Meet "the mother of Black feminism"
  February 27, 2026 The Unsung Mother of Black FeminismOn the last day of Black History Month, meet history-making Anna Julia CooperBY REBECCA CARROLL  ANNA JULIA COOPER CIRCA 1902 (VIA GETTY IMAGES) If you really want to “listen to Black women,” start with Anna Julia Cooper. Widely considered the mother of Black feminism, she was among the most important Black women educators, essayists, and activists of the 19th century. She defended her dissertation at 66—in French—at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1925, almost certainly making her the first woman born into slavery to earn a PhD. (Meanwhile, that year, back in her adopted hometown of Washington, D.C., 30,000 members of the KKK were marching in a public demonstration of white supremacy.) And Cooper is the only Black woman quoted on the U.S. passport: “The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class—it is the cause of humankind, the very birthright of humanity.” She lived to 105, yet few people today know her by name, even if they know many of her words. For instance, the phrase “when and where I enter” is often attributed to the abolitionist Martin Delany, the first Black field officer in the United States Army during the Civil War, who said in full, “When and where I enter, my people enter with me.” But it was Cooper who turned the phrase into what would go on to become a foundational fighting text for Black women in America. “Only the black woman can say when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood...then and there the whole Negro race enters with me,” Cooper wrote in her seminal 1892 collection of speeches and essays, A Voice from the South: By a Black Woman of the South. In fact, in the 1890s, more than a decade before W.E.B. Du Bois coined the phrase “double-consciousness” to describe the dual sense of self experienced by Black Americans, Cooper was speaking and writing about the dual marginalization of race and gender that Black women face. And while a lot of 19th century Black public intellectuals (like Ida B. Wells, Frederick Douglass, and Cooper’s Oberlin classmate Mary Church Terrell) were formulating theories about racism and sexism at that time, Cooper was among the first to connect these oppressions—essentially an intersectional feminist almost a century before the term was coined. Du Bois’s theory was that to be Black in America meant seeing oneself through two specific lenses: the oppressive white gaze, and the identity of a liberated Black self. But Cooper took a more inclusive and nuanced stance at a time when being a woman was too often considered something else entirely—even by Du Bois himself. It’s well-documented that Cooper struggled to get her work published in The Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP, where Du Bois served as editor from its founding in 1910 until his resignation in 1934. In a series of 33 letters the two exchanged between 1923 and 1932—thirty years after her essay collection was published—Cooper appealed to Du Bois to publish her newer works. The tenor of their correspondence is cordial, but it’s clear that Du Bois, who nominally expressed support for Cooper’s writing, was more comfortable talking the “profeminist politics” talk than actually walking the walk: He never published her. He was not the only man to fail to show Cooper the respect she deserved.  A PORTRAIT OF COOPER CIRCA 1892, SCANNED FROM HER BOOK (FAIR USE) Born into slavery in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1858, Cooper was the daughter of an enslaved Black woman, Hannah Stanley Haywood, and, it is widely believed, her white enslaver, Fabius J. Haywood. She turned six the year of Emancipation and, like many newly freed Black kids in Raleigh, enrolled in Saint Augustine Normal and Collegiate Institute at the age of nine. She excelled, and her young activism included protesting the boys-only admission to Greek and Latin courses. “A boy…had only to declare a floating intention to study theology and he could get all the support, encouragement and stimulus he needed,” she wrote in A Voice from the South. “While a self-supporting girl had to struggle on by teaching in the summer and working after school hours to keep up with her board bills, and actually to fight her way against positive discouragement to the higher education.” By the age of 11, though, she was made a scholarship-teacher (for $100 a year) to tutor other students. And she did eventually get the chance to study Greek with the boys. She married her husband, George A.C. Cooper—a minister and Greek teacher at Saint Augustine—in 1877 at the age of 19, and remained at the school as a matron. But George died from an unknown illness two years later, and Cooper enrolled at Ohio’s Oberlin College in 1881, eventually earning two degrees. Higher education for all Black people, but especially Black women, became Cooper’s main fight while there, and remained so throughout her life. After leaving Oberlin with her master's, she became an accomplished academic and speaker. In many of those speeches, and in her essays, Cooper—whose vision for feminism included all women—was openly critical of white women suffragists for blatantly sidelining not just Black women, but all non-white women, in their fight to secure women’s right to vote. In fact, she considered it a betrayal. From her essay “Women Versus the Indian”: “Is not woman’s cause broader, and deeper, and grander, than a blue stocking debate or an aristocratic pink tea? Why should woman become plaintiff in a suit versus the Indian, or the Negro or any other race or class who have been crushed under the iron heel of Anglo-Saxon power and selfishness?”  WHILE MANY MAY HAVE FORGOTTEN THE STORY OF ANNA JULIA COOPER, PASSPORT HOLDERS CARRY HER WORDS WITH THEM. As an educator, she fought on behalf of her students, which earned her enemies. She angered the board of the school at which she became principal when she successfully advocated for many of her Black students to pursue collegiate studies rather than be pushed into vocational training. And then, at the same school, the long-widowed Cooper found herself at the center of a smear campaign when she refused to stop helping students gain admittance to and attend college. Members of the board accused her of having an affair with a young man in her professional circle, and brought the fabricated scandal to the local press. Ultimately, despite public support on her side, she was forced out of the school in 1906. Despite other stops and starts—including a period when she adopted her five nieces and nephews—she was determined to earn her PhD, which she finally completed in her sixties after transferring to the Sorbonne. And throughout her career, she managed to nurture close ties with her loved ones. “Her family called her Sis Annie, her closest friends, Cookie,” remembers Shirley Moody-Turner, associate professor of English and African American Studies at Penn State University, and editor of The Portable Anna Julia Cooper. “Her students presented her with flowers, and cards, and gifts, and candy.” In the later part of her life, Moody-Turner says, “her closest friend and fellow educator, Lula Love [Lawson], sent Cooper dresses, slippers, foot powder, and insoles to make sure that Cooper was comfortable, fashionable, and cared for.” In making sure Cooper is honored for her extraordinary contributions to the canon of Black feminism, it can be hard not to flatten her into a symbol. But let’s also remember that our heroine was just as much Sis Annie as Anna Julia Cooper, who loved flowers and candy, who stopped her world to care for her family, and stayed looking fly.
