More Than A Magazine, A Movement
An excerpt from Allison T. Butler’s The Judgment of Gender: How Women Are Centered and Silenced in Pop Culture, published March 8, 2026:
While Sinead O’Connor was roundly criticized for ripping up the picture of the pope, the passage of time has revealed: She was right.
O’Connor was labeled a pop star, but she never saw herself that way. From Rememberings: “Everyone wants a pop star, see? But I’m a protest singer. I just had stuff to get off my chest. I had no desire for fame.”
Thirteen minutes is how long it lasted, and global superstar Bad Bunny—full name Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio—more than delivered. Set against pulsating Afro-Latin rhythms and brimming with the energetic dancing bodies of Black, Brown and other multicolored peoples, the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show transformed this historic moment of the first all-Spanish musical spectacle into a cultural reset. Now counted among the most watched halftime performances—with close to 130 million views—the Super Bowl was rightfully renamed the “Benito Bowl.”
Bad Bunny’s performance came just one week after he made history as the first artist recording exclusively in Spanish to win the Grammy’s top honor for Album of the Year. It arrived, too, amid escalating violence tied to ICE enforcement and the policing and deportation of Brown and Black communities. At a moment when the U.S. president is railing against diversity, equity and inclusion—and circulating virulently racist content targeting his predecessor and the nation’s first Black president and first lady during Black History Month—the cultural resonance of this halftime show feels all the more potent.
Bad Bunny’s dynamic performance is an affirmation of the same communities currently terrorized by state-sanctioned violence. At rallies and marches, people play Bad Bunny. In moments of grief and passion, people play Bad Bunny. His refusal to be silenced, to be forgotten, is an inspiration of hope and resilience for social movements. His music is music of the revolution, which was spectacularly televised in the middle of a widely watched football game.
Another year of feminist struggles, another year of feminist triumphs. Our pop culture pushed back and provided many glimpses into feminist resistance throughout the culture.
This year’s top feminist moments reveal how artists, storytellers and creators confronted regressive politics with imagination, joy, righteous anger and expansive visions of humanity.
Dear Cassie Ventura,
Millions who do not have the celebrity, resources or platform to speak out are exceptionally grateful for your voice, and the voice of all the courageous women who literally take the stand.
The millions of women who have experienced rape and sexual assault are grateful at a time when resources for them are in danger of elimination.
Casandra Elizabeth Ventura has described years of alleged physical and sexual abuse at the hands of Sean “Diddy” Combs. Combs has denied the charges, insisting that the sex acts were consensual.
The women’s credibility is therefore critical to the trial’s outcome.
As Combs’ lawyer already previewed, his team will endeavor to convince the jury that the accusers are lying. The courtroom becomes a stage for the oldest stories we tell about women and truth.
Founded in Canada in the 1980s, the Raging Grannies have gaggles around North America—and plenty to sing about.
Even in a crowd of thousands, they’re instantly recognizable by sight and sound: silver-haired women wearing colorful aprons and floppy hats, brandishing cardboard signs and sheafs of lyrics, singing acerbic protest songs set to cheerful nursery tunes.
Planned Parenthood honored Rodrigo with the 2025 Catalyst of Change award, recognizing her for using her platform to speak out about reproductive justice and launching the program Fund 4 Good to send proceeds from her Guts tour to local abortion funds.
Sabrina Carpenter’s “sexual revolution” is not unprecedented; in fact, it has been paved for her. Yet, there is still something refreshing—and controversial—about her sexual expression that uniquely contributes to the constant effort of normalizing and embracing female sexuality through art. And perhaps it boils down to a simple truth: Carpenter is making it explicitly clear she enjoys sex, and she’s having fun with it.
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.
Roxanne Shanté made history once as the first solo female MC in hip-hop, and now she has made history again. On Feb. 1, 2025, the Recording Academy honored her with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, making her the first solo female rapper to receive this recognition. She received the award at the Special Merit Awards Ceremony in Los Angeles, just one day before the official Grammy Awards.
As she reflected on receiving one of the most prestigious honors in music, Shanté opened up about her career, her impact and her ongoing mission to support at-risk youth in this exclusive interview.