“As students, we’ve been trying to progress, and I think the school system should catch up as well.”

On Monday, these prom dress code flyers appeared on the walls of Stanton College Prep, a public high school in Jacksonville, Florida.

Three of the flyers showed prom dresses with low backs, plunging necklines, and a leg slit. They said, "Going to Stanton Prom? NO YOU'RE NOT."

A fourth poster shows a sleeveless gown, accompanied with text: "Going to Stanton Prom? YES YOU ARE. GOOD GIRL."

Supplied

Lily Willingham, an 18-year-old senior at the high school, found out about the posters in a group text with some friends — and she was livid.

"I saw it, and I was like, 'This is a joke. Are you kidding me?'" she told BuzzFeed News. "I was immediately so angry."

Willingham said dress code rules anger her due to their role in the over-sexualization of young women — and because those rules are rarely enforced for male students.

"I feel like that’s just demeaning — not just to women, but to men as well. They’re not animals, they can handle themselves!" she said.

"It’s a very outdated rule that needs to be updated," Willingham added. "As students, we’ve been trying to progress, and I think the school system should catch up as well."

Supplied

Also, the prom is on Saturday, and most students have already bought their dresses.

"When everyone else found out, they were all as equally angry as I was," she said.

By the end of the day, they'd all been ripped down. It is still not known who put them up.

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Climbing mountains in a full-length skirt seems extremely safe!!!!

Topical Press Agency / Getty Images

Climb mountains:

Hulton Archive / Stringer / Getty

BECAUSE WALKING BETWEEN ICY MOUNTAINS ON A LADDER IN A DRESS DEFINITELY SEEMS SAFE.

Hulton Archive / Stringer / Getty

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Critics have a shorthand for when an actor, previously dismissed or unknown, gives an outstanding performance: She’s a revelation. The phrase spans decades, and has been used to describe Julie Delpy (Beatrice), Gwyneth Paltrow (Emma), Scarlett Johansson (The Other Boleyn Girl), Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone), Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air), Lake Bell (Man Up), Natalie Portman (Black Swan), Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave), and Kristen Stewart (Clouds of Sils Maria). It was used to describe Nicole Kidman’s 1995 role in To Die For, and used again, in a 1999 Newsweek profile, to describe her performance in The Blue Room — a play that required her to play 10 different roles.

In this case, it was the play’s director, David Hare, who called Kidman, then 32, “a revelation.” “At the dress rehearsal of the first preview you could see her technical limitations,” he recalled. “Two weeks later, by the time the play opened, they were gone. In two weeks she’d been to university and learned how to be a stage actress. You don’t see that richness of physical texture in British acting, that incredible amount of brushstrokes.”

“There was a famous saying about John Gielgud, that he acted from the neck up,” Hare continued. “Nicole acts all the way down.”

“Revelation” has a connotation of knowledge withheld, suddenly revealed: I did not know that Nicole Kidman was worth my time, it suggests, but now I do. And while it makes sense when children and unknowns are heralded as “revelations,” there’s a different sort of suggestion being made when a male observer — and they’re almost always male — uses the word to describe the performance of a female star. There’s a subtle implication that when a woman, especially a beautiful one, makes her way onscreen, it’s usually because of her looks or her body — not her talent. When a performance speaks truth to that lie, it’s a revelation.

Nicole Kidman has been serving revelations for three decades. She was a revelation at age 21, when she fought off a crazed Billy Zane on a yacht in 1989’s Dead Calm, and again, in 1995, with To Die For, and then in The Blue Room, and then again in Moulin Rouge, and The Hours, and Dogville...and, most recently, in her role as Celeste in HBO’s Big Little Lies. While male actors coast on the brilliance of a single performance for years, female stars have to reapply for greatness on a yearly basis, fighting the industry-wide impulse for gossip about their personal lives and their appearances to subsume substantial conversation about their ability.

Nicole Kidman and Billy Zane in Dead Calm, 1989.

Warner Bros / Courtesy Everett Collection

Which is why Nicole Kidman’s bangs in Big Little Lies are the best thing that’s happened to her career in a decade: They make it impossible to talk about her forehead, effectively forcing the conversation to center on her skill. Still, the idea that Kidman — who has been nominated for four Academy Awards, eleven Golden Globes, and nine SAG Awards — is still trying to prove her legitimacy as an actress points to a more entrenched (if unsurprising) gulf in the treatment of Hollywood talent. Between male and female actors, of course. But also between women whose fame is perceived as an extension of their proximity to famous men — and their attractiveness to them — and those who are “authentically” talented.

Which is not to suggest that Hollywood hasn’t historically been easier for a white, straight woman like Nicole Kidman to navigate than it has for many others. But no woman with as much talent as Kidman should be forced to re-argue, over and over again, that she is a force to be taken seriously.

Here are the things that Nicole Kidman is likened to most often: a thoroughbred horse, a piece of porcelain, a parcel of property, a Pre-Raphaelite angel, a presence that glows in the dark. But before she was a thoroughbred, she was an awkward filly. “I wasn’t beautiful by any means,” Kidman said of her childhood. “I was revolting — gawky, coltish. I had very, very long legs and not much else. I was amazed if somebody looked at me.”

Talking about how awkward she was as a child is, of course, a way to talk about how beautiful she is an adult. But even when Kidman was young and supposedly awkward, she was finding roles; by the age of 20, she had appeared in a remake of the Australian classic Bush Christmas, starred in peak ‘80s film BMX Bandits (1983) and scandalized audiences by briefly appearing naked in Windrider (1986) before landing a role in the Australian miniseries Vietnam (1988).

A 16-year-old Kidman in BMX Bandits (1983).

Rank Film Organization / Everett Collection

Vietnam made her a household name, but it took Dead Calm, a psychological thriller costarring Sam Neill and Billy Zane, to garner notice from American audiences or critics. Back in Australia, there was a sense that the country had at last created a female product fit for international export. Dead Calm director Phillip Noyce, himself an Australian, told the Sydney Mail, “She is going to be a big international star. There’s no doubt about it.” The Sun Herald listed all of the press outlets where she’d received coverage to show that “Nicole has become, as they say, a hot property.”

Profiles, interviews, and reviews all note her skill — “capable onscreen of any emotion the director calls for,” as the Herald put it — but they were most obsessed with the hotness, as it were, of the property. Noyce chose her for the role because she had “that purity, a beauty and sexuality and innocence and vulnerability.” The Sun Herald described her as “too feminine to be a schoolgirl, too gangly to be a woman and, oblivious of the brief mini she had on, she sat with her legs crossed the man’s way: right ankle on left knee.” Or, as the (male) writer, Dorian Wild, continued, “Look at her, with those awesomely long legs, and you have some idea what was going through Nabokov’s mind when he sat down to write Lolita: a perfect oval face, the chin proud and defiant and the look in those pale blue eyes that says she won’t be dominated. Not her spirit, anyway.”

The author attempts to get Kidman to talk about her previous boyfriends — including Tom Burlinson, of Man From Snowy River — but she refuses. “I don’t talk about that,” she says, before he raises the question of whether Warren Beatty “fancied her so much that he wanted to move in.” “Ah, the famous question,” she replied. “Sure, I met Warren Beatty. He was very nice to me and gave me some good advice.”

