It’s the weeks after the 2024 election, and I’ve moved from shock and utter dismay to being shaken and worried. I was part of a book coaching cohort and was debating whether I should even write the book anymore. Why bother? I mean, there are so many bigger fish to fry right now. Why waste my time writing a book about learning how to use our voice when we are about to go through some shit, and we don’t even know yet how bad it’s going to get.

The we I’m talking about are members of the Latinx community.

I say this as a Latina who was born and raised in the United States.

If you think my passport or birth certificate has made me feel safer on these streets, think again. If you think I don’t have a visceral reaction every time I see our people get dragged away by masked individuals, you’re wrong. Because mi gente, we are being hunted. There’s no other way to say it. Like animals. Like criminals. Like prey.

This is a moment worse than anything I could have imagined: that we would be targeted on the streets of the country where we live simply for being. For existing.

And yet, there I was, in that cohort, trying to write a book about stepping into your power. The very same power they are working, day by day, to strip from us.

We are in some wild times.

Nevertheless, I decided to write the book.

I did so to share the moments I didn’t speak up, and the consequences of not doing so. Not as an expert because, transparently, it’s something I still have to work on. And not because I thought it would change anything. But because I knew our community needed a message of hope more than ever before.

I poured love into the book. Shared affirmations. Declared that our differences were, in fact, our superpower. Encouraged Latinas to stand up, take up space, use their voices, and stop waiting for permission. It was a bold message that met the current moment. And I don’t regret it at all.

Here’s what I want my readers to know. They must learn to show up for themselves in ways that matter even when the stakes are high. Not because it’s comfortable or easy. But because there is a real cost when we don’t.

Before the election, I started a LinkedIn live series called “Latinas: Front & Center” to spotlight Latina trailblazers and leaders.

So often Latinas are overlooked for their contributions. I’ve long maintained that the Latina visibility gap is real. Our work is consistently undervalued and dismissed. It’s viewed as less than by just about everybody.

In response, I wanted to provide a space that celebrated us, inspired us, and reminded us why it is imperative to use our voice. While some members of our community have chosen to stay silent or go into hiding for their safety, that’s not all of us. My show is a reminder that we are still here. Presente. Recounting our journeys and loving our immigrant parents who risked it all to give us a shot at something better. And we’re not going to take that opportunity for granted.

It’s 2026, and my life is different.

I’m an award-winning author with a LinkedIn live show that’s been around for over 2 years. I moved to Madrid, where I get to enjoy a life that doesn’t require me to look over my shoulder for unmarked cars or carry my passport every time I leave the house. I hold a deep sadness for our community wherever I go because things have only gotten worse. And I know so many mothers who worry about their children as they leave for work or school, not knowing if they’ll return at the end of the day.

And yet…

I also raise my voice in celebration of us. Of our contributions. Of our experiences. And of the ways we bravely continue to show up. There will be a time when we look back at this point in our history con mucha vergüenza. And when we do, I’ll be proud to say I used my voice when it mattered most, and made space for others to use theirs too.

Hady Méndez, a Nuyorican, is the award-winning, bestselling author of Calladita No More, and a speaker and coach who helps career-minded women and emerging leaders find their voice and advocate for themselves. Learn more about her work at boldlyspeakingllc.com.

For twelve years, one rule separated Bumble from every other dating app on the market: women had to send the first message. It was a promising marketing strategy, based on the idea that women wanted to regain control over their relationship dynamics. Bumble’s own website once read: “To challenge outdated heterosexual norms, women make the first move on Bumble.” As of August 11, that language is gone, and so is the rule behind it.

A “Radical” Idea That Didn’t Work

Bumble announced that, effective immediately, anyone in a match can send the first message, and the window to respond before that match disappears has been extended from 24 hours to 72 hours. Gay men and lesbians on the app were always able to message first; the change undoes the rule that specifically governed matches between men and women. Bumble called it a “global evolution” rather than a reversal.

“While women making the first move was a radical idea, being women-first was never about prescribing just one way to connect,” Founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd said in a statement. “It was about designing an experience with women’s needs in mind to create better outcomes for everyone.”

The Numbers Bumble Says Justify The Pivot

According to the company, 66 percent of women surveyed on the app said they’d rather have men send the first message. Weird, right? Similarly, more than half preferred the longer response window. Bumble also says internal testing found that opening messages became more evenly distributed between men and women once the rule was loosened, and that overall chat initiation increased.

However, the app isn’t entirely dropping the emphasis on effort. Low-effort openers still get flagged: “If a member sends a low-effort message, such as a one-word opener, they will be prompted to be more thoughtful with their message before they send,” Bumble said in its release.

Bumble started chipping away at its own rule back in 2024, with a feature called Opening Moves that let women post a question on their profile for men to answer instead of writing a cold open. August 11 is the rest of that retreat playing out.

So Why Is Bumble Backing Away From Its Whole Identity?

While a sales pitch needs one solid argument, as Bumble is trying to make, two things are happening here.

The first is about comfort. In reality, Bumble’s original pitch wasn’t really “women get to message first.” It was a way to protect women from the all-too-common unsolicited message and the most likely follow-up: an unsolicited pic. After all, we are all tired of the amount of creeps out there. However, Bumble didn’t take into account that, for women, initiating in every single interaction is its own kind of risk.

Whether at a bar or on a dating app, putting yourself out there first, especially in an environment where you don’t actually know who’s on the other end, is a “no” in every single survival manual. Therein lies the first flaw in Bumble’s rationale. As Redditor kittenTakeover said in Bumble’s own subreddit: “There being too many interactions that lead nowhere… the most obvious [fix] is having the more in-demand person, usually a woman, make the first move. This ensures that there’s some minimum level of interest before anyone wastes their time.”

What this might imply is that, in mere transactional terms, there are more men out there desperate to meet someone (whether they are actually willing even to do the bare minimum is a conversation for another day) than women willing to compromise their comfort and, quite honestly, their safety.

And there enters the second argument: the pool itself isn’t working for anyone.

Wolfe Herd announced the messaging overhaul during Bumble’s second-quarter 2026 earnings disclosure, which showed revenue down 15.2 percent year over year to $210.5 million, with the company expecting its number of paying users to keep shrinking into the third quarter. As a result, Bumble laid off 30 percent of its global staff last year and is reportedly exploring a sale. Tinder, owned by rival Match Group, has posted its own string of declines in paying users, revenue, and stock price. The whole industry is running out of people willing to keep swiping through hundreds of profiles when, as TechCrunch put it, that isn’t “anyone’s idea of a great time.”

What’s worse, Bumble’s response has been to try nearly everything at once: Opening Moves, then this, plus a stated pivot toward swipe-free discovery, in-person events, and AI features aimed at Gen Z. When the whole pool feels this exhausted, whose turn it is to send the first “hey” stops mattering much.

Bumble’s Own Users Aren’t Buying the Rebrand

The r/Bumble subreddit gives you a glimpse of the actual user, not the one the brand surveys. “Losing your differentiating factor that allowed you to service a niche as the best product in a massive industry will also hurt your app long term,” Redditor NotTodayBoogeyman wrote, warning the app risked becoming “slop where men don’t message, and women don’t message so nobody meets and uninstalls.”

Asked what Bumble’s selling point even is now, another user offered one word: “Yellow Tinder.” A third, StumpyOPepys, pushed back on the idea that this was a misstep at all: “There’s really nowhere to go. They are responding to data… She’s not an idiot.” And when someone pointed out that the original rule was supposed to give women more control over how conversations started, Redditor Ancient_Draw2176 responded: “The patriarchy was, in fact, not defeated.”

An Evolution, or Just an Ending?

“We built Bumble around the belief that when you make dating better for women, you make it better for everyone and that remains true today,” Wolfe Herd said. Whether that belief still holds depends on what you think Bumble stood for in the first place.

If it was women having a specific, structurally enforced upper hand, that’s gone. If it was building whatever experience women allegedly said they wanted, even when it contradicts the original premise, Bumble seems to have followed through.

But for us out there swiping and actually considering whether dating is worth it, the feeling remains: men still got away with it.

If you were on Instagram this week, you probably saw Dr. Hazel Wallace, calm and direct in front of her camera, explaining that the gentle lower belly curve most women carry is. Her reel went viral for two reasons: first, she made us feel seen with our own private insecurities. And second, because she gently told us it’s ok. “That gentle curve that many women have is completely normal,” she says, “and most of us have it.”

She is, in fact, right. And there is one part of the conversation worth getting more precise about.

Nope, It’s Not Your Uterus

A version of this body-positive message, one that has circulated alongside Dr. Wallace’s reel and others like it, claims that the uterus causes the lower belly curve. That part is a misconception. Dr. Karen Tang, an OB-GYN writing for Katie Couric Media, explains that “a normal-sized, non-pregnant uterus is anatomically situated below or at the level of the pubic bone,” she writes. “It is generally not noticeable physically or visually through the abdominal wall unless you’re pregnant and the uterus is growing, or if you have something like fibroids in your uterus that make it larger.”

What is true is that the curve is normal, common, and for most women, completely benign. It comes from the way fat is distributed in the female body and from where the bowels sit, not from the uterus. Dr. Wallace adds that because of hormonal differences, women typically store more body fat around the lower abdomen than men do. Many women also have a slight anterior pelvic tilt, a forward tilt of the pelvis that makes the curve more visible. And for those of us who notice it getting more pronounced before our period, Dr. Wallace has an explanation for that too: hormonal fluctuations in the days leading up to menstruation are enough to make it more noticeable.

Getting the Anatomy Right Is an Act of Care

When we tell ourselves and each other that any lower belly curve is just the uterus doing its thing, we risk missing a signal worth paying attention to. “Misattributing such a change to a ‘normal uterus’ based on viral content could lead to too many delays in the diagnosis of serious gynecological conditions,” Dr. Tang warns. Uterine fibroids and large ovarian cysts, for example, can enlarge the uterus, creating a palpable mass or a sense of fullness in the lower abdomen.

According to Dr. Wallace, if the gentle curve has always been there and nothing has changed, you are almost certainly fine. “But if you do notice a new lump or bulge that’s getting bigger, or associated with other symptoms like pelvic pain or bleeding,” she says, “it is worth speaking to your GP and getting checked.” For Dr. Tang, the correct path is: if you feel something hard in your pelvis or notice a new bump in your lower abdomen, a visit to a gynecologist and an ultrasound are the right next steps.

The Curve Has More Than One Story

Just as each body is different, each stage of our lives changes that body. For women who have been pregnant, for example, the uterus expands during pregnancy, the surrounding muscles and skin stretch to accommodate it, and after delivery, that skin does not always return to its previous position. The medical term is panniculus: an apron of skin, and sometimes some fat, that can rest below the navel. When loose skin is the cause, exercise will not change it, because the issue is structural, not muscular.

Pregnancy can also cause diastasis recti, a separation of the two long parallel muscles in the abdomen, which allows the belly to protrude forward even in physically active women, according to Healthline. Then, for women navigating perimenopause and menopause, hormonal changes, particularly in estrogen levels, contribute to fat accumulation in the abdominal area, alongside decreased muscle mass and increased insulin resistance, according to Healthline.

Last but not least, the pelvic floor adds another layer. According to Elitone, 42 percent of adult women live with some degree of pelvic floor dysfunction. When the pelvic floor is not activating properly, it can contribute to a persistent lower belly bulge that traditional core workouts will not fix. The issue, in those cases, is coordination and pressure management, not the absence of effort.

The Flat Stomach Was Always the Lie

In the end, it all goes back to aesthetic indoctrination. We have been handed an image — the flat, unmarked stomach — that does not reflect how most female bodies are designed. The pelvis, hormones, and fat differ in each case. The lower belly curve, therefore, is a body working exactly as it was designed to.

What Dr. Wallace’s reel gave millions of women is the permission to stop fighting a feature that was never a flaw. And what we owe ourselves alongside that permission is accurate knowledge. The curve that has always been there, varying with our cycle, shifts with age, pregnancy, and hormones, is ours. But a new lump, a growing bulge, or pain that was not there before do deserve a doctor’s attention.

We have spent long enough being ashamed of normal. We do not have to spend another minute uninformed about it, either.

On a Sunday in St. Petersburg, Florida, Esther walks into Orlando Latin Market after church. She is a regular. She is there for the chicharrones, crispy and familiar. Deborah is there for linden tea because she has been having trouble sleeping. Yanick is looking for the ingredients to make a traditional Haitian soup. Three people, three stories, three specific reasons for being in the same room at the same time. And somewhere nearby, Amaris Castillo was watching.

Castillo is a media journalist, the daughter of Dominican immigrants, and the author of Bodega Stories, a creative nonfiction collection of true stories from the people who orbit Orlando Latin Market, her parents’ store in St. Petersburg, Florida (University Press of Florida, September 8, 2026). She spent a year inside those walls collecting them, in a race against the clock before her parents retired. “There is so much life in this space,” she told FIERCE. “My hope is that anyone who reads my book will see that, if you pay close attention, it’s anything but boring.”

