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Tag: identity

  • The Ewing X Yandel Collab Celebrates the Latine Community's Love For Sneaker Culture – POPSUGAR Australia

    The Ewing X Yandel Collab Celebrates the Latine Community's Love For Sneaker Culture – POPSUGAR Australia

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    Uptowns. Jordans. Foams. Classics. Maxes. Gazelles. Stan Smiths. In today’s world, these aren’t just sneakers – they’re cultural legends. These iconic kicks helped elevate what began as a daily aspect of life for Brown and Black folks living in inner cities to a global culture. But as the masses have embraced sneaker culture and streetwear, the roots and the people at the heart of the movement tend to get overlooked. In their latest collaboration with reggaetón superstar and legend Yandel, Ewing Athletics and Product Line Manager, Jonas Guerrero are trying to change that, by paying homage to a community that has worked alongside the Black American community in elevating sneakers to becoming the art form that they are today: Latines.

    “As a Latino, I’ve always been big on [shining] light on our community. I want to tell Latin stories,” the 37-year-old designer tells POPSUGAR.

    Telling Latine stories through sneakers is a sentiment that Guerrero admits, that even to him, at times sounds ironic. After all, sneaker culture has its roots in hip-hop, an art form that has included contributions from Latines since its inception. But, akin to the way genres like rap and reggaetón have become more commercial over the years, Guerrero has observed a similar transformation in the sneaker game.

    “Before it used to be more about individuality, standing out, you know, having a voice. Now, it’s all monetary,” he adds. “You can have x amount of money and buy anything, whereas before you had to know someone to know where to get it.”

    Related: Explore PS’s Best Feature Stories of 2023

    But while Guerrero brings that old-school passion and mentality to his work, his latest sneaker design, the Ewing x Yandel Rogue, which is set to drop in early 2024, bridges the gap between the past and future. Guerrero cites the Nike Mag, a shoe he refers to as the “holy grail” of sneakers, along with reggaetoneros Wisin y Yandel’s classic album “Los Extraterrestres,” as influencing his design process and getting him into a more alien, futuristic mindset. This is reflected in the Yandel Rogue’s gray, white, and scuba blue colorway.

    “It’s a shoe for the future,” he says. And at a time when Latine artists like Bad Bunny have become some of the biggest stars in the world, a collaboration with an icon like Yandel, who not only remains relevant but helped reggaetón reach global heights, is a fitting way to acknowledge where Latines are going while honoring the many contributions our culture has made to street style over decades. The Puerto Rican artist has been having quite a successful year. Yandel became a two-time nominee at the 2023 Latin Grammys, recently signed a deal with Warner Music Latin, and also made history at the Empire State Building in New York by becoming the first Latin act to perform at the venue during Hispanic Heritage Month.

    “A big portion of [the Ewing Athletics] consumer base is Latino. And while we’ve done all these rap collabs, I wanted to pitch something based on Latin music.”

    “A big portion of [the Ewing Athletics] consumer base is Latino. And while we’ve done all these rap collabs, I wanted to pitch something based on Latin music,” says Guerrero. So he pitched them the Yandel collab. And as fate would have it, the reggaetonero was already a fan of the brand, having purchased a pair of Ewing Athletics kicks a week prior.

    “I’m a big fan and collector of sneakers and a big fan of NY Knicks legend and NBA Hall of Famer Patrick Ewing. Now, I get to have my own shoe in collaboration with one of the shining stars in the sports world,” Yandel states in a recent press release.

    But for Guerrero, who is Puerto Rican and Dominican, this project is more than just a collaboration with an artist he grew up idolizing. It’s the culmination of everything he is – his story. The child of first-generation immigrants, Guerrero grew up in the Bronx. Unable to afford the more expensive brands like the Jordans and Nikes his peers were wearing, he would take markers to draw his own “Jordan” or “23” on his Filas and British Knights. As he got older, his creations became more complex with bandana print and or knock-off Gucci print.

    “I was trying to make it my own,” he says.”I’ve always been into sneakers and individuality. I’ve always been unique and wanted things a certain way.” But despite this early penchant for customizing kicks, Guerrero never thought that he’d be in a position to design his own.

    “My goal was never to be a designer. I always thought, ‘I’m a poor Dominican kid from the Bronx, I can’t be a designer.’”

    “My goal was never to be a designer. I always thought, ‘I’m a poor Dominican kid from the Bronx, I can’t be a designer,’” Guerrero admits. Not only did he not have the right college degree for it, but he also never saw people like himself in those positions. Fortunately, he was able to beat the odds and leverage his passion for kicks into an internship at Complex Magazine, where he wrote about sneakers. This opportunity would eventually lead him to Ewing Athletics.

    “With time, as the people here started seeing what I was capable of, they gave me an opportunity,” Guerrero recalls. That opportunity started small, giving his opinion on new samples. But his earnest passion for sneakers was evident, and eventually led to more responsibility and the opportunity to turn his creative vision into a reality. Even so, Guerrero is candid about his struggles with imposter syndrome and having to work to overcome them.

    “It’s something that’s been difficult for me because, like I said, I never saw myself doing what I’m doing now. A lot of it was not believing that I could do it. Now, I know what I bring to the table,” he says. “I go super hard, and I don’t take it for granted because I know that this could all end in an instant.”

    With that mentality, Guerrero knew that it was important to nail the collaboration with Yandel, not just for himself, but for the brand that believed in him and their customers. The Yandel Rogue marks the biggest Ewing collab so far, and it’s also the brand’s first time partnering with a Latin music star. Therefore, Guerrero felt extra pressure to do his due diligence and tell the story as best as he could. And that meant telling it in Spanish.

    “When you open the box, the comic that comes with it is in full Spanish. The little hang tag that comes on the sneaker is in full Spanish. It’s something that we’ve never done before. It’s us telling our story through the sneaker,” says Guerrero.

    And at the end of the day, the narrative of that story doesn’t belong to any one person or group. It’s the story of the underdog. It’s Patrick Ewing’s story, who put the city on his back and is forever loved and honored even without bringing back a championship. It’s Yandel’s story, going from being a barber in the town of Cayey, Puerto Rico to being one of the most successful Puerto Rican artists of all time. And it’s Guerrero’s story, every immigrant’s story, really, of people coming to a big city full of danger and promise and finding a way to make it. But even with a successful collaboration under his belt, Guerrero knows that he can’t stop pushing, and that success is not something you achieve, it’s something you do every day.

    “I just want to inspire the youth, you know, people that look like us,” he says. “You know, like it’s never too late. You can’t put an age on success.”

    The Ewing x Yandel Rogue will be available for purchase at 10 a.m. ET on January 5, 2024, via ewingathletics.com and yandel.com.

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    Miguel machado

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  • Explore PS's Best Feature Stories of 2023

    Explore PS's Best Feature Stories of 2023

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    It’s been quite an eventful year. Through the ups and downs of 2023, here at PS, we published hundreds of stories that charted history-making moments, critical issues affecting our readers today, and emerging trends in pop culture, lifestyle, wellness, and more. We covered a variety of topics, ranging from the return to teenhood and the queer history of hip-hop to the stigma around periods in sports and trans folks finding community during a record year for anti-trans legislation.

    For what would’ve been the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade in late January, we published a collection of stories marking the past, present, and future of abortion access in America. During Pride Month in June, we highlighted trans and nonbinary voices and their moments of gender euphoria and joy. In September, we celebrated Latine Heritage Month by spotlighting Latinas who have made the decision to prioritize their mental, physical, and spiritual health instead of the ever-present hustle culture. These are just a few examples of ways our editors, writers, and contributors have brought attention to important issues and tackled complexities not often talked about.

    To commemorate the end of the year, we’ve gathered an essential reading list of PS’s best stories from 2023. From insightful personal essays to thoughtfully reported features, these stories represent some of our favorite works from the past 12 months. Take a look back below.

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    Yerin Kim

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  • Tasha Ghouri Celebrates British Sign Language Being Introduced as a GCSE: “What a Day” – POPSUGAR Australia

    Tasha Ghouri Celebrates British Sign Language Being Introduced as a GCSE: “What a Day” – POPSUGAR Australia

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    The government announced on 21 Dec. that British Sign Language (BSL) will be taught as a GCSE from September 2025, marking a milestone moment for the deaf community after years of campaigning. The qualification will include around 1,000 signs and be open to all pupils, according to the BBC, and is a move that follows BSL becoming an official language in England, Scotland, and Wales last year.

    And the news is being celebrated up and down the country, with “Love Island”‘s first deaf Islander, Tasha Ghouri, praising the “step in the right direction.” Ghouri raised awareness of the deaf community when she appeared on the 2022 summer series, with her cochlear ear plant hailed as her “superpower”. Despite receiving a disappointing amount of ableist abuse while on the reality TV show, she came fourth with boyfriend Andrew Le Page, and has since gone on to start a podcast, “Superpowers With Tasha”, focused on empowering people through their differences.

    “It’s so important to have inclusivity in schools. Accessibility is something I massively stand for and It’s amazing that BSL is now becoming a GCSE course,” Ghouri tells POPSUGAR. “It’s incredible that students will now have the opportunity to learn the foundations of BSL, the history, how it was formed and it’s such a beautiful language to learn.”

    There are currently around 12 million people living with hearing loss in the UK, according to Hear4U, while it is estimated that just over 150,000 use BSL as their preferred language, including both deaf and hearing people who may have learnt it, per Sign Solutions. Introducing a GCSE in BSL will only help to open up the world for more people to communicate and connect.

    “What a day,” Ghouri added on her Instagram. “It’s amazing now students have the opportunity to learn BSL, something I really wish I had when I was at school. I really advise to take this course – one day in your life you will need it.”

    In 2021, there was a surge in people interested in learning BSL after Rose Ayling-Ellis won “Strictly Come Dancing” and wowed the nation with that silent dancing moment. The British Sign Language Courses website told ITV News they had seen a 2,488 percent increase in signups shortly after the show aired. And earlier this year, dating app Tinder teamed up with deaf twin sisters, Hermon and Heroda, to create a visual series teaching users how to flirt in BSL. But there was still a stigma around the deaf community, leaving many behind. Thankfully, due to tireless campaigning from charities, families, and students including 17-year-old, Daniel Jillings, who has campaigned for the qualification since the age of 12, communication will only continue to grow as we move towards a more inclusive society. Now that’s the good news we needed as we head into the Christmas break, right?

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    Joely chilcott

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  • There's a Sinister Truth to the Asian Male Stereotypes Depicted in “May December” – POPSUGAR Australia

    There's a Sinister Truth to the Asian Male Stereotypes Depicted in “May December” – POPSUGAR Australia

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    The Netflix movie “May December” is heavily inspired by the real-life relationship between Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau, which is probably why its depiction of Asian male stereotypes feels so close to reality, too. The morally problematic tale takes viewers on a complex journey with troubling racial implications, particularly as they relate to weaponized whiteness and the depiction of Asian masculinity as subservient and childlike.

    This highly publicized case, as well as its fictionalized version depicted in “May December,” raises a central question: How did the fact that she’s a white woman impact not only her ability to groom him – an Asian American boy – but also the public’s reaction to the story?

    “This feeds into the harmful stereotype that Asian men are complacent and obedient.”

    In “May December,” Julianne Moore plays Gracie, the fictionalized version of Letourneau, who began sexually abusing Fualauu when he was her sixth-grade student. In 1997, Letourneau pled guilty to two counts of secondary rape but stayed with Fualaau, giving birth to two of his children before he was 15 and eventually marrying him. In the film, Gracie is married to Joe, played by Charles Melton, the fictionalized version of Fualaau.

    We pick up the action as their youngest children prepare to graduate from high school. At this point, Joe is a 36-year-old stay-at-home dad and Gracie is in her mid- to late-50s. An actress named Elizabeth, portrayed by Natalie Portman, is set to play a fictionalized version of Gracie, and drops into the family’s life to try to learn more about them.

    Throughout the film, we, like Elizabeth, begin to see the real nature of Joe and Gracie’s relationship. It’s one predicated on stereotypes and racism – Joe fulfills the subdued, subservient role so often foisted upon Asian Americans, and their relationship is relatively accepted because Gracie weaponizes her whiteness. Ultimately, the film exposes how flipped gender and racial roles allow sexual abuse to be more palatable for and accepted by the general public.

    Related: How Netflix’s “Beef” Captures Asian American Men and All Our Complexities

    Let’s start with Joe. Although he’s well into his 30s, he increasingly comes off as childlike as the film progresses. He isn’t a full-fledged adult or equal partner. Rather, he is infinitely subservient to Gracie, only doing what he thinks is expected of him.

    This feeds into the harmful stereotype that Asian men are complacent and obedient. Importantly, it’s a sharp contrast to how white men are usually depicted: dominant, brash, aggressive. Joe practically fades into the background at a neighborhood barbecue, almost like he is hired help, until Gracie calls upon him. It’s clear that Gracie has groomed him, like a toy to fill some part of herself – and she’s been able to do so at least in part because of his race.

    In one scene, for example, Joe confides that the other girls at school weren’t much into him, but “Gracie saw me and I wanted that.” It’s clear he has internalized the white savior complex. Gracie was very much able to leverage the perception of Joe as an “other” to her advantage, especially so because he grew up in a mostly white community. Indeed, we learn that Gracie fetishized Joe right from the start, first noticing him only because he and his family were the only Asians in the neighborhood.

    Gracie is, in contrast to Joe, far more controlling, treating Joe more like a tool or dehumanized servant than as her husband. At the same time, she has come to weaponize her traditional “victim” role as a white woman. She makes it sound like everyone is out to make her feel bad and hurt her. She even tells Elizabeth at one point, “I am naive. I always have been. In a way, it’s been a gift.” In her relationship with Joe, while she is clearly the one in control, she fights to maintain this victim narrative. As she explains to Elizabeth, Joe “grew up very quickly,” whereas she herself was “very sheltered.”

    “At play here, too, is the explicit and implicit fetishization of Joe’s Asianness.”

    When Joe’s repressed feelings about how their relationship first started eventually float to the surface, he comes to her more like a child than as an equal partner and husband. He asks, “Why can’t we talk about it?” Even though he was only 13 years old at the time and unable to consent, Gracie continues to feed him a false narrative. “You seduced me,” she tells him. “I don’t care how old you were. Who was in charge? Who was the boss?”