The profile might seem outrageous, but it’s a blueprint for more to come: the brief acknowledgment of her talent; the obsession, in various shades of appropriateness, with her looks; the preoccupation with her love life. Granted, this is just the formula for men writing profiles of female stars — especially if you add in some commentary on what she's eating, and the presumption that she’s flirting with you. With Kidman, this formula was always elevated to include how different she looked, at least in comparison to other Hollywood starlets. That, and as soon would become standard, the fact that her husband was the most famous movie star in the world.

Kidman met Tom Cruise on the set of Days of Thunder, in which she plays an improbably young doctor who falls for a race car driver. The film, like Kidman’s performance, was insubstantial, but it was directed by Tony Scott and produced by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, the team who had previously refined Cruise’s appeal in Top Gun. Thunder grossed $157 million worldwide — and, when Cruise divorced first wife Mimi Rogers and launched into a relationship with Kidman shortly thereafter, provided the makings for a veritable gossip feast.

From top: Days of Thunder (1990), Billy Bathgate (1991), Far & Away (1992), My Life (1993), and Malice (1993).

Paramount / Buena Vista Pictures / Universal / Columbia Pictures / all courtesy of Everett Collection

Unlike celebrity couples of today, whose romances play out before the paparazzi and/or are documented by the stars themselves, Cruise and Kidman’s romance was whirlwind, their wedding private. They married when Cruise was 27 and Kidman was just 22. Kidman's next film was 1991’s Flirting, with high school classmate Naomi Watts, which won the Australian Film Institute’s Best Picture but barely blipped on the American radar.

In Hollywood, Kidman struggled to find work — in part, as Ron Howard, director of Far & Away, told Newsweek, because “people were dismissive of her because she was married to Tom.” She descended into a slew of supporting roles that positioned her as Cruise’s somewhat overrated other half: unremarkable in Billy Bathgate (1992), prim and squealy across Cruise in Far & Away (1992), watching Michael Keaton die in My Life (1993), and scared of Alec Baldwin in Malice (1993).

Kidman was, as Entertainment Weekly admitted, “mostly known as window dressing” for Cruise. Far & Away made $138 million worldwide, but that was viewed as an underperformance for the biggest star in the world. Still, Cruise emphasized just how equal their partnership was, how devoted their marriage had become. “Until I met Nicole, I always put my career ahead of everything,” he told Rolling Stone. “Now we do everything together. Now work doesn’t belong in the book next to the definition hard, awful yoke.” A friend told People that their relationship worked because “They both want to be not just superstars, but the No. 1 box-office stars in the world.” In 1994, Kidman was cast in Batman Forever, while Cruise was appearing in Interview With the Vampire and signed on for Mission Impossible. World domination seemed in reach — even if only one of them was taken seriously.

It’s unclear what prompted Kidman to call Gus Van Sant, best known for directing queer indie film My Own Private Idaho, while he was casting the lead role of a slightly unhinged news anchor in To Die For. Meg Ryan had dropped out; they were eyeing Patricia Arquette or Jennifer Jason Leigh. “She got my number somewhere,” Van Sant recalled, and told him “I’m destined to play that part.”

Van Sant eventually cast her, and Kidman was, once again, a revelation. Part of it was a matter of timing: To Die For was released just three months after the camp mess of Batman Forever. But the press loved it: Who knew Nicole Kidman could act? It was as if Cruise’s presence had blotted out her entire past career: Van Sant himself admitted that he didn’t know who she was until they met, then realized he’d loved her in Dead Calm.

When gossip columnist Liz Smith asked Kidman if it annoyed her that people “think you sprang full grown from Tom’s head and didn’t have any background of your own,” she admitted it confused her. “I thought people had seen Dead Calm or some of my work from Australia,” she said. “Lots of people thought Days of Thunder was my first film, so I had to keep trotting out my résumé.”

Kidman and Matt Dillon in To Die For (1995).

Columbia Pictures / Everett Collection

But that résumé — along with Kidman’s desire to play a varied swath of roles, from Shakespeare to Ibsen — wasn’t as compelling as talking about her husband, or her relationships, or what it’s like to be very, very, very famous. In every profile, Kidman struggled to disarticulate herself from her husband’s stardom — and from the rumors that swirled around their relationship. When pressed on the theory that her marriage was a sham, in a 1995 Vanity Fair profile, she went off: “I take offense if people say I would marry into a marriage of convenience,” she said. “I think that’s very sexist, because they’re saying, ‘She married for fame and money.’ It’s bullshit.”

It was also demeaning, and beside the point. “After a while it just gets boring," she told a reporter from EW, after being asked to leaf through an assortment of gossip magazines detailing the various rumors around her marriage. "You get asked the same things over and over. Just once I'd love to be asked about my work."

Cruise’s gravity was so intense that Kidman banned him from the set of To Die For. “He’s a very forceful presence on set, and it’s distracting to people.”

Both Cruise and Kidman underestimated just how powerful that distraction was. “We were naive at first,” Kidman told EW. “Little did we know that there was this thing out there. The Mrs. Tom Cruise thing.” That “thing” would change in character and texture several times over the years to come, but its foundational element — its ability to shift the conversation away from the work, and toward the personal — would remain.

Even director Jane Campion, who had first cast Kidman in a student film back in Australia, had ceased to take Kidman seriously. After wrapping To Die For, Kidman set her eyes on Campion’s planned adaptation of The Portrait of a Lady, her follow-up to critical darling The Piano. When they had first worked together, Campion had cautioned Kidman to “protect her talent.” But as Kidman recalled, “Jane saw some of the work that I had done in America and decided that I didn’t have the spirit” — that she had not, in fact, “protected her talent.” Kidman yelled at Campion, who had not seen To Die For, over the phone; they had, in her words, a “terrible fight.”

Still, they decided to forge forward together. Campion, herself, had a revelation: “I’m keeping pace with her scene by scene and then comes a time when she starts to do work I could not imagine,” she told Newsweek. “She amazed me.” Her new opinion was that Kidman could, in fact, do “both ends” — ”Batman to Portrait.”

Batman Forever director Joel Schumacher had a different way to describe Kidman’s ability. “Nicole is a great character actress,” he said, “with the body and face of a movie star.” It’s an idea that has afflicted many beautiful actors, both male and female — one presupposes that movie stardom and good acting aren’t one and the same, that beauty evacuates talent, and vice versa.

Portrait of a Lady (1996).

Gramercy Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

Comicgal.

When you're just very sympathetic (even if you don't need to be).

Maritsa Patrinos / BuzzFeed

When your period fucks with your emotions.

Becky Barnicoat / BuzzFeed

When your period pain is too great to explain.

Loryn Brantz / BuzzFeed

When your period acts like a total jerk.

Maritsa Patrinos / BuzzFeed

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Ivanka Trump appears on CBS This Morning

CBS News

Ivanka Trump is the inverse of her father, Donald Trump, in one very essential way: her silence. When Trump is aggrieved, he can’t shut up. But when Nordstrom dropped Ivanka’s clothing line earlier this year, she declined to speak publicly. When her father tweeted that the company had treated her “unfairly,” Ivanka said nothing. Even when Kellyanne Conway advised Americans to “go buy Ivanka’s stuff” — prompting an ethics investigation — she was silent. She didn’t address the outcry over her presence, without a security clearance, at meetings with heads of state, or acknowledge a Saturday Night Live parody of her that advertised a fictional perfume called “Complicit.”