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The Great Outdoor Whitewashing
  February 26, 2026 Howdy, Meteor readers, Tonight, in the words of Cardi B: We’re going outside. Plus, Rebecca Carroll talks to Reshona Landfair about reclaiming her life after years of abuse at the hands of R. Kelly. Lots to read, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONHistory lives in the land: “We ended DEI in America,” Donald Trump bragged Tuesday night at the State of the Union, pouring salt into the wound of what has already been a particularly trying Black History Month. (And we were off to such a good start…) Since March 2025, Trump has been on a crusade to literally rewrite history. His administration has forced the removal of African American studies at universities, charged the Smithsonian with focusing too much on “how bad slavery was,” and—perhaps most offensively—stripped content that “disparages Americans past or living” from historical sites. The nonprofit Democracy Forward has confirmed that at least 27 sites across the country were asked to remove or alter signage and exhibits mentioning things like enslavement, climate change, the mistreatment of Native peoples, eugenics, and the role of women in outdoor conservation. Some of the most egregious changes have been the removal of historical works like “The Scourged Back” in Georgia’s Fort Pulaski National Park, panels depicting enslavement during the nation’s founding in Pennsylvania’s Independence National Park, and signs detailing the work of abolitionist John Brown in West Virginia’s Harpers Ferry National Park. It’s not accidental that so many of these attacks on history have focused on public outdoor spaces. They’re heavily visited: In 2024 alone, there were 331 million visits to parks, recreation areas, memorials and other lands managed by the National Park Service. To remove informational panels from sites where historical events actually took place is a particularly blatant denial of history. It’s also an insult to our intelligence to deliver such an omission when we’re standing on the blood-soaked soil where it all happened.  THE MUCH DISCUSSED PANELS AT INDEPENDENCE NATIONAL PARK, WHICH WERE REMOVED AND EVENTUALLY RESTORED BY FEDERAL COURT ORDER. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) Unfortunately, we have been here before, as history professor and author of Without Fear: Black Women and the Making of Human Rights Keisha N. Blain knows all too well. “Trump joins the long list of American presidents to employ these tactics,” she says. The attempts of erasure we’re now seeing are part of a “long project to return the United States to a pre-Civil Rights Movement era.” President Woodrow Wilson didn’t stop at whitewashing history; his administration also tried to prevent Black students from receiving formal education, recommending instead that they be sent to vocational training schools. This strategy was self-perpetuating, Blain says: If people were not learning about Black history, then they were not learning about resistance tactics they could apply to the present. Blain finds that the Trump administration is similarly working to “promote a single vision of the American past that elevates white identity…and suppresses critical questions as well as dissent.” Intentionally altering public lands to erase marginalized groups has been happening since the establishment of the U.S. government and was heavily normalized during Jim Crow and the dawn of the “nature gap”—a term that refers to the racial disparities in access to nature or green spaces. Communities of color represent 74 percent of nature-deprived communities, with Black communities making up more than half of that figure. This gap goes far beyond whether or not someone enjoys camping—it can dictate communities’ longterm health outcomes. Still, “for as long as white politicians have employed these kinds of tactics, Black people in the United States have vigorously resisted,” Blain says. “They recognized the challenges before them and they devised strategies—working in tandem with like-minded individuals.” The same is happening right now in the outdoor community. Black and brown creators are working to create more access and safety for those who are tired of hearing that hiking, camping, or simply existing outside belongs solely to white people. History is in the land and in community—which you can find by going outside with groups like blk.people.outside, the hood hikers, outlandish, Negus in Nature, and brownpeoplecamping. AND:
 Three Questions About...Reclaiming Your LifeReshona Landfair, who survived abuse by R. Kelly, knows it’s a long road RESHONA LANDFAIR, AUTHOR OF THE NEW MEMOIR WHO'S WATCHING SHORTY? RECLAIMING MYSELF FROM THE SHAME OF R. KELLY'S ABUSE. (COURTESY OF RESHONA LANDFAIR) Reshona Landfair was a preteen when she, like nearly every other Black girl in mid-’90s America, became enamored with the R&B mega-star R. Kelly. Landfair was growing up in Chicago, where Kelly was a hometown hero, and where her own family had strong musical ties: Her father was a studio musician, and her aunt, Sparkle, was a singer on Kelly’s label. Landfair herself was in a semi-successful rap group with her young cousins called 4 the Cause, which toured abroad regularly, and had great aspirations. In 1996, Sparkle introduced Landfair to Kelly in order to, she says, help her niece’s dreams come true. Kelly, 29 at the time, already had a then-quiet reputation for preying on girls, and began grooming and sexually abusing Landfair—at the time still a middle-schooler—a year after they met. The violence worsened, and continued for decades. Landfair was a prisoner, first emotionally trapped by Kelly’s predatory behavior and the manipulative relationship with her family that he had weaponized, and later literally held captive in guarded rooms of Kelly’s studio, or other locations of his choosing. And then came the video. When Kelly was charged with child pornography and exploitation in 2002, an explicit “sex tape” featuring a 14-year-old Landfair was shown as evidence in two of his trials. After an acquittal in 2008, he was finally convicted in 2022, due in large part to the tape and Landfair’s testimony. Now, Landfair has written a memoir of recovery. In Who’s Watching Shorty? Reclaiming Myself from the Shame of R. Kelly’s Abuse, which features a foreword by activist and former A&R executive Drew Dixon, Landfair reflects on her trauma, her voice, and forgiveness. Do you have a particular memory of when it first felt like self-reclamation and liberation were possible? The first moment that comes to mind is having to face Robert in the courtroom [in 2022]. That was the first time I was able to think freely, think for myself, and really stand up for what I personally believed in, versus what I was taught…[Then] when I turned 30 years old, I took a trip to Jamaica. I had repaired my life mentally and physically and emotionally…[and] in that moment, I was able to be independent, do something nice for myself, take myself to a place with friends, and just communicate normally and be a normal human being. I can go out for a cocktail if I want, or stay out a little later, or engage in social conversations and not have to worry about what I'm saying or who I'm saying it to. Those are the most concrete moments that I have of really feeling like, “Wow, I can do this on my own. I can think for myself.” That's when I felt like I had my own leverage. There [have also been] moments when I compartmentalized, and tucked a lot of things away to try to forget that they happened. Having to dig those things out [while writing] and remember how I felt was hard, because it would take me back to a really, really dark place. You also write about forgiveness, of yourself and of your abuser. Can you say a little bit more about that? I struggle with that, and I think a lot of people do—because why forgive? Almost every abuser has had a terrible childhood [as R. Kelly did], but that shouldn’t be on us. I struggled with that for a really long time. I blamed myself for what happened. It took a really, really long time for me to see myself as a victim, because the way I was portrayed in the media was not necessarily as such. So you ask yourself, “What could I have done differently to avoid this happening to me?” Or “Why did he choose to do this to me, but he wouldn't have chosen to do it to this person or that person?” Until I realized, those were not my sexual desires. I learned intimacy through my abuser, and so, some things that didn’t feel right, I still went along with. But once I was able to think and be mature enough for myself and look into my heart and really get to know who I was, that's when I was able to release those things and let them go, because it was not something that I requested. I do forgive him. It feels difficult, but it is very genuine. Not all things about Robert were bad. That is not the way I met him. That is not the way I was introduced to him. I do understand that he went through certain things in his childhood and I feel like he had an enabling system around him that let him get away with so much that he didn't know when to stop. There's nothing left to revisit [in terms of my relationship with him]. It's more so just me really, fully healing. I can't do that holding a grudge, or still feeling anger. So a part of my healing process was to release all of that, and I'm blessed to be able to say, I at least forgive him. A lot of people have let you down in your life. When do you feel the most lifted up in your life today? I feel the most lifted when I'm with my son. He is five, and he is a bundle of joy. I know that he will understand this story one day. But he looks at me and he admires me in ways that are very necessary, very genuine, without knowing anything about this situation. So I just get the purest form from him. We’re looking at my rap videos [from when I was young], and he's learning so many new things about me that, again, I kind of just wiped out of my brain space. He’s learning a new version of me, and he seems to be inspired and really happy. I'm blessed to be his mother. This interview has been condensed and edited.  Rebecca Carroll is a writer, cultural critic, and podcast creator/host. Her writing has been published widely, and she is the author of several books, including the memoir Surviving the White Gaze. Rebecca is Editor at Large for The Meteor.  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
Smizing? In this economy??
