Because nothing is better than girl power.
HBO
CBS
ABC
Hulu
Because girl power is everything.
Watch on: Hulu, All 4
It is terrifying, it is brutal, and it will probably make you sick at your stomach, but you need to watch it. Everything in that show is something that has happened or is happening right now, and if we're not careful could very well be our future. But there are bits of hope, in the ways that people fight tooth and nail against their situation, and most importantly is that we can keep it from being reality. – maddiedanielle
While it can be a depressing watch at times, it's a staunch reminder of everything that's been done to women throughout history, how far there is to go for true equality between the sexes, and how fragile our current society is. – rebeccalouiseh2
Hulu
Watch on: Hulu, ITV Player
It's set in London in the mid-1700s when 1/5 women were working in the sex industry. As far removed as it seems, it's eerily familiar. Mother/daughter relationships are explored, yet still a culture of rape, abuse, and sexism exists. Aside from men in the government who prosecute and persecute prostitutes while simultaneously paying for sex, there is something very unique about the show. It's written and directed by women, and has an incredible female cast. – kellys435c4e67f
Monumental Pictures
Watch on: Netflix worldwide
A show about a group of clones all played by Tatiana Maslany, a truly amazing actress. One of its main themes is women's rights to their bodies – through the lens of the ethics of cloning – and it showcases so many diverse female characters, from a con artist to a scientist to a suburban soccer mom. – Maddie Nissan, Facebook
Netflix
This was an important tournament for the team and for women in sports, and it’s about time we acknowledged that.
In a tense match, England won by nine runs.
Richard Heathcote / Getty Images
Robert Cianflone / Getty Images
Stringer / AFP / Getty Images
A young girl with oil-soaked plaits and a starched uniform stands in the middle of a crowd of children. They're taunting her, pulling her hair, asking where she's from, and if she knows English. Pooja, the daughter of a sweet-seller from Chandni Chowk, fumbles, surrounded by the jeering bullies. They point derisory fingers, chanting, “Vernie! Vernie! Vernie!” (short for vernacular) as she shrinks away, confidence crushed.
Years later, the bullied schoolgirl is unrecognisable. Designer clothes have replaced the over-starched uniform, and she has an impeccable blow-dry in place of oily plaits. "Pooja" is now “Poo” – sitting pretty atop the social ladder of her universe, she spends her time deciding who she will honour with her attention.
So goes Kareena Kapoor's character arc in Karan Johar’s Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham.
Skip to February 2017.
Kangana Ranaut is on Koffee With Karan, sitting on the most coveted couch on Indian television. “As per your experience," Johar asks, "who has given you more unnecessary attitude in the industry; female or male costars?”
She looks Johar square in the eye and says, “I think you have, Karan.” In the same breath, Ranaut calls Johar “a flag bearer of nepotism,” and the “movie mafia.”
Her comments triggered a nationwide debate on Bollywood nepotism, and instantly turned her into a pariah in almost every drawing room and corridor that matters in Bollywood.
Ranaut is one of Bollywood’s best rags-to-riches stories. She has been bagging awards since her first film, but it took eight years for people to begin to realise that she was more than just a talented actor; she was a star.
Christopher Furlong / Getty Images
In 2007, as she picked up the Indian International Film Academy’s Best Debut Award for her role in Gangster, her first words were, “I don’t know how many times I’ll get nervous. But I love the excitement.”
She had already won several major awards that year and it wasn’t really a surprise seeing her onstage again. However, each time she had gone up onstage, she had been subjected to sneering and ridicule for her poor English. She has also been criticised for being "demanding" and "eccentric" on set.
Imagine better manicured fingers pointing, "Vernie! Vernie!"
As time moved on, so did Ranaut's career, with more misses than hits. However, as of 2017, Ranaut has three National Awards, a wide range of characters under her belt, and over 10 years of experience – and she’s only 30. She hasn't got there without her share of controversy, having been accused of bullying scriptwriters and exes along the way. But by any standard she is an A-lister, sought after by almost every director in the industry.
So why does Bollywood hate Ranaut so much?
Because unlike other Bollywood outsiders who've risen to the top, she isn't keeping quiet about the forces and folks that tried to keep her out.
Karan Johar is no stranger to snide remarks about his film-making style or his nepotistic ways. A Bollywood star child himself, he has directed six films in a career spanning almost 20 years. In these films' lead roles, he has cast zero people he didn’t already know of before he started casting the film. He has cast best friends, old connections, assistant directors, children of family friends, costars of best friends, wives of best friends, and even people he respectfully calls uncle and aunty.
Star World / Via twitter.com
By the time Ranaut took her turn on Johar’s couch, it had already witnessed numerous digs at the show’s host, all of which had gone down better than hers. He's been called out on his show for being a bad filmmaker, for being nepotistic, and for creating controversies by stars as big as Ranveer Singh, Shah Rukh Khan, Akshay Kumar, and even Aamir Khan.
Star World
Back in 2014 at the All India Bakchod Knockout, in a script Johar himself helped write, AIB made countless jokes about his nepotism. He laughed at each one
AIB
In a 2014 interview, Johar even admitted to letting his connections in the industry affect his casting decisions for Student of the Year. He added, “There are too many factors in this country that determine movie stardom and true talent is the least of them. It is truly tragic.”
So why did Ranaut making an old, threadbare observation evoke Bollywood's pettiest and most undignified response in recent history, and a news story that's lasted months?
The truth is a bitter pill to swallow and over the past few months, the industry and the numerous star kids that populate it have been force-fed this pill over and over. Public opinion is changing quickly, and the fact that the last number dialled on a star’s call log matters less than the audience's response to their latest movie now looms large over their heads.