President Trump’s PR strategy, like Kellyanne Conway’s, is total saturation — and deflection. Dominate with your own message, no matter how contradictory, and you’ll be able to guide the narrative others tell about you. That worked for Trump for decades, and it’s continued to work, to varying degrees, throughout the beginning of his presidency. Ivanka, by contrast, controls the narrative through scarcity: She offers just enough of her personal life, via Instagram, to create an aura of transparency and accessibility, even when she’s meting it out with tremendous precision. She’s an incredibly private person who’s managed to project an image of total publicness.

So when it was announced, last week, that Ivanka Trump would be taking on an official role in the White House — essentially performing the same tasks she already had been, only with security clearances — a public acknowledgment was in order. Or, rather, an interview that would soften any sharp edges around the fact that the president’s daughter would take on a major advisory role as her father’s “eyes and ears.”

“Eyes and ears” underlines precisely how Ivanka — and her father — seem to envision her (continuing) role: see and hear, not say and do. But she made an appearance today, in a three-part interview on CBS This Morning, in order to say just how much she wouldn’t be (publicly) saying. The selection of a morning show is significant: Whereas evening shows are considered “hard” (and masculine) news, morning shows are “soft” and feminized. Ivanka was interviewed by Gayle King, known to millions of audience members as Oprah’s best friend; the interview itself took place in Ivanka and Jared Kushner’s DC home — a point that both King and Ivanka were keen to emphasize, even though there were no revealing shots of the home itself.

Ivanka alluded, at one point, to her sons sleeping in the next room — “it’s shocking that we made it through this interview without one of my two little boys crying” — firmly situating her in the domestic sphere. She wore a sheath dress, but in a muted black and green tone, not the power red or white that she wears in many photos in the White House. She spoke at length about the joys of living in DC (her kids have a swing set in the backyard) and emphasized that she takes her kids somewhere new in town (a monster truck rally, a “cultural institution") every week. Her tone of voice was soft, breathy, as if trying to calm down a worked-up child.

Ivanka’s current image is like a flashing sign on a casino that’s closed: Look at me, then look away.

The message: Ivanka’s power is nothing for you to worry about. It’s a subdued, feminine power. She might be a strong, successful woman, but she’s not abrasive, not dangerous, and she’s certainly not breaking the law — or using her position for financial gain, or anything else untoward. Ivanka’s current image is like a flashing sign on a casino that’s closed for business: Look at me, then look away.

There’s nothing to see here, in other words — and on that point, Ivanka was explicit. She gave up her business to serve her father and her country; it’s now in “trust” and out of her control. No matter that the “independent trustees” are Kushner’s brother and sister, Josh Kushner and Nicole Meyer. “I have no involvement with any of it,” she told King. “I’ve been very transparent about that.” King suggested that she could call up her brother- or sister-in-law and ask what’s going on, and Ivanka shut it down entirely. “I take a legal document very seriously,” she said, “and I wouldn’t go through the pain of setting this up if I intended to violate it.” Plus, she added, if she really wanted to grow her business, she would have stayed in New York — “I would be doing far better.”

There’s no mention of how Ivanka "still wields power over her brand," trust or not: Brand sales exploded after her name took center stage in February around the Nordstrom tweet. And while profits from Ivanka’s forthcoming book, Women Who Work, will be donated to charity, her legal disassociation from her company does not mean she is not still laboring as the primary face of the brand. Her clothes, her shoes, her Women Who Work site — all of it is pegged to Ivanka’s public image, which is vastly amplified vis-à-vis her position by her father’s side, in White House photography, or traveling to Mar-a-Lago. She might have been able to sit in on board meetings for her company if she’d stayed in New York, but in DC, she gets incredible, if currently unquantifiable, brand visibility.

Ivanka meets with women small business owners on March 27 — just one of hundreds of photo ops that accompany her presence in the White House.

Pool / Getty Images

The effect of such visibility has been mixed: Even as Ivanka’s sales rose, millions of others were refusing to buy anything with the Trump name attached. In an effort to distance themselves from Trump’s most egregious and alienating policies and rhetoric, Ivanka and Jared have positioned themselves as the voices of liberal reason in the White House; various stories from unnamed “sources” claim that it was they who helped quash an executive order, early in Trump’s presidency, that would’ve reversed Obama era protections for LGBT workers, or they who are arguing for America to retain its place in the Paris Agreement on climate change.

A Washington Post story from March situated Ivanka and Jared, along with fellow New Yorkers Gary Cohn and Dina Powell, in a de facto coalition referred to as “the Democrats” in a “turf war” with the “ideologues,” i.e., the executive-order-drafting nationalists Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller. In addition to whatever these stories accomplish as journalism and/or gossip, they double as PR for Kushner and Ivanka’s image as competent, nonracist moderates.

When the GOP American Health Care Act imploded in late March, Ivanka and Kushner were away on vacation in Aspen — and very much in public view, photographed extensively by the paparazzi. As Vanity Fair’s Emily Jane Fox explains, their physical, thoroughly documented distance from the bill allowed the pair to “return to DC with clean hands.” More importantly, Fox argues, “Ivanka won’t have to answer for her father’s concessions that would eliminate maternity-care coverage from a health-care bill — a difficult task for someone who is in DC to advocate for women and families.” (A source inside the White House told CNN that Trump was "upset" with Kushner's absence; the White House denied the report).

There are plenty of things to stay silent about: Trump’s budget currently proposes cutting 20% of the funding for the National Institute of Health — a position that flies in the face of Ivanka’s extensive Instagram campaign for STEM training. On March 27, Trump signed an executive order revoking the 2014 Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces order, which ensured that companies receiving federal contracts had paycheck transparency and banned arbitration clauses for sexual harassment, sexual assault, or discrimination. Policies, in other words, that helped eliminate roadblocks to equal pay for women — one of Ivanka’s pet projects.

Ivanka's Instagram post from April 4 — Equal Pay Day

Instagram / Via instagram.com

The silence makes sense: The media didn’t make a fuss over that EO, so why would Ivanka? Other White House advisors don't speak out about individual policy decisions, so why would she? Maybe because, at least until very recently, she wasn't actually on Trump's stuff: she and the White House insisted that she was simply operating as her father's daughter. It's that insistence that makes it so difficult to deflect calls to speak publicly. Her brothers certainly don't shy from it. Why would she?

Even before Ivanka arrived at the White House, Ivanka’s vision of women’s empowerment was always limited to a specific sort of empowerment, for a specific sort of woman: Women who are privileged, women who are feminine, women who know when to shut up. In the CBS interview, King asked Ivanka why she doesn’t speak out on issues that she’s previously indicated are important to her — on Planned Parenthood, on gay rights, on the rights of women, on climate change. “It’s, like, you’re being held personally accountable for not speaking up,” King said. “What do you say to your critics?”