Inside Orlando Latin Market, Every Customer Carries a Country

Orlando Latin Market carries products from Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Venezuela, Cuba, and many other countries. The cook, Alberto, arrives early to prepare rice, beans, empanadas, and croquetas. Chico, who owns the barbershop next door, is also a regular. Tía Margarita, one of Castillo’s mother’s older sisters, has worked part-time at the store for years. The bulletin board outside carries apartment listings from local residents. The Facebook page fields requests for hard-to-find items. Every surface is a record of someone’s particular need.

For Castillo, it was fieldwork aimed at understanding the beautiful tapestry behind that specificity. Deborah and her linden tea. Yanick and her Haitian soup. A customer from El Salvador looking for a specific product that kept them connected to home. “The things some people looked for gave me insight into what they liked and what they valued,” Castillo says.

Latinos know well that a bodega is not a grocery store. It is a place where time and space collide in the quest to preserve one’s roots. “By the end, I also realized just how unpredictable the bodega environment is,” she says. “You really never know what will happen, or what someone will say. Every moment is different, because the store is a place where different individuals meet or clash at a certain point of the day.” She told us she wishes she could spend a whole day there doing nothing but observing. “I bet I could write another book after hanging out there just for a few days.”

What She Didn’t Know About Her Own Family Until She Asked

Castillo’s parents came from the Dominican Republic and worked in bodegas in New York City before opening their own in Florida. Her father was the victim of several armed robberies during those years in New York. But she had not known the full weight of what he had carried until she sat across from him for this book.

“Only as I interviewed him did I realize what we were unearthing together were traumatic experiences,” she says. “It was hard to hear him speak all this out loud in more detail, but I really appreciate him doing so.” Today, as a parent herself, she understands why he protected her from it when she was younger. “Violence has long surrounded bodegas,” she tells us, “and it made me think about what would have happened if my father ever got seriously injured or worse.”

For her part, her mother offered a different revelation. She shared a glimpse of what it actually means to build a business alongside your spouse, and the particular weight that places on a marriage. “It made me see how she and my father have built a true partnership outside of being my parents,” Castillo says. “Which is something I admire.”

And then there was Tía Margarita. When we asked Castillo who surprised her most among the people she interviewed for the book, she named her tía. One of her mother’s older sisters, Tía Margarita has worked part-time at the store for years and appears several times throughout Bodega Stories, including one story in which Castillo trailed her on her last day as a part-time employee. “My Tía Margarita, perhaps unwittingly, modeled how to live as fully as one can,” Castillo says. “She squeezes the last drop of juice out of life.” She is unapologetically herself, a go-getter who does not settle for less in any aspect of her life. “In a way, my tía gave me permission to try to apply that to my own life,” Castillo says. “I don’t want to become a martyr mother or a martyr, period. I want to make the most out of this life I have.”

What a Journalist Does When the Story Is Too Personal

Castillo has spent the better part of two decades as a reporter, at the Bradenton Herald, at the Lowell Sun in Massachusetts, and now at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, where she works as a research and writing assistant for the NPR Public Editor’s Office and as a staff writer covering journalism. By now, she knows perfectly well how to source a story, verify claims, and keep her distance. Bodega Stories required something different.

“Journalism is my profession,” she says, “so I had to adjust my mind a great deal.” Creative nonfiction gave her permission to use literary flair to tell factual stories. But it also demanded a different kind of trust. She did not consult second- or third-source materials for any particular story. When a subject shared something sensitive, she gave them room to speak, then went back afterward to verify that what she planned to include felt right to them. “My hope was that, when they read their story in the final version of the book, they felt it was an accurate portrayal of their story.”

As it often happens, some people said no. Castillo shares she received a healthy amount of rejections from customers who were too busy, too shy, or simply not interested. “Some people just aren’t interested in whatever it is you’re doing, even if what you’re doing is a very meaningful project to you personally,” she says. “And that’s perfectly OK. I respect that.” Being the owners’ daughter gave her an advantage with people who already knew her as “la hija de Damaris y Freddy,” and occasionally as “la heredera,” a joke that acknowledged her place in the store’s orbit even as she had chosen her own path. For customers who did not know her, she came as a stranger, and she treated their time accordingly. “It was an honor to listen to these stories,” she says, “and then try to shape them on the page.”

Bodega Stories as a Love Letter and a Gift

The book technically began as a website. In 2015, while working nights at the Bradenton Herald, Castillo would stop at her parents’ store before her shift, interview customers and employees, and then publish the stories herself alongside the portraits she took. She did it as a fulfilling lifeline of sorts. “In a way, I felt it was important work,” she says, “this act of documenting snippets of people’s stories to share with others.”

When Stephanye Hunter, an editor from the University Press of Florida, approached her after reading a piece she had written for Poynter about journalists who write books, it felt serendipitous. What finally made Castillo commit was her parents’ age. They are both in their 60s, and if they ever sold the store, she would lose the access she has as their daughter. “I ultimately decided the time was now to finally write this book,” she says. “I knew if I didn’t, I would probably regret it for the rest of my life.”

What some call the immigrant bargain runs through everything she says about her parents. “It’s like a moral contract, in a way,” she says, “and in my case it’s probably internalized. I don’t feel like I can ever repay my parents for all they’ve done for me.” Her parents paid off her graduate school loans. The book, she decided, was the most honest thing she could offer in return. “I dedicate Bodega Stories to my parents,” she says. “This book is, in part, an offering from a daughter saying, ‘I see all you have done, and I want to honor your story and what you have built.’”

Bodega Stories publishes September 8, 2026, through the University Press of Florida, with early praise from authors Angie Cruz and Claire Jiménez.

The iced coffee goes between the ring finger and the pinky. The phone sits flat against the palm. The keys dangle from the index finger, the sunglasses fold over the thumb, and the lip balm wedges in wherever it fits. No bag. No second hand. Just one woman holding an entire night out in one fist, without dropping a thing.

That is the girl grip, and if you have been anywhere near TikTok or Instagram lately, you have seen it. Gen Z women are posting videos of themselves carrying a full night’s worth of essentials in one hand: a fan, a vape, sunglasses, lip balm, a phone, and, for those who are really showing off, a drink, too. The Instagram account @girlscarryingshit, followed by 449,000 people, exists entirely to celebrate the practice. Its bio reads: “After thousands of years w/o pockets, non-men have evolved a superior grip to carry our sh*t.” One post, liked by 2,000 users, shows a woman holding an iced coffee, a bottle of aloe vera, and an entire bottle of wine in a single hand.

And the “non-men” conditional is scientifically accurate. In fact, TikTok user Brooklyn and Bailey asked men to replicate it, and they simply couldn’t.

Did Gen Z Kill the Handbag?

Beyond a superhuman skill, the girl grip is also a not-so-silent rejection. According to research by the wine brand Echo Falls, almost a third of Gen Z women now go out without a handbag. Thirty-four percent said ditching one makes them feel freer. Forty-four percent consider handbags old-fashioned. On the other hand, 45% of Gen Xers and baby boomers still refuse to leave home without one, and 60% use theirs to carry everything. Millennials are still the middle child, sometimes choosing their fav tote or simply going full grip. But for Gen Z, the bag is cumbersome, crashes into people on a crowded dance floor, and is one more thing to worry about all night.

And the market is paying attention. Luxury bag sales are down almost 10 percent from their 2023 peaks, according to data from Bain & Company, a roughly $8 billion drop in annual spending. For their part, brands pivoted almost immediately. Lacoste, for example, posted a TikTok captioned “the power of a girl grip” showing a woman balancing a Lacoste wallet, a croissant, sunglasses, keys, earphones, and a can of matcha in one hand. Millie Bobby Brown’s Florence By Mills, Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty, and Jennifer Lopez’s J Lo Beauty have all made versions of the video, staging their products alongside iced coffees and earphones in the open palms of women who do not need a bag to hold it together. As The Times noted, the girl grip has become its own form of peacocking: instead of hiding your essentials in a bag, you display them.

Not Every Girl Grip Looks the Same

While brands tend to envision the grip a certain way (think a Laneige lip balm, a Susmies fan from Barcelona, a pair of Prada sunglasses), the girl grip adapts to whatever the woman is actually carrying.

The Facebook account The More Than Project, for example, posted a reel highlighting what the grip looks like for caregiver parents when essentials aren’t a designer wallet and an expensive coffee, but paperwork, medications, a medical bracelet, sensory headphones, earbuds, a water bottle, keys, a tablet, a caffeine packet. “Somewhere along the way, you start carrying everyone else’s needs alongside your own,” the caption reads. “It’s not glamorous, but it’s a pretty accurate picture of what caregiving looks like.”

Beyond The Trend, The Girl Grip Is the Mental Load Made Visible

Writing in Social Ketchup, Smrithi Mohan argued that the girl grip points to something that goes beyond coordination. Women have spent generations adapting to systems, products, and spaces built around someone else’s needs, from the long-running joke about pockets, or rather the absence of them, to the expectation of always being prepared, organized, and accommodating.

The grip, Mohan writes, mirrors all the tabs that are constantly open in a woman’s mind: remembering a friend’s birthday while planning tomorrow’s meetings, wondering if a parent has taken their medication, mentally drafting a text a friend needs to send, replaying a conversation from three days ago wondering what went wrong, keeping track of a to-do list that no one else chooses to see.

The same women who balance six objects in one hand often balance an invisible weight that goes entirely unnoticed. Family expectations, a partner’s emotional needs, workplace responsibilities, social pressures. And, of course, safety concerns. Their own ambitions often fall somewhere at the bottom of the pile.

This hits close to home for women of color. We carry our own responsibilities and the constant mental exhaustion that comes with taking care of households, friendships, and communities, all while being expected to look good and not complain. The girl grip, Mohan argues, is where our hands have started mirroring our minds, both finding a way to hold far more than they were ever meant to.

When researchers promised 2,689 men complete anonymity, 95.1 percent of them admitted to recently using at least one strategy to force or coerce a woman into sex they knew she did not want and to which she had not consented. In 65 percent of those occasions, the strategy worked.

Those are the opening numbers in “Isolate, Inebriate, Intimidate, Repeat,” a new peer-reviewed study by researchers Lucia F. O’Sullivan and Scott T. Ronis, published on Sage Journals ahead of print and available via DOI: 10.1177/08862605261432630. It surveyed U.S. and Canadian men between the ages of 18 and 34 on their own histories of sexual aggression. Not incarcerated offenders, not men in treatment programs. Ordinary men, recruited through an online panel, repeatedly guaranteed that nothing they said could be traced back to them.

That promise, the researchers found, was beyond eye-opening.

The Sexual Aggression Numbers Men Only Share in Private

Prior studies based on identifiable samples typically find that between 8 and 24 percent of men report perpetrating some form of sexual aggression since age 14, according to the study. Women, by contrast, report being forced into sex at approximately five times the rate men admit to forcing it. Researchers have long struggled to explain that gap.

Anonymous surveys go a long way toward closing it.

A landmark meta-analysis cited by the researchers found that 42 percent of sensitive behaviors are not disclosed in surveys without anonymity guarantees. In this study, men were told repeatedly that nothing they reported could be linked back to them, and compensation was redeemed anonymously. The survey itself was framed in deliberately neutral, non-judgmental language. Men were described as having the chance to give “their side of the story.” The researchers wrote explicitly to the participants: “NOTHING you report will be or can be linked back to you. All responses are anonymous.”

And still, 95 percent of them told on themselves.

The 132 men who reported no history of sexual aggression did not differ significantly from those who did in terms of age, race, education, or relationship status. The researchers note this as meaningful: no demographic profile predicted restraint.

This Sexual Coercion Was Not Accidental. It Was Systematic.

The study presented men with 36 strategies for forcing or coercing sex and asked how many they had used in the past four years. At least some men reported every single strategy on the list. The average number of strategies ever used was 8.94.

The most common strategy, reported by 78.1 percent of the men who disclosed any history of forced or coerced sex, was telling the woman “whatever she wanted to hear.” That was followed by repeatedly asking her for sex (48.6%), using a friend, partner, or group of friends to help get what they wanted (46.6%), having a female friend make the woman feel safe and convince her (43.8%), and isolating her. The exact phrasing used in the study: getting her “away from everyone to somewhere private and under your control” (37.5%).

Physical force, while less common, was not uncommon. Nearly 10 percent of the men reported physically overpowering a woman from the start. Another 9.4 percent reported using physical restraint, such as holding her down or tying her hands. Another 9.3 percent reported using physical force to cause pain. And 8.6 percent reported administering drugs, including roofies.

In approximately 80 percent of incidents, peers were present and aware of what was happening.

The women had made their nonconsent clear. They communicated it by making excuses (41.9%), directly stating they were not interested or did not want to (24.1%), physically moving away or trying to be out of reach (15.7%), or, in some cases, being too drunk or high to say or do much of anything (9.7%).

The men proceeded anyway.

Three Men Out of 2,254 Faced Consequences for Sexual Assault

The researchers asked men about the outcomes of their most recent or most vividly remembered experience. Most of them, 70 percent, reported perceiving no negative outcomes. Among the minority who elaborated, responses focused primarily on relationship disruptions: hurt feelings, lost friendships, being ghosted. Just seven men indicated that the woman was traumatized. Only one said that someone intervened to stop them. Just three of the 2,254 men who reported an incident, 0.1 percent, cited having faced rape accusations or charges.