As far as Johar’s films go, India has eagerly lapped up every fantasy he has fed us over the past 20 years. But the more glimpses we get into the making of these films, the more the questions start to pile up. Johar’s oft-repeated mantra that he wants to tell the story in the best way possible – and that that involves casting the best voice and face available – has been put under the spotlight thanks to the storm Ranaut has kicked up.
AFP / Getty Images
And let's be real. When was the last time we really saw a star kid shine? Tiger Shroff may have a massive female fanbase that belies his filmography, but Armaan Jain, Sooraj Pancholi, Athiya Shetty, Shraddha Kapoor, Harshvardhan Kapoor, and many others have just been passing faces in a sea of less-than-passable movies.
We have excused many star kids, expecting that at some point, their genes will somehow reflect the legacy they were born into.
It goes without saying that nepotism allowed a lot of mediocrity and below-par performances to make it to the big screen. Uday Chopra's entire career, for example, was a matter of waiting to see if he could ever go beyond being just a well-built man. We have excused so many actors, giving them multiple chances to prove themselves, because we expected that at some point their genes would somehow reflect the legacy they were born into.
Despite what Saif may think, I don't think genetics work that way.
Besides, people have always found a way to sidestep the star system. Modelling and beauty pageants have been one way to enter the industry. Some of our biggest stars are proof of that. That later shifted to casting from television. Ex-TV stars such as Sushant Singh Rajput and Ayushmann Khurrana have proved their mettle as dedicated actors in their short careers, with big-banner Yash Raj Films movies as well as smaller productions.
As more of the usual first-weekend-going, pop-culture-loving audience turns to the internet for entertainment, stars are starting to emerge from there as well. Tanmay Bhat, for example, has a way bigger Twitter fanbase than star kids like Tiger Shroff, Athiya Shetty, or Harshvardhan Kapoor. Internet stars such as Mallika Dua, Rohan Joshi, and Kanan Gill have also found their way to the big screen in some capacity.
If bankability is the excuse we are given for casting children with a strong legacy backing them, let's look at some of the most bankable stars in Bollywood right now — Shah Rukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Deepika Padukone, Akshay Kumar and Anushka Sharma to name but a few. They have made it to the top without any parents, godparents, or legacies to live up to. Over the years, they have struggled to prove their worth and their talent, and now every project with their name on it has top billing.
The likes of Jhanvi and Khushi Kapoor (the daughters of Sridevi and Boney Kapoor), Sara Ali Khan (the daughter of Saif Ali Khan), and Suhana and Aryan Khan (the children of Shah Rukh Khan) are all currently being groomed to take over from their parents. And before they've even made it, they're already in the spotlight. Jhanvi Kapoor and Sara Ali Khan are followed around by paparazzi on their way to the gym, or to classes where they work on the skills required to be actors.
Jhanvi Kapoor (left) and Sara Ali Khan.
Viral Bhayani
They might even stand out in that audition that they will eventually, inevitably get, because they've had the privilege of being trained for it. While struggling actors work hard for the shot that may or may not come, the privilege of the star kid won't just get their feet in the door, but will ensure that those feet are well-manicured, and clad in expensive designer footwear.
But despite all that, they may get rejected by audiences who will seek their entertainment elsewhere if they're not satisfied with the weekend Bollywood release.
The direct, undignified jibes against Ranaut by Johar, Saif Ali Khan, and Varun Dhawan on one of Bollywood's largest stages revealed just how easy it is to rattle ruling dynasties these days. They haven't just been called out. They've been called out by an outsider-turned-A lister, one of Bollywood's most bankable actors.
The twist? She's talented enough that you, I, and Karan Johar know that she'll keep getting work, and keep making money.
Str / AFP / Getty Images
The times have been changing since the likes of Priyanka Chopra, Deepika Padukone, and Irrfan Khan found their way to the top by using the star system to their advantage. By starring in movies with top-billed superstars, they earned enough money to be able to extend their careers beyond the khandans, and fuel global ambitions. Anushka Sharma, who moonlights as a Bollywood producer now, admitted in an interview that if it hadn't been for bigger-budget movies with the Khans like PK and Sultan, she wouldn't have had the capacity to make movies that she wanted to watch as a viewer.
The monarchs of Bollywood are guilty of forgetting that while they sit pretty in their little bubbles, hungry newcomers are racing to the top.
The bullied little girl always finds her way up. Karan Johar should know. He wrote the script himself.
The little girl burst into tears when confronted with her idol at San Diego Comic-Con – and Gal Gadot’s reaction was completely adorable.
It swiftly became the highest-grossing live-action motion picture ever with a female director, raking in $779,433,279 worldwide. And, just this weekend, it was confirmed that a sequel is in the works.
Warner Bros
Wonder Woman, played by Gal Gadot, is the first female superhero to get her own movie in either of the two universes from DC and Marvel, and the movie is the first female-led superhero film in more than a decade.
Warner Bros
Variety
There are no stories about princesses being rescued in here.
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"Matilda wasn't offered the opportunity to learn when she wanted to, so she took it upon herself to do so." — madeleinek43e5c5a7b
Puffin
"I review children's books, and to this day this is one of the best I've ever reviewed. It features a WoC protagonist, a young girl who immediately becomes incensed upon learning that there's never been a female president and decides to run for president of her class. Aside from giving young readers a crash-course in how the electoral college works, there are so many amazing lessons the book imparts, like judging a person's worthiness on their actions and character rather than their gender; and how girls, especially POC girls, often have to work 10 times as hard to be taken just as seriously as their male peers." — TheIrishCowgirl
Scholastic
In 1995, Charlize Theron was newly arrived in Hollywood after stints as a model and a dancer, living in a fleabag motel, and running out of money. Her mother had sent the 20-year-old Theron a check from South Africa, but when she went to the bank to cash it, they refused her. Fed up, Theron threw what has been repeatedly called “a tantrum.” That argument, coupled with her beauty, caught the eye of an agent, who promptly handed over his business card. Fast-forward a few months, and there’s Theron in white lingerie, towering over Los Angeles in billboards for 2 Days in the Valley.