    This brings up the “hot for teacher” trope sometimes depicted in movies and TV shows. When we see a male teacher engage with a female student, it is universally regarded as problematic and predatory. But when the roles are reversed, the perception is wildly different.

    Take shows like “Dawson’s Creek” and “Riverdale.” In both cases, the male student is the instigator. We’re led to believe that these boys are ready for physical relationships, while the female teachers simply get swept up in it all. This framing completely eclipses the truth of the matter, which is that Gracie is a pedophile and an abuser.

    At play here, too, is the explicit and implicit fetishization of Joe’s Asianness. It’s harder to call out because we often see this in the form of so-called yellow fever and the objectification of Asian women. But it happens to Asian men as well – usually in the form of an exoticization or emasculation.

    Gracie isn’t the only one to fetishize Joe’s Asianness. As Elizabeth reviews the audition tapes for who might play Joe in the movie within a movie, she notes that the kids are “not sexy enough. You’ve seen him. He’s got this, like, quiet confidence. Even as a kid, I’m sure.” Equally, she is able to weaponize her white womanhood to seduce Joe herself.

    The disturbing truth that underlies the entire movie (and Letourneau’s real-life crime) is that if Joe’s character had been a white girl and Gracie’s character had been an Asian man, the narrative would be received in a wildly different way. That dynamic would be practically inconceivable for most American audiences to accept as even plausible. There’s no way an emasculated Asian male teacher would’ve been able to manipulate and seduce a young white female student – and even if he did, it’d be overtly predatory and unacceptable.

    The relative acceptance of Gracie’s actions and motives – as well as the other characters’ treatment of Joe – reaffirms that Asian men are seen as “less than” in American society. Emasculated and fetishized, Asian men become passive tools to satisfy and satiate the whims and fancies of the white majority. We cook your food and clean your laundry as nameless, faceless, infinitely replaceable instruments of absolute servitude and silent acquiescence.

    In the real world, Letourneau and Fualaau legally separated in 2019 after 14 years of marriage and two children together. She died from cancer in 2020 at the age of 58, leaving much of her estate to Fualaau. The ending of “May December” isn’t quite so conclusive. Rather, it leaves us with more questions worth exploring.

    Conventional gender stereotypes played a central role in the media’s portrayal of the real-world story. Letourneau was presented as a social victim, and her relationship with Fualaau was often described in terms of love. Her criminal actions were almost excused in the court of public opinion, whereas Fualaau’s lived trauma is little more than a footnote. It’s her story that’s of primary interest, not his. Fualaau fades into the background, much like Joe does at the neighborhood barbecue, only brought up when it is convenient and he is needed to fulfill a task.

    In “May December,” gender stereotypes equally take center stage. But the racial implications aren’t examined with nearly the same level of scrutiny. The power imbalance is attributed to the dynamic between an older woman and a teenage boy, and much less so to weaponized whiteness and subordinated Asianness.

    We aren’t sure what happens to Gracie and Joe by the end of the film, though it feels like she still has his claws in him and he will continue to feel hopelessly trapped in their relationship. Because that’s what she wants, and what he wants never mattered anyhow.

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    Michael kwan

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  • There's a Sinister Truth to the Stereotypes of Asian Men Depicted in “May December”

    There's a Sinister Truth to the Stereotypes of Asian Men Depicted in “May December”

    [ad_1]

    The Netflix movie “May December” is heavily inspired by the real-life relationship between Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau, which is probably why its depiction of stereotypes of Asian men feels so close to reality, too. The morally problematic tale takes viewers on a complex journey with troubling racial implications, particularly as they relate to weaponized whiteness and the depiction of Asian masculinity as subservient and childlike.

    This highly publicized case, as well as its fictionalized version depicted in “May December,” raises a central question: how did the fact that she’s a white woman impact not only her ability to groom him — an Asian American boy — but also the public’s reaction to the story?

    This feeds into the harmful stereotype that Asian men are complacent and obedient.

    In “May December,” Julianne Moore plays Gracie, the fictionalized version of Letourneau, who began sexually abusing Fualauu when he was her sixth-grade student. In 1997, Letourneau pled guilty to two counts of secondary rape but stayed with Fualaau, giving birth to two of his children before he was 15 and eventually marrying him. In the film, Gracie is married to Joe, played by Charles Melton, the fictionalized version of Fualaau.

    We pick up the action as their youngest children prepare to graduate from high school. At this point, Joe is a 36-year-old stay-at-home dad and Gracie is in her mid to lat e 50s. An actress named Elizabeth, portrayed by Natalie Portman, is set to play a fictionalized version of Gracie and drops into the family’s life to try to learn more about them.

    Throughout the film, we, like Elizabeth, begin to see the real nature of Joe and Gracie’s relationship. It’s one predicated on stereotypes and racism — Joe fulfills the subdued, subservient role so often foisted upon Asian Americans, and their relationship is relatively accepted because Gracie weaponizes her whiteness. Ultimately, the film exposes how flipped gender and racial roles allow sexual abuse to be more palatable for and accepted by the general public.

    Let’s start with Joe. Although he’s well into his 30s, he increasingly comes off as childlike as the film progresses. He isn’t a full-fledged adult or equal partner. Rather, he is infinitely subservient to Gracie, only doing what he thinks is expected of him.

    This feeds into the harmful stereotype that Asian men are complacent and obedient. Importantly, it’s a sharp contrast to how white men are usually depicted: dominant, brash, aggressive. Joe practically fades into the background at a neighborhood barbecue, almost like he is hired help, until Gracie calls upon him. It’s clear that Gracie has groomed him, like a toy to fill some part of herself — and she’s been able to do so at least in part because of his race.

    May December, Charles Melton as Joe. Cr. François Duhamel / Courtesy of NetflixMay December, Charles Melton as Joe. Cr. François Duhamel / Courtesy of Netflix
    Netflix

    In one scene, for example, Joe confides that the other girls at school weren’t much into him, but “Gracie saw me and I wanted that.” It’s clear he has internalized the white-savior complex. Gracie was very much able to leverage the perception of Joe as an “other” to her advantage, especially so because he grew up in a mostly white community. Indeed, we learn that Gracie fetishized Joe right from the start, first noticing him only because he and his family were the only Asians in the neighborhood.

    Gracie is, in contrast to Joe, far more controlling, treating Joe more like a tool or dehumanized servant than as her husband. At the same time, she has come to weaponize her traditional “victim” role as a white woman. She makes it sound like everyone is out to make her feel bad and hurt her. She even tells Elizabeth at one point, “I am naive. I always have been. In a way, it’s been a gift.” In her relationship with Joe, while she is clearly the one in control, she fights to maintain this victim narrative. As she explains to Elizabeth, Joe “grew up very quickly,” whereas she herself was “very sheltered.”

    At play here, too, is the explicit and implicit fetishization of Joe’s Asianness.

    When Joe’s repressed feelings about how their relationship first started eventually float to the surface, he comes to her more like a child than as an equal partner and husband. He asks, “Why can’t we talk about it?” Even though he was only 13 years old at the time and unable to consent, Gracie continues to feed him a false narrative. “You seduced me,” she tells him. “I don’t care how old you were. Who was in charge? Who was the boss?”

    This brings up the “hot for teacher” trope sometimes depicted in movies and TV shows. When we see a teacher who is a man engage with a girl student, it is universally regarded as problematic and predatory. But when the roles are reversed, the perception is wildly different.

    Take shows like “Dawson’s Creek” and “Riverdale.” In both cases, the boy student is the instigator. We’re led to believe that these boys are ready for physical relationships, while the women teachers simply get swept up in it all. This framing completely eclipses the truth of the matter, which is that Gracie is a pedophile and an abuser.

    At play here, too, is the explicit and implicit fetishization of Joe’s Asianness. It’s harder to call out because we often see this in the form of so-called yellow fever and the objectification of Asian women. But it happens to Asian men as well — usually in the form of an exoticization or emasculation.

    Gracie isn’t the only one to fetishize Joe’s Asianness. As Elizabeth reviews the audition tapes for who might play Joe in the movie within a movie, she notes that the kids are “not sexy enough. You’ve seen him. He’s got this, like, quiet confidence. Even as a kid, I’m sure.” Equally, she is able to weaponize her white womanhood to seduce Joe herself.

    The disturbing truth that underlies the entire movie (and Letourneau’s real-life crime) is that if Joe’s character had been a white girl and Gracie’s character had been an Asian man, the narrative would be received in a wildly different way. That dynamic would be practically inconceivable for most American audiences to accept as even plausible. There’s no way an emasculated Asian man teacher would’ve been able to manipulate and seduce a young white girl student — and even if he did, it’d be overtly predatory and unacceptable.

    The relative acceptance of Gracie’s actions and motives — as well as the other characters’ treatment of Joe — reaffirms that Asian men are seen as “less than” in American society. Emasculated and fetishized, Asian men become passive tools to satisfy and satiate the whims and fancies of the white majority. We cook your food and clean your laundry as nameless, faceless, infinitely replaceable instruments of absolute servitude and silent acquiescence.

    In the real world, Letourneau and Fualaau legally separated in 2019 after 14 years of marriage and two children together. She died from cancer in 2020 at the age of 58, leaving much of her estate to Fualaau. The ending of “May December” isn’t quite so conclusive. Rather, it leaves us with more questions worth exploring.

    Conventional gender stereotypes played a central role in the media’s portrayal of the real-world story. Letourneau was presented as a social victim, and her relationship with Fualaau was often described in terms of love. Her criminal actions were almost excused in the court of public opinion, whereas Fualaau’s lived trauma is little more than a footnote. It’s her story that’s of primary interest, not his. Fualaau fades into the background, much like Joe does at the neighborhood barbecue, only brought up when it is convenient and he is needed to fulfill a task.

    In “May December,” gender stereotypes equally take center stage. But the racial implications aren’t examined with nearly the same level of scrutiny. The power imbalance is attributed to the dynamic between an older woman and a teenage boy, and much less so to weaponized whiteness and subordinated Asianness.

    We aren’t sure what happens to Gracie and Joe by the end of the film, though it feels like she still has his claws in him and he will continue to feel hopelessly trapped in their relationship. Because that’s what she wants, and what he wants never mattered anyhow.

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    Michael Kwan

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  • Para Athletes May Face a Greater Risk of RED-S – but Not Enough People Are Talking About It – POPSUGAR Australia

    Para Athletes May Face a Greater Risk of RED-S – but Not Enough People Are Talking About It – POPSUGAR Australia

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    Eating disorders have a long-held grip on sport. While athletes of all genders grapple with disordered eating behaviors, women have been hit the hardest. Research has found that disordered eating is almost twice as prevalent in female athletes compared to male athletes (62 percent and 32 percent, respectively). And a new report from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) suggests that a significant population of athletes have previously been excluded from discussion and research of EDs in professional and recreational sport.

    In September, the British Journal of Sports Medicine published a study finding that Paralympians may be fighting a silent battle against disordered eating. It looked specifically at RED-S – which stands for relative energy deficiency in sport and was previously identified as the “female athlete triad.” RED-S refers to poor athletic performance and declining health due to inadequate caloric intake and/or burning too many calories.

    “When you boil it down, RED-S is not having a sufficient amount of fuel to provide energy for exercising and the body’s essential functions,” says Susannah Scaroni, MS, RD, a three-time Paralympics gold medalist. If left untreated, RED-S can lead to poor immunity, interrupted menstrual cycles, weakened bones, depression and anxiety, and even severe cardiovascular issues.

    Related: Can Too Much Exercise Really Make Your Period Late – or Totally MIA?

    The research raised concerns that RED-S may be even more prevalent in para athletes than in non-disabled athletes. Of the US para athletes surveyed in the study, 62 percent attempted to alter their weight to increase performance, 44 percent said they’d experienced menstrual dysfunctions, and 32 percent received elevated scores on the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire (a 28-item self-report designed to evaluate the severity of eating disorder diagnoses). Together, all these factors pave the road to RED-S.

    Given these frightening statistics, we spoke to two Paralympic athletes about what may be contributing to them – and what more needs to be done to center para athletes in the conversation around nutrition and body image in sport.

    Nutrition’s Central Role in RED-S

    At its core, RED-S is caused by an imbalance of energy in and energy out. In non-disabled athletes, eating disorders are often sparked by pressure to lose weight by training constantly and eating a “lean” (read: insufficient) diet. As American long-distance runner Kara Goucher told The New York Times in a 2019 op-ed, “When someone proposes something you don’t want to do, whether it’s weight loss or drugs, you wonder, ‘Is this what it takes? Maybe it is, and I don’t want to have regrets.’ Your careers are so short. You are desperate. You want to capitalize on your career, but you’re not sure at what cost.”

    Capitalizing on a career opportunity by shrinking your body often comes at a great cost. (Remember, everything from increased stress fractures to depression has been tied to RED-S.)

    Para athletes face their own, seldom discussed, array of pressures when it comes to nutrition and body image – first and foremost because there is little research on how much food they need to perform at a competitive level.

    “There are many limitations when using a single equation to calculate [energy requirements] for able-bodied athletes,” Scaroni explains. “In para athletes, different amounts of muscle mass are being used, and muscle groups are performing in ways that [able-bodied] athletes may not use them.” For instance, she says, someone who races marathons in a wheelchair relies on their arms to cross the finish line much more than a non-disabled athlete. Thus, they may require distinct quantities of energy to achieve their best performance.

    “Society doesn’t like to see disabled individuals as complex people.”

    “Para athletes may even have different gastric motility rates, which refers to how efficiently someone’s body can use the food they eat,” Scaroni says. “Someone’s body may use the food that they eat differently because of a spinal cord injury, for example. Or, people with cerebral palsy or those with amputations may have a different type of gait when they’re ambulating in their competitions that may be less efficient than someone who is able-bodied.”

    These factors and many more present a challenge for para athletes deciding what to put on their plates. And it doesn’t help that research on energy requirements for people with disabilities is nascent to nonexistent, making trial and error (and sometimes, nutritional deficiencies) a necessary step in discovering exactly what fuel is necessary for health and performance.