We read that number again so you don’t have to: three men.

The most common positive outcomes reported were relationship-related: friendship, a friends-with-benefits situation, a long-term relationship. Sex itself was the second-most-cited positive outcome. Among the more unsettling entries: personal responses that the researchers coded as learning, self-congratulation, and “winning.”

The men argued they persisted primarily because they were horny (38.2%) or because the opportunity arose (27.9%). Most of them (76.2%) described their efforts as “unplanned.” However, the argument of spontaneity, the researchers suggest, does not make the behavior any less deliberate. Quite the contrary, it reflects instead a readiness to act the moment conditions allowed.

The Male Script Behind Sexual Aggression Has a Name

The researchers frame what these men described as an adaptation of a “traditional male script.” This is a shared social norm for how a sexual encounter unfolds, one that involves identifying a target, isolating her, and overcoming her resistance, typically with the awareness or active involvement of peers. The script, they note, is reinforced by how men have long talked about sex: chasing, scoring, nailing, banging. Adversarial language is still common in what the literature calls “toxic bro culture.”

Men who perceived themselves as better than same-aged male peers at “getting what they want sexually from women” reported using more forceful and more coercive strategies, according to the study. Their self-ratings of sexual effectiveness correlated significantly with the number of strategies they used. For some men, the researchers write, the act of forcing sex confers social status, or at least supports the perception of oneself as superior to male peers.

On the other hand, a 2024 study cited by the researchers found that higher consumption of sexualized media was linked to stronger endorsement of a sexual double standard among young men ages 16 to 20, which was in turn linked to higher odds of perpetrating sexual coercion. Therefore, there is a constant stream of media that feeds this behavior.

But for researchers, there is a new particularity to this phenomenon, including a notable role of female peers. While verbal coercion and male peer involvement appear in other research on sexual aggression, this study documents significant numbers of men reporting that female peers facilitated these encounters, making targets feel safe, bringing them to the men, and vouching for them. The researchers are careful to note they cannot confirm the female peers acted knowingly. But the finding raises questions about social dynamics, hierarchy, and complicity that, they argue, warrant further investigation.

What Decades of Sexual Violence Intervention Have Not Changed

Despite decades of research, public health initiatives, education, media attention, and policy focus, there has been no discernible decrease in rates of sexual aggression since they were first measured in the 1980s and 1990s. A 2024 analysis of global trends in violence between 1990 and 2019, cited in the study, found that sexual violence against women actually increased during that period, even as rates of most other forms of interpersonal violence dropped.

In other words, we have educated, campaigned, reported, litigated… Yet, the numbers have not moved.

And while this study does not tell us why, it does provide evidence that most of what happens is never reported, seldom prosecuted, and, most often, not registered by the perpetrators as wrong behavior.

For those working in prevention, the researchers argue, the focus must shift firmly toward understanding perpetrators. And toward recognizing that many acts of forced sex are, as this data shows, deliberate, goal-oriented, and frequently collaborative. They are strategies, plural, with an average of nearly nine per man.

When Karol G released MATADORA as the opening salvo of her sixth studio album, many were excited for a possible return to original reggaeton. However, we began to see that the subsequent promotional campaign included social media posts from Khloe Kardashian and Jessica Alba. In certain corners of the internet, the sigh was inescapable. “There she goes. The crossover has begun.”

The Colombian reggaeton star who built a stadium-level career entirely in Spanish might now be following in Shakira’s footsteps from two decades earlier: donning the blonde, giving English-language interviews, and courting the Anglo proximity that, slowly but surely, turns Latin music stars into a digestible bite for the American mainstream.

However, there might be something else in the works here.

Karol G’s Numbers Speak for Themselves

In 2023, CNN and the Business of Fashion published what was arguably the first comparative data on Karol G. At the time, they highlighted how, while Kim Kardashian had more than five times Karol G’s Instagram followers, Karol G’s engagement rate was 5.8 percent. Kim Kardashian’s was 0.4 percent. It was the first time a massive media outlet recognized the importance of engagement vs. following.

And don’t get us wrong. By 2022, Karol G was already a megastar in her own right. She had already secured her third consecutive year as the most-streamed Latin American female worldwide on Spotify, and a year later, her 2023 album, Mañana Será Bonito, became the first Spanish-language album by a woman to debut at number one on the US Billboard 200.

Fast-forward three years. In April 2026, she became the first Latina to headline Coachella. And now, this past week, Pitchfork reported she became the first solo woman in history to headline Rogers Stadium in Toronto. She has her own record label, her Con Cora Foundation, and is, under any angle, the epitome of success. And now, Khloe Kardashian is promoting her song on Instagram, and the overall aesthetic trend across the internet increasingly resembles Karol G.

So, does she need a crossover?

The Move Shakira Made May Not Exist Anymore

The same year Karol G was catapulted to global success, Isabella Gomez Sarmiento at NPR reminded us Shakira’s stardom “occupies a particular place in pop music, one that arguably no longer exists: the Spanish-to-Anglo crossover.” Julio Iglesias, Gloria Estefan, Ricky Martin, and Selena had all found their way to American charts before her. Shakira may have been the last to perform the classic maneuver in its original form, the one requiring new language skills, a new hair color, and a reformatted sound for an audience that had not yet learned how to meet Latinos halfway.

In 2001, when Laundry Service arrived, Shakira needed top-40 radio airplay to play her music. Radio needed to push play first. Gloria Estefan advised her, per NPR, that a predominantly English album was the price of entry. Understandably, fans in Latin America called it a sellout. Entertainment Weekly’s David Browne called it, at the time, “the ultimate in crossover nightmares,” a review cited by NPR. Shakira told Variety years later: “Laundry Service was 100 percent a before-and-after moment. My life wouldn’t be remotely the same had I never taken that leap.” She also told Variety: “It’s true that now Spanish has become mainstream, but breaking through that barrier at the time was so important, not only for me as an individual but also for the culture I was representing.”

The barrier she described is now closer to an open door.

Latin music streams surged nearly 170 percent worldwide over the five years before 2023, according to Spotify data. Leila Cobo, Billboard’s chief content officer for Latin and Español, told CNN that year: “There aren’t as many gatekeepers as before.” Gomez Sarmiento at NPR wrote: “It’s now American artists, in an industry radically changed by global forces in streaming and social media, that must tap into non-English markets.” Cobo also told CNN: “Karol’s not just a reggaeton artist anymore. She’s become a pop artist.”

Shakira had to engineer that market, a world willing to receive Spanish-language music as legitimate pop. For Karol G, the story is different.

What Karol G Has Said About Never Changing to Get Here

For an outsider, the pattern looks familiar. The blonde hair, the Anglo interviews, the celebrity campaign for MATADORA… These are choices that read as the classic crossover, even when the underlying power dynamic has shifted. The question many might be asking themselves here has real teeth.

Karol G has been making her position on this clear for years, and she has made it in moments that cost her something to say.

In 2023, when GQ Mexico published a cover that photoshopped her image, she called it out directly on Instagram. “My face does not look like this, my body does not look like this, and I feel very comfortable and happy with how I look naturally,” she wrote. Subsequently, she pulled the cover into her own platform and named what had been done.

That same year, speaking to CNN and the Business of Fashion about her fashion breakthrough, she said: “You know, I never thought that being faithful to who I was — not following what’s in or out of fashion and not having to change myself to get there — would bring me such a platform.” She told CNN that she will never give up her hoop earrings, which she has worn through every era of her career, because they symbolize her roots in Colombia’s urban street culture. “I won’t stop doing something that truly represents me,” she said. “I’m very careful about that.”

Her new album, No Me Arrepiento de Sentir Tanto, which translates as I Don’t Regret Feeling So Much, arrives August 7. It is mostly in Spanish and was recorded in isolation in Hawaii, hiking alone through the mountains and writing from the inside out. “In making this album, I put a lot into being alone,” she told Elle. “I learned a lot about enjoying my solitude in this industry. We are really, really lonely. Compared to the rest of the world, you’re very isolated.” Its lead single, MATADORA, produced by Tainy and Cashmere Cat and released during the opening night of her Viajando Por El Mundo Tropitour in Chicago. The album cover shows her with a serious expression, a glitter-pen title wrapping her body, in the baby blue she has used across all her promotional imagery for months.

“The next version of me will be new to people,” she told Elle, “but it’s always been there, dormant.”

Until now, the evolution she describes has originated from within, like a dormant volcano waiting to surface. The crossover concept, by definition, requires an external pull: a market to enter, an audience to win over, a language to adopt. A crossover asks an artist to move outward. If it were true for Karol G, she might be taking a detour.

But what will it look like?

She is considered one of the most talented voices since those of Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, and Mariah Carey, and her return to music was long-awaited. Yet Ariana Grande announced on August 3, 2026, that she was stepping back from the public eye. The statement from her team described what she called “endless, ongoing public scrutiny” following her recent appearances but offered no further explanation.

As if we needed one.

Ariana Grande is the latest victim of a violent pattern we know too well. Once a woman reaches a certain level of success and public attention, her body becomes the target of public comment, to the point of losing autonomy over the flesh she inhabits.

It all took place after the release of her latest video for the song “Petal,” which criticizes the violence of rejection inside Hollywood. However, instead of focusing on her message, her vocals, or the brilliance of the videography and costumes, people couldn’t stop staring and dissecting the evident and, yes, worrysome weightloss.

After years at the center of one of the most documented careers in contemporary pop, she chose to walk away from the visibility rather than keep absorbing the commentary, much of which was not genuine concern but a sort of collective license to tear her to shreds.

And she’s not the first woman in the industry to go through it.

Karen Carpenter, vocalist and drummer of The Carpenters, died on February 4, 1983, from cardiac arrest caused by anorexia. She was 32 years old, and her illness had been unfolding in public for years, visible in photographs and performances and interviews while the people watching did not see it for what it was, or chose not to. Since then, countless women have been ruthlessly scrutinized by the media, the industry, and the audiences while they were fighting their own personal demons in private.

The specific faces and decades shift, and now social media is a whole other monster. However, the conditions producing these stories trace to the same place.

When Ariana Grande Says “Scrutiny,” She Hits the Nail on the Head

Dr Vivienne Lewis, a clinical psychologist who has spent more than 20 years researching eating disorders, drew a distinction in The Conversation on the day Grande made her announcement. Scrutiny focuses on bodies. Concern focuses on people. Lewis explained that scrutiny begins with how someone looks, while genuine concern begins with how someone is doing. They read as similar from the outside. Alas, they function very differently.

Grande had not said her decision related to an eating disorder or to her weight, and Lewis was explicit that speculation about her health would be inappropriate. What Grande’s statement makes visible is how inescapable that scrutiny becomes, and how little the person at the center of it can do to redirect it or protect themselves from it. However, Lewis points to scientific evidence that shows that stigma surrounding eating disorders is a major barrier to people seeking help, with public speculation amplifying the shame and misconceptions that already make it harder for people to ask for help.

The clinical question of concern versus scrutiny is evidence that the commentary about a woman’s body has never really been about her health.

The Racist Roots Behind the Obsession With Thinness

Now that we’ve made clear none of the comments towards Grande’s body have anything to do with concern, let’s talk about the other force pulling the conversation: the obsession with thinness.

The first instinct is to think it’s a matter of trends: the Y2K comeback, the anti-woke narrative against body positivity. However, this would fall short as an argument.

Dr. Sabrina Strings, a sociologist at the University of California, Irvine, has spent years tracing exactly where the obsession with thinness came from. Her book, Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia, traces the modern ideal of thinness to the Atlantic slave trade and the ideology Europeans constructed to justify it, a lineage that has nothing to do with medicine or aesthetics.

During the Renaissance, as Strings explained in an interview with NPR’s Short Wave, fuller-figured women were the cultural ideal. The shift came with European colonialism. By the middle of the 18th century, she told NPR, French philosophers were arguing that Africans were “sensuous,” that they loved food, that they were “too fat,” and that Europeans, by contrast, exercised rational self-control. That self-control expressed itself in body size. This way, slenderness became proof of racial superiority.

The logic served as social control, and as time passed, it became more obsessive. Strings explained to NPR that after hundreds of years of proximity and racial mixing across the colonies, skin color alone was no longer sufficient to mark who was enslaved from who was free. Body size and eating habits became additional markers, used, as Strings told NPR, “to suggest these are people who do not deserve freedom.”

As journalist Briona Lamback reported for Push Black, the ideology filtered into European American culture as an article of faith: being as thin as possible demonstrated supremacy over Black people. The medical field absorbed and perpetuated these constructs rather than questioning them. As Strings has documented, the Body Mass Index, a statistical tool never designed to measure individual health, became one of the primary lenses through which medicine evaluates bodies, with effects that have been concentrated unevenly across racial groups. Research has shown, per NPR’s reporting on Strings’ work, that African American populations tend to be healthier at heavier weights than white populations, a reality the tool does not account for.

