Are You There, God? My Nude Photos Are All Over the Internet.

Slut-shaming has become more rampant and acceptable than ever before in our surveillance-saturated culture. Lacking privacy, we are denied dignity.

By normalizing the behavior of pre-adolescent girls obsessed with sexuality that they don’t yet comprehend, Are You There God? is an excellent reminder that girls—like all of us—need space to act foolishly, sometimes cruelly and then grow up—without being treated like a sexual object and without the whole world knowing all about it.

Black Mamas Reclaim Their Space in Reproductive Justice

Forward Together’s 13th annual Mamas Day campaign “Black Mamas Reclaiming their Space in the Reproductive Justice Movement,” celebrates Black mamahood and the Black mamas who continue to push the work forward—since Black mamas are the founders of the reproductive justice framework and are the foundation of our movement.

Visit MamasDay.org to send a card to the mamas in your life.

Ms. Global: Iran Installs Cameras for Veil Surveillance; The Vatican Allows Women to Vote; India Debates Same-Sex Marriage; Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Criticizes Hungary’s Anti-LGBTQ+ Stance

The U.S. ranks as the 19th most dangerous country for women, 11th in maternal mortality, 30th in closing the gender pay gap, 75th in women’s political representation, and painfully lacks paid family leave and equal access to health care. But Ms. has always understood: Feminist movements around the world hold answers to some of the U.S.’s most intractable problems. Ms. Global is taking note of feminists worldwide.

This time with news from Iran, Colombia, the Vatican, India, Zimbabwe, Luxembourg, and more.

In Praise of Badass Super Mamas (Summer 2008)

From the Summer 2008 issue of Ms. magazine:

The summer of 1973 was the season of the supermama: kickass Black women such as Pam Grier and Tamara Dobson, who starred in big-screen “Blaxploitation” action films.

The cultural nostalgia for Blaxploitation has never really died. And at the movies in recent years, Black women continue to be underrepresented among the latest kick-butt heroes. Yet my hope for new supermamas survives. The screen and action cinema not only have room for Black women—but need them.

(For more iconic, ground-breaking stories like this, pre-order 
50 YEARS OF Ms.: THE BEST OF THE PATHFINDING MAGAZINE THAT IGNITED A REVOLUTION (Alfred A. Knopf)—a collection of the most audacious, norm-breaking coverage Ms. has published.)

Welfare Is a Human Right: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty With Annelise Orleck

In her book, Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty, Annelise Orleck not only shares the history of Clark County Welfare Right Organization’s (CCWRO) ascent and activism but also provides an insightful guide to community organizing.

“I loved the CCWRO’s insistence that poor women are experts on poverty and can run their own programs better than so-called professionals. And they did! … They demanded to know why a state that took tax revenue from gambling and prostitution was considered morally acceptable, but mothers trying to feed their kids were called cheaters. They were fearless.”

‘The Owl House’ Versus ‘Harry Potter’: Magic School Shows, Queer Representation and Medical Autonomy

The series finale of The Owl House premiered last weekend on the Disney Channel—a story of a neurodivergent Latina girl named Luz Noceda, who stumbles into a realm inhabited by witches and demons.

Just this month, Warner Bros announced a new decade-long TV series adaptation of all seven Harry Potter books. But we don’t need another Harry Potter adaptation. We don’t need a rich, white, abled, cisgender, heterosexual woman with limited feminist views representing or speaking for us. What we need are new stories—better stories. Stories that better represent human diversity and actively seek to include as many different voices as possible. The Owl House was one of those stories, and while I’m heartbroken it ended sooner than it should have, I know there will be more.

‘Silent Spring’: How Rachel Carson Took on the Chemical Industry and Captured the World’s Attention

On Sept. 27, 1962, Rachel Carson published Silent Spring and founded the modern environmental movement.

Following World War II, the United Stated embarked on a love affair with chemicals. When Carson published Silent Spring at 55, she was dying from breast cancer. Her book alerted the world to the dangers of the toxic chemicals that may have caused her disease. Carson died on April 14, 1964, at 56, never knowing to what extent her work would be vindicated or glimpsing its long-term impact.