    “The whole support system around an athlete – from parents to coaches to physical therapists to doctors – really needs to take an individualized approach to questioning an athlete about how they’re consuming and what they’re experiencing,” Scaroni says.

    Body Image and the Pressure to Perform

    Research has indicated that lean body mass is an asset in many sports. But despite the fact that the vast majority of studies on this topic have excluded disabled athletes, many para athletes still incorporate these findings into their own body image and athletic standards. Pursuing this aesthetic may prompt folks to tack on extra miles or increase other forms of fitness, according to Lacey Henderson, CMPC, a Paralympian and certified mental performance consultant. Over time, this overtraining can contribute to developing RED-S.

    “There are so many old thought processes about what an athlete needs to look like in order to perform in para sports,” she says.

    Many para athletes Henderson has spoken with feel that they must maintain a certain body size for functional purposes. As she explains, “What I’ve seen with disordered eating and disordered eating behaviors is that [the size of a para athlete’s body] is something that they feel like they might have some semblance of control over.”

    Henderson also says there’s a homogenous idea of how “inspirational” para athletes should look and behave – despite the fact that disabilities encompass hundreds of thousands of different experiences. “We talk about ‘inspiration porn’ a lot in Paralympics, seeing this disabled person who overcame all these obstacles and then won a gold medal,” she says. “Society doesn’t like to see disabled individuals as complex people.”

    The desire to fit into prosthetics can also “become a huge trigger for RED-S,” Scaroni adds. “You’re afraid your body will change because that’s another $10,000, or more, expense if you have to buy a new customized piece of equipment,” she explains. “I’ve seen this issue for younger athletes. After adolescence, their bodies start growing, and they don’t fit into their racing chair or their basketball chair anymore.”

    As Scaroni begins to take on the dual role of Paralympian and dietitian, she hopes to contribute to research that centers many types of bodies and experiences. And, of course, it’s crucial to spotlight the lived experiences of para athletes and the challenges they face.

    “We’re seeing non-disabled athletes coming forward and talking about RED-S, but it’s something that we also need to be included in, too,” Henderson says. “Because society paints a picture of disabled people as an ‘inspiration,’ it almost feels like you’re letting people down if you show weakness.”

    Henderson hopes that someday soon, the sports community will stop holding para athletes to standards that force them to wear a veneer of perfection. What lies beyond the pearly perception of parathletic resilience is a much more complex and human experience – one that deserves just as much discussion, research, and media attention.

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    Kells mcphillips

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  • Tell Me Más: Lúconde Fuses Theater and Urbano in Her Debut Album

    Tell Me Más: Lúconde Fuses Theater and Urbano in Her Debut Album

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    Many popular musicians have created fictional alter egos as a way to explore new sonic avenues that they wish to experiment with. David Bowie had Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane, David Johansen had Buster Poindexter, Lady Gaga spent a whole season as Jo Calderone, and the less said about Garth Brooks’s Chris Gaines era the better, but it certainly happened. For them, it’s a kind of performance art — an expression of their interest in stepping out of their comfort zone and giving the endeavor a theatrical flair as well.

    The debate about whether these could be considered merely publicity stunts is valid, but for some artists, there’s a true creative desire to inhabit these personas. For Adriana Rivera, a Puerto Rican singer-songwriter, it’s a culmination of her dream to merge two artistic outputs that have long fascinated and inspired her: music and acting. From this desire and its manifestation, Rivera set herself aside, and in her place emerged Lúconde and their debut album, “La Actriz: Acto I.” The EP is a magical collection of alt-perreo, conscious boleros, and progressive Latin soul. As Rivera explains, “Lúconde is basically the mother personality that serves as a vessel for other personas (or faces, as she calls them) to emerge.” For that reason, she invites listeners to call her by either name.

    Lúconde is an artist with lots of ideas, who has been searching a long time for a way to express them. A child of dancers from reggaeton’s early roots, when it was known as “underground” — her mother was a background dancer for Vico C, while her father danced for Ruben DJ — she grew up in a home that valued both music and performance and the overlap between the two. Lúconde was enrolled in ballet, where dance and expression are inextricably intertwined, and sang in her church’s chorus, where she began to discover her voice and test its limits and range.

    Not soon after, she was convinced by friends to audition for her school’s drama club. In a prescient twist, the monologue used for the audition belonged to a role about a character suffering from dissociative identity disorder.

    “I remember researching a lot. I remember practicing [the monologue] alone at home. I had no training whatsoever, but I remember clicking with that a lot,” she says. “There was a lot of that process that clicked with me very deeply, and I remember thinking, ‘OK, I love music and I’ve always been involved with music, but I think [acting] is going to be something that I’m gonna dedicate myself more to.’”

    For “La Actriz: Acto I,” Lúconde reached back and channeled the lessons from her days doing theater. She recalls being taken by the way acting helped her to connect with her inner thoughts and widen her view of the behaviors of people around her.

    “I learned [to] not take things at face value, which is something that I feel like I’m actively studying within myself and society — just looking at things from different perspectives,” she says. “There’s always more behind someone, which I also think in acting that’s what you [search for].”

    During the downtime that enveloped the world in 2020, she began to think about how she could fuse her interests. She began to write, thinking on topics that were close to her. She began to flesh out the overarching concept of the EP and conjured up what would become the roster of alter egos that embody each track: La Malasuerte, Näia Kiyomi, Lilu, Miss Quinn, Bo Aracnia, Adela, and Nina Sorei.

    Executing out such a far-out idea for a debut EP was a risky proposition, but she was determined to bring it to fruition. Through mutual contacts she got in touch with Gyanma, an indie fan favorite who produces projects for himself and others out of his own studio, called Alas. Whatever trepidation he had about the ambitious ideas she presented evaporated as soon as he put her in front of the microphone.

    “From the beginning, I recognized it was a very unique concept,” says Gyanma, who produced every track on the EP. “Throughout recording and producing the music, every track kept evolving, and when we listened to the final album put together, we knew it was something very, very special.”

    As a companion to the album, Lúconde produced, directed, and starred in music videos for the tracks. It’s here that her different personas can truly be appreciated. La Malasuerte, a trickster changeling that occupies every frame of “Macacoa” with mischievous intentions. Näia Kiyomi, heavily inspired by Jennifer Check of the movie “Jennifer’s Body,” enacts empowered, violent revenge in “6eis.” Lilu and Bo Aracnia both break the rules in favor of righteous anarchy in “Bendito Caos” and “Tus Cartas Póker,” respectively. In “El Frío del Alba,” Adela reflects on the long, sordid history and pain that women have carried throughout the struggle for bodily autonomy, especially in the face of eroding abortion rights.

    “This is very autobiographical. What I’m doing is just taking the Stanislavski technique of acting and transforming it into a philosophy of life, because that’s who I am,” she says. “I feel like acting saved me. Acting gave me so much perspective of life, of people, of society, and of myself. That’s kind of where it all starts, because with each character I’m showing different sides and different aspects of myself, and the actor studies the gray area of life, the gray in people.”

    When talking about her future, Lúconde foresees more projects in the same vein as “Acto I.” For now, she doesn’t see herself dabbling in more mainstream songs divorced from this album’s conceit. In fact, she’s already brainstorming which personas she’ll utilize again, and new ones to introduce as well. As the album’s title implies, it’s simply the first act of what will slowly unfold as a larger all-encompassing project.

    “This project is synonymous with where I am in life right now. I feel like I’m still in the midst of becoming. This project is a lot of the younger, naive aspects of myself,” she says.

    She intends to fully expand the visual side as well, founding her own production company where she’ll be able to control that aspect of development as well as help other artists with their own projects. “La Actriz: Acto I” was an effort that took a long time to come together, but for Lúconde it has been worth everything she invested in bringing it to life.

    “Once I knew that I wanted to be La Actriz in the music industry, I had a direction,” she says. “For me that’s really important; I’ve always [felt] like I have to have some idea of who I want to be. In that sense, now I realize how lucky I am to know who I am a little bit. I still feel like I have a long way to go, but I’ve always had the vision. I’ve always nourished that. I’ve always protected that.”

    The strands that link the light and shadow inside every human being — and the way they can bring people together under better understanding and empathy — are what Lúconde wishes to underscore.

    “Everything is connected: our spirituality, our physicality, our mind, our emotions. As an actor, my body, my mind, my emotions are my tools. The more familiar I am with myself, the better human I will be. That’s what I’m trying to explore with music. I always say, ‘Through my work I am whole,’ because I get to express all of these different aspects of myself.” It’s a passion project that not only makes her feel fulfilled, but hopefully finds fans who’ll also appreciate the different levels of creativity that make it up. “I felt like I wanted to be a creator, and I feel like music allowed me to do all that. And I realized I didn’t have to sacrifice my identity as an actress. Maybe I could just be La Actriz.”

    POPSUGAR: What is your favorite word?

    Lúconde: Curiosity.

    POPSUGAR: What is your favorite quote?

    Lúconde: “You don’t have a right to anything in this life, but there’s nothing you can’t achieve.”

    POPSUGAR: What is your favorite play?

    Lúconde: “No Exit” by Jean-Paul Sartre.

    POPSUGAR: What is your favorite movie?

    Lúconde: Well, I love “Black Swan.” It used to be “The Pursuit of Happyness.” I think now, “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”

    POPSUGAR: Who is your favorite fictional character?

    Lúconde: Raven from “Teen Titans.”

    POPSUGAR: What are you listening to these days?

    Lúconde: Gesaffelstein, Belén Aguilera, and “Scarlet” by Doja Cat.

    POPSUGAR: What person comes to mind when you hear the word “inspiration”?

    Lúconde: My grandfather. We were very close, and he would talk to me about many things. My favorite quote is something he’d always tell me.

    POPSUGAR: Do you prefer to be the hero or the villain?

    Lúconde: I prefer to be the villain that becomes a hero.

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    Juan Arroyo

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  • Column: Pedophile panic and coming political violence. What the Paul Pelosi case revealed

    Column: Pedophile panic and coming political violence. What the Paul Pelosi case revealed

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    A unicorn costume, a hammer and a belief that pedophiles are using public schools to destroy democracy: The trial of David DePape for attacking Paul Pelosi was strange and disturbing.

    But take away the costume and the hammer, and the reasoning for DePape’s vicious attack is alarmingly mainstream — pedophile panic.

    By that, I mean the outrageous effort not just by hate-mongering conspiracy theorists to frame LGBTQ+ individuals as deviant and dangerous, lumping them in with criminals who sexually abuse children. But also a cynical bid by some politicians, clergy and grifters to do the same.

    Anti-LGBTQ+ attacks are everywhere, both physical and political. Hysteria about pedophiles, driven by conspiracy theories, has trampled truth.

    As DePape explained it on the stand, he is concerned about “groomer schools,” where teachers are “queering the students, pushing transgenderism to confuse children about their identities to make them more vulnerable to abuse and Marxist indoctrination.”

    Sound familiar? It could have been a quote from a Huntington Beach City Council meeting, a Republican presidential rally or a debate on the floor of the Florida Legislature, where the controversial “don’t say gay” bill last year was described by an aide to Gov. Ron DeSantis as an “anti-grooming” law.

    The quote is, in fact, DePape’s summary of what he learned from right-wing podcaster James Lindsay about one of DePape’s top targets, a professor of feminist theory and queer studies whose house seemed, to DePape, too difficult to break into. So he went to Pelosi’s brick mansion instead.

    When a San Francisco jury came back with a guilty verdict against DePape, it was hardly a bombshell. It is fact that DePape smashed a hammer into Pelosi’s skull, a brutal act caught on camera and uncontested even by his own lawyers.

    What was lost with the quickness of the in-an-out, no-surprises trial — and what should be chilling to any supporter of civil rights — was the defense team’s argument about why DePape created his elaborate plot, which was going to involve donning the unicorn costume while interrogating the victim’s wife, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, about government corruption, and, you guessed it, pedophiles.

    It wasn’t conventional politics. It wasn’t even aimed at Nancy Pelosi. The powerful San Francisco Democrat was somewhere down a list that included the mother of DePape’s two sons, Tom Hanks, George Soros, Hunter Biden and performance artist Marina Abramovic.

    DePape was propelled by the hyper-drive conspiracies that have bled out from internet chat rooms onto streets and into school boards — amped-up paranoia about threats not just to the white Christian values that some perceive as intrinsic to our country’s identity, but to the safety of our children.

    “It’s not just that she’s a pedo-activist. It’s that she wants to turn all the schools into pedophile molestation factories,” DePape said of the queer studies professor he was targeting.

    “She wants to destroy children’s sense of identity because it’s her opinion that this will lead them to grow up dysfunctional and unhappy. And if they’re dysfunctional and unhappy, they will be maladjusted to society, hate society, and want to become communist activists,” he said.

    Those kind of beliefs, ugly and untrue, can no longer be considered extreme, or extremism.

    Take, for example, this commentary from earlier this year by Jonathan Butcher, a fellow at the ultraconservative and ultra-influential Heritage Foundation:

    “For parents, rejecting radical gender theory is a matter of protecting their children. The rest of us, though, should reject queer theory’s attempt to gain control of the next generation,” he wrote.

    Or the mugshot meme Donald Trump posted not too long ago insinuating that pedophiles were out to get him.

    Or Trump’s recent sit-down interview with conservative activists Moms for America, in which he lamented that the “indoctrination programs” at public schools are “out of control” and promised quickly to end them if elected.

    Jared Dmello, an expert on extremism and an incoming senior lecturer at University of Adelaide in Australia, told me that mainstream politics is “driving an anti-LGBTQ ideology.”

    Where once conspiracy was relegated to dark corners, it now has a symbiotic relationship with the mainstream, he said, each building off whatever “evidence” or current events play into the narrative with such speed and force that the sheer amount of information makes it seem like it must be true.

    “The whole goal is to introduce so much chaos into the atmosphere that it’s hard to distinguish what is fact from fiction,” he said.

    Mission accomplished.

    A recent Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) poll on threats to American democracy found 59% of Republicans think that what children are learning in school is a critical issue facing the United States. A 2022 poll by USC found that while roughly 60% of Democrats support teaching high school students about gender identity, gay and transgender rights or sexual orientation, only about 30% of Republicans feel the same.