This anecdote finds its way into almost every profile of Theron, and Theron herself has regularly described it as “Lana Turner-esque,” referencing the classic Hollywood star who, according to popular lore, was “discovered” at Schwab’s Soda Fountain in Los Angeles in 1937. The tantrum, the beauty, and the comparisons to Turner — best known for her ice-cold platinum look and secretly sordid private life — provided the star mold for Theron’s early image. Like Turner, Theron was raised in rural isolation; like Turner, her father was murdered, leaving her and her mother to survive on their own. Neither had traditional training as actresses. Both were routinely underestimated, initially cast as pretty faces with beautiful bodies.
But unlike Turner, who was exploited and abused by a series of men in her private and professional life, Theron charted a different career trajectory for herself almost immediately. Over the course of the next two decades, her image has shifted from cool girl to bitch, and now from bitch to broad. Even with — or despite — her traditional beauty, she’s achieved a position of cultural and industrial power akin to Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn, who, like Theron, prided themselves on ignoring the unspoken rules of proper (female) star behavior.
A portrait from Charlize Theron's early modeling career in 1991 (left) and Lana Turner.
David Sandison / The Independe / REX / Shutterstock; William Grimes / Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images
Today, Theron still labors to get people to talk about what she’s reading, her craft, or her politics, instead of what she ate to gain weight or what she’s doing in her private life. She continues to fight the idea that the private lives of female stars are not only public property, but take precedence over whatever they do onscreen. For that, she’s been labeled a bitch, a diva, and an ice queen. But she’s also fashioned one of the most enduring and unexpectedly varied careers in the business, positioning herself as one of the most bankable — and powerful — stars in Hollywood.
Theron has said that she’s “very attracted to characters who don’t necessarily make it easy to be loved.” But she’s only been able to refuse niceness, onscreen and off, because of her beauty: It’s the capital she keeps cashing in order to get interesting roles that will de-emphasize, or at least trouble, the privileges that attend being a thin, white, straight woman in today’s society.
So what happens when that beauty, at least by Hollywood standards, comes of age? First, you keep conducting your career as a man would — or, more precisely, you redefine what a woman’s career might look like. And then you lobby for, demand, or create the very roles that Hollywood wouldn’t otherwise. As Theron enters the third decade of her career, she hasn’t just figured out how to game the system. She’s trying to change it entirely.
After 2 Days in the Valley, Theron’s agent arranged for her to audition for Showgirls. She was purportedly offered the lead role, later given to Elizabeth Berkley, but turned it down — and fired her agent. “We can see where he saw my career going,” she later told W magazine. She didn’t work for nearly a year; all of her offers were for “sex-kitten” roles that required her to take her clothes off. And then she won a part in That Thing You Do!, Tom Hanks’s directorial debut.
The role was significantly reduced during the editing process, but served as an opening for Theron. Over the next five years, she’d go on to play a string of wives and girlfriends who only periodically took off their clothes. Those films (The Astronaut’s Wife, Reindeer Games, and a half dozen more) were all relative duds, yet Theron was celebrated as one of the most beautiful women in the world — and became famous enough to attract funding for Monster. It was a role that promised to change the conversation about her.
From top: 2 Days in the Valley, 1996, The Astronaut's Wife with Johnny Depp, 1999, and Reindeer Games with Ben Affleck, 2000
MGM; New Line; Dimension Films | All Courtesy Everett Collection
But that conversation was not easily changed. Every star, no matter their gender or their beauty, their age or their acting, gets slotted in a particular place in Hollywood as soon as they give a performance worth writing about. For Theron, that place has always been “rural cool girl”: the male fantasy of a hot girl who doesn’t take anything too seriously, who loves to hang with the boys, who’s low-drama and won’t hassle the men in her life with bullshit like asking for things.
Early profiles always mentioned Theron’s “discovery” story, but reveled in her past: how she grew up on farm, how her best friend was a goat, how she swears like a sailor, how she just happens to be the most beautiful woman in the world, with a body to match. Pictures of her — in Playboy, Esquire, Vanity Fair — highlighted the second part of the equation, while the interviews took care of the rest.
She wasn’t just raised in rural South Africa, but as many articles emphasized, on a “dirt farm” — which really just means they farmed without irrigation, but sounds much more rural, and, well, dirtier, than “farm.” In one of her first profiles of her, People magazine reported that Theron, growing up an only child, relied on a goat named Bok to be her best friend. “I grew up surrounded by animals,” she told EW in 1997. “I was milking cows before school at six in the morning and making butter; I can do all that shit.” She’s a tomboy, who, according to the Ottawa Citizen, “loves a big barbecue”; she learned all about engines from her father, who was a mechanic. “I don’t remember when I learned how to drive,” she told the South African Sunday Times. “I just woke up one day and I could.” According to Theron, when she was filming The Italian Job — with stunts that required precise technical driving — Mark Wahlberg would do a 360 and start puking while Theron yelled “What’s up, girl?” at him.
Early profiles reveled in Theron's past: how she grew up on farm, how her best friend was a goat, how she just happens to be the most beautiful woman in the world, with a body to match.