“I would not conflate lack of public denouncement with silence,” Ivanka responded, her tone measured. “I think there are multiple ways to have your voice heard. In some cases, it’s through protest and it’s through going on the nightly news and talking about or denouncing every issue on which you disagree with. Other times it is quietly and directly and candidly. So where I disagree with my father, he knows it. And I express myself with total candor. Where I agree, I fully lean in and support the agenda — and hope that I can be an asset to him and make a positive impact.”

Here, Ivanka implicitly ranks ways of “having your voice heard” — there’s the unruly, immoderate way (“through protest,” “on the nightly news,” “talking,” “denouncing,” “every issue”) and there’s her way: in private. Directly, candidly, but quietly. Which is to say: off the record, without taking any risks. And while that mode of protest might, in fact, be more effective with Ivanka’s father — who’s notoriously nonplussed by public opinion and often swayed by the advice of whoever spoke to him last — it does not magically immunize her from critique.

If Ivanka is, in fact, a “passionate advocate,” that passion and advocacy has never been more necessary.

Ivanka might conceive of herself, as her Instagram bio proclaims, as a “wife, mother, sister, and daughter” — a private person with no responsibility to speak publicly. But she made the decision as an adult to remain a public person, leveraging her last name and her lifestyle into a brand that has significantly expanded her fortune. As the second line of her bio states, she also thinks of herself as a “passionate advocate for the education and empowerment of women and girls.”

If Ivanka is, in fact, a “passionate advocate,” that passion and advocacy has never been more necessary. And while Ivanka believes she knows the best way to influence her father and advocate for women and girls, in truth she’s found the safe way: a way that might help others, but certainly doesn’t hurt herself — and very well may hurt others.

Ivanka may think, as she told King, that “complicit” is “wanting to be a force for good and to make a positive impact.” But no matter her privilege, no matter her father’s insistence on redefining words to serve his means, she cannot redefine that word. To be complicit is to help commit a crime or do a wrong in some way. The “wrongdoing” component of that definition — with specific regards to actions by Trump’s campaign — is currently under investigation. The moral question won’t be decided by Ivanka, or what she “wants” to be. It will be judged by the number of people who suffer or thrive, both here and abroad, over decades to come, as a result of her father’s policies. It will be judged, in other words, by history. And no amount of privilege, of practiced answers and poise, can change that. ●

Listen.

Don't be an activist in the streets and a sexist in the sheets.

Okay, so you read "King Kong Theory" by Virginie Despentes and a bunch of Facebook statuses about feminism and you're now convinced that feminism is your thing. Stop the car. The first thing you have to do is check yourself and figure out what kinds of macho behavior you're spreading with women around you: Are you one of those guys who says that they "help" at home? Talk to your partner and start doing 50% of the house chores. Do you still give your dirty laundry to your mom because "it's what she's always done"? Dude, please. Are you a father? Congratulations! Do you take on 50% of the childcare responsibilities? Hmmm... better check that too. When a woman gets angry, do you assume it's either because she's on her period or because she needs to get laid? Go back to square one! And, hey, do you think you emotionally support your girlfriend/wife as much as she supports you?

Houses can't be built starting with the roof. There always has to be a foundation upon which to build, and there's nothing worse than being an activist in the streets and a sexist in the sheets.

Jane_kelly / Getty Images

Listen.

One of the main issues of sexism is that we have culturally silenced women, and given men full control of the microphone for far too long. The first step to supporting feminism is to listen to what women have to say about their own oppression. So get comfortable and listen up.

Cottidie / Getty Images

Shut up.

Would you tell an oncologist your opinions about cancer? It's also not necessary for you to heroically decide to play the role of "devil's advocate" in a subject that does not (what a coincidence!) affect you in the slightest. And please don't interrupt us every five seconds to try to distinguish yourself from "other men." Yes, we already know that not all men are like that, but if you care more about proving that you're not like those other men than you do about truly listening to and understanding our thoughts and opinions on the matter... well then, you're not much different from the rest anyway.

Valovalo / Getty Images

Face your buddies.

Right, so you've listened to a lot of women, you've begun to understand what this is all about, you've realized that everything's shit, and now you have some suggestions to make about what women should do or say in certain situations. NOPE. WRONG.

Now's the time to do the actual dirty work: face your colleagues. Yeah, that guy who constantly shares pics of naked girls in your group chat, the one who calls any woman above a size 4 "fat," the one who makes a woman feel uncomfortable at the bar when she's clearly having a good time with her friends, the one who says his boss "just needs to be fucked," or the ones who make small (haha), very inoffensive (hehe) jokes (HA FREAKING HA) about assaulting women. NOPE!

Dmitrymo / Getty Images

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Because being a woman doesn’t mean you’re free from misogynistic thoughts.

You’ve been shocked/appalled/offended to see body hair on other women, even though you damn well know you have it too.

This kind of judgment about other people’s choices may show that we’ve bought into an unrealistic conception of femininity, even if it's at odds with our real-life experiences of other women and our own bodies. We expect women to be flawlessly smooth even though we know very few of us are that way naturally!

Allure / youtube.com

You've felt embarrassed by stubble on your body or that you should apologise for it.

What you do to your body hair is up to you, but you shouldn't have to feel ashamed over something that is entirely natural – would a man apologise for his stubble before kissing you? This is also applicable to other perceived bodily "flaws" in general, like scars and stretch marks.

Holychild / youtube.com

You've automatically felt sorry for women who are over 40 and single.

This often works on the assumption that she can't possibly be single out of choice, that something must have gone wrong in her life for her to "end up" this way, whereas we probably wouldn't make similar assumptions about a 40-year-old bachelor. People know what will makes them happiest, and sometimes being single is exactly that.

MTV

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“You’re not like other girls.”

Twitter: @raichew

paintdeath.tumblr.com

Twitter: @eminemobama

Twitter: @RebeccaSlatkin

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Live your life so Professor McGonagall would be both proud and exasperated by you.

This reminder that Molly Weasley managed to kick ass, take names, and also cook delicious meals for her seven children.

Tumblr / romanticronweasley.tumblr.com

This undeniable truth.

Tumblr / lilyevans-obliviate.tumblr.com

This reminder of what Ginny Weasley had to deal with on a daily basis.

Tumblr / accio-shitpost.tumblr.com

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Just put aside the whole “killing puppies thing” for like a minute.

And even demonstrates interest in Anita's personal life.

Production company Walt Disney Pictures/ Great Oaks Productions

She uses her position of power and relative privilege to lift up other women.

Production company Walt Disney Pictures/ Great Oaks Productions

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Never will you leave the toilet seat up.

In your house, there are probably plenty of pads and tampons of all kinds and sizes.

Chances are, at least one woman you live with bought them wholesale, so if you forget to stock up before that time of the month, you can always steal some from your sisters and mom and be saved. Crisis averted!

Matka_wariatka / Getty Images

The toilet seat is never up.

And when you use the bathroom in other people's houses, you don't get why they leave it up. Truth is, it's great going to the bathroom in the middle of the night and being confident that you won't trip and fall in because somebody left the lid open.

20th Century Fox

You're an expert at undoing impossible knots on freshly-washed bras.

You know that this is all-too common when you live with other women. It may test your concentration and patience to no end, but you have become a master at detangling even the worst of these knots.