    Of course, parents have good reasons to be concerned about public schools, especially in the wake of the pandemic when teachers are burned out, budgets are tight and students are coping with sky-high levels of mental health challenges.

    But Joan Donovan, an expert in disinformation and a professor at Boston University, told me that while violence remains rare, vigilantes such DePape aren’t the lone wolves we like to believe. She said violence, whether by individuals or groups, is going to increase as the 2024 election nears.

    “I wish it were the case that they were fringe, but they do seem to represent a larger sentiment online,” she said. “Of course taking action in the form of assaulting or attempting to murder people is in and of itself horrendous, but if you look at the kind of discourse that emboldens these people, it’s the natural outcome.”

    Support for political violence has increased over the past two years, with nearly a quarter of Americans now agreeing that “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” That comes from the recent PRRI poll on threats to American democracy.

    That percentage has increased from 15% in 2021.

    But get ready for it: 41% of Republicans who like Trump agreed violence may be necessary, and 46% of Trump supporters who believe the election was stolen also believe violence may be an answer. That’s nearly half.

    By all accounts, DePape was just a lonesome loser, unremarkable and peaceful, until he started delving into conspiracy theories during the pandemic. Living in a Bay Area garage that didn’t even have a bathroom, he spent his free time — hours every day — playing video games while listening to conspiracy podcasters pushing what we were then calling QAnon.

    I won’t go so far as to say he was a victim, but he was a vessel for a fire hose flow of propaganda, holding it all in until doing nothing seemed unconscionable. He is accountable for his violence, but it is clear he has lost the ability to parse truth from that swamp of what he calls research.

    Somewhere along his journey, DePape began believing that a secret cabal of so-called elites was ruling the world and participating in a cult that sexually abused children.

    That’s how DePape came up with his list of targets — most of those on it are somewhere in QAnon lore — a set of conspiracies that QAnon expert and Michigan State University professor Laura Dilley told me “absolutely are endemic now.”

    At its core, the political turmoil caused by these falsehoods is not much different from the satanic panic that ruled in the 1980s, driven by discomfort with more women joining the workforce and leaving their children in day care. Then, too, conservatives vilified the LGBTQ+ community to fuel fear that children were in danger and American society was on the brink of collapse.

    And Donovan points out that even the KKK focused on children and education in the 1920s, with the same arguments about American values.

    So none of this is new.

    But we are capable of not repeating the past. Hate and conspiracy aren’t normal. They aren’t American values, to be debated as valid political positions.

    David DePape was fighting an enemy conjured by lies. That enemy may not be real, but the danger of those lies is.

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    Anita Chabria

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  • Indigenous Activist Michelle Chubb on What We All Lose When History Centers White Voices

    Indigenous Activist Michelle Chubb on What We All Lose When History Centers White Voices

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    Michelle Chubb, also known as Indigenous Baddie on social media, is a model, activist, and public speaker who brings mainstream media’s attention to the beauty of and challenges facing Indigenous communities. Chubb is a Swampy Cree member of Bunibonibee Cree Nation, and ahead of Thanksgiving, she shared how many Indigenous communities approach the holiday.

    “A lot of us don’t respect it as an event to celebrate because of the history,” she said, referencing the fact that the narrative of the 1621 Thanksgiving feast has long been dominated by white voices and leaves out the fact that cooperation between European colonists and Indigenous communities was short-lived, giving way to violence and massacres of Indigenous tribes in the years that followed.

    Chubb also shared what it was like to grow up Indigenous, how we can all be more respectful of Indigenous communities, and more. Read it all, in her own words, below.

    I grew up in the city, and I’d visit the reservation in the summer and winter. And when I had the opportunity, I’d see differences between the city life and the res life. There was a big difference between the care of the people. There were more resources in the city versus what people have available on the res — healthcare, for instance. Or the high food prices on the res or in remote areas — it’s really, really expensive, so a lot of the people depend on hunting and fishing to survive. I’ve seen that difference.

    I think everything portrayed in the media growing up was wrong.

    When I’d come back to the city after visiting, I would feel bad, having seen the people on the res struggle to survive, to actually live. Seeing that, I wanted to make a difference, but I didn’t know how I wanted to express that when I was younger. When I had the opportunity with TikTok, I wanted to use my platform to amplify the problems that we have. And that got me speaking about big companies taking resources from Indigenous communities when they’re at their lowest already, or amplifying the problems we have in the city as well, because living in the city isn’t necessarily better for Indigenous people. I remember growing up in Winnipeg, and there would be a lot of news reporters talking about a missing Indigenous woman, and I would be like, “What, again? This happened last week.” Being an Indigenous girl growing up, I was scared. I didn’t want to be one of those missing people. So I started amplifying that also, because it’s a struggle for Indigenous people.

    I think everything portrayed in the media growing up was wrong. How history books portrayed us — they told the white part of the story, not the whole history. I was never taught about residential schools or the buffalo massacre. I had to take a separate course in high school to learn all about that stuff. Meanwhile, in social studies class, you only get a paragraph or two about Indigenous peoples.

    And on a more personal level, every Halloween, I’d be asked to be Pocahontas. Growing up, I respected her as a woman, because she was basically one of our first missing and murdered Indigenous women. But also in school, there would be people touching my hair without asking and saying, “Oh my god, your hair is so long.” I think that’s different culturally, because even during powwows, when I’d wear my regalia, people would ask before touching my regalia or taking pictures. I think so many people don’t respect boundaries.

    I think it’s all about educating ourselves to become more informed, especially with Indigenous culture, because again, media can portray us in ways they want to paint us. In reality, there are a variety of Indigenous people around the world, and we all have similarities — but we all are different in ways that make us unique in our own tribes and cultures.

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    Michelle Chubb

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  • Innovating Latin Music Is What’s Made Juan Luis Guerra a Legend — His New EP “Radio Güira” Is Proof

    Innovating Latin Music Is What’s Made Juan Luis Guerra a Legend — His New EP “Radio Güira” Is Proof

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    If you’re Dominican and were alive during the 1980s and ’90s, chances are Juan Luis Guerra‘s hits became the soundtrack of your life. They’d play at every family function, during long car rides, or at the beach, and he was likely your mami’s favorite artist to blast during her Saturday morning cleaning rituals. Throughout his prolific and four-decade career, Guerra has not only reinvented the tropical rhythms of his native Dominican Republic alongside his band 4.40, but he’s also reached audiences way beyond just the Dominican community. With 30 million-plus albums sold around the world and more than 20 Latin Grammy wins, Guerra has become a legend in the Latin music space and not just for his poetic lyrics — he’s often referred to as the Pablo Neruda of merengue and bachata — but also for never being afraid to innovate or color outside of the lines of what “Dominican music” is supposed to sound like. His new EP, “Radio Güira,” which was released earlier this month, proves just that.

    “Radio Güira” was inspired by both a radio show Guerra had years ago, as well as his love for the güira, a percussion instrument that’s often played in Dominican folklore music. The innovative EP also includes interludes, radio-style commercials, and even one of Guerra’s favorite habichuelas guisadas recipes by Nuna, the woman who cooks in his home. You hear her reciting the recipe in the intro to the “Cositas de Amor” track.

    “I had a radio [show] in the Dominican Republic called Radio Viva and it played music from the continents. Then when I started working on the album, [and] I realized it was a lot of new things — things I haven’t done before,” Guerra tells POPSUGAR. “[With] ‘MAMBO 23,’ we had never done merengue that fast. We began mixing it with classical, adding French horn to the violins, which normally is not done, and [we] varied the orchestration.”

    Guerra has been fusing different sounds and genres since the ’80s, when practically no other Latin music artist — let alone a Dominican artist — was bold enough to try. It’s what has contributed to his signature sound. If a Juan Luis Guerra song plays on the radio, even if it’s your first time hearing it, you’ll easily recognize it as one of his. And with “Radio Güira,” there’s a celebration of both old school and new school Guerra. It fuses genres like mambo, merengue, rock and even jazz.

    “I tried very hard to connect with a younger audience in this album. I have already connected with other audiences, the ones that will listen to my music because they like it — thank God. But I wanted to connect with a younger one,” Guerra says.

    Guerra’s inspiration to fuse sounds early in his career had a lot to do with the music he listened to during his youth ­— a lot of it being rock. He was a big fan of The Beatles growing up, for example.

    “The sound of our guitar, the way I play guitar, it is very rock-oriented within bachata,” he says. “That’s why our bachata has a different color compared to others. I have always been drawn to mixing different genres and I think the result was very good [and] a lot of the younger generation are doing the same.”

    Guerra, who has also been in the middle of his US tour, is up for three Latin Grammy nominations for his song with Colombian artist Fonseca, “Si Tú Me Quieres.” With decades of success under his belt, the Dominican artist still feels humbled by the accolades and support he receives from the community.

    “[It’s] a privilege I accept with a lot of gratitude and fills me with joy. I accept it as a gift from God that they are motivated by my music,” he says. “It is a great responsibility and a great privilege at the same time. Remember that at my age, I had the responsibility to set the path in Europe. . . . When we arrived to Europe, remember, everything was salsa. If we did merenge, to them it was salsa . . . I have had the privilege of opening doors, mostly with merengue and bachata because salsa was already known, and of course, it is a privilege for us Dominicans to share our music with them. “

    As for his poetic lyrics that can melt anyone’s heart, Guerra credits his faith for everything he’s been able to write and for carrying him through such a long and successful career.

    “My faith in Jesus is what holds me. When we gather here, mostly musicians, we pray: ‘Our God, from you comes our capacity. Holy spirit take control over everything we are going to do here,’” he shares. “Everything you hear is inspired by him. We are simply putting our projects in his hands and he directs us.”

    With all the devastation happening in the world, Guerra wants listeners to experience joy with “Radio Güira.” He refers to the EP as “good news” that is much needed in the times we’re currently living in.

    “The goal of every artist is that this music is understood. When I find or when I know that a song can transform the life of another person, I think that’s when I feel the most joy,” he concludes. “When I sing ‘Las Avispas’ [a track off of his 2004 album ‘Para Ti,’ which is entirely dedicated to his faith] and the message is received and a person changes from sad to happy, I believe that’s the most beautiful gift that God can give us musicians. Therefore, to transform the lives of others is my biggest hope with my music.”

    Indeed, transforming the lives of others through music is something many would agree Guerra has already done.

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    Johanna Ferreira

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  • La Borinqueña Doll Gives Little Girls More Latina Superhero Representation

    La Borinqueña Doll Gives Little Girls More Latina Superhero Representation

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    Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez still feels the pressure of being a one-man army when it comes to promoting the crown jewel of Somos Arte, his independent creative studio. Since 2016 he’s been at the forefront of every campaign surrounding his creation La Borinqueña. The Puerto Rican superheroine has been the star of a series of self-titled graphic novels that have directly tackled cultural topics and current events at the forefront of the island, all through the lens of a superhero yarn. It’s an effort that’s earned him a humanitarian award at the 2019 Eisner Awards (the comics industry’s Academy Awards), collaborations with Hollywood stars such as Rosario Dawson, and crossovers with DC Comics’s biggest characters like Wonder Woman. But even with all the accolades, he makes it clear, it’s always been an uphill battle.

    “There’s so many moving pieces when you’re something as big as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, when you’re something as big as Star Wars,” Miranda-Rodriguez tells POPSUGAR. “But [how about] when you’re something as tiny as a freaking sorullito called La Borinqueña? You have me, and I literally feel like your abuela in the kitchen doing a gazillion things at the same time. I’m making the bacalaitos while I’m tending to the rice, while I’m checking on the habichuelas, while I’m flipping over tostones, all while I’m carving up the pernil.”

    But even while acknowledging the workload, Miranda-Rodriguez sees it as a responsibility he happily carries. Last year, on the fifth anniversary of the devastating passage of Hurricane María over Puerto Rico, he released a special edition of “La Borinqueña” with a commemorative cover. The funds from those sales went to various philanthropic organizations that Somos Arte supports, most of them grassroots organizations involved in helping causes relevant to Puerto Rico and its diaspora population.

    Recently, he concocted and put into effect his newest expansion of the Borinqueña brand: action figures, with multiple points of articulation in order to make them posable. While still eminently popular with children, action figures — especially those of pop culture characters — have become a large market for collectors and enthusiasts. Having introduced a brand-new superhero team called the Nitaínos in the latest installment of “La Borinqueña,” he now had a roster of characters to pull from to fill out fans’ shelves.

    Ever cognizant of his community’s needs, Miranda-Rodriguez decided to go further. He teamed up with the same company that manufactured the action figures, Boss Fight Studios, to release a doll based on La Borinqueña, available for preorder on their website.

    “They’re doing something they’ve never done before. They’re actually making toys for children, and they created a line of dolls for girls called I Am Brilliance,” he says. “The first wave of these dolls actually have two luchadoras from the Masked Republic, which is a wrestling franchise that exists. But La Borinqueña is actually part of that wave as well, which is separate from las luchadoras.”

    Miranda-Rodriguez has studied the sociopolitical structure of race and ethnicity and its impact on Black and brown communities, and he has always had an eye for considering them with all his projects. In this case, the doll will reflect La Borinqueña’s identity as a Black Latina, from the color of her skin to her curly hair. This is done with intent.

    “This has a lot to do with how young girls, especially, are conditioned through play,” he explains. “Conditioning in terms of the roles they play, the gender roles they play, the class roles they play, and even the roles they play in identifying themselves racially.”

    A big inspiration for his impetus to make the Borinqueña doll is a now-infamous experiment carried out in 1939 known as the Clark doll test, named after the psychologists who carried it out.

    “The Clark experiment pretty much cemented the idea that many [African-American] children had an internalized self-hatred of their own complexion — of their own identity,” Miranda-Rodriguez says. “And when they were given the choice to choose between a white baby doll and a Black baby doll, they played with the white doll. And when they weren’t allowed to play with the white doll and were only given a chance to play with the Black doll, they were very upset.”

    This is the level of care and attention to detail Miranda-Rodriguez imbues his stories with as well, always looking for a way to intersect the escapism of comic books with a conscious finger on the pulse of what real-world topics need to be highlighted.

