Beyoncé

The Great American Jeans Debate: Racializing Beauty and Democratizing ‘Good Genes’ in Commercial Media

PUBLISHED 8/5/2025 by

“Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.” Get it?

The issue is, we all get it and cannot avoid the ad’s uncomfortable truths about how women’s bodies convey different symbols and meanings. As a symbol of beauty, Sweeney certainly fits the bill as an attractive, voluptuous young woman who has capitalized on her looks. However, when the camera emphasizes Sweeney’s blue eyes just after panning across her body as she gives a quasi-scientific lesson on how “genes” get passed down, beauty is no longer just about whether a young woman is attractive enough to serve as an ad campaign’s spokesperson. It’s about which type of woman gets to define beauty and promoting scientific fixation on “good genes,” a holdover from the era of eugenics (which literally means “good genes”). 

The best “all-American jeans” advertisement should capture this sense of aspirational dreaming. And Ralph Lauren “Oak Bluffs” ads do just that. These campaigns depict the collegiate, bougie aesthetic of Black middle-class life—represented by those African Americans attending HBCUs and vacationing in Oak Bluffs at Martha’s Vineyard during the summertime—and resonates more positively for a wider audience than American Eagle’s exclusionary “great genes” messaging.

Built on Magic: Black Women’s Spiritual Legacy in American History

PUBLISHED 8/5/2025 by

The “Black Feminist in Public” series continues with a feature on Lindsey Stewart, an associate professor at the University of Memphis, whose latest book, The Conjuring of America: Mojos, Mermaids, Medicine, and 400 Years of Black Women’s Magic, released this week. A native Southerner, born and raised in South Louisiana, Stewart draws on the literary and cultural traditions of Black women in this region, also highlighted in her first book, The Politics of Black Joy: Zora Neale Hurston and Neo-Abolitionism (2021). With our popular culture now learning to celebrate “conjure women”—from Beyoncé to HBO shows like Lovecraft Country and recent films like The Exorcist: Believer (2023) and this year’s Sinners, The Conjuring of America could not have come at a better time.

Ms.’ Janell Hobson spoke with Lindsey Stewart earlier this summer to discuss her latest book.

“So many of the things that we interact with in our daily lives have hidden origins. And Black people are not just Black people, but magic. … I’m interested in how Black women used magic, used conjure to create a sense of safety in their communities. It was a type of luck management.”

“One of the things I’m trying to do with this book is to debunk the scariness and the association with evil that comes out of conjure, because when you look at Black culture, it’s present in so many of the sayings, superstitions, and practices that we use everyday, even though it’s been rejected in these Christian spaces.”

“There’s another lineage of Negro Mammies, another story about Negro Mammies that’s powerful. They were amazing women. And one of the things I wanted to do with this book is help Black women get closer to their ancestors and release the shame about how we survived. These women were powerful.”

Keeping Score: Devastating Attacks on USAID; Louisiana Indicts N.Y. Doctor; Autumn Lockwood Is First Black Woman Coach to Win Super Bowl

PUBLISHED 2/12/2025 by | UPDATED 6/26/2025 at 2:46 P.M. PT

In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in this biweekly roundup.

This week: Musk and Trump’s USAID attacks have devastating impacts; 80% of the clean energy investments from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act—which Trump wants to roll back—are in Republican congressional districts; Louisiana indicts a New York doctor for prescribing abortion pills; new executive orders go after workers and LGBTQ people; the Laken Riley Act was signed into law; childcare costs affect the health of parents; and more.

An American Requiem: Beyoncé’s Country Statement at the Grammys

PUBLISHED 2/5/2025 by

With all the upheaval, just two weeks in, that has accompanied the second term of the current presidential administration, the 67th annual Grammy Awards show came and went Sunday night like a welcome distraction. Even calling the event a “distraction” misses the serious work of art and its purpose in troubled times: to mobilize the masses, reaffirm our values and spread joy and light amid the darkness.