Twitter: @TheChadBenson

You all share clothes.

Whether you're the same size or not. When many women live together, it's understood that everything is communally owned. Granted, this can sometimes unleash a third World War at your house, but at other times it gets you out of a tight spot, especially when you went a few days too long without doing laundry.

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I was a normal woman before I followed this account. A few weeks later, I am a woman who truly accepts herself. You can be, too.

Regardless of your feelings about her, Rakhi Sawant has not escaped anyone's imagination.

Rakhi is queen, tbh. Let's just establish that now.

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But, in a world that has constantly mocked Rakhi for her outspoken nature, I found a champion for self love in her — and her Instagram is the best example of that.

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She won't even mind loving caricatures of herself.

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There is no end to her living the best life that she can possibly lead.

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“Forget the friendzone, tell him he’s the son you’ve always wanted.”

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ON a blue sky morning in Sydney, M sits on the terrace of a Glebe cafe fiddling with her coffee spoon while the 433 bus grinds to a stop across the road. A few passengers step off and head towards the sprawling University of Sydney campus down the street.

M, from Sydney, is in her early 20s, with dark hair and a gap between her two upper front teeth. She’s around 5’7, wears a size 12 and loves young adult fantasy novels. On a busy night at the legal brothel where she works, M can take home $300-400.

Like many who work in the sex industry M hasn’t told her friends or family how she makes money. The sex industry was decriminalised in New South Wales in 1995, so there’s no risk of arrest, but social stigma is ever present. She agreed to speak to me and introduce me to the girls she works with, on the condition she remain anonymous.

“I have to weave these elaborate lies with my parents so they don’t figure out where I’m working,” she told me.

Aside from New Zealand, the Australian state of New South Wales is the only place in the world where both the purchase and sale of sex without registration is not considered a criminal act. There are restrictions, such as not working near schools and in residential areas, but the consequences from the decision to decriminalise sex work have been remarkable.

The rates of sexually transmitted infections are low, as are incidents of physical and sexual violence. In NSW sex work is a relatively safe and lucrative job option. Certainly, some women are forced into the sex trade even in places where it’s been decriminalised. But many enter the industry willingly, and they have a variety of reasons for pursuing this line of work. M used her earnings to fund a costly degree, and she's far from the only student turning to sex work to make ends meet.

IN Australia an undergraduate degree can cost up to $10,000 a year in course fees. And that’s for Commonwealth-supported degrees. On top of fees, a student living out of home can expect to have to find up to $615 to cover bills each week. (Sydney and Melbourne are in the top ten most expensive cities in the world).

Accommodation: $300
Groceries, food and household products: $150
Utility bills: $45
Socialising and entertainment: $100
Public transport costs: $10
Study expenses such as printing, photocopying, stationery: $10

Plus one off costs such as new textbooks each semester ($300+), rental bond ($1000+), house appliances and furniture.

“It just so happens that sex work is a very lucrative job. As a uni student, when you have such heavy course work, what else do they expect you to do?”

While studying M was also expected to fund expensive travel as part of her course, with trips costing up to $4000.

“There are very few jobs that are flexible enough to make that possible,” she said. “It just so happens that sex work is a very lucrative job. As a uni student, when you have such heavy course work, what else do they expect you to do?”

I studied for five years in Sydney, but I was lucky that my parents lived a 10 minute walk from my university, so I stayed at home for almost four of those years. Even so, I still didn’t manage to save any money from various retail jobs.

IT'S difficult to determine how many students such as M work in the Australian sex industry, but a University of New South Wales report estimated there are just over 100 brothels within 20km of the Sydney CBD, employing a total of around 3000 workers. In Victoria and Queensland sex workers are required to register in order to work legally and in the other states and territories the industry remains illegal.

Twenty years after sex work was decriminalised, a NSW government inquiry confirmed the current system was in the best interests of the workers, clients and the general public.

When I was in the penultimate year of my degree I met a girl named Alannah who lived in a beautiful house in an affluent Sydney suburb. She always seemed to have enough money to buy lunch and go out for drinks on the weekend. After a while she told me she gave hand jobs for money.

She always seemed to have enough money to buy lunch and go out for drinks on the weekend. After a while she told me she gave hand jobs for money.

ONE night, I went with M to the inner Sydney brothel where she works. The girls, as the workers, mostly in their early 20s, refer to themselves, offer a service known as a rub and tug – providing naked massages and “hand relief” for clients. The brothel recently introduced the option for men to choose “full service” bookings (including sex) for a higher fee, but the majority of the girls only perform hand jobs. I’m told only about one in twenty men who come in are after the full service.

From the outside the brothel is an inconspicuous brick building, and the only hint at the nature of the business within is a neon sign bearing the brothel's name. It’s been in the same place for 20 years. The walls are pink, the leather couches brown and the spas baby blue. It’s not tacky but rather welcoming and cozy.

On a Tuesday night there are seven to 15 girls working. Potential clients enter and hang out in a lounge area. The girls walk past and introduce themselves one at a time. Some are in short party dresses, some in lingerie covered with a lacy robe, some in leotards. All wear high heels and makeup.

On “Fantasy Thursdays” the girls dress up in costumes ranging from sexy Snow White to a sexy nurse. Groups arrive on Friday and Saturday nights; each client books a girl and they all party together in a spa.

“Party spas are the most fun, because you’re not just stuck with one guy in the spa for an hour,” one girl told me. “It’s a bunch of guys, and a bunch of girls, we crack open the champagne, and it’s usually pretty enjoyable.”

When there are no clients the girls wait together. Some use the in-house computers to work on university assignments; others watch movies or read. They appear as a bunch of friends just hanging out.

A few of the girls tell me that they started out working retail, but had to jag 25 hours a week just to cover rent and groceries, leaving them no time to actually study. Here, they can make at least $90 for a 75 minute booking. On busy nights, a girl can take home more than $400 for a six hour shift. And they can set their own working hours. But one girl tells me that sex workers need to have a strong character, because “it’s something that can really break you”.

IN 1994 the Supreme Court of Victoria, in justifying a light sentence for the rape of a prostitute, upheld a precedent that a prostitute who is raped is much less likely to feel psychological trauma than a “chaste” woman who isn’t involved in sex work. This sent a loud message: sex workers are to be treated differently.

Scully / Getty Images / Tim Lane BuzzFeed

Lucie Bee (a pseudonym) is an escort, porn star and activist for sex workers’ rights who started in the industry five years ago when she was studying in Canberra, where sex work is still criminalised.

One time, Bee said, she was invited to speak on a panel at her old university during Sex and Consent Week. The Facebook page for the event was flooded with messages from women shaming her, telling her she’s ill-educated, a victim of anal rape and a puppet for the sex industry. Some even went as far as finding out her real name, threatening to “out” her publicly.

“The fact I have a willingness to speak out about these things openly, without fear or shame, seems to really piss people off,” she told BuzzFeed.

Many of the sex workers I spoke to don't reveal the nature of their work to friends, family or fellow students. They’ve spent years earning (expensive) degrees and don’t want to threaten future job opportunities.