    “Introducing this character to a child, particularly little girls, to me is revolutionary because I’m giving [them] a choice between ‘Do you want to play with the baby doll or the fashion doll?’ [or] ‘Do you want to actually play with the superhero?’” he says. “The superhero that looks like you, the superhero that actually speaks to your heritage, the superhero that has your hair color, your mother’s hair texture, [and] your skin color. A superhero that actually comes from a real place. A superhero that affirms their identity, that affirms their place and affirms their visibility.”

    Representation and inclusiveness is a topic he’s fastidiously touched on before in the “La Borinqueña” series and arguably serves as the thematic throughline for it as a whole.

    The goal, he expresses, is to address not only the internalized racism that the Clark test demonstrated but also an “internalized colonialism” that he surmises exists within some Puerto Ricans as well. The country once banned its own flag and demonized its nationalist heroes, and that has led to what he says is the painful effect that some “don’t see the value in our heritage, we don’t see the value in our heroes.” Adorning La Borinqueña in the Puerto Rican colors is a way to counteract that.

    The hope for Miranda-Rodriguez and Boss Fight Studios is to have the dolls ready for sale by Día de los Reyes — January. It’s an important holiday in Latin America, particularly in Puerto Rico, which is known for its extended Christmas holiday season. The doll will be distributed online and available in certain stores across the East Coast.

    “Our hope is that we’re entering into a space that’s dominated by multibillion-dollar corporations so that big stores like Walmart or Target see the value of La Borinqueña action figures [and] La Borinqueña dolls and put them on the shelves,” Miranda-Rodriguez says.

    The endeavor was preceded by a successful campaign with Puerto Rican cocoa processor Chocolate Cortés, which sold limited-edition chocolate bars with La Borinqueña comic strips printed on the wrappers. The run exhausted the Puerto Rico inventory and forced Chocolate Cortés to tap into its Florida-based distribution point. It validated Miranda-Rodriguez’s long-held aspiration to work with and support local businesses,

    As always, he and his team at Somos Arte (which includes his wife, Kyung Jeon-Miranda, as projects director) will continue to push forward with bigger plans for their works and strive to get them in front of new audiences.

    “There is a necessity for us as Latin people to see the value in our own intellectual properties, and our own art, and our own stories,” he says. “So that we can show the rest of the world that our stories, our characters, and our toys need to be on the same shelves as other heroes as well.”

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    Juan Arroyo

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  • Morir Soñando Makes History as the United Palace’s First All-Dominican Comedy Show

    Morir Soñando Makes History as the United Palace’s First All-Dominican Comedy Show

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    Karina Munoz
    Karina Munoz

    If you’re Dominican, chances are you’re familiar with morir soñando, a simple but refreshingly crisp batida (milkshake) made with milk, orange juice, and vanilla extract. As simple as the three-ingredient drink seems, there’s a reason it’s given such a poetic name. “Morir soñando” translates as “to die dreaming,” and after just one sip, one instantly feels like they’ve been transported into a dream — even if just for a matter of seconds. That was exactly the feeling Dominican American comedians and real-life besties Sasha Merci and Glorelys Mora, who both grew up in uptown (Merci specfically in the Bronx), wanted audiences to feel when they created their first all-Dominican comedy show back in 2019. On Monday, Nov. 6, the Morir Soñando show took over the historic United Palace, formerly Loew’s 175th Street Theatre, in Washington Heights. It was the first show in the New York Comedy Festival to include an all-Dominican lineup, and just like the beverage, it felt like a dream for the Dominican community.

    The show opened up with a special musical performance by Dominican bachata artist Jae Camilo and included an impressive lineup of Dominican comedians, from up-and-coming stars like Julio Diaz, Mr. Nuevayol, and Dee Nasty to established comics with HBO Max specials, including Aida Rodriguez and Ian Lara. Mora was the evening’s host and Merci also had her own stage time, making it a jam-packed lineup filled with eight talented Dominican comics that sold out the show within weeks.

    Karina Munoz
    Karina Munoz

    Aside from the United Palace, sponsors included Led Black’s The Uptown Collective, Dominican Writers, Word Up Books, Little Dominican Republic, mitútv, and Jalao NYC, which hosted the event’s afterparty.

    Located in el Alto Manhattan’s Washington Heights, home to the nation’s most prominent Dominican community, the United Palace is one of the island’s largest and most spectacular theaters. Occupying a full city block, the theater’s lavish design replicates that of a royal palace. It opened its doors in 1930 and was originally built with the intention of showcasing films, and it’s since become a cultural hub for the performing arts — where everyone from Bob Dylan and Lenny Kravitz to Aventura, Bad Bunny, and Becky G have performed. It has also served as a filming location for “John Wick: Chapter 3” and TV series like NBC’s “Smash,” Netflix’s “Luke Cage,” HBO’s “Crashing,” and Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building.” But before Morir Soñando, it had yet to house a comedy show, let alone one with only Dominican comics. This is something Merci and Mora had dreamed of being able to pull off for years.

    “It means so much to have Morir Soñando as part of the New York City Comedy Festival, because the festival doesn’t have a lot of Latino representation and it definitely doesn’t have Dominican representation. It’s the first time it has ever been done where there’s a whole Dominican lineup at the festival,” Mora tells POPSUGAR. “I keep telling everybody this was a dream come true. Obviously, I still want to record a special at some point in my career. But this right here, what happened on Monday, was my dream come true in comedy. Anything that happens after this is a cherry on top. I feel like I really made my community proud.”

    The show took place at the Palace’s foyer, with audiences seated around the stage and gathering upstairs in the mezzanine area, which included a VIP lounge, a step and repeat, a bar serving drinks and light snacks — including empanadas from a local Dominican spot — and a table with copies of Rodriguez’s new memoir “Legitimate Kid.” There was even a large Dominican flag hanging from the foyer’s balcony in honor of uptown’s Dominican community.

    Karina Munoz
    Karina Munoz
    Karina Munoz
    Karina Munoz

    “The Uptown Collective was significant in making the introductions and the connection and really building that trust with United Palace. They have the relationship, and we’ve been talking about wanting to be there since we started the show,” Mora explains. “Led [Black] is a person who works really hard with the Uptown community. We told him we needed help. We were like we just need someone that’s going to make this dream bigger, and that’s what this project is — it’s really bigger than Sasha and I. It is a community project. We wanted everyone that is uptown working to really be a part of it.”

    While each comic’s style and set was different, all of them highlighted their experiences being Dominican Americans, whether it was Lara touching on what it’s like for Black Dominicans to finally have their moment or Merci joking about being a Dominican living in Los Angeles, where we’re hardly recognized as Latines, to Rodriguez, who is half-Dominican and half-Boricua, sharing how the Dominican community has warmly embraced her since she really started embracing her Dominican roots after finally reuniting with her father in the Dominican Republic. Whether they grew up uptown, in the outer boroughs, or even outside of New York, every comic and their unique story was embraced and celebrated by the posse of Dominicans who came out to show their support that evening. There was no competition between talent or shade thrown by any of the guests. It was all love and a joyful celebration of la cultura.

    “I remember when I had first started doing social media and when I did the movie ‘De Lo Mio’ and seeing the impact that had on the Dominican community and how they came out for the film. I was like, man, Dee [Nasty] and I should do a standup show,” Merci tells POPSUGAR. “Then I met Glorelys and we came up with Sancocho (a smaller-scale comedy show the duo produced for the Dominican community), and after that, we wanted to do something that was very intentional. We wanted to do something that was going to bring the Dominican community together and showcase our community’s talent. Morir Soñando stemmed from the idea of making a comedy show for and by Dominican Americans.”

    Merci and Mora insist that they’re just getting started and hope to host a Morir Soñando show at the United Palace every year — with the dream of one day being able to fill every seat in the venue’s main theater. It’s not a far stretch, considering how quickly tickets sold out this time around.

    “This was a very special moment, and I addressed that during my set. I started doing comedy in 2011, and at that time the landscape of standup comedy was very different. There weren’t that many Dominican comedians doing comedy at the top level,” says Lara, who was the show’s closer. “So to see a lineup strictly based off just Dominican comedians who are all in their own right killing it and coming together on a standup stage was surreal. Doing it at United Palace was just the cherry on top, because anybody who’s from New York, especially Uptown, you know how legendary of a place it is.”

    Everything about the event felt like a community effort — from the Dominicans in the audience who showed their support and excitement for everyone who hit the stage to the numerous ways the show’s producers and sponsors worked to show their devotion to everyone involved. It was clear that this was more than just your regular comedy show. This was a community effort to celebrate and support Dominican creatives and entrepreneurs at every level, because when we show up for our people, we go big or go home. Morir Soñando isn’t just a dream anymore. It’s a reality made possible by every Dominican who was involved in the event’s production, y créeme we are just getting started.

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    Johanna Ferreira

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  • Janelle Monáe’s “Dirty Computer” Will Forever Be the Anthem to My Own Queer Journey – POPSUGAR Australia

    Janelle Monáe’s “Dirty Computer” Will Forever Be the Anthem to My Own Queer Journey – POPSUGAR Australia

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    This LGBTQ+ History Month, we’re asking writers to reflect on a moment in queer pop culture history that has allowed them to experience queer liberation in their own lives. Check out our coverage here.

    When Janelle Monáe released “Make Me Feel,” the funky hit single off her third studio album, “Dirty Computer,” in February 2018, the song consumed my thoughts. I was 19 at the time, and the year had been a significant one for me – I had been dealing with my parents’ divorce, started rehashing religious trauma, and shaved all my hair off. And on top of all that, I began to question my sexuality.

    But Monáe’s catchy lyrics – “That’s just the way you make me feel” – kept echoing in my head. The song itself was immediately praised as a bisexual anthem, and Monáe’s music video with Tessa Thompson portrayed an irresistible flirtationship between the two.

    At that point in my life, I’d often struggled to put my sexuality into words, so I’d run away from the thought of labeling myself. But something changed that spring, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that “Dirty Computer” was released alongside my own journey, providing a soundtrack to emotions I’d long kept deep within myself.

    Since childhood, I’d attended weekly Sunday service at my Baptist church with my parents and went to a private Christian school from kindergarten to eighth grade. Years of homophobic, transphobic, and misogynist language was spouted from the mouths of my Sunday school teachers and the dean at my school, but that never stopped me from listening to secular music.

    I was 11 when I first heard Monáe’s music, and it was ironically during a Kmart commercial for the back-to-school season, as it played “Tightrope” featuring OutKast’s Big Boi. The catchy track – which happened to be the debut single for 2010’s “The ArchAndroid” – feels timeless and still holds a place on Monáe’s setlist for their ongoing “The Age of Pleasure” Tour. I occasionally listened to “The Electric Lady,” but something clicked when “Dirty Computer” was released.

    Perhaps it was because, alongside “Dirty Computer”‘s release, Monáe gifted their fans an entire 48-minute “emotion picture” of a dystopian and science-fiction scope into a world that began with her character Jane 57821 being labeled as “dirty,” which referenced the marginalized and oppressed. The film and album also introduced me to the concept of Afrofuturism. Little did I know that Monáe’s usage of Afrofuturism throughout their discography portrayed a future full of Black, queer people, one that I felt I could truly belong to.

    In high school, I assumed that my allyship to the queer community ended there – but nothing more. As I surrounded myself with more friends that identified as LGBTQ+ and consumed more queer media via Tumblr, though, I began rethinking my sexuality. I was astonished by Monáe’s unapologetic nature to their Blackness, womanhood, and queer identity, which is something that I didn’t know was possible to do at once. Between the album’s empowerment anthems like “Django Jane” and colorful labia-lined pants from the “PYNK” music video, I quickly became obsessed with the album and attended the “Dirty Computer” Tour three times the following year.

    “Monáe perseveres past the misogynoir, and I’ve been taking notes.”

    Five years later, the entire album feels timeless and as moving as it did on the first listen. In “I Like That,” Monáe made a reference to being called “weird,” and as a Black girl who’s definitely leaned on the “otherness” or alternative spectrum of Blackness, I feel seen every time I listen to it. Their androgynous, suit-forward style has been an inspiration for my evolving style, and their public stance to be a “free-ass motherf*cker” will always inspire me to express myself to the fullest. Beyond style and personality, I’ve admired Monáe’s approach to sexual liberation amid online discourse that has revolved around others trying to police their body.

    Regardless of the negative pushback they’ve received for their music videos or performances that celebrate sexual autonomy and Black bodies, Monáe perseveres past the misogynoir, and I’ve been taking notes ever since my 19-year-old self first listened to “Make Me Feel.”

    Indeed, the summer after “Dirty Computer” was released, I attended my first Pride and haven’t missed an annual celebration since. Although I haven’t come out to a majority of my family, I would hope that my expression of Blackness and gender identity can silently speak for itself. As I revisit Monáe’s discography, I’m grateful for their enduring queer bops.

    In September, I even attended Monáe’s “The Age of Pleasure” Tour at Brooklyn’s Kings Theatre. The three-act show was the second sold-out stop in New York City, and although the night was a precursor to the city’s recent flooding, you’d have no idea that Brooklyn was plagued with rain, thanks to Monáe’s dazzling performance. Described by the singer as a “safe oasis,” the two-hour set was an ode to the pleasure politics of “The Age of Pleasure” while paying homage to the revolutionary queer anthems from “Dirty Computer” and “The ArchAndroid.”

    Five years ago, I may have known very little about the intersection of my queer identity and Black womanhood, but thanks to Monáe’s artistry, I’m able to regularly reflect on my own revolutionary politics and apply them to my life.

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    Noella williams

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  • Unapologetic and Never Underdressed: Black Women’s Power on and Off the Runways at NYFW

    Unapologetic and Never Underdressed: Black Women’s Power on and Off the Runways at NYFW

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    Courtesy of Virginia Cumberbatch
    Courtesy of Virginia Cumberbatch

    In the last few years, we’ve witnessed a renewed urgency and energy around the pursuit of racial equity. And as a racial justice educator and culture writer, I’ve been curious if these commitments to a more just future have manifested as visceral investments — shaping new conversations, elevating new voices, and empowering new agency to shape culture. Three years removed from the impetus of this cultural reckoning (namely, the deaths of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd), I’ve questioned whether the headlines, tweets, black boxes on Instagram, and financial pledges were just performative action, and if America’s short attention span would once again undermine the pursuit of a more inclusive and equitable future.