In at least six different interviews, Theron ate steak. Breakfast: steak and eggs. Lunch: steak salad. Dinner: strip steak. And she was seemingly always drinking: shots of tequila, bottles of Rolling Rock, dive-bar booze. “She has the appetite of a lumberjack,” according to Good Housekeeping. “She doesn’t subscribe to Hollywood’s passion for grasshopper-thin figures,” said Biography. She chain-smoked. She had tattoos. She said “fuck” a lot. For Vogue, she had “the swear-heavy vocabulary of a randy stevedore.” In Vanity Fair, Kenneth Branagh related an anecdote from their time together on the set of Woody Allen’s Celebrity: “We were stuck in the back of a Teamsters van waiting for the rain to stop,” he said. “It was the filthiest conversation I’ve ever had. The two Teamster lads couldn’t believe their ears.”
To promote her early roles — mostly as girlfriends, wives, and love interests to middlingly handsome men, from Ben Affleck (Reindeer Games) to Keanu Reeves (Sweet November), she was placed on the covers of magazines, often without pants or a top. “Why be afraid of your sexuality?” she told Vanity Fair. “I have to use that. ...Nudity, if used correctly, is extremely powerful.”
Playboy
Nudity served to get Theron steady, if unremarkable, work — and it soon dominated her image. In 1999, Playboy published nude photos of Theron that had been taken years before when she was still modeling. Theron attempted, unsuccessfully, to sue the magazine, but the effect on her image was complete. Regardless of consent, the cover of Playboy had the same connotation: Theron was a hot girl, a Playboy girl, not an actress of substance.
Her cool girl image began to morph in other, darker ways. Theron was purportedly undeterred by the male-dominated film industry, because, as she told the Courier-Mail, “the more men you throw my way, the more I just become alive.” She supposedly snagged boyfriend Stephan Jenkins, lead singer of Third Eye Blind, by going backstage at a concert at the Hard Rock Cafe in Hawaii. That relationship dissolved, but when she started dating Irish film star Stuart Townsend, it was framed as an on-set seduction: Theron “has a reputation as a man-eater in Hollywood,” as the Sunday Mirror proclaimed.
“Man-eater” was the only way to describe a hot woman who 1) wasn’t married; 2) didn’t talk about her plans to become married; and 3) never affected an aura of “niceness” in interviews. The rural cool girl had become a vamp: a long-standing Hollywood stereotype that expands to describe darkly sexual women like Angelina Jolie (who, around this time, was wearing a vial of husband Billy Bob Thornton's blood around her neck) and Theron, as the narrative of her childhood was revealed to be much darker than previously suggested.
In early interviews, Theron claimed that her father had died in a car accident when she was just 15. But in 1998, police reports emerged detailing how Theron’s mother, Gerda, shot and killed her husband after he threatened to kill both her and Charlize. The shooting was ruled an act of self-defense; no charges were ever brought. When the real story broke, Theron never tried to deny it, but did not comment directly on it, save a single primetime special with Diane Sawyer “so that everyone would know and so we could demystify the whole thing,” as she later told Interview.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve auditioned for a role, only to have my agent come back and say, ‘Listen, Charlize, they saw you in the orange dress and they don’t think you can do it.’”
Still, it became a fixture in press to come — a sort of shadow over the cool girl narrative, a central tragedy that could be connected to every role she chose, every decision she made — especially when, in 2003, she dramatically transformed herself for the role of serial killer Aileen Wuornos in a small, indie movie called Monster.
Leading up to Monster, Theron’s role as a cover girl was secure. She was voted the “Most Desirable Woman” of 2003 by the readers of AskMen.com. But the parts she got were generally shit — and the movies themselves by and large bombed. The Astronaut’s Wife earned $19 million back of its $75 million budget; The Legend of Bagger Vance earned just $40 million (budget: $80 million); Reindeer Games grossed $32 million (budget: $42 million); The Yards didn’t even crack $1 million (budget: $24 million). Sweet November performed decently but was so bad it won Theron her first Razzie nomination for Worst Actress. The Curse of the Jade Scorpion will go down as one of Woody Allen’s major flops. Trapped, costarring Kevin Bacon, earned $13 million (budget $30 million); Waking Up in Reno, with Billy Bob Thornton and Penélope Cruz, made just $262,000. Italian Job was a surprise blockbuster — and the first film to truly take advantage of Theron’s nimbleness as an action star — but her role in the film was still supporting.
Part of the problem, according to Theron, could be traced to an orange gown she wore to the Oscars back in 2000. Formfitting, plunging in the back, and paired with soft finger curls, it prompted comparisons to Jean Harlow, landed her on every best-dressed list, and, for the next three years, became a symbol of what she couldn’t move beyond. As she told the OC Register, “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve auditioned for a role, only to have my agent come back and say, ‘Listen, Charlize, they saw you in the orange dress and they don’t think you can do it.’”
“It could be a magazine cover, a movie role or even an orange dress,” Theron continued. “People in this town get stuck on an image and don’t realize that it is the job of an actor to transform.” Put differently: Theron wanted roles that asked her to do more than just be hot, which may have helped her earn her place in Hollywood, but then turned into a cage of her (and her publicists’) own making.
Charlize Theron at the premiere of Focus Features' "Atomic Blonde" on July 24, 2017.
Gregg Deguire / WireImage
It’s no coincidence that it was a female director who was able to envision Theron as more than the sum of her beautiful parts. That director, Patty Jenkins, was casting for the lead role in Monster, a story based on the real life and death of serial killer Aileen Wuornos. Jenkins screen-tested Kate Winslet, Heather Graham, Brittany Murphy, and Kate Beckinsale. But ever since seeing Theron’s dark turn in The Devil’s Advocate, Jenkins had known she wanted her for the role.
When Jenkins approached her, Theron was confused. “Why me?” she asked. “This stuff doesn’t happen to me…these are usually the things that I have to go out there and sweat blood and kill somebody for.” Jenkins’ reply: “Honestly, I just looked at you, and I looked at everybody else, and I said to myself, ‘I could kick the other actors’ asses. You, I’m not so sure.’”