Even where sex work is legal it attracts what UK based sex industry researcher Teela Sanders dubs “whorephobia.” She says this social stigma is one of the most harmful downsides of sex work because secrecy can distance workers from their friends and family, leaving them more vulnerable to the effects of stress.

“It’s isolating, when you’re doing something that none of your friends do, or even know about,” Bee said. “Sometimes you can have a bad day, sometimes all your clients are just pricks... and you can’t talk about it.”

M has experienced this emotional isolation first hand. Even her sister, who works as a topless waitress, doesn't know she's doing sex work. She confided in a friend who considers herself a feminist, but was met with the statement that sex work is “so detrimental to women.”

“I’m happy to be a feminist and to work where I do. She can’t tell me that the two don’t mix, they definitely do.”

“It was really hurtful at the time,” M said. “I’m happy to be a feminist and to work where I do. She can’t tell me that the two don’t mix, they definitely do.”

Feminists are divided on whether sex work is demeaning or empowering. Those in the former group want to reverse decriminalisation, arguing that for true equality to exist all activities where women are considered a “man’s object” or products to be sold or rented need to be eliminated.

Those who support a woman’s right to undertake sex work view it as a means with which to fight repression. They argue that it is much more acceptable for men to celebrate their sexuality and explore their bodies outside of marriage than it is for women, who are quickly labelled as “easy” or “whores”. By working in the sex industry, women are fighting this double standard while also capitalising on their bodies.

Some of the girls I speak to talk about an increased assertiveness and self worth, but really, the key driver is cash. It’s not about smashing the patriarchy by making money off hand jobs, it’s about being able to pay all your bills and have enough money left over for a night out. Most can’t understand the negativity they face for using their sexuality to make money.

“[Men are] fine to go and parade their sexuality around as much as they want,” M said. “But God forbid a woman wear a short dress and make decisions about what she does with her body. Because women are choosing to be ‘objectified’, that’s why society isn’t OK with it.”

NOT every man who visits M’s workplace is there for sex or a hand job – some come back regularly, just to hang out. Some are single and looking for a new friend, while others find it difficult to talk through particular issues with their wife or partner.

Mark falls in the latter group. He’s been seeing sex workers for 22 years after breaking up with a girlfriend in his early 30s. He claims he was too shy to meet a new partner through traditional means. Ever since, he’s been going to brothels all over Sydney, making connections with different girls.

Mark is in his fifties, and he’s really old school – he enters wearing a khaki coloured suit, with a pink handkerchief in the breast pocket. M tells me that he tucks his singlet into his underwear. He stands up to meet the women and makes conversation with them rather than just saying a quick hello. He doesn't always want a hand job either, sometimes he just wants to sit in the spa and enjoy the company of a naked girl. He seems lonely.

“I tell my married friends I come here and they get jealous,” he said. But, he added: “Girls who work here shouldn't tell anyone they do it... people will get the wrong idea.”

There is, it seems, one rule for men and another for women. M believes this double standard also applies to men working in the sex industry.

“Male strippers tell their families and friends what they do,” she said. “They can be open with it and be proud of it. It’s never treated in the same way that female sex workers are.”

“Male strippers tell their families and friends what they do,” she says. “They can be open with it and be proud of it. It’s never treated in the same way that
female sex workers are.”

OVER coffee at the cafe M reflects on her introduction to the industry. She didn’t think she had the right “look”.

“I had all these preconceptions about what girls who worked in that industry looked like, and it wasn't me,” she said.

Even the most open-minded people stereotype the sex industry, which perpetuates the stigma, Bee said.

“We’re not at the point yet where sex work is seen just as work and sex workers are seen just as human beings.”

Outside Your Bubble is a BuzzFeed News effort to bring you a diversity of thought and opinion from around the internet. If you don't see your viewpoint represented, contact the curator at bubble@buzzfeed.com. Click here for more on Outside Your Bubble.

Do you remember your first kiss? How about the first time someone catcalled you while you were walking down the street?

1. You will probably never forget the first time you kissed someone.

Rebecca Hendin / BuzzFeed

2. Or the butterflies in your stomach you experienced when you saw your first crush.
3. How did you feel the first time you got your period? You can probably describe it as if it were just yesterday.
4. And the panic you felt when you got a stain for the first time, because "oh my god"?
5. The first time you had sex must be engraved in your memory.

6. Ugh, there's no forgetting how things started the first time you got plastered (although chances are you don't remember how they ended).

Rebecca Hendin / BuzzFeed

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On March 4, about 500 women in downtown Los Angeles experienced time travel. These women, mostly youngish and progressive-leaning, wide-eyed and well-dressed, entered a bright, lofty industrial building just before 9 a.m. They took a freight elevator, illuminated by pink neon lights, up to the fourth floor. And for the next 12 hours, give or take, they returned to the state their lives were in before Donald Trump became a serious candidate for president.

Remember those days? Before the country heard a presidential candidate say "grab 'em by the pussy"? Before November 9 became a day of mourning for most of Hillary Clinton's 65.8 million voters? Before scores of women, on the day after Trump's inauguration, became the leaders of the #resistance with a worldwide march, shaking the women's movement from its decades-long slumber?

Because by President Obama's second term, there simply wasn't a women's movement, at least in the raucous political sense. Feminist activists were still out there — fighting for reproductive rights and against sexual violence, joining Black Lives Matter — but the movement that attracted the most attention was the up-the-corporate-ladder kind. Empowerment was catchier than equality. Powerful women in business became the faces of modern (white) feminism, even if they expressed little interest in feminism itself.

Pink vibes at the inaugural Girlboss Rally on March 4, 2017 in Los Angeles.

Vivien Killilea / Getty Images

Enter Sophia Amoruso, entrepreneur and proprietor of Girlboss, a term she introduced in 2014 with her best-selling book #Girlboss and doubled down on in 2017 with the inaugural Girlboss Rally — the event that brought these 500 women to downtown LA on a Saturday in March.

When it was announced in December, the one-day conference seemed almost like Amoruso's answer to post-election anxiety. "When I wrote #Girlboss nearly three years ago, I had no idea how necessary it would be," Amoruso said in her Instagram announcement. "The world has moved backward in 2016, putting even more pressure on us to collaborate, co-conspire, and create a vision of the future together."

The rally was also the first production of Amoruso's new women's digital media company, Girlboss Media. The goal of the company, Amoruso later told me, is "to inspire and inform and educate and entertain girls, women, to be their best selves and to define success for themselves."

Can Girlboss Media succeed without reflecting the tectonic shift the election wrought for its audience?

Girlboss Media's online content and IRL events (like the rally) will focus on work, personal finance, wellness, travel, and possibly fashion, Amoruso said — an extension of the topics she wrote about in #Girlboss. But there's something missing from that list. This is 2017, not 2014, and in those three years, the world as Amoruso's audience knows it has changed. Young women have descended their corporate ladders to join the marches. Mainstream feminism has gone political again, and women's media has largely followed suit.

Girlboss, though, has no plans to embrace politics in a significant way, Amoruso said. The company already has name recognition and Amoruso's loyal follower base (450,000 followers on Instagram alone) to get it going. But can it succeed without reflecting the tectonic shift the election wrought for its audience?