    Throughout American history, some of the most effective barometers of our political posture have been spaces of cultural consequences, and the world of fashion serves as one of those cultural spaces. Indeed, at the intersection of fashion, politics, and culture has always been the Black experience.

    So my curiosity led me to my first New York Fashion Week experience. In conversation with Black scholars, artists, writers, and designers, I attempted to survey the runways and walkways of New York for signs of a new dress code to propel our ongoing protests for our humanity, stories, and style to matter.

    My New York Fashion Week started a week early in the galleries of some of New York’s most inspired museums. After an interview with the founder of The Race and Fashion Database, Kimberly Jenkins, I was invited to a private tour she was hosting of the “Black Power to Black People: Branding the Black Panther Party” exhibit at the Poster House museum. And I was able to experience one of the most brilliant capturings of the power of design, storytelling, and aesthetics to transform culture.

    “I witnessed a reclamation of roots, ancestry, and origins.”

    This beautifully curated exhibit by Es-pranza Humphrey surveys the incredible archives of posters and collateral materials of the Black Panther Party and its decades-long political revolution through design. The combination of a black beret, a black leather jacket, pants, boots, and exposed weapons formed the military-style uniform for the Black Panther Party in the late 1960s, and that look has become an enduring symbol that still articulates political dissonance and cultural determination today. The posters, meanwhile, were used to rally community around education programs, instigate political foes, and energize support for prison-release campaigns. The exhibit was a reminder of the many ways Black people, and particularly Black women, including Kathleen Cleaver, Angela Davis, and Afeni Shakur (yes, mother of hip-hop legend Tupac Shakur), had stylized their revolution.

    It was here in conversation with Humphrey and the images immortalized in the posters on display that the idea of rootedness offered the perfect prism to experience and explore New York Fashion Week. This was further confirmed during my awe-inspiring afternoon at the “Africa Fashion” exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. I was surprised, yet grateful, for the exhibit’s entry point — a map documenting each African country’s year of independence from its European or Western colonizer. It was as if the curators had invited us to unapologetically bask in the evolution of African fashion, textiles, and aesthetic choices, and smirk at the Western world’s eventual adaptation and at times appropriation of Black brilliance and beauty.

    What lead curator Christine Checinska prioritized in the exhibit was in essence what Black designers, stylists, and taste-makers have known and practiced for decades in America. There is an innate awareness that the adornment of Black bodies — the act of asserting the agency to dress oneself as an expression of mood, personality, cultural practices — is political. And it is this knowledge that reinforces Black fashion as a tool for political articulation and, when appropriate, political dissonance and resistance.

    What was so thoughtfully curated at the Brooklyn Museum exhibit (which is up through Oct. 22) was also on display across the Brooklyn Bridge in several showrooms and runways at NYFW. I witnessed a reclamation of roots, ancestry, and origins with unabashed reverence and eloquence. To be clear, this wasn’t a thematic homage to be appreciated for just this season’s collection; this marked the origins of many designers’ stories and motivation for their work.

    “The Diotima designs are a rebuttal and refusal of the Euro-centric gaze.”

    This was evident in my last (and, with fear of retribution from others, favorite) show of NYFW. A friend of a friend, the talented stylist and editorial director Ronald Burton III, had passed along an invitation to attend the Diotima presentation. Rachel Scott, the brand’s founder, is a Jamaican designer who launched the line just a few months into the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Her love and appreciation for the varied stories of the Black diaspora is vividly present in the literal and figurative fabric of her clothes. The Caribbean serves as her clear inspiration, but just like Africa’s revolution of fashion, it is the reference to the origins of Black presence in the Caribbean that offers a disruptive layer to the story. Her work is intricate and provocative — with seductive cutouts, backless silhouettes, and breathtaking draping of what most Americans would consider nontraditional textiles. By nature, the Diotima designs are a rebuttal and refusal of the Eurocentric gaze and the continued presence and occupation of colonization throughout the Caribbean and the Black diaspora.

    The result of her Caribbean-inspired audacity is a disruption of the fashion industry’s traditions, and the creation of a collection that can only be described as poetic, angelic, and elegant. As Jenkins, who is also a fashion scholar and professor and the former host of podcast “The Invisible Seam,” told me, designs like Diotima’s offer a necessary agency and artistic expression for melanated bodies. “Fashion is in no way frivolous. Fashion is gendered, it’s classed, it’s racialized,” Jenkins told me over a cup of coffee. “In fact, we have some moral and political stigmas that are attached to our clothing. What is often posed to us as Black people, and specifically as Black women, is how well can you work not to disrupt people’s ideology and the hierarchy. [Fashion] is far from being a neutral practice.”

    The Diotima NYFW presentation was a departure from traditional collection debuts. Instead of a seated show, the Diotima team invited everyone to a downtown art gallery where models adorned by Diotima’s latest designs sauntered around the room, sometimes posed along the white walls as if they were 4D art. The models brought to life the interplay of the fabrics — crochet and beads, cotton and linens — reflecting the conflict of the story that is a part of Jamaica, the Caribbean, and most of the Black American experience: the legacy of both slavery and pain, and our collective resilience and beauty. Scott’s artistry is an acknowledgement of that multilayered story, as well as a reclamation of the beauty and boldness of Black identity, power, and cultural autonomy.

    A few days later, after wrapping up my nearly three weeks on the East Coast, I had the pleasure of speaking with Paola Mathé, founder and creative director of the popular e-commerce brand Fanm Djanm. Originally based in Harlem, the head wrap brand continues to source its fabrics from Haiti and across the Black diaspora, but it now calls Austin, TX, home. A few minutes into our conversation, I asked the New Jersey native about her experience at NYFW as a designer. She responded emphatically, “I’m really careful not to call myself a designer. When people ask me what I do in fashion, I say I am a storyteller.”

    I found this admission to be indicative of how her line of head wraps came to be and continue to evolve. A Haitian-born creative, Mathé birthed her line out of necessity and responsibility — a necessity to make her life and hair routine more efficient and easygoing as a server at a fast-paced New York City restaurant some years after graduating college, and a responsibility to young Paola and the many Black girls with textured, coiled hair whose locks and tresses had been policed, politicized, and permed their whole life.

    “I saw there was a problem that needed to be solved — so many people who look like me in New York who want to wear head wraps for convenience and as part of their cultural expression — but never thought it was appropriate or OK in certain settings,” she told me. That resistance of the status quo, the refusal to abide by the social politics that have governed the styling of Black hair and bodies, is innate to the meaning behind Fanm Djanm, which translates to “strong woman,” and articulates a decisive posture to be unapologetic, undeterred, and, if you follow Mathé on Instagram then you know, never underdressed.

    “I think I am giving Black girls, women of color, luxury, because I’ve offered them something that is true to them, true to their story.”

    Both Diotima and Fanm Djanm articulate references of and reverence for culture, context, and history, while remaining committed to an ever-evolving expression of Blackness both in its multifacetedness and collectiveness. Mathé said it like this: “What I realize this New York Fashion Week is that fashion is storytelling. And fashion for me has been a vehicle to tell my story. For so long, fashion has been about luxury, steeped in elitism and classism. But I think of luxury as accessible, tangible, and beautiful. I think I am giving Black girls, women of color, luxury, because I’ve offered them something that is true to them, true to their story.” Diotima offers a similar design lens, one that rejects European style and whiteness as the standard. As Scott offers on her website, “I advocate for a more expansive definition of luxury, one that is not exclusively centered in Europe.”

    In response to my inquiry about the reception of Fanm Djanm by the fashion industry — especially in the aftermath of corporate promises and pledges from leaders in fashion to diversify the runways and their shelves — Mathé had this to say: “I think the fashion industry is unconcerned with my company. And that’s OK. Fashion is such a gatekeeping industry. People with the right connections, with the right story, get granted access. So, I’d rather focus on what I do and who I do it for than spend all this energy trying to fit in and sucking up to the right people.”

    The design ethos of Fanm Djanm and Diotima — alongside initiatives like Aurora James’s 15 Percent Pledge and the Black in Fashion Council, the brain child of Sandrine Charles and The Cut’s Lindsay Peoples Wagner — are indications of how Black women are walking into the future, whether on the runways of Fashion Week or walkways throughout this country. Perhaps it is this approach, this stylistic attitude that sums up the current dress code for Black women — unbothered, unapologetic, and undeterred. And as consistent seamstresses of political, cultural, and stylistic revolutions from the runways of New York to the sidewalks of Jamaica and Austin, never underdressed.

    Virginia Cumberbatch is a racial justice educator, writer, and creative activist and the CEO and cofounder of Rosa Rebellion, a production company for creative activism by and for women of color.

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    Virginia Cumberbatch

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  • TikTok Star April Lockhart Is Expanding the World of Adaptive Fashion

    TikTok Star April Lockhart Is Expanding the World of Adaptive Fashion

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    Until recently, adaptive fashion — specially designed clothing for people who have difficulty dressing themselves — has been little more than a legend in the disabled community. Thanks to fashion content creators like April Lockhart, however, conversations surrounding the need for accessible fashion have transcended the hypothetical realm of “maybe someday.” In making their voices heard, Lockhart and her fellow disabled fashion influencers have laid the groundwork for an adaptive fashion revolution.

    A self-described “disabled fashion girlie,” Lockhart, who was born with amniotic band syndrome, has spent nearly two years fostering an online community for disabled people to share their stories in the context of fashion. “Disabilities are so different within the sphere of the disabled community,” Lockhart tells POPSUGAR. “My disability can be so vastly different than someone else’s, which is cool because we can relate on the common ground that we share something different. But also, I can learn so much about what they’re going through; they can learn what I’m going through.”

    “Now, in general, I’m very open and comfortable with my hand and my body.”

    After years of hiding her limb difference from her followers, Lockhart challenged herself to step outside of her comfort zone. In January 2022, she started her series “Normalizing Disabled Fashion Girlies,” which aimed to promote disability pride through a fashion lens.

    “[It] sort of stemmed out of this personal itch I’d been having for a while,” she says. “I was born with a limb difference; I don’t have my fully formed left hand, and [the series] was kind of birthed out of New Year’s resolutions.” For many social media users who came across her content, simply seeing someone with a disability in the fashion space was new. Still, the comments Lockhart received were overwhelmingly positive. “Now, in general, I’m very open and comfortable with my hand and my body,” she adds.

    Since launching that series, Lockhart’s social media platform has become a safe space for conversations about disability pride. She continues, “That kind of launched me into a new season of life and confidence in general, and it’s been a cool journey for me to be on. I’m sure that anybody can relate to the fact that self-esteem is such a journey and we go through waves of feeling comfortable with ourselves and then feeling like we’re starting all over again. I think that’s just being human.”

    Personally, the connections Lockhart has made as a result of her online candor have been invaluable. Professionally, her platform has given her opportunities to influence the scope of adaptive fashion, a long-term objective she’s eager to see through.

    April Lockhart

    While adaptive clothing does exist in niche retail spaces, function largely takes precedence over fashion. For avid shoppers in the disabled community — for whom little beats the thrill of securing a sleek, new pair of Doc Martens or the perfect pair of denim — the joy of finding a sartorial treasure can often be spoiled if the pieces they’re searching for aren’t adaptive. Of course, for some, there are a few workarounds. “I, at the end of the day, will always go for fashion over function,” Lockhart says. “I will figure out a way; I will make my husband button the dress for me if it’s the dress I want; I will find a way to wear it.”

    “I think some of the swaps are easier than people think, and then you’re not sacrificing the style.”

    Lockhart’s TikTok and Instagram videos support this resolve for style. In between takes of herself trying on kaleidoscopic dresses or thrifted sweaters, her husband’s hands occasionally pop into the frame to assist with a zipper or an inconveniently placed clasp. Some people, though, require varying levels of assistance to get dressed, which is where adaptive clothing comes into play.

    Adaptive clothing is not a new concept. For decades, specialized brands have created clothing with more accessible features: velcro closures instead of buttons, magnetic closures, tagless clothing, one-handed zippers, shoes without laces, and pieces made from sensitive fabrics. But while adaptive clothing like this can be tracked down, it’s not readily available at mainstream retailers. This means many people in the disabled community do not have access to this clothing, and those that do have strong feelings about the medical look and feel of the garments.

    “I would love to be in the rooms [with designers], trying things on and saying, ‘This doesn’t really work,’ or ‘This does work,’ or ‘This makes my life a lot easier,’” Lockhart says of developing clothing that is both functional and fashionable. “I think the thing that most of the disabled community can resonate with, too, is we’ve figured things out over the years on our own for sure, but there are definitely ways to make things a lot easier.”

    Though brands have had decades to reshape their sales models to be more intentionally inclusive of the disabled community, little progress has been made. Some notable brands — including Tommy Hilfiger Adaptive, UGG and Zappos Adaptive, Aerie, and Skims — have made strides in the adaptive fashion industry, but, as Lockhart points out, “there’s always room for improvement.”

    “There’s a huge part of the disabled community that loves fashion,” says Lockhart, who made her runway debut while wearing Victoria’s Secret at Runway of Dreams during New York Fashion Week this September. “I think some of the swaps are easier than people think, and then you’re not sacrificing the style.”

    In terms of immediate next steps, Lockhart hopes to see more big-name fashion brands adopt a business model that considers disabled people in every aspect of product development. By naturally integrating disabled models in marketing ads and runway shows, retailers can take the first step to becoming part of the adaptive fashion conversation. Additionally, Lockhart says, clothing brands can provide adaptive alternatives to existing staple pieces and release capsule collections made in smaller quantities to meet the needs of their disabled shoppers.

    “They can take pieces that we’re all wearing anyway and find ways to make easy, adaptive swaps,” Lockhart says. “I would love to see brands put the effort into it, and I think I’m seeing a few brands start to have those conversations behind the scenes. Maybe it’s six months or a year from now, but I think we’ll start to see it more.”