This aura of toughness, which emerged over and over in the conversations about Monster, would help shift Theron’s career trajectory to its current action-hero apex. It wouldn’t have been possible, however, without Jenkins’ understanding of Theron’s ability — or Theron’s own role in making the film, which became the first undertaking for her production company Denver & Delilah.
Theron would go on to win an Oscar for her performance; afterward, her asking price rose to $10 million per picture. But first, she had to deal with every interviewer obsessing over how a pretty, thin person could possibly be “brave” enough to gain weight and, as it has since become known in the industry, “go ugly.” “Charlize Theron Sacrifices Great Looks for Great Part in Monster,” a typical Vancouver Sun piece exclaimed. “When the first photo stills from Monster were published, no one could believe that Theron … would downplay her ‘greatest asset’ to become a homeless lesbian prostitute and serial killer.”
Theron’s performance was far more than the dental prosthesis, makeup, and weight gain that accompanied it — or the press-ready narrative of “transformation” that became central to the Oscar campaign that coalesced around her. Theron, for her part, did her best to resist that narrative — in part because it equated “looking poor” with bravery, but also because it elided the actual, well, acting. She was particularly annoyed with critics who suggested she decided to “get ugly” without motivation — or without grounding it in the facts of Wuornos’s life. “People were like ‘You better not make Charlize Theron ugly!” Theron told The New Yorker. “Fuck that. I didn’t work on Aileen from the outside in. After I read the writing she did in jail, she was in my body, and I was in hers.”
According to Theron, each aesthetic decision was made with tremendous care: “Her body was the way it was because she had a child at 13,” Theron said in the Denver Post. “She was homeless and ate whenever she could, and usually it was crap ... the way her skin looked, the way her teeth looked, the way her eyes looked — those were all things because of her lifestyle, because she’d been living out in sun and didn’t have a home.”
Theron in Monster, 2003
Newmarket Releasing / Courtesy Everett Collection
Puedes ayudar a convertir tu lugar de trabajo en un espacio seguro para las mujeres.
No dejes que sean las que pidan comida, tomen notas o se preocupen de si hay o no hay café para todos en una reunión si no es su trabajo. No son las niñeras del equipo.
Marcos Chamizo / Andre Borges / BuzzFeed
No te asomes sigilosamente a su pantalla o te apoyes sobre su mesa.
Marcos Chamizo / Andre Borges / BuzzFeed
No les interrumpas cuando hablen: espérate y añade lo que tengas que decir cuando hayan terminado.
Marcos Chamizo / Andre Borges / BuzzFeed
Es molesto en cualquier día del mes.
Marcos Chamizo / Andre Borges / BuzzFeed
After Dhanya Rajendran simply mentioned that she hadn’t liked the film, fans of the actor unleashed organised trolling that lasted all weekend.
Red Chillies Entertainment
1. Did I really wake up at 7am for this so that I could squeeze in a workout before the 9am show and hence compensate for my unhealthy lifestyle?
2. Why does Shah Rukh Khan not become a singer like he planned to?
3. Why did Sejal think it was necessary to explain the meaning of her name?
4. Why is she still doing it?
5. Why did she think no one would pick up her ring and steal it?
6. Does Sejal think people are going to just say, “Here’s a diamond ring lying on the floor of a popular European tourist spot and is probably worth a fortune. But I WILL NOT PICK IT UP”????
7. Has Imtiaz Ali met lawyers whose parents are diamond merchants in Mumbai?
8. Isn’t that accent…offensive?
9. Has no one told Sejal about the Maya Angelou quote – “When someone shows you who they are, believe them”?
10. Why are we still so afraid to say sexual intercourse on screen? Why are they calling it physical relations? I CAN SEE YOUR MOUTH SAYING INTERCOURSE, SEJAL.
11. Can I be the one to tell Sejal she doesn’t have to be a “sister-type” to not be sexually harassed by a 50-year-old man?
12. Why is she running out every night to follow Harry?
13. Does she understand that stalking is not okay?
14. What does Sejal gain when she follows Harry on his sexual exploits?
15. Does Harry think it’s hot to poke a woman in her belly button?
16. Is that code for something?
Red Chillies Entertainment
17. For someone who’d kill for a Shah Rukh Smoulder™, is it okay that I want to shield myself with pepper spray when he looks at women in this movie?
18. Why does she want him to think she’s hot?
19. What is the underlying issue here, Sejal?
20. Who do we really need to beat up for the way you see your body and your personality?
21. What does Harry mean when he says, “Tum uss type ki ho hi nahi”?
22. What is that type?
23. Are we picking Pokémon types?
24. Can I be a panda-type Pokémon?
25. Why are women blamed for misconstruing a backhanded compliment?
26. Why can’t Harry give a compliment without being a dick?
27. When are we going to stop assuming women are “nakhrewaali” for not being okay with the excuse of a compliment you gave them?
28. Why did Harry shame her for leaving the hotel at night and living her life?
29. Wait, now why is he “saving her life” and then slut-shaming her?
30. Why is he blaming her for being harassed in a club in a country she doesn’t know?
31. Why would you want to be kidnapped by strange men, Sejal?
32. Are you sure you want to say “What you seek is seeking you” right after you were chased by bouncers across the city?
33. Can someone please hand Sejal her boots so that her feet don’t freeze?
34. Do they want to have a go at brushing their teeth before singing loudly in each other’s faces?
35. Why are they behaving like a couple?
36. Isn’t she engaged to a boy named Rupen?
Red Chillies Entertainment
37. Has Sejal never been told to not love men who love pretending to be tortured by their past?
38. Why is she asking to be his girlfriend?
39. Why is she offering a relationship to a man who is clearly not good for womankind?
40. Has no one told the writers that being lonely doesn’t mean someone will offer you love?
41. Wait, she isn’t lying about being a girlfriend?
42. What are labels?
43. Can we now call me Daenerys Stormborn, the First of Her Name, The Unburnt, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, Queen of Meereen, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Protector of the Realm, Lady Regnant of the Seven Kingdoms, Breaker of Chains, and Mother of Dragons?