  February 24, 2026 Greetings Meteor readers, So. How ‘bout that snowstorm, eh? Personally, I am on the side of one random New Yorker on TikTok who said she wants to see Punxsutawney Phil “seized and seasoned” by noon-thirty tomorrow. I’m on my way to Pennsylvania. In today’s newsletter, we enjoy some really funny jokes about hockey, and stand in admiration at the Epstein survivors attending the State of the Union tonight. Plus, Julianne Escobedo Shepherd weighs in on the America’s Next Top Model documentary we can’t stop talking about. I just wanna talk Phil 🔪, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONNo laughing matter: This weekend, both the men’s and women’s USA hockey teams took home gold medals after beating Canada in overtime. (There’s a Heated Rivalry joke running through my head, but I just can’t seem to articulate it.) We should all still be riding a collective high from that moment, but sadly, we do not live in the world of Rachel Reid. In this world, Donald Trump called the men’s team in the locker room after their win to congratulate them, also extending an invite to the State of the Union and to “do the White House the next day, just have some fun.” It should have been a standard moment. But he also took the opportunity to say that he would “have to bring” the women’s team, adding that he’d be impeached if he didn’t. The men in the room laughed as if it were a joke that another gold medal-winning team would be invited to the White House. You know what is funny, though? Women were not allowed to play ice hockey at the Olympics until 1998, almost thirty years after Title IX was signed into law. They won gold that year. The men, who have been playing Olympic hockey since 1920, didn’t medal at all in ‘98. You know what else is really funny? Until this weekend, men’s hockey hadn’t seen a gold medal since 1980.  YOU WOULD THINK A MAN OBSESSED WITH GOLD WOULD BE THRILLED TO BRING AS MANY MEDAL WINNERS AS POSSIBLE INTO HIS SPACE. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) And you know what’s absolutely freaking hilarious? A Republican president and his lackeys are celebrating women winning gold medals for the U.S. while simultaneously tripping over themselves to weaken Title IX, the very thing that made it possible for women to secure 67 percent of the gold medals won by Team USA this year. Surely, though, nothing is as funny as the fact that the women’s team was eventually also invited to attend the State of the Union, but declined, mainly for travel reasons. Because while the men’s team was flying by charter back to the states, the women’s team booked commercial flights back to Atlanta and weren’t aware they had been invited until late Sunday night. It’s almost as if proving dominance over and over and over again isn’t enough to be treated equally on a team whose entire motto is literally “One For All.” But I’m sure that’s not the case, because we’re all just kidding, right? P.S. Thrilled by the hockey events this weekend and still want to support women players? You’re in luck: The PWHL season resumes this Thursday (another reason the Team USA women had to rush home) when the New York Sirens take on the Montreal Victoire. Show up and show out. AND:
 America’s Next Top Model is a cautionary tale for this dark eraBY JULIANNE ESCOBEDO SHEPHERD  L-R: CYCLE 2 WINNER YOANNA HOUSE, TYRA BANKS, SHANDI SULLIVAN, AND MERCEDES SCELBA-SHORTE. MANY FANS STILL REMEMBER SHANDI FROM THE INFAMOUS "CHEATING" EPISODE THAT YEAR WHICH WAS REVISITED IN REALITY CHECK. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) America’s Next Top Model died first by sinking ratings, and then by TikTok. During pandemic lockdown, a new generation of viewers revisited the reality competition show, which ran from 2003 until its cancellation in 2018, and realized what they may have thought was a fun series about fashion shoots was, in fact, kind of messed up! This epiphany led to loads of social media posts by bored Zoomers lobbing critiques of the show and its supermodel host, Tyra Banks—and eventually culminated in Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model, a Netflix documentary series probing ANTM’s effect on its contestants and the culture at large. Reality Check, which hit number one on Netflix, is the latest entry in the cottage industry of Y2K nostalgia, which reevaluates the mean-girl era through fresh eyes and contemporary values. Through interviews with former contestants and cast—including runway coach Miss J, creative director Jay Manuel, photographer Nigel Barker, and Tyra herself—the series examines how ANTM started as an aspirational project to upend the fashion industry’s constrictive white norms and ended as an outrageous circus that put white women in blackface and had models pose as crime-scene victims, among many other terrible, misanthropic ideas. It is clear from Tyra’s interviews that she has seen the TikToks and was media-trained and lawyered to near-oblivion before Reality Check, her responses containing a tablespoon of accountability and a heaping cup of denial about her own role in some of the most horrific things that happened on set. The most infuriating of these dodges is in response to Shandi Sullivan, the Cycle 2 model who was filmed “cheating” on her boyfriend but who, in retrospect, was unable to consent to sex with a virtual stranger after downing two bottles of wine (and, as Shandi confirms in the doc, blacking out). She charges that she was not cared for by production, their cameras rolling through it all. “It’s a little difficult for me to talk about production because that’s not my territory,” Banks says, before executive producer Ken Mok sidesteps an apology by saying the “girls” knew they were being filmed as if in a “documentary.” “Made for good TV,” present-day Shandi tells the camera, forlorn.  