What began as explicit racial ideology permeated medicine, fashion, and entertainment so thoroughly that most people who enforce these standards today have no idea where they came from. Ideology survives by becoming the background assumption, and the explicit origins drop away.

But the demand remains.

Who Eating Disorders Actually Affect

The cultural story about eating disorders is so narrow, it costs lives. According to PBS NewsHour, almost 30 million Americans will have an eating disorder in their lifetime, and eating disorders are among the deadliest mental illnesses, causing over 10,000 deaths a year.

However, research cited by PBS shows that women of color carry lifetime rates of eating disorders at levels comparable to or exceeding those of white women. Yet Black women are 25 to 40 percent less likely to be diagnosed with an eating disorder than white women, according to psychiatrist Dr. Erikka Dzirasa, who spoke to PBS NewsHour.

“In the media, it’s always a thin white, middle-class, upper-class woman,” said Gloria Lucas, who runs Nalgona Positivity Pride, a support group for eating disorders in communities of color, in conversation with PBS. Lucas described the effect of that narrow image on people who do not fit it and are suffering anyway: they do not recognize themselves in the available language, do not seek help, and the illness advances.

“Eating disorders thrive in isolation,” Lucas told PBS.

The barriers for communities of color compound each other. Treatment is expensive, and insurance rarely covers it. All while culturally competent care is rare. Therefore, stigma around mental health in many communities makes seeking help feel like an unbearable exposure. The cultural belief that eating disorders belong to a specific demographic means that people who fall outside that image often do not receive a diagnosis when they need one most. And the research shows they need one: the illness is there, the treatment gap is the part that is not.

The Scrutiny Has Always Served a Purpose

Caleb Dunson, writing in The Politic, traces how American beauty standards have functioned as tools of racial and social control from the country’s founding. The Miss America Pageant stipulated that all contestants be “of good health and of the white race” until 1940. However, what many don’t recognize inside the timeline is that in the 1920s, as women began to exercise the right to vote, disordered eating exploded alongside a beauty standard which required women to be as slim as possible, according to Dunson’s analysis.

Then, in the 1960s and 1970s, as women pushed for political and economic rights, including the right to abortion care, the beauty standard shifted again to demand they appear young and physically fragile, a trope that satisfied one gaze only: the male one. In other words, the intensification of the scrutiny was directly proportional to the expansion of women’s power.

This is to say, social media has not invented this pattern. However, it has given it a delivery mechanism that reaches everyone at all times, allowing the scrutiny that used to arrive through tabloid covers and late-night commentary to find any woman (and girl) at any scale of fame, in any time zone, on any day.

Ariana Grande stepped back because she had that option, and because the alternative was to continue absorbing commentary that had nothing to do with her health. And, in the end, the scrutiny will continue whether she is visible or not; it will simply pivot its target. What we can do is be honest about what it has always been: a mechanism for keeping women small that predates every celebrity it has attached itself to and will outlast all of them if enough people keep treating it as a neutral observation rather than what it is.

By Crystal Quintero.

Badass women are killing the game in every single industry. You’ve probably heard of women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). You might’ve also heard of women in GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums), and women in SPAM (social media, PR, advertising, and marketing).

However, when it comes to women (and baddies) in WISH (wellness, inclusion, somatics, and healing), most people either imagine it’s a white people’s thing, or they don’t take it seriously as a profession.

In reality, WISH is a category of study and practice that has been the pillar of communities throughout history. Inside our Latino culture, intuitive healers have protected and guided our people for centuries.

And this practice didn’t die with our ancestors.

Nowadays, women are at the helm of wellness spaces. In WISH in particular, it might be perceived as a way of preserving ancestral practices. In reality, it is much more. Many of us honor that lineage in new ways.

For my part, I have been hosting wellness events and workshops for over five years now. In that time, I’ve seen more Latinas pursue WISH careers, especially in LA, where the wellness industry is overrepresented as a white woman’s profession.

So, what is WISH, exactly?

Think of it this way:

Wellness: Aromatherapy, aesthetics, sound healing, creating wellness spaces, returning to ancestral practices, acupuncture, skincare.

Inclusion: DEI, Latina-focused events, Queer-focused events, Afro Latina spaces to push back against ICE raids and this administration. Yes, our voices have only gotten louder.

Somatics: Somatic therapy, yoga, pilates, Lagree, fitness, movement, massage therapy, sobadoras.

Healing: Holistic practices like spirituality, herbalism, limpias, brujeria, reiki, botanicas, tarot/oracle reading.

The wide range of professions makes it clear that wellness work is not a fun hobby. Beyond that, it’s a fundamental industry, especially for a community that makes up the global majority.

We deserve to have our work seen and understood.

Healing practices such as somatics take training, education, and practice just like any other profession. If that’s you, your work is valid and so needed.

What’s more, the core of WISH is inclusion. You can also think of it as intercultural liberation. After all, while white women center themselves in this conversation, adding “inclusion” to this acronym leaves no room for that. Wellness spaces have one purpose for women of color: collective healing that spans generations and restores what colonization has attempted to take from us. When we take part in healing as a community, we can better understand one another, even if we don’t share the same culture.

And music is a huge part of that.

One thing that transcends cultures is music, and if you’ve ever attended a good Pilates or yoga class, you know the right soundtrack is essential to getting into your zone. There are plenty of neurological studies supporting the idea that sound and somatics help support our mental health, and that magical combo ultimately feeds our spiritual health.

If you think about it, spirituality is understanding that our spirits are our inner child, one that vibrates with that spark when we are inspired. So, if you are a spiritual baddie in WISH, just know your magic isn’t just a fun hobby. It has, in fact, a lasting impact.

I’m Crystal, a Queer, Black Chicana, community healer and wellness advocate who cultivates restorative spaces with a decolonized lens. I partner with the DOPEST healers in LA to create accessible spaces for my communities: those who are queer, Black, Latinx, and any other community that needs a space to land in these wild times.

Studio Luna (2003 1st St, Los Angeles, 90033) in Boyle Heights is the home base for my wellness organization, Spirit Well—the only Aura Photo studio in East LA, with movement classes Sunday-Wednesday. Interested in getting an aura photo taken or signing up for a movement class? Secure your spot at spiritwell.xyz!

You’re probably used to seeing the version of Fernanda Romero that shows up on screen. The actress who held her own alongside Jessica Alba, made you laugh in Without Men, carried twenty films and four television shows across the United States and Latino markets with the kind of grace that makes it look effortless.

Maybe you’ve seen her on social media being supermom while authoring children’s books and running her fragrance company, Vita Parfum.

But there’s also a version of Romero that still needs her mother’s hand. That hopes to snuggle with her kids well into their adult lives. And that has the kind of strength that allows her to be open about her vulnerabilities around motherhood. In a special Huggies® edition of “Baring it All,” she showed up as a mom with a lot to say, zero filters (or makeup).

We sat down with Romero and her mom, Patricia Martinez, for a conversation that went beyond the screen. Here’s what stood out.

How Fernanda Romero’s Mom Became Her Biggest Blueprint

Fernanda Romero didn’t show up to the studio alone—she came with her mom. From the moment they sat in front of the cameras, ready to take off their makeup and share their motherhood journey, the room’s vibe changed. Romero shared how much she admires her mother and how close they’ve become since she had her own sons.

“I appreciate everything that you did for us,” she tells Martinez. “I just value every little detail that you put—like the good things—and I want to pass them on to my kids because I see the impact that your teachings had on me.”

Being a mother herself reframed how she sees Martinez and their relationship.

“It opened my eyes. It helped me to appreciate you, to appreciate the hard work that moms do on a daily basis.”

Among the things she’s passing on to her own sons are respect, humility, “la energía,” and Mexican traditions that live in her home every day that trace back to her mom.

Romero Shared Vulnerabilities Every Mom Has But Doesn’t Say Out Loud

Before the cute baby photos and the milestone moments came, Romero had the very real and relatable spiral of: Am I actually ready for this?”

“I was just thinking, ‘Am I enough? Am I going to do a good job? Am I going to fail?” She laughs to herself.

While removing layers of her makeup with a wet wipe, she teared up, remembering many of the anxieties she felt during her pregnancy with her two sons. Thankfully, she had her family’s support through it all, and trusted allies like Huggies®, who always gave her the confidence to provide her sons with products she trusted. For one, the all-around blowout protection (Sizes 1-2) is a game changer.

“You want to trust a brand that is good with your kids. That is fragrance-free, that they’re good, that they’re not gonna be harsh to their skin because it’s very sensitive. I like the Huggies® Natural Care® Sensitive Baby Wipes because they’re fragrance-free, they’re watery, and they’re soft. I use them sometimes on my own skin.”

How Becoming a Mother Unlocks a Strength She Didn’t Know She Had

Romero has been a single mom. She’s remarried. She’s navigated motherhood through chapters that didn’t wait for her to feel ready. And somewhere in the middle of it all, she found the same strength she had watched her own mother carry her entire life.

“There’s something that just kicks in when you become a mom, and it’s just this fierceness; you become like a lioness. You’d do anything for your kids… and somehow there is that strength where you just come up, and you figure it out.”

She calls this strength a superpower.

“No one tells you, but then you do so many jobs. Doctor. Therapist. Best friend. Cook. You are many, many things.”

The Pre-Baby Letter That Helped Her Let Go of Who She Was Before

Before Romero became a mom, she was just a girl living her best life. One of the things she did before becoming a mom was write herself a letter, something she suggests everyone on the path to motherhood should do.

“ It’s going to be a letter to who you are, and it’s kind of like grieving. It will come back later…that everything is transitional and you’re gonna be fine.” She said it helped her make peace with the before-and-after of becoming a mom. “I did that letter to myself, and it actually helped me. Because we have to understand that there was a before and then there’s an after, and I swear the after is just much better. You become selfless, stronger, just a more complete human that you didn’t know and discovered.”

Her other piece of advice? Tune out the chorus of opinions from everyone around you (yes, even your mamá and mother-in-law).

“You and your baby, and you guys will have the best chemistry and bond together. Just listen to your body and go day by day.” To this, Martinez nodded in approval.

Why Huggies® Lives in Her Car, Diaper Bag, and Purse

As a mom of two boys, the actress has relied on Huggies® since her first child was born. She proudly declares having a Huggies® Little Snugglers® family. She shared an anecdote about her younger son, Alessandro, and how an unexpectedly long car ride turned her into a Huggies® ride-or-die. Despite the long car ride, the diaper held without any leaks.

Then, her personal diaper bag was stolen at an airport. One backup Huggies® Little Snugglers® in her purse got them through an entire flight from Mexico City to Cabo. “That’s why we get hooked. With moms, you get hooked on a product when you see that it works.”

Another thing she loves? ​​Huggies® Natural Care® Sensitive Baby Wipes. They’re stationed everywhere in her life. Car, diaper bag, purse—she’s got every corner covered. Her reasoning is simple: fragrance-free, soot-free, gentle on sensitive skin, and she can use them too. “Listen, if they’re for a baby, I use them too.”

As her youngest son grows, she says she’ll continue using Huggies®, eventually switching to Huggies® Little Movers®, since they’re diapers specially designed for babies on the move. This tracks, given that her child is now climbing up everything, loves getting wet, and cannot be contained.

Plus, she says her kids have never experienced rashes during their diaper years. For a mom, that’s an A+ report card.

The three phrases she wants every mom to remember

After “Baring it All,” Fernanda had nothing but kind words for moms and moms-to-be.

She recommends making your mantra short, earned, and worth saving somewhere:

“Don’t push yourself too much. Don’t judge yourself too much. You’re enough, and that’s it.”

Short, earned, and worth saving somewhere you can see it every day. Romero and Martinez are the proof that motherhood is always best with family and friends by your side and a trusted ally like Huggies®.

This article is part of our sponsored campaign with Huggies®.

Beth Greenwood grew up in Amherst, New Hampshire, dreaming of playing for the Boston Red Sox. A few weeks ago, she threw out the first pitch at Fenway Park. She stood on the mound, took in the stadium, and thought about what comes next. “As a little kid, there was no women’s professional baseball league,” she told New Hampshire Public Radio. “So I just dreamed of playing for the Boston Red Sox.”

On Saturday, as catcher and coach for the Boston Hunters of the Women’s Pro Baseball League, Greenwood gets a little closer to that version of the dream. The league launches its inaugural season on August 1, ending a 72-year gap in professional women’s baseball in America.

And for the 60 women on its four rosters, it is long overdue.

The 72-Year Wait for Women’s Pro Baseball Is Over

The last professional women’s baseball league in North America was the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which folded in September 1954 after 12 seasons. Philip K. Wrigley, then-owner of the Chicago Cubs, founded it in 1943 as a wartime measure, reasoning that empty ballparks were bad for business.

In just a few weeks, his initiative became an unprecedented phenomenon. A genuine athletic institution that drew 910,000 fans in 1948 alone, employed more than 500 women across its existence, and established that elite women’s baseball could fill seats.