44. Who else thought of Twilight when Harry said he doesn’t deserve to be loved because he is a bad person?
45. Why are they twirling in this café?
46. Are the waiters not scared for the orders they’re carrying because these morons want to waltz in the middle of the café?
47. Are they really still hoping to find this damn ring?
48. Why are they not nice to any white woman they meet?
49. Why are we okay with mocking the anger that women feel when they are unjustifiably abandoned by men?
50. Why is Sejal defending Harry against his ex?
51. Does it really take 20 euros to make a copy of a key?
52. ARE THEY SETTLING THIS RELATIONSHIP WITH 20 EUROS?
53. Can I text the love of my life and ask him to send me a gold-plated yacht for the heartbreak I felt when he didn’t love me back?
54. Does this sidey guy really feel alright about being called Gas?
55. Is it okay to call people Acidity now?
56. Can we write a song named, “Kabhi Kabhi Acidity”?
57. Is it okay that I have laughed at my own joke in the middle of this movie?
58. Does anyone suddenly miss the receptionist from Hotel Decent because of how awful this side character is?
59. Why did Harry get a back story but we still don’t know why Sejal hates herself?
60. Why is she lying about the ring?
61. Why can’t we just end this?
62. Is this payback for the time I thought Imtiaz Ali movies were too short?
63. Did he actually say he thinks Sejal can save him?
64. Who else is happy that she’s packing her bags?
65. WHY ARE THEY NOT GOING HOME?
66. Why is Evelyn Sharma playing a white woman with no brains again?
67. Why is he questioning a woman who wants to actually be with him?
68. Who gave him the right to say she will be called “ghatiya” if she goes back to her fiancé?
69. Why is he regretting letting her go?
70. Why do I still love airport runs and endings?
71. Do I really love this ending or am I just happy this is ending at all?
72. Why didn’t he call her to say he’s coming?
73. Why are they kissing like that?
74. Why won’t they stop kissing?
Red Chillies Entertainment
75. Wait, why don’t we know more about Sejal?
76. Has Imtiaz Ali ever met a heartbroken woman?
77. Has Imtiaz Ali met a woman?
78. Can I suggest Sejal see my therapist?
79. Can I suggest Imtiaz Ali see my therapist?
80. Can I suggest Shah Rukh Khan tenderly hold my hand and come to therapy with me too?
81. Why don’t we know why this woman is so riddled with a low sense of self-worth?
82. Why aren’t any women helping write the women for this movie?
83. Why are we still okay with the tortured hero asking for women to save him?
84. Especially when this man is a 50-year-old sexist pig?
85. Why have I been fooled into thinking Shah Rukh Khan would not make a terrible movie again?
86. Why did I think Imtiaz would make a movie for me, a woman?
87. Why did I think Anushka would take a stand for Sejal against the sexist garbage the movie puts her through?
88. At what point in time did I take it for granted that a team of three extremely talented people (Imtiaz, SRK, and Anushka) could make this burning pile of wasted opportunities?
89. At what point did my disappointment turn into anger?
90. At what point will Bollywood realise that I will easily pick a binge-watch sesh on Netflix if more of this puerile garbage is made?
91. At what point was it okay for me to be made a fool by the thing I love and cherish the most in this world?
92. At what point did I stop giving a fuck and realise mediocrity on Bollywood’s part was indefensible?
93. At what point will I stop giving them my money anyway?
Serena revealed she doesn’t want her child living under the same “stipulations” she faced.
Remember when she wrote an open letter to empower women? Or when she shut down John McEnroe's dismissive comments about her achievements? Or when she hoped to inspire women breaking into sport with this awards acceptance speech? Or when a reporter asked how she felt to be "one of the greatest female athletes of all time," and she responded: "I prefer "one of the greatest athletes of all time."? Or when she wrote an essay about the way in which the pay gap hits women of colour the hardest?
Serena, who is eight months pregnant, told Stellar:
There are barriers I hope to break so my baby, whether a boy or girl, won't have to live under those stipulations. I definitely am a feminist. I like to stick up for women and women's rights. So many things happen, and I just think: "Wow, why don't we have a chance?" If that makes me a feminist, I am proud to be one.
Neilson Barnard / Getty Images
“He was like, ‘I’d never date you in real life. You’re too big for me.’”
Roy Rochlin / Getty Images
Variety
Alex Wong / Getty Images
It was one of the only actors that ever made me cry on set ... I had to pick it up and go back on set and pretend he was a love interest, and it was really hard. It just makes you realise that there are some really bad people out there and for some reason, he felt the need to say that to me. You have to kind of forgive and not forget really, but it was just like wow. It was jarring.
This shit is political.
Becky Barnicoat / BuzzFeed
It's a big love, deep and true.
Becky Barnicoat / BuzzFeed
There are literally millions of women out there, staring bemused at the heavens, shaking their fist and asking this question.
“There is so much power in our voices, and we need to speak out.”
In the film, Emma plays renowned tennis player Billie Jean King, who in 1973 was challenged by Bobby Riggs – a retired player 26 years older than King – who claimed he could "beat any woman" on the tennis court.
Cloud Eight Films
In my career so far, I've needed my male costars to take a pay cut so that I may have parity with them. And that's something they do for me because they feel it's what's right and fair. That's something that's also not discussed necessarily – that our getting equal pay is going to require people to selflessly say: "That's what's fair."