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    Chanel Vargas

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  • An Ode to the Jersey Dress, the 2000s Hip-Hop Trend That Changed Everything

    An Ode to the Jersey Dress, the 2000s Hip-Hop Trend That Changed Everything

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    YouTube users Victoria Monét, Dmitry Fedkiv; Getty | Mark Mainz, Theo Wargo
    YouTube users Victoria Monét, Dmitry Fedkiv; Getty | Mark Mainz, Theo Wargo

    A full embrace of impracticality is one of the hallmarks of 2000s fashion. Jeans were cut low past the pubic bone with no regard or support for the stomachs above them. Men’s shorts were oversize and worn in the most inconvenient location: just underneath the butt, secured with a belt desperately clinging to thighs with every swaggered stride. They stopped just above the ankles — pants with an identity crisis. Baby T-shirt sleeves burrowed deep into your armpit, greedy, apparently, for sweat stains. Not a drop of functionality was to be found in these garments. But they weren’t meant to make sense — the aesthetic is what folks were after. And this rang true for one of the decade’s most recognizable looks: the jersey dress.

    The trend, as a 2003 New York Times article tells it, was birthed from a place of necessity. For capitalists, that is. At the time, Mitchell & Ness, a sports goods brand, was enjoying a surge in popularity from a new market comprising Black and Latine city dwellers. Since the mid-’80s, the brand had been creating replicas of vintage jerseys, aka throwbacks. As the brand’s owner at the time, Peter Capolino, told Fortune in 2003, “I figured my market was 35-to-75-year-old conservative, college-educated, suburban white men.” But in 1998, after Outkast’s Big Boi was styled in a throwback Dale Murphy (Atlanta Braves) jersey for the duo’s “Skew It on the Bar-B” music video, it quickly became clear that his target market was far Blacker and swaggier.

    The most powerful thing about the jersey dress is that it celebrated a very particular brand of femininity: one that appropriated parts of a male-dominated culture and remixed it in its own image.

    But remember, it was the 2000s, a time when an oversize silhouette was the preferred look. The only fitted thing you were wearing was a baseball cap. These new customers were buying jerseys in the largest sizes available. The mad grab for size-XL-and-up jerseys left Mitchell & Ness with a bunch of smaller styles sitting in the warehouse. So, as the brand reps tell it, they decided to turn the extra stock into dresses, at the behest of the company’s then-President Reuben Harley. Harley gave one of the dresses to R&B singer Faith Evans, who wore the piece on an episode of BET’s “106 & Park” at the top of the aughts. The rest is history.

    It seemed as if jersey dresses were everywhere. Mariah Carey took the stage at the 2003 NBA All Stars game in two jersey dresses. The first was a throwback Chicago Bulls piece with Michael Jordan’s number 23. It stopped well above her knees, the sides boasting a lace-up detail to make it even more alluring. The other look, a Michael Jordan Washington Wizards jersey, had a low neckline and reached the floor, grasping every curve on the way down. That same weekend, rapper Eve was spied out and about wearing another Michael Jordan throwback dress — this one for the Chicago Bulls — paired with the It shoe of the time: high-heeled Timbs.

    Styled by June Ambrose, R&B singer Mya starred in the 2000s “Best of Me (Remix)” music video matching JAY-Z in a powder-blue North Carolina Tar Heels Jersey, arguably the most memorable of the decade. It bore the number 23, the one Jordan wore when he played for the team in college. She recently wore a blinged-out re-creation of it in a photo shoot with Alexis Photography in June 2023, 23 years after it made hip-hop history.

    click to play video

    The jersey dress is at once tomboyish and unapologetically feminine. It was made to be accessorized, preferably with large gold hoops, rimless sunglasses with colored lenses, stacks of necklaces, and sneakers you wouldn’t dream of playing any sport in. Apropos, since the dresses, despite their obvious link to athletic teams, were decidedly impractical for any strenuous physical activity other than dancing in the club. The frivolity was the main appeal. That’s what made them so cute. They were cut to the feminine figure: pinched at the waistline, fitted enough to hug the curves, almost always stopping at a length that would allow for a generous view of the wearer’s thigh.

    You didn’t need to know the team or the player in order to wear them. If you did, it was a bonus. You were never questioned about the player’s stats or abilities. You were never shamed for not knowing any of those things. In the 2000s, wearing a T-shirt with a band whose songs you couldn’t name was a faux pas. But wearing a jersey with the name of a player you couldn’t identify in a lineup? Acceptable. Celebrated, even. Because the look was the point — not the actual engagement with sports culture.

    And with this, every girl with an ear for hip-hop from the Bronx, NY, to Inglewood, CA, embraced the piece. We were all running around in Jordan 1s, looking like Fabolous’s love interest in the music video for “Trade It All.” Whether clueless about sports or not, girls across the States were embracing the aesthetic, and soon, other clothiers like South Pole and FUBU were creating versions of the piece with their own branding.

    The impact of the jersey dress on 2000s style is generation-defining. It’s now a favorite of Gen Zers at parties honoring the decade. R&B singer Victoria Monét’s music video for “On My Mama” is an ode to early-aughts hip-hop culture and could not be complete without the fashion staple. In one scene, she wears a baby-blue jersey dress with lace-up sides, recalling Mya’s iconic “Best of Me (Remix)” look.

    click to play video

    The most powerful thing about the jersey dress is that it celebrated a very particular brand of femininity: one that appropriated parts of a male-dominated culture and remixed it in its own image. It wasn’t just sports culture; hip-hop as well was decidedly male. And the prominent fashion trends centered on menswear. Men still make up the majority in the space today, but we are enjoying a dominance of female emcees like Megan Thee Stallion, Cardi B, City Girls, and Nicki Minaj. But in the early 2000s, there was a mere handful of highly visible women rappers, and the jersey dress allowed them to participate in the culture at an entry point that was more suited to feminine sensibilities.

    It allowed girls who didn’t give a damn about a ball or the men wielding them to indulge in a fantasy far more accessible and, depending on who you ask, fun.

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    Jihan Forbes

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  • “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” Is an Enduring Love Letter to Hip-Hop and Black Women

    “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” Is an Enduring Love Letter to Hip-Hop and Black Women

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    In the beginning, there was Ms. Lauryn Hill.

    In 1992, she emerged as a phenom as the first lady of The Fugees. Composed of Hill, Wyclef Jean, and Pras Michel, the group solidified themselves as a hip-hop powerhouse before their controversial split in 1997. Instead of crumbling, though, Hill rose even higher with her debut solo album, 1998’s “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.” The album — which she’s primarily credited with writing, producing, and arranging — quickly cemented Hill’s lasting impact in hip-hop.

    “Miseducation” not only provided a distinct onset of timeless lessons taken from the informal school of Ms. Hill, but it also was her audible love letter to hip-hop, Black women, and the communal Black experience.

    “Yo hip-hop, started out in the heart / Now everybody tryin’ to chart,” Hill rapped on “Superstar.” As she spoke to the need of maintaining one’s self amid fame to govern true artistic integrity, Hill cleverly used her past experience in the industry to discuss issues she’s faced as a Black woman in hip-hop, both as a praised superstar and a potential target.

    Now, as the album marks its 25th anniversary alongside hip-hop turning 50, we’re revisiting what makes it such a fundamental part of hip-hop history — and its enduring life lessons straight from Hill herself. In spite of the backlash she’s received for her crowning glory over the years (including accusations of musical theft and improper accreditation), the New Jersey native persevered nonetheless — declaring in her 2018 Medium essay that she is “the [sole] architect of [her] creative expression.”

    click to play video

    “With ‘The Miseducation,’ there was no precedent. I was, for the most part, free to explore, experiment and express,” Hill, now 48 and a mother of six, explained to Rolling Stone in January 2021. “After ‘The Miseducation,’ there were scores of tentacled obstructionists, politics, repressing agendas, unrealistic expectations, and saboteurs EVERYWHERE. People had included me in their own narratives of THEIR successes as it pertained to my album, and if this contradicted my experience, I was considered an enemy.” In the age of cancel culture, it’s something that she and fellow women rappers continue to deal with.

    Then and now, “Miseducation” was about addressing community as a testament of relatability. On “Doo Wop (That Thing),” she states, “Don’t be a hard rock when you really are a gem / Baby girl, respect is just a minimum / N****s f*cked up and you still defending ’em / Now, Lauryn is only human / Don’t think I haven’t been through the same predicament.” The breakout single garnered commercial success with two Grammy wins for best R&B song and best female R&B vocal performance as Hill sermonized why we need to be cautious about how we approach internal and external relationships with the famous proverb, “How you gon’ win when you ain’t right within?”

    One walked so the other could run.

    Meanwhile, Hill’s revered ballad “To Zion” offered a conscious ode to impending motherhood. “Unsure of what the balance held / I touched my belly overwhelmed / By what I had been chosen to perform . . . But everybody told me to be smart / ‘Look at your career,’ they said / ‘Lauryn, baby use your head’ / But instead I chose to use my heart,” she sang to her then-unborn son Zion.

    Cardi B faced similar condemnation in 2018 when she revealed she was pregnant with her daughter, Kulture. But instead of folding under pressure, the Bronx-bred emcee tweeted, “I started winning when the whole world was doubting on me! think imma lose with my little baby counting on me?” It seemed to piggyback off Hill’s explanation of “To Zion.”

    As Hill put it in her own Medium essay: “The song To Zion gave encouragement to women during challenging pregnancies. There are children who were given a chance at life because their Mothers experienced moral and emotional support through this song.”

    It’s no coincidence that after Hill first won best rap album with The Fugees at the 1997 Grammys and swept at the 1999 ceremony — taking home five of 10 nominations, which included album of the year, best R&B album, and best new artist — Cardi became the first woman emcee to win best rap album as a solo artist in 2019 with her debut LP, “Invasion of Privacy.” One walked so the other could run.

    click to play video

    Hill not only paved a way for women rappers to be all-encompassing, but she also created what is controversially one of the best diss tracks in hip-hop history. With “Lost Ones,” she apparently addressed the affair and severed personal relationship she had with Fugees band member Jean. She chose violence straight out of the gate, rapping on her LP’s second track, “It’s funny how money change a situation / Miscommunication lead to complication / My emancipation don’t fit your equation . . . Some wan’ play young Lauryn like she dumb / But remember not a game new under the sun / Everything you did has already been done.”

    Danyel Smith, former editor in chief of Vibe and host of the podcast “Black Girl Songbook,” noted on her “The Diss-Education of Lauryn Hill” episode from March 2021, “While there’s so much going on on ‘Lost Ones,’ it’s exquisitely focused and refined. Diss records are called diss records because one rapper is being disrespectful of another. ‘Lost Ones’ wins because Lauryn is being respectfully disrespectful.” Smith also broke down the track bar for bar, unpacking everything from Hill’s subtle confrontation of her ex’s insecurities, manipulation, and hypocrisy to gaslighting, the self-awareness of her infancy in the game, and the threat of karma.

    After the hostile outpouring of emotions on “Lost Ones,” the track “I Used to Love Him” featuring Mary J. Blige welcomed that communal embrace of sisterhood and pain. On the track, Hill and Blige both analyze their transgressions from the toxic aftermath of relationships as they seek and accept spiritual repentance. “But my heart is gold, see, I took back my soul / And totally let my creator control / The life which was his, the life which was his to begin with,” they conjointly sing. The collaboration remains underrated in the grander conversation of hip-hop and R&B duets, even though this is one of the more R&B-leaning records on the album. But in true Hill fashion, she has no problem being an outlier among the crowd.

    Hill truly offered Black women a belief in self.

    During a time when the “sexualization of the Black female body was the standard,” as Hill wrote for Medium, she stood for something different. As a dark-skinned, innately talented, beautiful, cognizant woman with swag who could masterfully articulate the complexities of being such, Hill combated the boys’ club rhetoric by being “a breath of fresh air, a hope and — unrealistically — a solution to what was wrong with hip-hop and its representation of women at the time,” author Joan Morgan wrote in “She Begat This: 20 Years of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.” Hill truly offered Black women a belief in self and intimate sensuality without the ascendant hypersexualization.

    And she allowed that complexity to shine through in a combination of sound and lyricism. My favorite aspect about “Miseducation” is that it’s a perfect marriage of hip-hop and R&B. It makes sense for fans of either genre to be torn about how to categorize the album. Hill’s bars are poetic and intentional, but she also showcases her softer side with romantic hymns.

    click to play video

    “Tell Him,” a song of yearning, finds Hill reprising biblical references to express the depths of her love — “Let me be patient, let me be kind . . . ‘Cause love is not boastful / Oooh and love is not loud.” Then you have “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You,” one of those covers that feels so much like a precursor as Hill puts her artistic twang on the Frankie Valli original. Of course, there’s “Ex-Factor,” which taught the masses the word “reciprocity” and gave a succinct definition in the opening line: “It could all be so simple / But you’d rather make it hard.” “Miseducation” does an immediate 180 as a gentle Hill analyzes shattering heartbreak and questions shortcomings on the track: “Is this just a silly game / That forces you to act this way? / Forces you to scream my name / Then pretend that you can’t stay.” Despite Jean being the unnamed muse of a solid portion of the LP, the song emotes a much-needed catharsis on Hill’s part.

    And finally, the D’Angelo-assisted offering “Nothing Even Matters” is arguably one of the few perfect love songs to ever exist, alongside modern-day records like H.E.R. and Daniel Caesar’s “Best Part.” Sandwiched in between the raw storytelling on “Every Ghetto, Every City” and the blaring speaking-in-tongues philosophy on “Everything Is Everything,” this ballad put every other narrative on pause and transported listeners into another dimension. It was as though Hill needed a reminder of what healthy love was — personified, concrete, and tangible.

    click to play video

    When Hill recorded her unofficial live sophomore album, “MTV Unplugged No. 2.0,” she shared, “I’m just retired from the fantasy part,” referring to the “public illusion” that “held [her] hostage” during the marvel of “Miseducation.” While the debut may be her freedom cry, we’re thankful the masterpiece exists.

    In February 2021, “Miseducation” earned its well-deserved diamond certification from the RIAA, and it remains a staple among music lovers. This goes to show that if you’re going to have one studio album quantify your entire musical legacy, let it be something like Hill’s debut.