When the league dissolved, television and the return of male players made its demise feel inevitable, and its history slipped away. The 1992 film A League of Their Own, directed by Penny Marshall, restored it to cultural memory for audiences who had never heard of the Rockford Peaches. But the players had been telling the stories all along.

The Women’s Pro Baseball League traces its own origin to a moment that will feel familiar to many women in sports.

WPBL co-founder and commissioner Justine Siegal was 13 years old when a coach told her baseball wasn’t for her. She spent the following decades making that statement progressively less true. In 2015, she became the first woman to coach a professional men’s baseball team, working with the Oakland Athletics, and the first woman to pitch batting practice in Major League Baseball.

That same year, she founded Baseball For All, a nonprofit that runs girls and women’s baseball tournaments across the country; roughly 25% of WPBL players are Baseball For All alumni. The WPBL formally announced its launch in October 2024. The following summer, open tryouts in Washington, D.C. drew more than 600 players from 10 countries. The WPBL drafted 120 of them in November 2025.

Four Teams, Sixty Women, Eleven Countries

The WPBL’s inaugural season features 60 players from 11 countries, aged 19 to 37, split across four teams: the Boston Hunters, the New York Heights, the Los Angeles Queens, and the San Francisco Firebells. Each team takes its name from a visionary woman of the 19th or 20th century. The Boston Hunters honor Harriet Hunt, who applied to Harvard multiple times, was turned down each time, and kept practicing medicine anyway. “Being told no and doing it anyway,” as Greenwood described her, “and kind of pushing the needle forward.”

The league holds all 30 regular-season games plus the postseason at Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield, Illinois, a 5,200-seat venue named for the Hall of Fame pitcher born in that city. The approach is careful. The league will keep overhead low, build its fan base in one location, and get operations right before expanding to a traveling model, possibly as soon as next season.

The talent reflects a depth of international pipeline that most American sports fans have never had to follow.

Japan’s Venus League, the world’s largest amateur women’s baseball organization, produced the Queens’ 36-year-old pitcher Ayami Sato, whose 80-mph fastball anchors the rotation, per Front Office Sports. San Francisco selected Kelsie Whitmore first overall, a former USA Baseball player and current Savannah Bananas pitcher-outfielder who received a Division I softball scholarship without ever having played the sport. The Queens’ roster also includes Mo’ne Davis, the 24-year-old from Philadelphia who became the first girl to win a game and pitch a shutout at the Little League World Series in 2014 at age 13, later played softball at Hampton University, and pursued graduate studies at Columbia. The New York Heights open with Team USA players Denae Benites and Kylee Lahners.

The players are, in their other lives, firefighters, teachers, coaches, college students, and parents. Many stepped away from full-time jobs to spend six weeks in Springfield. Twenty-year-old Heights player London Studer took time off from the Columbus Division of Police cadet program to play. Studer told Front Office Sports: “Honestly, if this league really takes off and gets off the ground, like a WNBA-level, they’d never see me again. My dream is for my whole life to be dedicated to this.”

The Latinas in the WPBL

The WPBL’s opening rosters include Latina players on all four teams, reflecting the international scope of the draft and the growing depth of women’s baseball across Latin America and Latino communities in the United States. The inaugural draft’s first nine picks came from five countries: the United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, and the Dominican Republic, per MLB.com. Mexico and Curacao also placed players in the draft.

Among the Latinas to watch this season: from the Boston Hunters, Maria José Valenzuela, Luciana Moreno, Edith De Leija, and Nadia Diaz. From the San Francisco Firebells, Samanta Gutierrez, Rosi del Castillo, Flor Elena Valerio Montoya, Estheoa Segovia, and Bella Espinoza-Molina. From the New York Heights, Denae Benites alongside Valerie Perez, Diana Ibarra, Angelis Rivera, Rocio Barajas, Angela Valenzuela, and Milanyela Cortez. From the Los Angeles Queens, Samaria Benítez and Luisa Hernandez.

And their presence goes beyond representation. The WPBL creates a professional pathway for athletes who have spent their careers navigating a system that routed girls away from baseball and toward softball, a sport with institutional infrastructure, college scholarships, and broadcast attention that baseball has historically withheld from women. For Latina athletes, who have had fewer visible pathways in both women’s baseball and women’s sports more broadly, making the first professional roster in this sport in 72 years represents something new.

ESPN Is Paying Attention. So Is Everyone Else

Before the Women’s Pro Baseball League played a single game, team merchandise sold out in one day—4,000 orders, $300,000 in total, per the Boston Globe. What’s more, Opening Day on Saturday is sold out.

The league accumulated roughly 600,000 social media followers across platforms before its first pitch, with the official WPBL Instagram at 176,000 followers and each team account between 27,000 and 32,000. The numbers reflect an ongoing shift in how media companies, fans, and sponsors treat women’s sports. It is now a product worth broadcasting, not programming that is scheduled when nothing else is available.

ESPN secured the media rights deal for the WPBL’s full inaugural season and playoffs. Thirty-seven games will air on ESPN platforms, with 11 regular-season games also airing on the Scripps Sports Network. “Bringing the WPBL to ESPN is an exciting addition to our growing baseball offerings,” said Ashley O’Connor, Vice President of Programming at ESPN. “This agreement enhances our already strong baseball lineup, underscores our dedication to women’s sports, and provides fans with access to a compelling new professional league.”

The economic model the WPBL runs is also worth noting.

Front-row seats cost $52. General admission bleacher seats run $22. Siegal has said her goal is “to showcase that women play baseball at an elite level, and you’re going to have a lot of fun if you come to our games.” That approach is part of what drove the early sellouts and will determine whether the league builds the kind of sustained fan base that gives these players something to come back to next year.

“We all have big expectations for the league,” said Alli Schroder, a right-hander for the Boston Hunters and the fifth overall pick in the inaugural draft. “But more than anything, it’s really exciting that we finally have a platform where we can showcase our talent all together.”

A woman called Manic Muse, a DJ and music producer, gave her number to a man who approached her in a Texas grocery store. At first, the interaction seemed normal. It was a conversation, with an exchange of contact information. What she didn’t know was that he was wearing Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses. The camera built invisibly into the frames was recording the entire encounter. He would eventually post the footage online without her permission despite her direct message asking him not to. The video received 23 million views. “It’s just so violating,” she told Mashable. “I didn’t consent to being secretly recorded, and I definitely didn’t consent to becoming content for millions of strangers.”

The glasses have been on the market for a year now, and by the first quarter of 2026, Meta held 69.2% of the smart glasses market, with shipments surging 167% year over year to roughly 2.25 million units.

The phrase now circulating online to describe them is “pervert glasses.”

Meta Glasses Look Like Ray-Bans, And That’s the Whole Problem

Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses look, for all practical purposes, like a pair of Ray-Bans. They can answer questions, translate language, capture photos, and livestream hands-free. The camera is built into the frames. A small white LED is supposed to flash whenever a video is being recorded, signaling to wearers and bystanders that the device is active. Meta has repeatedly said that this light cannot be turned off.

However, as it often happens, people are already finding ways to circumvent this. Some are selling stickers online to conceal the indicator anyway. And per the Wall Street Journal, people in at least 30 states have offered services to modify it physically.

The Women Being Turned Into Content Without Knowing It

In less than a month, aspiring influencers and pickup artists have built entire accounts around filming themselves approaching women. They approach them in grocery stores, gyms, airports, malls, and on public transit, then upload the footage. Then, audiences who never meet the women in question are invited to evaluate them inch by inch.

Former prank creator Brad Podray, who previously operated under the name Scumbag Dad, described the targeting logic to Mashable in January: “They want people who are good on camera, so they’re going to hit fast food employees, and they’re going to hit pretty girls. A lot of random women walking around aren’t going to want to participate in a skit if you ask them to, so they remove the agency entirely by just running the glasses.”

The Public Response Came Quickly

In May 2025, Spanish authorities in Barcelona arrested a man who had used Meta glasses to secretly record more than 320 videos of women in public spaces, uploading the footage to promote paid “seduction” and pickup courses, per Cultura Colectiva.

Similarly, in late 2025, the University of San Francisco’s Department of Public Safety issued campus-wide alerts. The announcement came after a man wearing Meta glasses reportedly approached female students with unsolicited romantic comments and posted the footage on a TikTok account called pickuplines.pov. Now, investigations by the BBC, CNN, and The New York Times identified dozens of accounts built entirely around covertly filming women in gyms, airports, malls, and on public transit.

The Footage is Only the Beginning of the Harm

Once a video is online, viewers scrutinize the woman’s appearance, sexualize her, criticize how she handled the encounter, and sometimes search for personal information. We are suddenly part of a virtual Roman circus we never agreed to in the first place.

Researchers at Harvard have already demonstrated that pairing Meta glasses with public facial recognition software can allow wearers to identify strangers’ names, addresses, and family members in real time, per Cultura Colectiva, which turns being filmed in public into a genuine safety threat.

Thorin Klosowski, a security and privacy activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, explained how, with the glasses, it’s just “fundamentally, completely, utterly different.”

“Unless you’re literally in front of them, you don’t know whether it’s recording or whether they’re taking photos.”

Meta Banned the Content It Created the Conditions For

The backlash became loud enough, and literal enough, to be impossible for Meta to ignore. Activists plastered anti-smart glasses posters across New York. In London, an activist group called Everyone Hates Elon placed an advertisement at a bus station near Meta’s King’s Cross office showing Jeffrey Epstein wearing a pair of the glasses with the caption: “Glasses for people who don’t do consent,” per Futurism.

When your product has been placed on the face of a convicted sex criminal as a joke that makes perfect sense to everyone who sees it, you have a problem that a content moderation policy cannot fully address.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced that content “taking advantage of people and harassing them, like a lot of these pickup line kind of videos,” would be removed from the platform. Meta, Instagram’s parent company, confirmed it had deactivated two accounts, each with more than 1 million followers, for violating its harassment policies by posting content about smart-glasses pickup.

What this means in practice: Meta built and sold a product whose users behaved so objectionably that Meta felt compelled to ban the resulting content on Meta’s own platform, as The Verge’s Mia Sato put it, as if to say, “Stop making us look bad.” Meta spokesperson Albert Aydin told The Verge the company was working on disabling cameras when tampering is detected. Aydin did not answer questions about whether a person who was filmed could appeal to have the content removed. The actual written policy was not provided to The Verge.

The Structural Problem With the New Policy Is Not Its Existence but Its Limits

Right now, social media moderation begins only after footage has already been posted. If you discover you are in a clip, you must find the video, locate the account, file a report, explain the violation, and wait for a platform decision, all while the clip accumulates views and gets copied to other accounts.

This means the policy addresses harassment and exploitation explicitly but leaves a wide gray area for invasive recordings that do not clearly rise to either definition. As The Verge noted, Meta is trying to have it both ways: touting enforcement while creating the conditions that made enforcement necessary.

Even Apple noticed. Per Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple is delaying its own smart glasses to WWDC 2027 in part to build in privacy protections, including on-device AI processing, no facial recognition, and a pledge not to use customer recordings to train AI models. Apple has also considered removing video-recording capabilities entirely, though doing so would undermine one of the product’s core selling points, per Mashable. The company’s calculation is not hard to read: “pervert glasses” is now a phrase, and whoever comes to market next will be judged against it.

How to Protect Yourself When the Law Won’t

The internet’s most viral answer to this problem is also the most honest about its own limits. The advice circulating on LinkedIn, Threads, and X is to play a Disney song loudly if you suspect someone is filming you, on the theory that platforms like YouTube and Instagram use automated copyright-detection systems to flag copyrighted audio and block the upload.

The sad part is that, as many are saying online, “music is more protected than women.”

But does it work? The real answer is sometimes, imperfectly, and only if you notice in time. YouTube’s Content ID system can detect copyrighted audio. Still, the most common result is not removal but redirection of ad revenue to the copyright holder, meaning the video stays live. TikTok typically mutes the audio while leaving the visual content intact. Therefore, creators can strip the audio, replace it with AI-generated audio, or shorten the clip before uploading.

The execution window is also brutally short. You would need to spot the tiny white LED, recognize what it means, confirm it hasn’t been covered with tape, unlock your phone, open a music app, and hit play before the conversation ends. By then, you are, in all likelihood, already the content.

Two detection apps are worth knowing about, limitations included.

Antizuck Smart Glasses Scanner, available for iPhone at $2.99, scans for Bluetooth signals matching Meta glasses, Snap Spectacles, and other wearable devices, and records whether a nearby device has been detected before. The catch: it only detects Meta glasses when they are charging, powering on, or actively pairing, not while recording mid-conversation. Nearby Glasses, an Android app developed by Yves Jeanrenaud, uses the same Bluetooth-scanning principle and can produce false positives. Jeanrenaud described the app to TechCrunch as “a desperate act of resistance, hoping it would help at least someone.” He is not wrong that it is desperate. He is also not wrong that it might help.

The more structural protections are institutional bans, which have begun to accumulate.