Greg Kadel / Marie Claire
Kevin Winter / Getty Images
“Since time is money and money is time, and I’m getting paid for 84% of mine, we’re fucking off and going home”
ABC
It's not available to view in the UK at the moment, but thankfully we are still blessed with some snippets of the best musical numbers.
ABC
The comedy duo worked with a team of researchers to verify the statistics in the song, with the 16% figure referencing the Australian Bureau of Statistics (2017), and the industry specific pay gaps referencing the Australian Taxation Office (2014-2015).
ABC
Here’s a hint: our ancestors were VERY afraid of evil and VERY into kidnapping.
I dove headfirst into wedding planning only to find myself painfully unprepared. But to be fair, I've never hosted an event for 150 people before.
I was behind my peers in other ways. I didn't have a Pinterest board with my dream wedding details. I had no idea what I actually wanted. My parents were laissez-faire about the ceremony, so I knew I had free reign to do what I wanted. But what did I want? What traditions and rituals should I include?
Where did all of these wedding traditions come from? When did they start? Why did they start?
Oh my, how little did I know.
BuzzFeedVideo / Via youtube.com
Kamelias (female KKK members) attend a funeral in Muncie, Indiana.
Courtesy Ball State University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections
Although Klansmen outnumbered Klanswomen by 6 to 1, at least half a million women (some claimed as many as 3 million) joined the movement, and that doesn’t count the many who participated in its public events and supported its ideas. In fact, women clamored to participate from the moment the second Klan reappeared. They contributed a new argument for the cause: that women’s emergence as active citizens would help purify the country. That claim may well have emerged only after the women's suffrage amendment was ratified in 1920; before that, many Klanspeople of both sexes probably had doubts about the righteousness of women entering politics. Nevertheless, the claim that women might bring “family values” back into the nation’s governance — a claim made at the time in movements of all political hues — created a contradiction within conservative movements: Despite an ideological commitment to Victorian gender norms, including women’s domesticity, many conservative women enjoyed participating in politics. In fact, some Klanswomen interpreted political activism as a female responsibility. Then, once active, they often came to resent men’s attempts to control them and even challenged men’s power. Thus we meet a phenomenon that many progressive feminists found and still find anomalous — the existence not only of conservative feminism but even of bigoted feminism. Readers who have not already done so must rid themselves of notions that women’s politics are always kinder, gentler, and less racist than men’s.
Readers who have not already done so must rid themselves of notions that women’s politics are always kinder, gentler, and less racist than men’s.
Women who became active in the Klan were continuing a populist tradition of the 1880s and 1890s. Even without voting rights, women had constituted a significant force in the Farmers Alliance and then in the Populist and Socialist Parties. Women activists spoke at meetings, edited newspapers, lobbied legislatures, published novels, wrote political tracts, ran for local offices, and got elected to leadership in the Alliance — in short, they engaged in every form of political activity allowed to them. When the Populist Party emerged, women were increasingly shut out of official roles, not only because of their disenfranchisement but also because increasing Populist power made male leaders less open to sharing influence. (It was often the case that women had more space to lead in social movements than in formal political parties.) There were exceptions, though. Kansas feminist Mary Elizabeth Lease, to cite just one example, was a major Populist traveling speaker, in demand throughout the Midwest. She gave the opening address at the 1892 Kansas Populist convention and was an at-large delegate at the national convention. Many Populist women were also stalwarts of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. They brought these experiences into the Ku Klux Klan. They did not assume that politics was a male activity.
Moreover, women had won at least partial suffrage in 27 states and the Alaska Territory prior to the national amendment, and these states included those where the Klan was strong, such as Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, and Oregon. But the 1920s political world into which Klanswomen entered was rapidly changing. After the 19th Amendment was ratified, the most visible women’s rights organizations waned in strength. As a result, the narrative of women’s struggle for equality has often characterized the 1920s as a period of inaction or even retreat. But that conclusion, while accurate with respect to electoral engagement, does not hold up with respect to social and cultural developments. For example, rates of women’s college education mushroomed. Between 1910 and 1920 the number of women in college doubled, reaching almost 300,000, or nearly half of all students in higher education. That increase continued during the Klan’s heyday, growing by 84% through the 1920s. Similarly with women’s employment: By 1920 women constituted 21% of all those employed outside their homes, a rate much higher among poor women and women of color, of course. Both changes — education and employment — drew more women into the public sphere; even those with husbands who could support a whole family were spending more time outside their homes. Progressive Era women activists had obtained a base for promoting women’s and children’s health and welfare in the US Children’s Bureau. At the same time, divorce rates were growing, which meant that more women were not only leaving husbands but also fighting for child custody, always the right about which women cared most.
Meanwhile, commercial culture was responding to these changes. The stereotype of the new culture had been the flapper, but this was a small group compared to the millions captivated by new forms of leisure and social adventure, many of them entirely secular. Prohibition was flouted openly in big cities and discreetly in smaller locations. Advertising morphed from information about where particular commodities could be purchased to imagery that persuaded people that they needed new products. Nightclubs, records, and above all radios brought jazz out of Harlem into white communities. Radio broadcasting began in 1920; by 1930, 60% of Americans owned a radio, and as a result radically expanded the acquaintance of small-town and urban Americans with big-city culture. By 1927 50 million Ford cars were on the roads — many with women drivers — offering greater mobility and privacy. Well into the 1960s, most young people had their first sexual experience in a car. For the young and unmarried, unchaperoned commercial leisure such as dance halls, soda fountains, and the movies — where couples could sit in the dark! — became a magnetic attraction. Images of beauty changed rapidly: Women cut off and “bobbed” their hair (using, significantly, a male name to describe the new haircuts), and wore makeup, shorter skirts, and brighter colors.
