first place. Barker places the central threat within Nikki who becomes obsessed with Bear and kills several of their friends. Conversely, feminists recognize that it’s Bear’s expectation that he is owed her affection and that he is right to use a supernatural entity to gain it, as the true horror.

A (Brief) History of Women’s Rights, 1600 to Present

PUBLISHED 6/3/2026 by and

From the Haudenosaunee women who successfully challenged warfare in the 17th century, to today’s feminist organizers defending democracy, reproductive freedom and civil rights, the struggle for women’s equality has never been a straight line. It is a story of persistence, resistance and collective action spanning centuries.

Compiled by editors at Ms. and researchers from the National Women’s History Alliance, this women’s history timeline traces the interconnected histories of feminism, abolition, labor organizing, civil rights, reproductive justice, LGBTQ+ liberation and democratic participation.

No timeline can fully capture more than 400 years of feminist history, let alone every movement, leader, victory and setback that has shaped the ongoing fight for equality. Rather than offering a comprehensive account, this chronology highlights pivotal moments and turning points that help tell the story of how women have expanded the boundaries of freedom, democracy and human rights in the United States and beyond.

The timeline is part of Ms. magazine’s FEMINIST 250: Founding Feminists project, a multimedia essay series marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by examining the women and feminist movements that have worked to make the nation’s founding promises more fully realized. Through reported features, essays, interviews and historical analysis, FEMINIST 250 explores not only where we have been, but where we must go next to achieve true equality.

FEMINIST 250’s Parts 2 and 3—Feminist Lessons and Feminist Futures—drop this month on MsMagazine.com.