New York prohibited recording-enabled glasses inside every courthouse in the state’s Unified Court System as of July 20, 2026. Monopoly Events, which runs Comic-Con shows across Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and much of England, banned Meta glasses and all wearable recording devices after celebrity guests said they would stop appearing at events if covert filming continued, per the BBC. CalMac, a Scottish ferry operator, paused bridge visits for passengers after a man was caught filming crew and passengers with Meta glasses.

In fashion spaces, a quieter form of resistance is also taking shape.

Designers are now building adversarial patterns into clothing, carefully designed arrangements of shapes and colors that exploit weaknesses in computer vision systems and confuse facial recognition algorithms. Brands like Cap_able and Urban Privacy are already marketing these garments to a growing audience, per The Guardian. Experts observe that effectiveness varies by surveillance system and conditions.

Dr. Jennifer Bell, a senior lecturer in creative AI, fashion, and digital culture at Nottingham School of Art and Design, told The Guardian: “Even if the designs don’t necessarily work perfectly, fashion is also a visible sign of resistance. This is consumers collectively coming together to make a visible statement.”

That is what most of these tools are: visible signs of resistance in the absence of effective law. Recording someone in public is not universally illegal in the United States, and laws around audio recording, sexual imagery, harassment, and commercial use of someone’s likeness differ greatly by state, per Mashable. The law built to address consent was written for an era where cameras were visible, one where you could see them and decide how to respond, and this world is not that one. In the meantime, the women are left with Disney songs, $2.99 apps, and clothing designed to confuse an algorithm. It is not enough. But it is what exists, and knowing what it can and cannot do is at least a start.

Every July 29, the beauty and media industries observe National Lipstick Day as a massive sales opp. Brands like Ulta are extending the promotion through August 1 on select lip products. And while the deals are real, we thought, “What about the brands Latinas have been building for over two decades? Oftentimes without the backing of a major conglomerate or a mainstream moment to launch them.

That’s why we are celebrating these nine founders who did it on their own.

The Latina Lipstick Brands You Should Already Know

Bésame Cosmetics

Gabriela Hernandez founded Bésame Cosmetics in Burbank, California, in 2004, with a single shade, Bésame Red, and the conviction that the beauty industry had abandoned something important when it stopped honoring vintage formulas. Born in Buenos Aires and trained at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, Hernandez approached her brand as a makeup historian, reconstructing shades and packaging from the 1920s through the 1970s. She had spent years collecting vintage compacts from estate sales. Today, her Victory Red is the brand’s icon. Two decades later, Bésame supplies makeup for Hollywood period productions and remains the standard for vintage-inspired lip color in the United States.

Melt Cosmetics

Mexican makeup artist Lora Arellano co-founded Melt Cosmetics in 2012 after identifying a specific gap in the market: no one was making bold, ultra-matte, deeply pigmented shades for the women who actually wanted them. She and co-founder Dana Bomar invested their life savings, developed five colors, and launched in May 2013. And the shades sold out immediately. Sephora and Nordstrom carry Melt today, and the brand is one of the largest independent makeup brands. Hola even named Arellano one of its Top 100 Latina Powerhouses of 2022.

Reina Rebelde

Regina Merson grew up in Mexico, where wearing bold makeup is simply the standard, and she left a career in Big Law to found Reina Rebelde, the first prestige makeup brand built around Latina culture. The name translates to “rebel queen.” Her lipstick shades carry names like Brava, a word for a woman on fire, and La Jefa, a nod to the rising tide of Latina entrepreneurs. Forbes covered Merson’s work, and the brand is one of the few luxury makeup lines where the cultural reference is the foundation.

Vive Cosmetics

First-generation Latinas Leslie Valdivia and Joanna Rosario-Rocha founded Vive Cosmetics in Northern California in 2016, after watching the beauty industry default to a narrow view of what Latinas looked like and wanted. Their response was both practical and pointed: lipsticks named “Mija” and “Dímelo,” products developed in partnership with Latina- and POC-owned vendors, and a brand identity that does not translate itself for anyone.

The Ones Worth Adding to Your Rotation Now

Luna Magic

Afro-Latina sisters Mabel and Shaira Frías launched Luna Magic in Los Angeles in 2019, building a brand around the vibrancy of Afro-Latinidad and the specificity of Caribbean culture without softening either for the mainstream. Their red bullet lipstick line delivers four highly pigmented shades at $13 each. They appeared on Shark Tank and landed distribution with Target and Walmart, per Forbes. The sisters remain at the head of the company.

Valdé Beauty

Margarita Arriagada spent more than a decade as Chief Merchant of Sephora USA, earning the nickname “The Godmother of Beauty,” before launching her own brand. In 2020, at 67, the first-generation Peruvian American introduced Valdé Beauty: a luxury, sustainable, refillable lipstick line built around the Armor, a sculptural case designed to be kept and refilled. She launched it because of her mother’s lifelong love of lipstick, which is as good a reason as any to build something that lasts. The brand also runs the Latinx Beauty Entrepreneur Grant, investing directly in the next generation of Latin creatives.

Axiology Beauty

Ericka Rodriguez founded Axiology Beauty in 2014 after learning about the prevalence of animal testing in the cosmetics industry. She spent two years working through 200 formula combinations in her kitchen before landing on a 10-ingredient cruelty-free lipstick made with candelilla wax, avocado butter, and elderberry extract, per Beauty Heroes. The brand name comes from the philosophical study of beauty and ethics. In 2022, Axiology eliminated all plastic from its packaging.

PDL Cosmetics

Panamanian actress and activist Patricia de León spent two years developing PDL Cosmetics alongside a Los Angeles cosmetics chemist, building a vegan, cruelty-free matte lipstick line whose shade names say everything: Panama Paradise, Azucar Morena, Fearless, Senorita. She built the collection to deliver intense pigment and a transfer-proof finish, and named the brand’s butterfly icon after what she describes as “You, Unlimited.”

Necromancy Cosmetica

And then there is Necromancy Cosmetica, founded by Des and Zal in Puerto Rico: an indie cult favorite offering highly pigmented vegan matte lipsticks in gothic and unconventional shades that go where most brands won’t, per HipLatina. The brand circulates among people who know, which is exactly the kind of reputation that outlasts a trend.

When Karol G opened her Viajando Por El Mundo Tropitour at Chicago’s Soldier Field on July 24, she turned a stadium into a Colombian rainforest and performed atop a giant guacamaya. She addressed a packed house in bejeweled orchids. The crowd answered her. Fans arrived in bright oranges, exuberant pinks, glittering golds, massive floral prints, national flags refashioned into skirts, and recreations of the artist’s feathered sunglasses.

Now, the tour runs through mid-2027, hitting 63 stadiums across North and Latin America and Europe. You have dates and maybe time to organize. What you need right now is the perfect outfit.

Here is everything you need, head to toe.

Wear the Tropicoqueta Era First

Start with the official capsule collection, because walking into that stadium in merch is a statement before the show even starts. The Karol G Official Tropicoqueta Merch Cropped T-Shirt ($26.08, on sale from $40) is made from 100% soft cotton, features screen-printed Tropicoqueta graphics, and has a cropped fit that works over anything high-waisted.

If you want the layering option, the Official Tropicoqueta Merch Coconut T-Shirt ($28.00, on sale from $45) is the relaxed-fit version, the one you knot at the waist when the heat hits the third act. Both are Amazon exclusives. Add the Official Visor ($18.62, on sale from $25): adjustable, multicolor, letter-printed, and the fastest shorthand for “I came prepared.”

The One Karol G Concert Look That Does Everything

If you want the outfit decided before you even open your closet, the Kaei&Shi Sequin Fringe Romper ($59.99) takes care of it. A V-neck, backless, sequin-and-fringe shorts jumpsuit with 4.4 stars across 859 reviews. It comes in more than 40 colors, including hot pink, iridescent pink, gold, and orange, all of them perfect for a Tropicoqueta show. Put it on and walk in; the look is already complete.

The second option is the Women’s Strapless Ruched Ruffle Mini Dress ($39.98), a high-waisted A-line strapless mini available in orange that aligns directly with the theme of the whole tour. Strapless, elastic fabric, above-the-knee, and in the right color.

Bottoms That Do the Movement Justice

If you are building the look yourself, start at the bottom. The EnchantingEssence Women’s Y2K Mini Skirt Ruffle Lace Mesh Asymmetrical Skort ($29.99, on sale from $36.99) has built-in shorts, layered pleated tiers, a lace-trimmed ruffle hem, and 4.4 stars across 106 reviews. It comes in white, red, black, pink, yellow, and multiple mesh colorways, and it moves the way a Karol G show requires.

The Verdusa Women’s Boho Flowy Asymmetrical Skirt ($36.99) covers the same energy in a chiffon-style fabric with a high-rise elastic waist. In hot pink or light pink, it codes directly to Karol’s signature palette. One note from the listing: light colors may appear slightly sheer in direct sunlight, so plan the undergarments accordingly.

And then, for the denim alternative, the luvamia High Waisted Denim Wrap Skort ($33.99) is the practical choice, with 300+ bought in the past month, two back pockets, a stretch elastic waist, and an asymmetrical wrap detail that reads intentional with everything.

Pick Your Top Based on Your Bichota Level

Five options, five very different energies, all of them right.

The miduo Women’s Sparkle Sequin Tank Top ($31.99) in gold or hot pink is a V-neck racerback sequin cami with 2,742 reviews and the kind of shimmer that catches stadium light at the precise right moment. Pair it with the denim skort and earrings, and the look is done.

For the woman whose tropicoqueta runs boho: the BEAUDRM Women’s Boho Bell Sleeve Wrap Crop Top ($24.99 to $28.99) is a tie-front, bell-sleeve crop in floral and solid options with 4.2 stars across 516 reviews, and it pairs naturally with any of the skirts above.

The Accessories That Finish the Bichota Look

Keep them focused and let the outfit carry the moment. The AICase Karol G Inspired Stackable Bead Bracelets ($11.99 for a set of six) come in her signature neon pink, gold, matte black, and cherry red. Wear all six, mix them with what you already own, or trade them with someone in the crowd, which is the whole point. The Italian 14k Yellow Gold High-Polished Round Hoop Earrings ($225.49 and up) are the investment piece: lightweight, high-polish, and the right amount of real luxury against sequins, lace, or white cotton merch. If they are not in the budget this season, they go on the list.

And last but not least, for shoes, the Women’s Boho Thong Flat Sandals ($12.12) are beaded ankle-strap flats that pair with anything flowy and will not ruin your night before the encore.

Do you remember Vanessa Guillén? The 20-year-old Mexican American soldier from Houston who was murdered at Fort Hood in 2020 by a fellow soldier, after confiding in her family that she was being sexually harassed on base? Vanessa never reported it through the chain of command because she was afraid of what would happen if she did.

In the months after, her death sparked a national reckoning. There were protests and widespread concern. However, it took over a year for the “I Am Vanessa Guillén Act” to pass the U.S. Senate in December 2021, allowing soldiers to report sexual assault outside the chain of command for the first time. Her sister Lupe stood at the announcement and said: “Someone had to suffer in order for all of us to realize what’s happening and that someone was Vanessa Guillén. That stops now.”

However, it didn’t stop. In the years that followed the Act that bore Vanessa’s name, the rate of women dying by suicide or homicide in the Army rose over 35 percent.

The Numbers the Army Kept to Itself

A first-of-its-kind investigation by The Intercept, published June 30 and based on 14 years of Defense Department death data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, found that between 2011 and August 2025, at least 41 women died by homicide in the Army. The investigation found that other service members or veterans killed more than half.

And hey, we get it. With everything going on in the world, these numbers, in a silo, are easy to dismiss. Until you start putting the pieces together.

In perspective, active-duty Army women face a higher per capita risk of homicide than male soldiers, the opposite of national and global trends. Over 70 percent of victims had an intimate relationship with their killer at some point. This implies the rate of intimate partner violence homicides among women soldiers is at least three times higher than the national average.

Unsurprisingly, the Army has never made any of this public. It does not separate homicide and suicide death rates by gender or calculate them per capita, and, what’s worse, there is no publicly accessible information on how many homicides service members commit, who their victims are, or where those homicides occurred.

Even the data the Army did release was incomplete.

When The Intercept asked, the Army acknowledged it had counted 16 active-duty homicides of women between 2021 and 2023. The FOIA data it turned over shows nine.

The Women in Those Numbers Had Names

Sarah Roque was 23 when a fellow soldier shot her in the head at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Her body was found in a dumpster behind the barracks. That was October 2024, four years after Guillén, three years after the law named in her honor. “Even now, I still can’t believe it,” her mother, Ana Roque, told The Intercept. “That murderers could exist in one of the supposedly safest places in the country.”

At Fort Hood, the father of Sgt. Francine Martinez’s 1-year-old child, a fellow soldier from whom she had recently separated, shot her in the head after a night out in September 2021. She died two weeks later. Pvt. Ana Basaldua Ruiz, 20, took her own life at the same base in March 2023 after reporting sexual harassment. A subsequent Army inquiry found a “persistently toxic culture permissive of harassment,” per Telemundo.

And it persists.

Counting Guillén and Ruiz, nine women stationed at Fort Hood died by homicide or suicide in five years. But the Army never announced three of those deaths publicly. They appeared only in the data The Intercept obtained.

