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This year’s top feminist moments reveal how artists, storytellers and creators confronted regressive politics with imagination, joy, righteous anger and expansive visions of humanity.

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The issue is, we all get it and cannot avoid the ad’s uncomfortable truths about how women’s bodies convey different symbols and meanings. As a symbol of beauty, Sweeney certainly fits the bill as an attractive, voluptuous young woman who has capitalized on her looks. However, when the camera emphasizes Sweeney’s blue eyes just after panning across her body as she gives a quasi-scientific lesson on how “genes” get passed down, beauty is no longer just about whether a young woman is attractive enough to serve as an ad campaign’s spokesperson. It’s about which type of woman gets to define beauty and promoting scientific fixation on “good genes,” a holdover from the era of eugenics (which literally means “good genes”). 

The best “all-American jeans” advertisement should capture this sense of aspirational dreaming. And Ralph Lauren “Oak Bluffs” ads do just that. These campaigns depict the collegiate, bougie aesthetic of Black middle-class life—represented by those African Americans attending HBCUs and vacationing in Oak Bluffs at Martha’s Vineyard during the summertime—and resonates more positively for a wider audience than American Eagle’s exclusionary “great genes” messaging.

The post The Great American Jeans Debate: Racializing Beauty and Democratizing ‘Good Genes’ in Commercial Media appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

Ms.’ Janell Hobson spoke with Lindsey Stewart earlier this summer to discuss her latest book.

"So many of the things that we interact with in our daily lives have hidden origins. And Black people are not just Black people, but magic. ... I'm interested in how Black women used magic, used conjure to create a sense of safety in their communities. It was a type of luck management."

"One of the things I'm trying to do with this book is to debunk the scariness and the association with evil that comes out of conjure, because when you look at Black culture, it's present in so many of the sayings, superstitions, and practices that we use everyday, even though it's been rejected in these Christian spaces."

"There's another lineage of Negro Mammies, another story about Negro Mammies that's powerful. They were amazing women. And one of the things I wanted to do with this book is help Black women get closer to their ancestors and release the shame about how we survived. These women were powerful."

The post Built on Magic: Black Women’s Spiritual Legacy in American History appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

This week: Musk and Trump's USAID attacks have devastating impacts; 80% of the clean energy investments from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act—which Trump wants to roll back—are in Republican congressional districts; Louisiana indicts a New York doctor for prescribing abortion pills; new executive orders go after workers and LGBTQ people; the Laken Riley Act was signed into law; childcare costs affect the health of parents; and more.

The post Keeping Score: Devastating Attacks on USAID; Louisiana Indicts N.Y. Doctor; Autumn Lockwood Is First Black Woman Coach to Win Super Bowl appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

The big night, however, went to pop star Beyoncé, who not only made history as the first Black woman to win Best Country Album, but finally earned Album of the Year for her politically salient album Cowboy Carter, after previously losing in the category. The album, which opened with a “requiem” for America and closed on a prayer that “we’ll be the ones to purify our fathers’ sins,” calls on all of us to witness this nation’s history and its present, to reckon with its “sins” of exclusion and discrimination and demand that we purify it toward the democratic promise it has always held out for all of us and not just a select few determined to set us back on a backward course.

The post An American Requiem: Beyoncé’s Country Statement at the Grammys appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

Featuring: Kamala Harris, the 27 women who sued the state of Texas for its abortion ban in Zurawski v. Texas, Sarah McBride, abortion providers and funders, Black women voters, Jasmine Crockett, South Carolina’s “Sister Senators” and more.

The post Ms. Magazine’s Top Feminists of 2024 appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

2024 nonetheless demonstrated that women still hold powerful sway across our popular culture, even as they struggle for the highest political position. We continue to hold onto hope for a feminist future with more opportunities for gender and racial breakthroughs, which are still possible because they have been imagined and envisioned in our pop culture. Here are our picks for the year’s top 10 feminist moments.

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Now, two-and-a-half years later, with near-full abortion bans in 13 states, deaths confirmed because of them, and a smattering of states that have enacted protections via the direct democracy of ballot initiatives, the country has a choice: to reelect Republican Donald Trump, whose pledge to undo Roe helped fuel his first ascent to the White House; or to elect Democrat Kamala Harris, who is running on resurrecting abortion rights as she aims to be the first woman to win the presidency. 

The post After Losing a Constitutional Right, America Picks a President appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

An Instagram post from Sept. 10 shows the pop star posing with a fluffy cat in her arms—a direct reference to JD Vance’s quip deriding single and childless women. Before signing the post, “With love and hope, Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady,” Swift told followers that she plans to vote for Harris "because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them. I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos.”

Ms. spoke with contributing editor and scholar Dr. Janell Hobson about about what the endorsement might mean.

The post Will Taylor Swift’s Endorsement Swing the Election?: The Ms. Q&A With Scholar Janell Hobson appeared first on Ms. Magazine.