    “Miseducation” is her alpha and omega — a body of work so impactful that it continues to inspire generations. Where would we be as a culture without the genius, vulnerability, and passion displayed on “Miseducation”? It’s a sonic work of innovation; a heartfelt tale of womanhood; a detailed, earnest journey of adulthood; and a clever outpouring so majestic that one album was just enough. And when it’s all said and done, it’ll forever stand the test of time. Amen.

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    Mya Abraham

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  • We Love Charity and Dotun’s “Bachelorette” Fairy Tale — and Got the Scoop on Their Nigerian Wedding

    We Love Charity and Dotun’s “Bachelorette” Fairy Tale — and Got the Scoop on Their Nigerian Wedding

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    It’s been a long, long time coming. But when Dotun Olubeko dropped on a knee to propose to Charity Lawson (adorably at her height level), I smiled. Then I cried. Then I texted my mom and friends I knew who were watching “The Bachelorette” (and those who stopped watching the franchise because they gave up on seeing a Black love story seasons ago). And then I rejoiced with Black Twitter, finding our way together to celebrate this historic moment in Bachelor history.

    I’ve been a Bachelor franchise viewer for about a decade, and although I have seen mixed-race women who look like me on the journey to find their partners, inclusive representation was lacking. The time for a beautiful, melanated Black couple — a gorgeous lead in Lawson and every bit the prince charming in Olubeko — has been way overdue. My joy stemmed from young people with skin as richly dark and lovely as my mother’s — and all the oft-ignored-by-the-mainstream incredible women who raised me — taking center stage. It’s needed, it’s welcome, and we must not wait another 25 years to see it again.

    Lawson and Olubeko spoke with POPSUGAR fresh off their engagement reveal, broadcasted to millions Monday night on ABC — and the love they’re feeling from fans is immense. “It’s been amazing to watch,” Olubeko shares. “We went into this leading with our hearts, just to find our person. And for this to end up being what it is, it’s an honor. And we respect the position so much, and we want to further that conversation and make sure that people understand what Black love can look like.”

    “We want to further that conversation.”

    For this Black love story, Black Twitter is already dialed in for the main event: a bustling, vibrant Nigerian wedding. “Whether I like it, there’s no avoiding it. My mom wants that to happen, like, yesterday,” Olubeko says, laughing; he comes from a vibrant, welcoming Nigerian American family. Although the couple have plans to simply do life together, they assure two weddings will take place when the timing is right. “We’re just going to take the next year or two to continue to enjoy each other’s company and live life, because it’s been so crazy for the past year. But we’re excited for the opportunity to have this Nigerian wedding, and likely that’s going to happen along with probably a more intimate one because we are meaningful people. So we want to have one that’s meaningful. But also a fun one, a fun one that’s vibrant and classic Nigerian fashion.”

    Although there will be no wedding bells in the near future, Lawson is already excited to immerse herself in the richness of Nigerian culture. “I’m teaching her Yoruba,” Olubeko shares. And of course, Lawson is here for all of the culture’s delicious food. Rice and jollof for the win, y’all.

    That authenticity from both Olubeko and Lawson made it such a fun ride watching the two find love in a hopeless place: reality TV. For Lawson, authenticity was essential, and she remained true to herself throughout the entire televised, highly scrutinized journey. “I knew for myself, if I was to be easily molded or swayed, I was going to leave or walk away from here probably not having the outcome that I truly wanted, and so it was an active thing for me,” Lawson says. “But also not something that I had to think about. I didn’t want to think about being a certain way. I just was.”

    To stay anchored in simply being Charity, faith and culture led the way. “I did bring my journals and devotions and my Bible,” Lawson shares. “Just being a woman of faith, that was helpful for me to be anchored in.”

    Her music, meanwhile, gave her the space to cut up. “The running joke for the season, the theme of the season, was ‘Wipe Me Down,’” she says, laughing, referencing the Boosie Badazz classic. “I always listened to that before a rose ceremony. Or just Beyoncé, things like that that really just allowed me to feel empowered in the moment or have a moment where I could just feel more at peace or at home and connected.”

    “After encountering something so powerful, now the approach and how we view things is totally different.”

    As Lawson starts this exciting chapter of her life — a new man and an upcoming run on “Dancing With the Stars” — she’s leaning on the works of one of our greatest late elders. “After filming, I started reading a book by bell hooks, which is ‘All About Love,’” Lawson says. “And that just allowed me to really have this overwhelming transformative outlook on what love is and how we come to know what love is. And so we often talk about it, too. After encountering something so powerful, now the approach and how we view things is totally different.”

    It’s a tale as old as the Bachelor franchise: Lawson and Olubeko can finally share their love off camera. I’m excited to see the fun shenanigans of “Bachelor in Paradise” ensue and for “The Golden Bachelor” Gerry Turner to find his golden match. (My boomer mom is especially interested in that one!) And I’m here for Lawson’s runner-up, Joey Graziadei, to search for his OTP on the next season of “The Bachelor.” It’ll be business as usual for my regular rotation of Bachelor Nation offerings. But the Charity and Dotun era will have my heart for years to come.

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    Jada Gomez

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  • In Our Shoes: How Women of Color Are Stylizing a More Liberated Future

    In Our Shoes: How Women of Color Are Stylizing a More Liberated Future

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    Women of color have long forged pathways of defiance and liberation through a legacy of serving lewks. Fashion — even at the highest and most superficial echelons — is inherently political and, when executed with the intention, culturally transformative.

    We witnessed this viscerally throughout the 20th century, with Black women dressing in their Sunday best to juxtapose the ignorant characterization of Black people as being unclean, impoverished, and uneducated. This paradox was on full display during moments of protest that turned violent. Civil rights strategists like Fannie Lou Hamer and Dr. Dorothy Height understood that the stark visuals of seeing well-dressed Black women in skirts and pantyhose brutally beaten with water hoses and police canines would be a powerful alarm for the American psyche. They were right. These deliberate sartorial choices laid the foundation for enticing white America’s attention, sympathy, and ultimately support to condemn the oppressive state of Jim Crow.

    “Then and now, women of color have used threads to fashion their resistance.”

    Nearly 60 years later, women of color have assumed these same tactics — creating intentional moments of discomfort and disruption to direct attention to the realities of ongoing injustice.

    There is a remarkable link between some of the most significant Black and Brown social justice movements, cultural shifts, and empowerment campaigns, and the aesthetic choices that were adopted. Fashion in itself is a tool of disruption — articulating taste, cultural agency, and, at times, political dissonance. Our style serves as a universal language. Then and now, women of color have used threads to fashion their resistance amidst invisibility, intolerability, and injustice.

    Back in 2019, we witnessed “The Squad” walk through the halls of Congress dressed in all white for President Trump’s State of the Union. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib deliberately chose stark white ensembles as a reference to the suffragist movement of the 1920s. But there was something acutely powerful seeing Black and Brown women stylized in all-white power suits and dresses, in a sea of mostly white men — it called out the lack of representation in Congress and referenced how women of color were not invited to participate in the suffragist movement or subsequent women’s movements. Even in the halls of Congress, women of color are forced to contend with America’s devaluing of their existence. But what AOC and her squad offered was a style guide for ongoing disruption.

    Now, a few years later — as we engage in discourse around bodily autonomy, reproductive rights, and the lack of protection of Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people — women across the country continue to make bold statements with their attire: confronting societal expectations, demanding acknowledgement of our existence, and challenging practices of systemic equity.

    This year, the stylization of cultural dissonance is taking place from the halls of Congress to the runways of New York Fashion Week to the streets of our hometowns. Back in May, in response to the questionable choice to honor Karl Lagerfeld (a known misogynist with harmful ideals of beauty) at the Met Gala, a few guests offered bold rebuttals. Actresses Viola Davis and Quannah Chasinghorse both chose to wear pink gowns. According to fashion writer Patrick Mauriès’s book “The World According to Karl,” Lagerfeld once said, “Think pink. But don’t wear it.” Davis’s extravagant, feathered, hot pink dress seemed to be a literal and figurative shading of the designer, and she called on a decades-long tradition of Black women asserting their power and refashioning ideas of beauty through the natural state of our hair.

    Chasinghorse sported a more subtle pink shade than Davis, choosing a subdued powder pink dress. But like Davis, she styled her hair and makeup with nods to her heritage, inspired by her Han and Lakota Indigenous traditions. The look challenged the often siloed and silenced visibility of Indigenous women that has instigated the Missing and Murdered and Indigenous Women movement, which seeks to elevate the staggering statistics of Indigenous women who are silently abused and killed. These stylized choices offered autonomy and agency in spaces that have been reluctant, if not refused, to offer such power to women of color. In a cultural arena historically unconcerned with our stories, Chasinghorse and Davis unapologetically took up space.

    If there is anything that the rise of the Black Lives Matter, Stop Asian Hate, and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women movements have taught us in the past few years, it is that “fear of the other,” and protection of power predicated on dehumanization, is at the core of the American social fabric; woven together by policy, social politics, and language. Perhaps there is power in examining and renegotiating the ways in which we have literally and figuratively fashioned our national paradigms, cultural practices, and misguided policies to disenfranchise, disempower, and disregard the voices and humanity of women of color and the communities they represent.

    “I challenge us to assume a new aesthetic of equity, one that becomes a uniform we all try on this year.”

    We can all agree that the summer of 2023 hasn’t just been one of the hottest recorded in the Earth’s history, but one of the most politically and thus socially hellish. We watched the undermining of our humanity from all sides. The Supreme Court has voted to deconstruct and, in some cases, abolish abortion rights, affirmative action, and debt relief, transforming a generation and deepening the already painful wounds of entrenched racial oppression. It was particularly demoralizing to watch affirmative action get overturned a few days before we celebrated the most recent federal holiday, Juneteenth. While we prepared to honor a public declaration of freedom for Black America and thus, America, we witnessed the ongoing contradiction of the American dream.

    As I prepared for my weekend celebrations in Austin, TX, I found myself oscillating between jubilee, joy, and jadedness. I’d been invited to speak at a Juneteenth Summit at the Lyndon B. Johnson School at the University of Texas in partnership with the Emancipator to discuss what Black freedom means today. Aesthetics, like writing, has always been a way to express my emotional state and my current posture in the world, and I knew my outfit choice would need to reflect my state of anger. While the idea of Juneteenth evokes celebration, I was overcome with righteous indignation, and thus chose to select an all-black ensemble that articulated militancy and rage. I put on a somewhat risqué black blazer with peek-a-boo moments throughout and black cargo pants. The monochromatic look was interrupted only by the intentional color accents of a red lip (Mac’s “Feel So Good” matte, of course) and lace-up green heels — my not-so-subtle nod to Black liberation (or Pan African flag) colors. And adorning my blazer were lapel pins highlighting the faces of some of my inspirations: James Baldwin and Rosa Parks.

    Image source: Alyssa Vidales

    Of course, I stood out from the suits and Austin business casual attire that filled the auditorium. It called into question the politics of appropriateness in an academic institution and a grand hall named after Lyndon B. Johnson. There was a cyclical operation at play that day. My outfit articulated my emotional state and stylized my intellectual posture before I ever spoke a word on stage; simultaneously, I felt emboldened to speak unfiltered, unapologetic, and unabashed.

    With the help of the tasseled blazer and vintage lapel pins, I fashioned these words to the audience: “We are less than three years removed from the so-called racial reckoning of 2020, and yet companies and institutions are saying, ‘I thought we already did that work? We wrote that check, I did that one march, we did that workshop.’ But we are talking about 400 plus years of harm; 400 plus years of creating systems that were predicated on the understanding of who would be valued as human and who would not. So, I think it’s going to take a bit longer than three years, or even sixty years, and it’s going to take a bit more than policy. It’s going to take sustained investment and a pervasive shift in our cultural paradigm.”

    And, perhaps, it will take stylizing new tactics of resistance. So, my challenge to us all is to reflect on these and other stories of resistance to inspire, inform, and set intentions for the ways we can continue to disrupt spaces and agitate the system. I challenge us to assume a new aesthetic of equity, one that becomes a uniform we all try on this year.

    Virginia Cumberbatch is racial justice educator, writer, creative activist, and the CEO/Co-Founder of Rosa Rebellion, a production company for creative activism by and for women of color. She splits her time between her hometown of Austin, Texas, and Brooklyn, New York. When she’s not elevating the voices of women of color, you can catch her styling outfits with her latest vintage finds and the designer shoes she found on sale at Nordstrom Rack. She’s a graduate of Williams College and The University of Texas at Austin’s Lyndon B. Johnson School and the author of “As We Saw It: The Story of Integration at UT.”

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    Virginia Cumberbatch

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  • The story behind the most iconic sneakers of all time

    The story behind the most iconic sneakers of all time

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    A lot of the marketing around the shoes was more like that of a car promotion, says DeLeon, who’s not sure of the exact number of pairs he owns  – he acquired five or six in the past month, and has somewhere in the 100s in total. In 1989, adverts were released, “very Spike Lee style”, as DeLeon puts it, in which Lee appears as Mars Blackmon, his character from his film She’s Gotta Have It. In the ads, he questions Jordan on what makes him the best player in the universe, and repeatedly says, “it’s gotta be the shoes!” Teaming up with Lee on the adverts was a savvy move. It was, says DeLeon, unprecedented for any brand to tap into the cultural zeitgeist like that. “I think that was the moment that, ‘ok, these are a status symbol,’” he says.

    The shoe was initially banned by the NBA because of its red-and-black colour scheme at a time when the organisation stipulated that players’ footwear had to be predominantly white. This inevitably only created a rebellious mystique around it – it is the shoe’s ability to take colour that might also have helped in its long-lasting popularity. “Whether it was the toe box or the contrast on the swoosh or the collar, the way that you could design it and make colours pop was just eminently noticeable in a way that was relatively new to sneakers, and I think that was part of it,” says DeLeon.

    Cult appeal

    Despite not owning any himself – “I’m very much a Nike Airforce guy” – Haines also nods to the design itself: “The cleanliness of the model, the way the panels are constructed and the way that they can apply hundreds or thousands of different colours to that, and different materials and keep it fresh, I think it’s a versatile sneaker, for men, for women, for kids.”

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