BANKS WITH ORIGINAL MEMBERS OF THE ANTM JUDGES' PANEL, NIGEL BARKER, RUNWAY DIVA COACH EXTRAORDINAIRE MISS J ALEXANDER, AND JAY MANUEL. (VIA NETFLIX) Tyra gets the brunt of Reality Check’s blame—the producers who declined to intervene with Shandi are nowhere to be found in this series—but as the writer Taryn Finley points out, ANTM was a microcosm of the racist, sexist, nihilistic culture of the years in which it aired. The 2000s were particularly exploitative, and it’s easy to write off that exploitation as a product of a long-ago, less-enlightened era. But Reality Check should be a warning for this era, too: The size diversity that Tyra says mattered so much to her is disappearing in a wash of semaglutides—and with it, acceptance of bodies that aren’t super-skinny. The racial and ethnic diversity Tyra says she hoped to champion has been banned (and even criminalized) at the federal and judicial levels. The tendency towards unexamined cruelty is apparent in U.S. culture every day, and its effect on women and girls won’t be calculable for years. And still, as a longtime America’s Next Top Model viewer, I can appreciate some of the small advancements it made. In a culture where a skinny, rich, white woman like Paris Hilton was viewed as the ideal, the fact that Black women and Latinas were shown as beautiful and worthy was important—even if some of those same women of color were often portrayed as angry, argumentative, or otherwise wild, especially early on. Later contestants like Isis King, Nyle DiMarco, and Winnie Harlow shared their lives with a massive audience which wouldn’t have otherwise seen a transgender model, a deaf model, or a model with vitiligo, respectively. In that sense, Tyra accomplished at least some of her stated goals, even if she had to bully a whole lot of other models to do it. (Justice for Danielle Evans, who should have been, and still could be, a supermodel.)  MODEL ISIS KING WAS ORIGINALLY BROUGHT TO ANTM AS A BACKGROUND MODEL DURING A CYCLE 10 PHOTOSHOOT WHERE THE CONTESTANTS WERE TOLD TO PRETEND TO BE UNHOUSED. AT THE TIME, KING HERSELF WAS AN UNHOUSED PERSON. SHE WAS INVITED BACK TO THE SHOW IN CYCLES 11 AND 17 TO COMPETE. SHE HAS SINCE BECOME AN ACTRESS AND STAUNCH LGBTQ+ RIGHTS ADVOCATE. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) While I would never argue that ANTM’s achievements outweighed its mistakes, it maintains a storied place in U.S. pop culture for a reason. (For one thing, it directly influenced RuPaul, who borrowed some of its rubrics for Drag Race.) And while Reality Check cocks an eyebrow toward the series’ increasingly outrageous storylines, through a lens of camp there’s a lot to love there—the rapper The Game visibly falling for OG e-girl Allison Harvard during the infamous “Pot Ledom” episode; the jokes about the lacefront beard; “Mama Hot.” Even the season hosted by musician Rita Ora—the more celebrity-zhuzhed Cycle 23, which aired in 2017 on VH1 after Tyra got the boot from her own show by the higher-ups—was packed with memeable, memorable moments. Even so, Reality Check forces the question: Was any of this worth all that? Lisa D’Amato, winner of Cycle 17: All-Stars and star of a forthcoming competing ANTM documentary on E!, suggests it wasn’t—and as a fan of the show, I tend to agree. “Watched the Netflix docu on antm and I still think it was sugar coated,” D’Amato wrote on Instagram. “It was wayyyyyyy worse for so many of us.”  Julianne Escobedo Shepherd is a Wyoming-born Xicana journalist, editor, and co-founder of Hearing Things, living in New York. She is currently at work on a book for Penguin about her upbringing and the mythology of the American West.  FOLLOW THE METEOR     Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
“I wanted to make sure she knew she had autonomy.”
Lulu Garcia-Navarro on interviewing Gisèle Pelicot
by Nona Willis Aronowitz
Lulu Garcia-Navarro, co-host of the New York Times podcast “The Interview,” has covered harrowing circumstances all over the world for the Times, NPR, and the Associated Press. She’s reported on everything from the war in Iraq to the Arab Spring uprisings to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But her recent interview with Gisèle Pelicot, she told me, was one of the hardest she’s ever done.
In our new series, The One Who Got the Story—where we catch up with a woman or non-binary journalist who was behind a major story of the week—we ask Garcia-Navarro how she prepared to interview a woman who endured some of the most shocking sexual abuse one can imagine. Pelicot, whose husband secretly drugged her and invited dozens of men into their home to rape her, made the extraordinary decision during the trial to waive her right to anonymity and allow media in the courtroom. And yet, she’d never truly told her story—until now. On the occasion of her new book, A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides, Pelicot, 72, sat down with Garcia-Navarro for her first interview with an American outlet. It’s a sensitive yet unflinching conversation about pain and renewal. Here’s how Garcia-Navarro did it.
I noticed in the beginning of the interview, you asked Gisèle how she’d like you to refer to her rapist (she answered, “Monsieur Pelicot”), and that struck me as a question specifically tailored to someone who’s gone through trauma. What kind of preparation did you do before talking to her?
Because she had never spoken [to the media] outside of the confines of the trial, I didn't know what I was going to get. Some victims of trauma really have trouble articulating their interior life, how they might have felt about things, their recollections of things. So we just prepared by being extremely careful. We made sure that where the interview was going to take place was going to be a very intimate environment. [The crew rented an apartment in Paris for the interview.] The majority of the crew was female. And then I wanted to make sure she knew she had autonomy and she had her voice. [Asking her what she’d like to call her abuser] was a way for me to signal that this was something she had agency over.
You were extremely careful, but you also didn’t shy away from the awful details. At one point you quoted a graphic passage of the book in which Gisèle notices that a crown in her mouth was loose, which she learned later was a result of, as she wrote, “the violence of penises being repeatedly forced into [her] mouth.” Can you explain more about the reasoning to include this?
I know that there's great concern about retraumatizing people and I understand that. I also do feel that sometimes, in trying to protect the victim, we do a disservice to the audience in not really showing the full scope of the horror that somebody went through. I asked for her permission [beforehand]; I said I was going to quote directly from the book, and she said that that was fine. I tried to be as sparing as I could. I just used one line, but it was a line that really haunted me. It said so much about the dynamic between her and her ex-husband, how he gaslit her, how he manipulated her...I felt it was really important for people to know.
You’ve reported amid conflict zones and revolutions, but how does this interview rank in terms of difficulty?
