More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Weekend Reading for Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation.
This week: U.S. women’s soccer team officially secures equal pay; Black women win big at the Emmys; how ranked-choice voting would help women candidates compete in New York City; and more.
In the dating show franchise’s 20-year history, there have only been two self-identified plus-sized contestants—and both went home on night one. This campaign is hoping to change that.
In the new documentary Four Winters, award-winning filmmaker Julia Mintz shatters myths of Jewish passivity during World War II. “Jewish women were not part of the battles of history that they had been taught about. They learned to use a gun. They learned to adapt and become what they needed to be. I’m trying to give these women their rightful place in history.”
“The resiliency and self-determination, the courage, ingenuity and grit these women embodied—it’s our collective legacy. I hold them as my sheroes.”
“There’s no crying in baseball,” says Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own. But the film’s more subtle theme is that there are no lesbians in baseball. The 1992 film made no mention of the fact that many of the athletes in the All American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) were gay.
But last Friday, Amazon Prime Video unveiled an eight-episode series, also called A League of Their Own, that includes openly lesbian AAGPBL players.
On July 18, the music video for P!nk’s new song, “Irrelevant,” dropped and has since been deemed a ‘protest anthem.’ She explained, “As a woman with an opinion and the fearlessness to voice that opinion, it gets very tiring when the only retort is to tell me how irrelevant I am. I am relevant because I exist and because I am a human being. No one is irrelevant. And no one can take away my voice.”
The proceeds from the new track will be donated to Michelle Obama’s national, nonpartisan voting initiative When We All Vote.
During the 45 years that award-winning author Nikki Grimes has been publishing children’s and young adult novels, she’s seen massive changes in the industry. Protagonists today are far more diverse, featuring more protagonists of color and characters who are disabled, non-binary, questioning or LGBTQIA+.
Right-wing organizations think many children’s books are offensive and have launched a campaign to squelch this progressive turn.
“The right is wrong. A more inclusive, accepting and humane world is possible.”
“We felt it our responsibility to depict the war on Black women’s bodies raging in this conservative state,” said Katori Hall, creator of Starz’s P-Valley.
At the time of the Center for American Women and Politics’ founding, there were so few women in politics that some male colleagues wondered aloud what the organization would even study.
Five decades later, in a year marked by critical milestones and mixed outcomes for women’s rights and representation, the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) at Rutgers Eagleton Institute of Politics is celebrating its anniversary as the original and preeminent source for data, research and resources regarding women in American politics and public life. Ms. spoke recently with Debbie Walsh, CAWP’s director for the last two decades, about the significance of that half-century mark.
After an in-person hiatus of two years, Essence Festival of Culture returned to New Orleans for its annual festival dedicated to celebrating and uplifting Black women.
The return of Essence Festival in person during this critical social moment was vital. With the theme “It’s the Black Joy For Me,” it was a moment for Black women to take time for themselves and each other, despite what’s currently happening in the world.
Good Luck to You, Leo Grandestarring Emma Thompson as Nancy Stokes and Daryl McCormack as Leo Grande is an exploration of whether women, due to internal and external messaging, are allowed to pursue and attain sexual fulfillment. The fact that Nancy has never had an orgasm answers that question.
In a world where we’ve started discussing the critical importance of sexual consent, and in the wake of MeToo, we must address women’s pleasure—making this film not only entertaining, but necessary.