The big night, however, went to pop star Beyoncé, who not only made history as the first Black woman to win Best Country Album, but finally earned Album of the Year for her politically salient album Cowboy Carter, after previously losing in the category. The album, which opened with a “requiem” for America and closed on a prayer that “we’ll be the ones to purify our fathers’ sins,” calls on all of us to witness this nation’s history and its present, to reckon with its “sins” of exclusion and discrimination and demand that we purify it toward the democratic promise it has always held out for all of us and not just a select few determined to set us back on a backward course.

Ms. Magazine’s Top Feminists of 2024

PUBLISHED 12/28/2024 by | UPDATED 6/30/2025 at 12:00 P.M. PT

From top athletes, to community activists, to badass lawmakers, here are our 25 picks for the top U.S. feminists of 2024, and two of the best things they did or said.

Featuring: Kamala Harris, the 27 women who sued the state of Texas for its abortion ban in Zurawski v. Texas, Sarah McBride, abortion providers and funders, Black women voters, Jasmine Crockett, South Carolina’s “Sister Senators” and more.

2024’s Top Feminist Moments in Pop Culture

PUBLISHED 12/19/2024 by

The year 2024 had promised an era of women rising to the top. This was spectacularly highlighted by the historic presidential run of Vice President Kamala Harris, who had mounted an unprecedented campaign in just over 100 days. Sadly, Harris fell short of the necessary votes.

2024 nonetheless demonstrated that women still hold powerful sway across our popular culture, even as they struggle for the highest political position. We continue to hold onto hope for a feminist future with more opportunities for gender and racial breakthroughs, which are still possible because they have been imagined and envisioned in our pop culture. Here are our picks for the year’s top 10 feminist moments.

After Losing a Constitutional Right, America Picks a President

PUBLISHED 11/4/2024 by

Americans are picking their first president after the Supreme Court overturned their constitutional right to an abortion.

Now, two-and-a-half years later, with near-full abortion bans in 13 states, deaths confirmed because of them, and a smattering of states that have enacted protections via the direct democracy of ballot initiatives, the country has a choice: to reelect Republican Donald Trump, whose pledge to undo Roe helped fuel his first ascent to the White House; or to elect Democrat Kamala Harris, who is running on resurrecting abortion rights as she aims to be the first woman to win the presidency. 

Will Taylor Swift’s Endorsement Swing the Election?: The Ms. Q&A With Scholar Janell Hobson

PUBLISHED 9/26/2024 by

Since Taylor Swift announced her endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris on the night of the debate with former President Donald Trump, publications from NBC to Fox have been debating what it might mean for Harris’ campaign and the outcome of November’s election.

An Instagram post from Sept. 10 shows the pop star posing with a fluffy cat in her arms—a direct reference to JD Vance’s quip deriding single and childless women. Before signing the post, “With love and hope, Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady,” Swift told followers that she plans to vote for Harris “because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them. I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos.”

Ms. spoke with contributing editor and scholar Dr. Janell Hobson about about what the endorsement might mean.

The Political Life of Beyoncé’s ‘Freedom’

PUBLISHED 8/27/2024 by

The sonic power of Beyoncé’s “Freedom” has done the work in freeing our minds to imagine women’s leadership on the world stage. It has found new life articulating a “Freedom” agenda for presidential nominee Harris. Harris’ campaign insists on forward movement. This freedom story of the nation and the world is far from over. It’s this possibility of leadership that is quite on brand with Beyoncé’s “Freedom.”

‘The Future Is Here!’: America Is Finally Ready for a Woman President

PUBLISHED 8/22/2024 by

Eight years ago, Hillary Clinton made history as the first woman to be nominated for president by a major party. A proud feminist, she embraced the trailblazing nature of her campaign, portraying it as a quest to break the “highest, hardest glass ceiling.” But winning the popular vote still didn’t enable her to shatter the glass. A greater equality, the dream of generations of women, remained just that—a dream. Another woman would have to make it come true.

This week, in what might have been the waning days of her second term, Clinton declared in a full-throated speech at the Democratic National Convention, that “the future is here.” It is Kamala Harris, she said, who can smash that centuries-old ceiling once and for all.