That depends on what happens to mainstream feminism next: whether it slides back into careerism, the place #Girlboss flourished, or whether it maintains the political urgency brought on by President Trump. And that means, once again, Amoruso has found herself at the center of feminism's evergreen identity crisis, a murky, tangled, infinite jungle she never intended to enter.

Fans selfie with their copies of #Girlboss at a speaking engagement with Amoruso in 2015.

Cindy Ord / Getty Images

In the years before the election, the media was fixated on young women's personal and professional advancement, obsessed with narratives of empowerment. Mainstream feminism was a worn copy of Lean In, a Dove soap commercial, a viral video about catcalling, a celebrity standing up to her haters. There were many firsts: A woman won the Nobel Prize in Economics, a girl pitched a winning game in the Little League World Series, and the first female nominee of a major political party ran for president. What more could the modern feminist want?

So she turned her attention to her career, to bridging the gender gaps she saw in her daily life. The Lean In feminist networked, climbed, and got paid. She was young, social, and probably white (but woke, she'd remind you). And there's a good chance she’d read #Girlboss, the part-memoir-part-business-advice book published by Amoruso, then the 30-year-old CEO of fashion e-commerce company Nasty Gal.

#Girlboss spent 18 weeks on the best-seller list, received by critics as Lean In for millennials. But the book found its following because it wasn't anything like Lean In. Amoruso was a cutting, cunning community-college dropout, far more relatable to most young women than Sheryl Sandberg with her two Harvard degrees and two kids.

Amoruso's rags-to-riches story meant something to these young women, who turned #Girlboss into a kind of status symbol. She read the book, and then she posted an Instagram of her copy, carefully askew beside her mid-morning matcha latte, and then her friends bought the book (and a matcha latte). In 2015, #Girlboss became Girlboss Radio, a popular podcast, but by then it barely mattered what form of media Amoruso chose. Girlboss was not a book but "a movement," as Lena Dunham opined.

sophiaamoruso / Instagram / Via Instagram: @sophiaamoruso

Girlboss, like much of popular feminism in 2014, had never really been about political action. But the election, Clinton's loss, and the women-led protests against President Trump massively shifted the focus of mainstream feminism. Millions of women expressed outrage they hadn't before at politicians and the misogyny they believed propelled Trump to victory. They marched on DC, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, in the island town of Adak, Alaska, and in the border town of Ajo, Arizona. The personal and professional advancement that felt so urgent in the Obama years suddenly didn't matter — not compared with the millions of Americans who now feared being targeted by the Trump administration based on their gender, race, sexual orientation, and religion.

As progressive women imagined a world stripped of fundamental rights, there was little talk of having it all, or leaning in, or being bossy, or banning bossy. More women showed interest in running for office. More donations poured into Planned Parenthood, including $1 million from Sandberg, Lean In's author and patron aunt of Obama-era feminism, who until then had kept her donations to the organization quiet. Issues that feminists may have once allowed to occupy a gray space were now forced into black or white. Ivanka Trump was either with women or against women; all Trump voters were misogynists, period. When the Women's March was called out for partnering with women-led anti-abortion groups, the organizers had to choose a side. (They chose their powerful supporters like Planned Parenthood.)

Amoruso, who attended the Women's March in LA, sensed this reorientation of popular feminism. Accompanying her announcement of the Girlboss Rally was a black and white photo from a 1970 women's liberation protest in Toronto, which became one of the Girlboss Rally's main promotional images. The event sold out five weeks later — on the day before Trump's inauguration.

sophiaamoruso / Instagram / Via Instagram: @sophiaamoruso

But the appeal of the rally wasn't just the "actionable takeaways" for the "next generation of curious creatives" that Amoruso promised. It was also about hearing from Amoruso herself. The year after #Girlboss's publication, Amoruso's meteoric success began falling apart. She stepped down as CEO of Nasty Gal. There were layoffs and rumors of financial peril, and reports (she denied) of Nasty Gal firing pregnant employees. The day after the 2016 election, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It was a delicious parallel for critics of both Amoruso the Nasty Gal and Clinton the Nasty Woman. Amoruso's big brand of career-focused feminism couldn't save her career — Clinton's couldn't save hers either.

Still, Amoruso's followers didn't turn on her; they knew setbacks had always been part of the #Girlboss story. And so they turned out en masse to support her big comeback: the Girlboss Rally.

Amoruso speaking at the Girlboss Rally.

Stefanie Keenan / Getty Images

Just after 9 a.m. on March 4, Amoruso gave the longest speech she's ever given, at six and a half minutes. Her public appearances are typically formatted as Q&As, she explained. This — her opening remarks at the Girlboss Rally — was different. She was speaking directly to her audience, for perhaps the first time since her book tours for #Girlboss.

She stood onstage, note cards in hand, a slightly nervous figure against a playful ’80s-futuristic pink, red, and purple backdrop. Nearly every phone camera in the room was trained on her.

"There was a time when I was the archetype of success," she told the crowd of 500, referencing her tumble from "40 under 40 and 30 under 30" to bankruptcy. "I don't have it figured out, and I hope I never do, and I hope you never do. And that's why we all get to keep learning. And that's what we're all here today to do."

Amoruso wore a black jumpsuit, long-sleeved and slim-fitting, cut with a deep V-neck and framed by sharp shoulder pads, reminiscent of the black dress she wore on the #Girlboss book cover. The parallel felt intentional; this is still the Girlboss you know and love, even if some things have changed.

"So what's Girlboss?" Amoruso continued. "I'm going to start by telling you what it's not. It's not a book. But I did write a book called #Girlboss. It's not a new Netflix series. Although there's a really funny show coming to Netflix in April called Girlboss. Girlboss is a feeling; it's a philosophy. It's a way for women to reframe success for ourselves on our own terms for the first time in history."

The short version of Amoruso's success story goes like this: After a few years of on-and-off employment — supplemented by shoplifting and dumpster-diving — and flirtations with postsecondary education, Amoruso started an eBay store for vintage clothing in 2006. She called it Nasty Gal. By 2014, that eBay shop had blossomed into a multimillion-dollar e-commerce website, collecting 350 employees along the way. The Nasty Gal wardrobe was aggressively trendy, sometimes edgy, and often affordable. Malia Obama once made headlines for stepping off Air Force Two in a $78 dress sold by the brand.

As an entrepreneur, Amoruso was already a character — with her Black Sabbath T-shirts and distaste for industry traditions like Fashion Week — but #Girlboss made Amoruso an icon among her audience: women under 30. Her book, she said, was "neither a feminist manifesto nor a memoir." She defined a #Girlboss as "someone who's in charge of her own life," a hardworking, responsibility-accepting but occasionally rule-breaking go-getter who was simultaneously — perhaps impossibly — super chill.

The rally's glamsquad.

Stefanie Keenan / Getty Images

"You know where you're going, but can't do it without having some fun along the way," she wrote. "You take your life seriously, but you don't take yourself too seriously. You're going to take over the world, and change it in the process. You're a badass."