At Fort Hood, Spc. Mayra Diaz was blindfolded, bound, waterboarded, and raped in her barracks by Sgt. Greville Clarke, a superior who arrived at her door carrying a pistol. The Army knew Clarke had assaulted two other women at the same barracks in similar attacks and chose not to issue a warning. Clarke assaulted five women before his arrest in October 2022. A judge convicted him in 2025 on charges including attempted premeditated murder. He died by suicide in custody. “Because the Army took no action,” Diaz wrote in a federal tort claim, “Sergeant Clarke was empowered to continue preying on the female soldiers at Fort Hood, including me.”

In summary, suicide is the leading cause of death of Army women. Between 2011 and 2024, 128 women died by suicide, the majority lower-ranking enlisted soldiers. From 2001 to 2023, nearly one in four women service members experienced sexual assault, per Brown University’s Costs of War project. Researchers identify military sexual trauma as the single biggest factor driving the spike in suicide risk among women veterans, per RAND.

Violence Has Many Faces

What happens inside the barracks does not exist separately from what happens in Washington. In September 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth eliminated the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, which had focused on sexual harassment and assault for nearly 75 years. In January 2026, he ordered a review of women’s roles in combat. In April 2025, he directed the Army to change its 15-6 regulation, which governs misconduct investigations, making verification of accusers’ “credibility” the first step in the process and imposing penalties for complaints deemed false or frivolous. Advocates warn that the policy will deter reporting and deepen a culture of victim-blaming, per Protect Our Defenders.

Things are so dire that in April 2026, the FBI arrested a former Army whistleblower who had reported sexual harassment within Army Special Operations, charging her with sharing classified information. Hegseth has also moved to block the promotions of women officers.

For her part, Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, an Air Force veteran and House Armed Services Committee member, called The Intercept’s findings “staggering, and unfortunately, unsurprising.” Servicewomen, she said, “consistently bear the brunt of harassment, assault, retaliation, and systemic failures within the ranks, and it is costing them their careers, their safety, and in far too many cases, their lives.”

Reddit user layyslayy thought they were posting about a movie. They ended up posting about their relationship.

They had gone to see Obsession with their boyfriend and a group of friends. When the credits rolled, his verdict was that a man clearly directed the film, because the real horror was what Bear, the male protagonist, had to endure. He had completely missed that Nikki — the woman stripped of her body, her mind, and her free will — was the victim. The post went up on Reddit, and the comments arrived in the hundreds. The general consensus? Run.

Layyslayy is not alone. Since Obsession opened on May 15, the $750,000 indie horror film has become the accidental relationship litmus test of 2026, grossing $443 million worldwide and drawing the kind of couples-night-out energy usually reserved for romantic comedies. What happens in the theater and afterward has been revealing things women did not necessarily intend to learn about the men sitting next to them.

In Case You Haven’t Seen It, Here’s the Plot

Directed by 26-year-old first-time theatrical filmmaker Curry Barker and starring Michael Johnston and Inde Navarrette, Obsession follows Bear, a music store employee who uses a supernatural toy called the One Wish Willow to wish that his friend Nikki would fall in love with him. The wish works. Nikki, stripped of her autonomy by supernatural force, becomes consumed by an all-devouring obsession with Bear, one that escalates into violence, self-harm, and murder. As the film progresses, Bear learns the full extent of what he has done to her and repeatedly chooses to do nothing. He wanted the relationship. He does not want to give it up.

The film holds a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, and its audience skews toward Gen Z and younger millennials, and word of mouth drove it to become Focus Features’ highest-grossing film of all time. It arrived with viral marketing, including an interactive text hotline where Nikki’s character could reach you directly, and unhinged billboards, per the Wall Street Journal. Across the internet, viewers joked that it “was supposed to scare me, not expose me,” identifying with Nikki’s desire for total devotion before the horror of what that actually looks like fully registered.

The Inkblot Test Nobody Asked For (Spoiler Alert)

The film’s power as a relationship test lies entirely in one question: who do you see as the victim?

“This film is like an inkblot test for potential incels,” wrote user iampachyderm on r/TrueFilm. “There’s a lot of leeway and projection going on in the interpretations of this movie in regards to Bear.”

On r/obsessionmovie: “I saw a comment that said, ‘This movie is an inkblot test for problematic men — if a man can’t see Bear is the problem — run.’”

The pivotal moment for most viewers is when Bear calls the One Wish Willow customer service line and asks to alter the wish rather than cancel it. He does not ask how to free Nikki. He asks how to change the way the possession affects him. “He didn’t care that he’d stripped her of autonomy,” wrote user cockaskedforamartini on r/TrueFilm. “He just didn’t want to suffer himself.”

Later, when the real Nikki briefly surfaces from the spell and begs Bear to kill her and end her suffering, he responds by asking what would be so bad about being with him. “He knows what’s right but is a coward,” wrote user PinkJenni on r/TrueFilm. And user can_u_tell_its_me added: “Even when he’s trying to undo it all, his first instinct is to manipulate her behavior again. Throughout the whole film, he never really cared about her.”

Couples watching the movie together have reported that the experience became uncomfortable in ways unrelated to the on-screen horror. Women noted boyfriends giving knowing, hostile side-eyes during the film, a wordless signal that they viewed normal emotional requests as unhinged. After the movie, some men argued the film was about a dangerous woman. What Bear had originally done to her had stopped registering as the inciting act.

The Specific Red Flags

Women online have mapped the patterns to watch for.

The first is siding with Bear outright: rooting for him while bypassing the fact that his wish, made without Nikki’s knowledge or consent, is what set everything in motion. On r/TrueFilm, user Jorlung broke it down: “You go from viewing the events of the first night as ‘a guy who was confused and overwhelmed’ to ‘a guy who was willfully overlooking major red flags to be with the girl he was obsessed with.’ The eventual contextualization of Bear as an irredeemable character makes you look back at the earlier scenes with a more critical lens.”

The second is weaponizing the film: suggesting that your normal emotions — hurt feelings, a request for reassurance, frustration — are equivalent to the literal supernatural possession on screen. Equating those two things is not a joke, and it is not a small thing, per the online conversation around the film.

The third is the “women are crazy” reading: watching Obsession and arriving at the conclusion that it is a cautionary tale about a dangerous woman, rather than a story about a man who decided another person’s autonomy was his to override.

Director Curry Barker has said he did not set out to make a film about entitlement. “He just makes some bad decisions, but I think it starts from a really innocent place,” Barker said. He added that he was not even familiar with the term “incel” when he wrote the script. But the audience found the themes anyway. Ms. Magazine has placed Obsession within a growing genre of “incel horror” — alongside films like Companion (2025) and Don’t Worry Darling (2022) — in which the real source of terror is a man who believes he is owed access to a woman’s body, attention, or affection.

Last night in Brooklyn, Shakira filled her concert with the women most people never think to thank. And she chose each of them herself.

As part of her initiative Camina Con La Loba, which celebrates strong women by inviting them to walk out on stage with her at the start of her show, Shakira partnered with the New York City Mayor’s Office to give away tickets to her Brooklyn concert to three groups of New Yorkers: the volunteers at Lulla’s who have been supporting earthquake relief in Venezuela, the union workers whose labor made the World Cup possible, and the owners of Colombian restaurants who participated in the city’s $26 World Cup dining special, per Shakira’s team. Some of those union workers, many of them immigrant women, walked out on stage with her at the start of the show.

Who Shakira Chose to Honor at Her New York Concert

The gesture came from a simple yet invaluable recognition. Most of what made the World Cup memorable happened in places fans never saw, in the hotel rooms kept clean, and the stadiums kept running.

“So much of what made this World Cup special is the work that most fans never see: the thousands of hotel rooms kept clean, all of the stadiums that worked so smoothly,” Shakira stated. “I wanted to show my gratitude for the people of New York City who made this incredible experience possible. Thank you for all of your hard work; you are the true she-wolves, and it will be an honor to have you with me.”

Maya Handa, New York City’s World Cup Czar, said the moment reflected the spirit the city wanted to carry through the tournament. “New York City knows how to show up for the people who show up for us. The union workers, so many of them women, who are making this World Cup possible, the volunteers supporting Venezuela relief, and the Colombian restaurateurs who opened their doors for the community are the heart of this city,” Handa stated. “For Shakira to give them a night to simply feel joy is a beautiful gesture, and exactly the spirit we want this World Cup to carry. We’re proud to celebrate them.”

The Immigrant Women Who Walked Onstage With Shakira in Brooklyn

Among the union members in the crowd was Biviana Pereira Leiva, an NYHTC member and room attendant at a Manhattan hotel who came to New York City from Barranquilla, Colombia, ten years ago. “Getting to welcome the world to New York City for the World Cup means so much to me, and I can’t think of a greater honor than being recognized by Shakira herself,” Pereira Leiva stated. “I came to NYC from Barranquilla, Colombia 10 years ago and today, I am a proud union member and room attendant at a Manhattan hotel. I still can’t believe it.”

Sandra Leiton, a 32BJ member and Colombian porter from Queens, shared what the night meant to her: “Estoy tan emocionada de poder ir a ver a Shakira, una mujer tan resiliente que nos ha enseñado a levantarnos siempre si caemos. Ella se cae y se levanta y, como mujeres inmigrantes, nos identificamos con ella y con su fuerza. Estoy muy orgullosa de cómo representa a nuestro país y de que reconozca a mujeres trabajadoras y guerreras como ella.”

[I am so excited to go see Shakira, such a resilient woman who has taught us always to get back up when we fall. She falls and gets back up, and as immigrant women, we identify with her strength. I am so proud of how she represents our country and that she is recognizing hard-working, warrior women like herself.]

The Seven Colombian Restaurants Behind New York’s $26 World Cup Dining Deal

The restaurant owners who received tickets had spent the summer participating in Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s $26 World Cup dining special, a six-week program run in partnership with nearly 300 restaurants across the five boroughs. The program offered prix fixe meals, food-and-drink combinations, or drink deals at $26 at participating restaurants while World Cup matches were being played at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. “Whether you are watching the match from a restaurant in Jackson Heights, a bar in the Bronx, or a cafe in central Brooklyn, the World Cup should be something every New Yorker can take part in,” Mamdani stated.

The seven Colombian restaurants that received tickets span Brooklyn and Queens: Palenque in Williamsburg, Romeo & Juliet Colombian Coffee in Midtown, Para Ti Colombia Con Sabor in Jamaica, Rico Pan Bakery and Pollos a la Brasa Mario in Woodside, Casa Margaritas in Queens, and Leo’s Restaurant & Sports Bar in Jackson Heights.

For Shakira, the guest list was the point. The people who show up every day in invisibility got a night in the spotlight, in Brooklyn, front row.

You open your phone for five minutes and walk away feeling like you’re failing at everything. You haven’t hit your protein. You missed your fiber window. You should be lifting, but not too heavy, because someone on TikTok just said heavy lifting gives women a boxy waist. You need to sleep eight hours, but not before you’ve meditated, journaled, done ten minutes of evening stretching, and read something nonfiction. You have to work, but not let work consume you. Stay social, but protect your energy. Track your steps, heart rate, zone 2, macros, and cortisol. And if you have a husband and kids? Consider the bar higher still.

This is the wellness culture social media has built. And it is exhausting.

The Social Media Fitness Checklist That Never Ends

The “we need to” content pipeline runs twenty-four hours a day. For every hour spent on TikTok or Instagram, the algorithm delivers a new protocol, a new deficiency, a new reason to feel behind. But the people behind the most widely shared fitness content are often not qualified to give it.

“Just because someone has a large following doesn’t mean they’re qualified to give fitness guidance,” said Dr. Amy Comander, director of the lifestyle medicine program at Massachusetts General Hospital, to The New York Times. Richard Beddie, chief executive of Exercise New Zealand, agreed. He warned the latest wave of social media fitness trends is “often driven by online influencers with little or no formal training in exercise, health or wellbeing.”

A 2024 study published in Digital Health, which surveyed 339 active fitness video viewers on Douyin, China’s TikTok-like platform, found that trustworthiness and expertise matter far more than physical attractiveness in response to fitness influencers. The problem is that on most platforms, the two are almost impossible to tell apart.

The Social Media Fitness Myths Experts Are Tired of Seeing

Let’s go through what is actually circulating. “Runner’s waist” is a trend claiming that regular running will give women a wider, boxier waist due to visible oblique muscles. Per Exercise New Zealand, citing research highlighted in Healthline, this claim is not supported by scientific evidence. Running develops endurance, cardiovascular health, and core stability. It does not significantly increase the size of the oblique muscles.

“Cortisol face” is the suggestion that everyday exercise causes facial puffiness through elevated stress hormones. Medical experts at Ohio State Wexner Medical Center stated it is not a recognized medical condition. The facial changes associated with abnormally high cortisol levels are linked to rare disorders, not a morning run.

And the long-standing claim that women will get “bulky” from lifting weights continues to discourage strength training. Per Exercise New Zealand, building substantial muscle mass requires years of progressive resistance training, carefully managed nutrition, and in many cases, favorable genetics. For most women, strength training builds strength, bone density, confidence, and functional fitness.