I mean, 100 out of 10. It's one of the hardest interviews that I've done because I think it's just really hard to get right. And if I did, I'm grateful for it. A consistent theme is that people said that they went in bracing for the worst and thinking this was just going to be a tour of horror. What they found instead was her beautiful ability to explain her own experience.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
The Sinister World of Looksmaxxing
  February 17, 2026 Happy Monduesday Meteor readers, Anyone else spend all of yesterday binge-watching and then emotionally recovering from the America’s Next Top Model docuseries? I saw all three episodes, but you know what I didn’t see? Anything resembling accountability from Tyra Banks. We were all rooting for you, ma’am. In today’s newsletter, we look at a troubling Senate race in Kentucky. Plus, we ask what everyone’s been asking the last few weeks: what the hell is looksmaxxing? Writemaxxing, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONSo it can get worse: As we all know and appreciate, Senator Mitch McConnell is not running for re-election this year. When he announced his retirement last year, it filled me with peace to know that his specter will no longer haunt the halls of government. But that peace is gone after watching a campaign commercial for Andy Barr, one of the three men in Kentucky vying to be the Republican candidate for McConnell’s seat. The ad is what the young people call ragebait—intentionally designed to make people angry with statements like, “DEI stands for dumb evil indoctrination.” And at the midpoint of Barr’s commercial, he says, “It’s not a sin to be white, it’s not against the law to be male, and it shouldn’t be disqualifying to be a Christian.” Those are words with a history, journalist Judd Legum points out. “The language used by Barr is a variation of the phrase 'It’s OK to be white,’” Legum writes. The phrase, abbreviated to IOTBW, dates back to 2017 when it spread on the "notoriously racist message board" 4chan. The term went on to be adopted by neo-Nazis and other white supremacist groups, who put up flyers with the term. One would like to imagine that proudly updating a neo-Nazi slogan for a political campaign would be disqualifying. (Although, to be fair, posing in front of a Confederate flag and weakening the Voting Rights Act didn’t end McConnell’s career.) It turns out Barr is just part of a trio of horrifying candidates in a campaign that has become “a racialized cage match revolving around convincing White people which candidate hates Black people the most,” according to professor Ricky L. Jones in the Courier Journal. “It’s a disgusting spectacle to behold.” The other two Republican candidates—former Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron and businessman Nate Morris—have both played up their anti-DEI bona fides and subtly vowed to protect white Kentuckians and stay loyal to Donald Trump. Cameron, who is Black, even went so far as to claim that systemic racism is a myth, and that he was proof. (Early polling from the New York Times shows that Cameron is ahead of his colleagues and will go up against either Charles Booker, a progressive who has lost two previous primaries, or the more moderate Pamela Stevenson, who was the first Black woman to lead a legislative caucus in the Kentucky General Assembly.) So what’s the moral here? It can, in fact, get worse than Mitch McConnell. Now’s a great time to check out who’s running against guys like these in your own state’s midterms and decide how the next few years of our collective lives are going to go. AND: 
 Three Questions About...LooksmaxxingMegan Reynolds explains what the menfolk are up to now. A MAN! (VIA GETTY IMAGES) Bubbling up recently from the putrid waters of the manosphere is a thing called “looksmaxxing.” On the surface, looksmaxxing is a language dodge by men who want to achieve a perfect aesthetic without having to use feminine terms like “plastic surgery” or “nose job.” Harmless, right? Probably not if legacy media is devoting so much ink to introducing us to someone named Clavicular—a man I’d happily go my whole life knowing nothing about. To understand the latest trend clogging our FYPs, I turned to author and chronically online elder millennial Megan Reynolds, who has a talent for demystifying internet rabbit holes. What exactly is "looksmaxxing" and how did this particular corner of the internet claw its way into the light? Looksmaxxing is the act of “optimizing” your appearance towards the traditional aesthetics of masculinity, via a wide range of methods, from working out and eating well to various surgeries, steroids, hair transplants, and the like. For the men who participate in this subculture, the focus is generally on the skin, muscles, and, for some reason, the jawline. (Think Gaston from Beauty and the Beast or the phrase “a jaw that could cut glass.”) A looksmaxxer's final form is a Chad—an archetypal "hot" man, the strapping and handsome stereotype of masculinity, idolized by incels. Chads get Stacys, which, as you may have surmised, are essentially their female counterparts—attractive, sexually available blondes. Looksmaxxing has been around since the 2010s, in the more red-pill, incel-adjacent corners of the internet, where distorted and dangerous thinking flourishes. We can thank TikTok and social media in general for the fact that we’re even discussing what this is today. If we want to look for a deeper answer [of why it has become more mainstream], I think looksmaxxing is also about a sense of control, especially in a world where young men feel like they’re in a state of crisis that is seemingly unsolvable, born out of the ballyhoo around the loneliness epidemic. [Also] I would say that Scott Galloway, the NYU professor/pundit/podcast host, who recently published the book “Notes on Being a Man,” is stoking the fires here just a touch, too. In an appearance on Oprah Winfrey’s podcast in December 2025, Galloway suggests that when looking for someone to have sex with, women are looking for men who can “signal resources” (i.e. make money), and while he is careful to not say outright that women want a man who is physically attractive, that is certainly implied. “I worry we are literally evolving a new breed of asexual, asocial male,” he said in an interview with The Guardian in 2025. Galloway’s entire thing is that men are here to “protect, provide, and procreate.” To my mind, presenting this rhetoric to a group of people who are feeling a bit left out in the first place is pouring gasoline on the fire.  