Together these cultural developments transformed social life and, of course, created a backlash. Conservatives railed at the decline of morals, and by this they meant mainly women’s morals. Walter Lippmann’s phrase “the acids of modernity” captured Klannish fears that the very ground of Protestant morality was being eroded. The Klan blamed Jews and, to a lesser extent, Catholics for subverting what would later be called the gender order; nevertheless, Klanspeople fretted about immodesty precisely because this freer social and sexual culture appealed to Protestants as well. Because anxiety about immodesty focused on women, Klanswomen were both repelled and enticed by these developments, and this shows in the contradictions within their program and activism.
Klanswomen were often wives of Klansmen, but many joined on their own, and others led their husbands into the organization.
Klanswomen were often wives of Klansmen, but many joined on their own, and others led their husbands into the organization. In fact, some husbands resented their wives’ Klan activities and absences from home, and some opponents taunted Klansmen with the charge that they were not man enough to keep their wives at home. It seems likely, though, that Klanswomen often spent more hours on Klan work than did rank-and-file Klansmen because they had more disposable time.
Women did not always wait to get Klansmen’s permission to join the movement but organized themselves independently through churches, clubs, sororities, and Klan picnics. Male leaders, alarmed by these initiatives outside their control, formed competing women’s groups, producing a variety of organizations with names such as Kamelias, Queens of the Golden Mask, and Ladies of the Invisible Empire. In 1923 Imperial Wizard Hiram Evans, seeing that women could not be kept out of the Klan movement, managed to merge these groups forcibly into the Women of the Ku Klux Klan (WKKK). Some preexisting women’s groups resisted this merger, and then, after acceding, refused to accept a subordinate status. An Oregon group proclaimed that “the women’s organization is an exact counterpart of the Klan itself, with no difference whatever except that of gender. They will use the same constitution, ritual, regalia, and methods.” In another assertion of its independence the WKKK set up its headquarters in Little Rock, hundreds of miles from Atlanta, home of the Klan headquarters. By November 1923, the WKKK claimed chapters in all 48 states. In Indiana, the state of greatest Klan strength, where the population was 97% white and Protestant, the WKKK boasted of 250,000 members; if true (not likely), this would have meant that 32% of the state’s native-born white Protestant women belonged.
Brief profiles of three WKKK leaders illustrate their combination of conservatism with assertiveness, a combination that many might find surprising. Elizabeth Tyler, cohead of the Klan’s PR firm, defied almost all the gender norms of the time and displayed a business acumen that might befit a CEO today. Her career grew from both nativist and fraternal traditions. Born in 1881, married at 14, either abandoned or widowed at 15, she made several further brief marriages, becoming a multiple divorcée. In Atlanta in the 1910s she was a member of a sororal order, Daughters of America, an anti-immigration organization associated with the American Protective Association and many fraternal orders. Tyler participated in the eugenics cause as a volunteer “hygiene” worker, managing publicity and organizing parades for a “Better Babies” campaign. Through that activity she met Edward Clarke. Together they sensed the profitable opportunities that could arise from professionalizing and commercializing their efforts and set up the Southern Publicity Association, selling their services to groups like the Red Cross and the Anti-Saloon League. In their first 15 months of work for the Klan, they claimed to have netted upward of $200,000 ($2.7 million in 2016); this is probably an exaggeration, but they were doing well. Tyler personally owned and profited from the Searchlight, a Klan newspaper, and built herself a large Classical Revival house on 14 acres in downtown Atlanta. It was she and Clarke who turned [founder of the second KKK] Colonel Simmons’ feeble attempt to revive a southern organization into a mass national movement and a profitable business. When she turned her energies to creating an early women’s division of the Klan, she took advantage of Simmons’ temporary absence to put Clarke in titular control of the entire Invisible Empire. In 1919 their position became precarious when Atlanta police literally rousted them out of bed and arrested them for disorderly conduct; the “disorder” was the fact that they were sexual partners while married to other people. When the arrest was discovered two years later, newspaper coverage revealed not only the illicit sex but also that they had used false names and had been in possession of whiskey. The scandal was big news, covered even in the New York Times when the New Jersey Klan demanded firing Clarke and Tyler. Learning of the arrest some Klansmen were doubly dismayed — by the alleged immorality but also by the discovery that a woman was a key organizer of the KKK. One vilified her, adding that her experience “in catering to [men’s] appetites and vices had given her an insight into their frailties.”
Meanwhile, Klan opponents forced congressional hearings on the Klan in 1921. Fearing further exposure, since he was guilty of other improprieties, Clarke immediately announced his resignation. This made Tyler furious. She publicly denounced him, saying he was “weak-kneed and won’t stand by his guns.” She refused to resign. She even survived an attempt on her life when unknown assailants shot up her home. The congressional report treated her with both respect and misogyny, as the éminence grise behind the Klan. Instead of backing down, she skillfully turned the negative publicity from the hearings into a successful membership drive that grew the Klan exponentially.
The organization might well have grown without this driven, bold, corrupt, and precociously entrepreneurial woman, but it would likely have been smaller.
“I was troubled by the singular image of a bride that our society has.”
Tasnim Jara / Facebook
Tasnim Jara
Jara told BuzzFeed that she's received hate messages as well as those of love and encouragement.
"People around me resisted my idea. But they had no answer when I asked why those are mandatory," Jara said. "I could clearly see that these norms weren’t helping my family in any way, rather it was serving the interest of a particular industry. So I didn’t find their argument very persuasive," she added.
Tasnim Jara
Check(list) your privilege.
Jen Lewis / Via BuzzFeed