Then there are the challenges. “75 Hard,” the viral program that requires two daily 45-minute workouts, a strict diet, a gallon of water, and at least ten pages of nonfiction reading for 75 consecutive days, is “extremely unsustainable” and “quite possibly the worst way to set good habits,” said Victoria Sekely, a physical therapist and founder of Train Smart Run Strong, per The New York Times. Exercising twice a day, especially for beginners, “is a good way to injure yourself and to create completely unrealistic expectations around exercise,” Sekely added.

“What I eat in a day” videos carry their own damage. “All of us have different heights, different weights, different body compositions,” said Dr. Comander. Meghann Featherstun, a sports dietitian in Kent, Ohio, warned that comparing your own diet to what you see online can encourage disordered eating, per the same reporting. It’s also worth noting that what someone shares may not be what they actually eat day to day, particularly when they make a living promoting sponsored products.

The Algorithm Doesn’t Know Your Body

What makes the social media fitness problem uniquely hard to escape is that the platforms are built to keep feeding it to you. Per Glorious Sport, TikTok and Instagram’s algorithms learn behavior from signals as small as whether a user lingered on a video for more than five seconds. The longer someone engages with fitness content, the more fitness content arrives, regardless of whether it is accurate, applicable, or created by anyone with credentials.

According to a 2023 study published in the journal Body Image, exposure to fitness influencers on Instagram and TikTok can increase body dissatisfaction, especially among young women.

The one-size-fits-all nature of the content is part of the design. “Effective fitness doesn’t look the same for someone managing chronic illness as it does for a college athlete,” per the International Fitness Professionals Association. Hormonal shifts, injuries, neurodiversity, and socioeconomic barriers all shape what a person actually needs from movement. Per IFPA, these realities are largely invisible in the content being promoted. When a program fails to work for someone, the implicit message social media sends is that it must be her fault: she didn’t push hard enough, didn’t want it enough. When in reality, as IFPA notes, the program was simply never designed with her body or her life in mind.

The data obsession adds another layer. Per Kathryn Larson, a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic Sports Cardiology Clinic, some patients become so fixated on their trackers that “at the end of the day, they’ve kind of lost focus on why the exercise is important in the first place.”

Our Mothers Never Had Time for Wellness Culture

Here is the part that doesn’t get talked about enough.

Our mothers survived. That was the assignment. They worked, they raised children, they kept households running, and they did not have the bandwidth to think about their fiber intake, their zone-two heart rate, or whether their cortisol was aging their face. The wellness culture social media sells was never designed for women who were too busy keeping everyone else alive to take care of themselves.

And now, decades later, many of them are living with the consequences. And it’s not because they failed at some protocol. Because, honestly, they didn’t even exist. And because survival mode does not leave much room for building bone density, muscle mass, or the cardiovascular foundation that carries a person into old age without pain. The autoimmune conditions, the knees that won’t cooperate, the back too stiff to pick up a grandchild. That is what actually happens when health gets pushed to the bottom of the list, not because of anything a fitness influencer said, but because there was no other option.

Social media has taken that reality and commodified its opposite: the relentless idea that if you are not optimizing everything, you are failing. And it is selling that idea to the daughters of the very women who had no choice but to do without.

“We’ve gone from celebrating what our bodies can do to worrying about whether our waistline or face fits the latest TikTok trend,” said Beddie, per Exercise New Zealand. “That’s a step backward.”

The irony, Beddie added, is that social media is making people fear the very activities that improve their health. Running, strength training, and regular physical activity reduce the risk of chronic disease, improve mental wellbeing, and build confidence. The content designed around those same activities is actively working against them.

What Works Has Never Gone Viral on Social Media

The honest version of fitness advice does not make for compelling content. Per The New York Times, experts recommend finding movement you enjoy, doing it consistently, and building a habit, rather than chasing the latest miracle workout. Full-body strength training twice a week. Paying attention to how a workout feels rather than what the smartwatch reports. Consulting a nutritionist if you want guidance on food, rather than modeling your meals on a creator who may not eat what they post.

“What matters most is actual feeling and intensity,” said James McKirdy, founder of McKirdy Training.

Similarly, one of the most meaningful shifts in the fitness industry over the past two decades has been moving the conversation from “exercise for looks” to “exercise for health.” Social media is actively working to undo that progress.

Right before her West End opening night, Ana Villafañe was in her dressing room when a video arrived. Rita Moreno, the only Latina to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony, had found out Villafañe was playing Ava Gardner in Sinatra: The Musical at London’s Aldwych Theatre and sent her a message.

Villafañe started crying.

“The fact that Rita, our EGOT, has seen me perform on Broadway and at the Library of Congress, knows I’m making my West End debut, and knows who I am at all is insane to me,” Villafañe told FIERCE. “She’s the blueprint. I remind myself that so many people had to walk so we could run.”

The moment was particularly powerful after years of walking into rooms not built for you, taking roles no one imagined could belong to a Latina, and showing up anyway.

Ana Villafañe on Playing Ava Gardner: “I Understand That Deeply”

Sinatra: The Musical, directed by Kathleen Marshall, opened at the Aldwych Theatre on June 24 and runs through April 2027. Ana Villafañe plays Ava Gardner, the screen icon famously in love with Spain and the Spanish-speaking world, a woman who lived with a defiance that made her magnetic and an inconvenience to the systems around her.

But what drew Villafañe to the role was not the glamour. “What drew me to the role is Ava’s inherent strength,” she said. “Her resilience. The audacity to live on her own terms truly made her magnetic, beyond external beauty, while existing in a time period and within a system that was not built to protect her. I understand that deeply.”

Asked what she brings to Ava that audiences might not expect, her answer was precise: “I bring the embodiment of being chronically underestimated. People relate to that.”

“Sometimes Without Permission”

The audition almost did not go the way Villafañe let herself hope. “When I auditioned for Sinatra, I was convinced I wouldn’t get the part,” she said. “I knew a lot of actresses who were also in the running to play Ava, and none of them were Latina. But I showed up anyway.”

And she did not stop there. “People won’t see us for all that we can be unless we show up. Sometimes without permission.”

That instinct, she says, is not bravado. Like many Latinas, her instincts are deeply connected to her upbringing. “I was raised by immigrants in an immigrant community. I was taught to be empowered and take pride in everything I am. I do not take that for granted.” The world, she says, has spent years trying to put her in a box, but her immediate instinct is to shatter it. “More and more, I challenge the idea that we belong in only one space. Latin artists have so much to offer, and our discipline is top tier.”

From Gloria to Ava: “Esa Chispa”

Villafañe made her Broadway debut in 2015, originating the role of Gloria Estefan in the Tony-nominated On Your Feet!, a performance that earned her a Theatre World Award and a Drama League Award nomination. The path from Gloria to Ava, she says, follows the same thread.

“I think there’s nothing more powerful than a self-made woman who never forgets where she came from,” she said. “Gloria and Ava actually have a lot in common: humble beginnings, losing their fathers young, being raised by hard-working mothers, and achieving icon status without ever losing their spark of authenticity. Esa chispa. These are universal truths that transcend culture.”

Between these two iconic roles, Ana Villafañe built a body of work that crosses every lane the industry tried to assign her. She played Nina Rosario in In the Heights at the Kennedy Center and Roxie Hart in Chicago during the show’s 25th anniversary Broadway run. Her portrayal of Lola in the Arena Stage revival of Damn Yankees, directed and choreographed by Sergio Trujillo, earned her a 2026 Helen Hayes Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Performer in a Musical. She starred opposite Holland Taylor in the world premiere of N/A at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center, directed by Diane Paulus. On Apple TV+, she voices Eva Eight on WondLa, a role that has contributed to the series’ recognition at the Emmys and the TCA Awards. She will also appear in the upcoming feature film Castro’s Daughter opposite James Franco.

Oh, but that’s not all. She is also releasing new music. Her latest single, “Suelta,” is out now.

What Holland Taylor and Diane Paulus Taught Ana Villafañe About Longevity

“Sharing a stage at Lincoln Center with Holland for an entire summer was a theatre kid’s fever dream,” Villafañe said. And Taylor’s advice stayed with her long after the run ended. “She would always tell me ‘be where your feet are.’ I’ve kept that consejo with me. Her depth knows no limits, but she approaches everything with a wicked sense of humor.”

Diane Paulus, she says, is the direct reason she is in London. “I was deciding between two projects, and ultimately she advised me to pick Sinatra because it would stretch me further artistically. I needed that push.” Both women gave her the same lesson, delivered differently. “They’ve both taught me that longevity in this industry can look however I want it to. They’ve both elevated the game by creating their own rules.”

Ana Villafañe Keeps the Vision Clear

The National Hispanic Media Coalition and other leading institutions have recognized Villafañe for her impact advancing Latino representation in entertainment. For her part, she is candid about what that work asks of her. “Sometimes it’s exhausting. I see the scripts, and the lack thereof. I see the statistics. I know we have a long way to go.”

On the nights she feels its weight, she returns to the Rita Moreno video. She returns to what it means that a woman like that, who carved a path where there was none, knows her name. “I keep the vision and my purpose clear,” she said. “Our community deserves to see ourselves at the highest level, in positions of power and dignity. To take up space unapologetically and not make ourselves smaller or ‘less’ for anyone. I want to keep adding to that however I can.”

She is adding to it right now, eight times a week, in London, playing a woman the industry never expected a Latina to play.

American women won the right to vote in 1920, when the 19th Amendment was ratified. One hundred and six years later, in San Antonio, Texas, some women at a conservative summit said they would hand that right back to their husbands.

This is worth slowing down for.

What TF Happened in San Antonio?

The Turning Point USA Women’s Leadership Summit convened in San Antonio, Texas, during the first weekend of June 2026. Approximately 3,000 mostly young Christian conservative women attended. TPUSA has been led since last fall by Erika Kirk, the widow of founder Charlie Kirk, who was killed during an outdoor college debate in Utah in September.

Keynote speaker Savanna Stone, a 21-year-old conservative content creator with approximately 800,000 followers across platforms, presented the concept of household voting to the crowd. The idea holds that one vote per household, cast by the male head of that household, should replace individual voting rights.

Several attendees told reporters they would accept that.

Alexus DeGraaf, 31, from Columbus, Ohio: “My perspective as a Christian woman is that my husband and I are one flesh. I vote the same way he does, so honestly, I would be okay with giving up my right to vote, because I know that he would represent me well.”

Brooke Foxworthy, 48, a stay-at-home mother who had recently relocated from California to Texas, put it this way: “If my husband’s the head of the household, I am the neck, and we work very cohesively together. If he were voting on behalf of our household, I would be fine with that,” per CBC. She said she would apply the same arrangement to her daughter.

KayElah Gardner, 19, a nursing student from San Diego, told CBC she would give up her vote if it led to the elimination of abortion access.

The framework these women are drawing from is biblical patriarchy, a belief system rooted in Ephesians 5:22, “Wives submit yourselves to your husbands as you do to the Lord,” which holds that men should lead in both family and civic life, per The Meteor.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has publicly amplified a version of this argument, reposting a video of Doug Wilson, an Idaho pastor, advocating against women’s suffrage. Hegseth’s family attends Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship in Tennessee, part of Wilson’s Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches network.

Where This Idea Comes From

Conservative thinkers first raised the concept in the 1980s, drawing from pronatalist movements in Europe, per The Meteor. It gained organized momentum in the United States during the 1990s and 2000s under Doug Phillips, the founder of Vision Forum Ministries.

Historian Beth Allison Barr traced the concept to its roots in an interview with Katie Couric Media: “The householder was the wealthy white man who had the vote. So it was more about class privilege and racial privilege.”

Historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez identified what has changed about the current moment: “These ideas are being platformed more brazenly and more unapologetically, and moving from a kind of quiet subculture into the mainstream.”

Tia Levings, a survivor and author who has written about escaping biblical patriarchy, added: “When proponents of these ideas aren’t able to legislate these changes, they will get women to self-subjugate.”

Not Everything Is That… Grim?

The images that circulated from San Antonio focused on the women who said yes. The fuller picture, per CBC, is that the vast majority of attendees pushed back on the idea of household voting.

Emmy Mills, 20, from Greenfield, Indiana, offered one of the sharper responses: “Not all of our destinies are to get married and have kids,” per CBC. Her point names a structural problem with the model itself. Household voting, in every version on record, assumes a married woman with a politically engaged husband. Most women on earth do not live that life.

But The Fact That Some Women Are Already Indoctrinated Should Scare All Of Us

“When you give up your voice, you give up your rights,” Levings concluded.

Women won the right to vote in America in 1920 after more than seventy years of organized struggle. Suffragists were arrested, went on hunger strikes, and died for it. They fought for an unwavering mission: the right of every woman to cast her own ballot. The women in San Antonio were free to attend that summit, hold those beliefs, and cast their votes in November because of those seventy years of work.

And yes, faith is a private matter. How any woman chooses to vote is entirely her own. However, a policy of household voting removes the choice.