Despite the nearly three years between them, the Girlboss Rally's programming was remarkably consistent with #Girlboss. In the book, Amoruso implored readers to have professional LinkedIn photos (no sunglasses); the rally offered free professional headshots, preceded by free makeovers from a curling iron–armed glamsquad. (The wait for these headshots was, at times, at least an hour.) Also in the book, Amoruso explained that she believed in "chaos magic," "the idea that a particular set of beliefs serves as an active force in the world," often practiced through "sigils, which are abstract words or symbols you create and embed with your wishes." The Girlboss Rally’s first presenter following Amoruso's remarks, Gabby Bernstein, was a motivational speaker who encouraged similar spiritual practices: setting intentions, visualizing goals, communicating your dreams into the universe.

#Girlboss is also essentially a text of self-promotion, not just for Amoruso but for her company; the book's final moment dwells on Amoruso walking into the Nasty Gal offices and realizing "we've arrived, and we're killing it." Since Amoruso’s Nasty Gal doesn't exist anymore, she used the final moment of the Girlboss Rally to advertise the upcoming Netflix show Girlboss, appearing onstage alongside the showrunner, star, executive producer, and costume designer. (Amoruso is also an executive producer.)

Stefanie Keenan / Getty Images

There was one big difference between the book and the rally, though: The latter featured many, many women.

More than three-quarters of the business and cultural figures quoted throughout #Girlboss are men — including Donald Trump, whom Amoruso quotes at the start of a section on how to fire people: "Generally I like other people to fire, because it's always a lousy task." In the book, men often play more dynamic roles in Amoruso's life: trusted investor, mentor (in business and in shoplifting), inspiring high school teacher, boyfriend, photographer. The women are more often employees, customers, models, competitors, or idiot travel companions. The book makes no plea to lift up other women, or to lean on other women for mentorship. A #Girlboss is on her own.

Amoruso today is more devoted to sharing her platform with women. Her rally had just two male panelists compared with 40 female speakers. On her podcast, she interviews prominent women each and every episode. Her Girlboss Foundation has contributed more than $120,000 to fund small women-owned creative businesses.

But it's still unclear if Amoruso has any interest in deeply exploring the "girl" part of Girlboss. Gender has never been something Amoruso "had to overcome," she wrote in her book.

"Is 2014 a new era of feminism where we don't have to talk about it? I don't know, but I want to pretend that it is," she wrote. "If this is a man's world, who cares? I'm still really glad to be a girl in it."

When I mentioned that line to her, nearly four years after she wrote it, Amoruso laughed. “It was such a different time! It's almost like an irresponsible thing to say," she said. "But who knew?”

Stefanie Keenan / Getty Images

The morning of the Girlboss Rally continued with panels from a cancer survivor turned model, a millennial marketing researcher, investors, a YouTube star, and a new-age wellness guru — that's Amanda Chantal Bacon, whose A-list–approved Los Angeles company Moon Juice also offered free lattes to attendees. The lattes were spiked with "Power Dust," an herbal supplement blend to boost "peak performance, stamina, and longevity," and there was always a line for the drinks, until Moon Juice ran out of ingredients sometime around 4 p.m.

In the brief rests between panels, and during two separate lunch breaks, the rally-going women convened in a stylish lounge space, resting their free Sweetgreen salads on their laps, comparing notes and often outfits. There were no blinding-hot pink "pussyhats" here — rather the numb, pale “millennial pink” was everywhere: on their dresses and blazers and bags and the badges around their necks, on the walls around them, and painted on once naturally green houseplants in every corner. At one point I looked down at my pink shoes and wondered if they were even a choice.

The Moon Juice setup at the rally.

Stefanie Keenan / Getty Images

Sean Gallup / Getty Images

Ivanka Trump, who serves as an assistant to her father, President Donald Trump, faced critical questions at the W20 Summit in Berlin on Tuesday, and was booed and hissed at by some audience members when she said that her father was an advocate for women and families.

Trump sat on the panel alongside several other female leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, Queen Maxima of the Netherlands, and tech entrepreneur Juliana Rotich.

The moderator, WirtschaftsWoche's editor-in-chief Miriam Meckel, dove right into the discussion by first asking Trump what, exactly, her role was in the White House.

“The German audience is not that familiar with the concept of a first daughter,” Meckel said. “I’d like to ask you, what is your role, and who are you representing: your father as president of the United States, the American people, or your business?”

“Certainly not the latter,” Trump said, adding that she was still learning about the role in the first 100 days.

Later in the panel, when the conversation turned to the topic of childcare, Trump lauded her father for his support of women and families.

She first spoke about her father’s advocacy of granting American families paid leave, and then said, “He’s been a tremendous champion of supporting families and enabling them to thrive.”

The audience cut her off with a round of boos and hisses.

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The interjection prompted Meckel to dig in further.

“You hear the reaction from the audience, so I need to address one more point,” she said. “Some attitudes towards women your father has publicly displayed in former times might leave one questioning whether he’s such an empowerer for women. How do you relate to that? Are things changing?"

Trump said she’d “certainly heard the criticism from the media that’s being perpetuated.”

But she said that her personal experience, as well as those of “the thousands of women who have worked with and for my father for decades when he was in the private sector,” were “testament to his belief and solid conviction in the potential of women and their ability to do the job as well as any man.”

Earlier in the discussion, Meckel had asked the panelists to raise their hand if they considered themselves feminists.

Trump did not raise her hand, but later she said, "I do label myself a feminist, and I do think of that in broad terms."

Female doctors in Australia earn 25% less per year than their male colleagues, a report has found.

Szepy / Getty Images

A study from Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research at the University of Melbourne has found that women account for 40% of GPs in Australia, but earn 25% less on average than male doctors.

Differences in hours worked and career disruption after having children are the reasons given for the income discrepancy.

After taking into account "differences in hours worked and a range of other characteristics", the report found that female GPs with children earn $30,000 less than comparable female GPs without children.

But male GPs with children earn over $45,000 more than male doctors without children.

Supplied.

Report author Professor Anthony Scott told BuzzFeed News this is called the "breadwinner effect".

"They've got to go out and work more to support the family, especially if their wife is taking time off to care for the kids," he told BuzzFeed News.

As GPs have more flexible hours than doctors working in hospitals, Scott says they can control how much money they earn by increasing and decreasing consultation hours.

The report found female doctors are more likely to hold longer consultations and not charge extra, which means they see fewer patients and earn less.

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The percentage of female GPs rose from 33 in 2005 to 40 in 2015, however the level of job satisfaction and work-life balance has flatlined.

"I don't think money is everything; other things matter more than money," Scott said. "For women the work-life balance would matter more and impact their job satisfaction, but the fee freeze could be associated."

The fees doctors earn from consultations under the Medicare rebate have been frozen by the federal government, and will stay the same until June 30, 2020.

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I see you, Margaret Atwood cameo.

Margaret Atwood makes a cameo in the pilot episode.

She's the character who slaps June for not initially blaming another character for being raped.

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The red outfits that the Handmaids wear in the book and TV adaptation are a nod to Mary Magdalene, a repentant sinner in the Bible.

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Whereas the blue that the wives wear is meant to be a nod to the virgin Mary, and how she's often shown in art as wearing blue.

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If you're wondering about those names, "Offred," "Ofglen," "Oferic," the Handmaids' names denote which Commander owns them. (So, "Offred" is "of Fred," for example.)

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“When will my hecks return from the war.”

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