A MAN WHO SPENT A MONTH TRYING TO BE MORE MAN, FOLLOWING THE GUIDELINES OF LOOKSMAXXING. TO BE CLEAR, THIS PERSON IS NOT CLAVICULAR, WHO WE ARE DECLINING TO SHOW BECAUSE HE DOES NOT DESERVE THIS MUCH ATTENTION FROM WOMEN. When we think about the manosphere, we think about guys out in the wild, chopping wood, trying to assert dominance over all things through strength. But "looksmaxxing" sounds like the antithesis of that. Are the bros embracing a wider scope of masculinity, or is it really all a net negative? It’d be nice if this was a gesture towards enlightenment, but what lies at the heart of looksmaxxing is desire—specifically, the men who are trying to mold themselves into the aesthetically ideal men are doing so in order to attract women. The manosphere is powered by the fumes of men who, like many, many people on earth, have faced rejection, either romantically, professionally or otherwise. What’s sinister about this is not rejection, as that is a simple fact of life, but the entitlement that men feel when faced with rejection. And it’s what people do with that entitlement that makes this entire situation alarming, to say the least. The TikToker who is sort of resurrecting looksmaxxing is a 20-year-old named Clavicular who associates with the likes of Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate. What's the connection between a sharp jawline and the right? Ugly guys can be fascists too, no? If we must trace the connection between the far-right and a jaw that could cut glass, we have to go back to the Nazis and their demented and incorrect views on beauty and the aesthetic ideal. The ideal Aryan man is blonde, blue-eyed, and muscular, the perfect specimen of physical fitness, absent any trace of racial ambiguity. Fascism, too, is about control—and if looksmaxxing is a means of seizing control over the one thing a young man actually can control, then it makes sense that these movements are inherently connected. It’s important to note, too, that Clavicular is doing what he does for the clicks—attention, in this economy, can lead to fame, financial gain. He and his compatriots are just a flash in the pan, but the real issue here is the thinking behind it.  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
Worker’s Rights, But Make it Fashion
  February 12, 2026 Greetings, Meteor readers, Love is Blind is back, and frankly, I could stay in the pods forever with this batch of weirdos. But duty calls! In today’s newsletter, we tell you what’s extra-special about this year’s New York Fashion Week with a little help from former model and activist Sara Ziff. Plus, a quick check-in on the Olympics. Chilling in Ohio, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONWalk the walk: There’s something different about the fall/winter New York Fashion Week this year, which officially kicked off yesterday in Tribeca. Its models will be protected by a new labor law called the Fashion Workers Act. The law guarantees protections so basic that they wouldn’t be notable in many other industries: access to their own contracts and agreements, overtime pay, meal breaks, limits on fees and expenses charged by their agencies, and recourse around late payments, harassment, and retaliation. These bedrock rights have been denied to models (who are often minors) for decades. The law is the result of years of tireless work from advocates, including Sara Ziff, the founder and executive director of the workers’ rights nonprofit Model Alliance. Ziff started modeling her freshman year of high school, landing jobs in places like Seventeen magazine and the Delia’s catalogue, both basically bibles for girls (okay, me) in the late nineties and early aughts. As her career and education progressed in tandem, she became aware not only of the well-publicized problems with the industry—like its obsession with extreme youth, thinness, and whiteness—but the conditions that scandals like the Epstein files have made clear: It’s also a hotbed for widespread financial and sexual exploitation.  SARA ZIFF AT WORK IN 2005 (VIA GETTY IMAGES) “People often see models as being privileged and don't picture bad working conditions,” Ziff tells The Meteor. Most people don’t know, for example, that it’s commonplace for modeling agencies to hold power of attorney over their talent (even those over 18), which keeps models in the dark about their pay and scope of work. Models often end up in debt to their agencies; Ziff recalled to The New York Times how agencies would front wages that were late, then charge her 5 percent interest for the delay. And until the passage of the FWA, models had few legal avenues to fight back. Not that models haven’t tried. For decades, the fashion industry has fiercely pushed back on calls to improve labor conditions. Attempts to unionize have fizzled, a Diane Sawyer exposé failed to inspire concrete changes, and Ziff herself has been fighting for these protections since she founded Model Alliance in 2012. She chalks the resistance up to sexism, and an undervaluing of women’s work. “If you had middle-aged white men complaining about not being paid their earnings or being sent to castings and told to take off all their clothes,” Ziff says, “I don't think anyone would stand for that.” So can we feel better watching NYFW’s runway shows knowing the models are protected? Well, it depends on how much they know. Ziff says the success of this law depends on spreading the word. “There are multiple layers of enforcement built into this law,” she says, like the ability for models to sue their agencies, a safe way to file complaints with the labor commissioner, and penalties for violations. But that enforcement “requires the models themselves to understand their rights and take action if they feel their rights have been violated.” Those rights go beyond compensation. Ziff has long understood that being young and financially vulnerable leaves women and girls in the fashion industry exposed to sexual abuse, too. “In light of the MeToo movement and ongoing news about Epstein,” she says, “people are starting to connect the dots that this almost entirely unregulated industry has been a breeding ground for abuse.”  That abuse has propelled Ziff’s advocacy years before the Fashion Workers Act became law. The Model Alliance was also instrumental in passing 2022’s Adult Survivors Act, which gave sexual assault survivors a one-year window to sue their assailants regardless of preexisting statutes of limitations. The law is responsible for high-profile cases like E. Jean Carroll’s claim against Donald Trump and Cassie’s lawsuit against Diddy, and has helped kickstart a MeToo 2.0 of sorts. Ziff filed her own claim in 2023, accusing Fabrizio Lombardo, a former Miramax executive and a close associate of Harvey Weinstein, of rape. (The case has since been resolved.) Ziff sees the Fashion Workers Act and the Adult Survivor’s Act as important first steps, but she’s not declaring victory anytime soon. “Patriarchy is alive and well,” she says. “We're finally developing the language and the consciousness to try to dismantle it. But sadly, this is a life's work and it's probably going to take many lifetimes before we level the playing field.” —Nona Willis Aronowitz AND:
 PROTESTORS OUTSIDE OF STONEWALL IN MANHATTAN SHORTLY AFTER THE ANNOUNCEMENT THAT THE FLAG WOULD BE REMOVED. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)
 WEEKEND READING 📚On the grass people: Meet the woman behind this year’s Super Bowl halftime show. (Paper) On mother knows best: New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani wouldn’t be anywhere without the brilliant Mira Nair. (Vulture) On frenemies: Women on the right have a new name for women on the left that they hate: AWFULs (affluent white female urban liberal). Talk about white-on-white crime, damn. (Vox)  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
The Scary Bill That Will Not Die
  February 10, 2026 Salutations, Meteor readers, Good evening to this woman and this woman only. Everyone else, you’re just going to have to settle for an average evening. In today’s newsletter, we try to understand the GOP’s obsession with long-shot voter fraud legislation. Plus, a quick way to check if your state has a law that could criminalize your miscarriage. Bye Mia, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONBack from the dead: The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE) has been reintroduced for a third time, with the House scheduled to vote on it this week. If you’ve forgotten, the SAVE Act would require proof of U.S. citizenship to become a registered voter, including a birth certificate with a name that matches your photo ID. It would also require mail-in voters to prove their citizenship in person before casting a vote. It’s estimated that these requirements could disenfranchise as many as 21 million Americans—a Florida-sized chunk of voters!—including millions of married women who have taken their husbands’ names. It’s all in service of what Republicans claim is an effort to prevent voter fraud. “It’s a solution looking for a problem,” explains Julie Womack, the head of national programs for the political organizing group Red Wine and Blue. “We know that there is really no problem with voter fraud in this country.” (In an analysis of six swing states’ results in the 2020 election, for example, the Associated Press found just 475 potentially fraudulent ballots—less than .002% of the more than 25 million cast.) The GOP trying to solve a problem they invented out of thin air? Doesn’t sound like them. Democrats and voting rights groups have raised alarms over SAVE’s ID requirements, which would require people to provide birth certificates or naturalization papers and a form of government-issued photo ID to register to vote. Anyone who has ever been to a DMV knows that this is the start of a long day, particularly for married or transitioned people who have changed their names.  For all those reasons, the first two times SAVE was introduced in 2024 and 2025, it didn’t go further than the House. And there’s evidence that the onerous requirements would actually affect more Republican voters than Democrats. All of which begs the question: Why do Republicans continue to trot out this losing horse? Because the SAVE Act may very well hurt the GOP’s own voters, but there’s one guy it would impress: Donald Trump. His administration has endorsed the SAVE Act repeatedly; just last week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt described it as “common-sense.” And the timing of this latest attempt does not surprise Womack. “There's so much going on in the news…it’s a time when a lot of people are distracted. I think [the GOP is] going to try more tactics like this, like doing it really quickly under the radar.” Womack says that the ultimate goal is to suppress votes in any way that works. “They can definitely do a watered-down version where it's just a voter ID law at the polls, or they could maybe put a restriction on voting hours or early voting or how many drop boxes,” she says. And part of the long game may be to inspire copycat laws: As with state-by-state abortion restrictions, “a lot of the states are taking these [causes] up now too. I live in Ohio. There's a [statewide] version of the SAVE Act in the Ohio legislature.” The best way to push back on all these measures, Womack says, is to call your representatives and get involved with voting rights organizations, like the Brennan Center for Justice or Fair Fight. In the meantime, let’s hope that the Republicans heading into the office to vote this bill forward can’t find their birth certificates that morning. AND: 
  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
"This Changes Everything"
  February 6, 2026 Happy Saturday, Meteor readers, We’re coming to you with a special treat from the archives today, in honor of the 100th celebration of Black History Month this February. Four years ago, our colleague Rebecca Carroll sat down with author and historian Imani Perry to discuss the surprising origins of Black History Month and its current role in the American story. When we first published this piece, we noted that legislators were trying to strip Black history lessons from school. Some of those efforts are now law, but advocates, educators, and avid readers remain undeterred. And I suppose that’s the history lesson in and of itself—the harder you try to erase it, the stronger it becomes. Love and power, Shannon Melero  “This Changes Everything”What Imani Perry taught me about Black History MonthBY REBECCA CARROLL  THE INCREDIBLE IMANI PERRY WAS HONORED AT THE 2025 WOMEN'S MEDIA CENTER FOR HER BODY OF WORK (VIA GETTY IMAGES) Years ago, when I was working at a mainstream media corporation, I was called into a marketing meeting for my ideas on how to best package Black History Month in ways that would boost ad sales and sponsorship on the site. I suggested, in all seriousness, because I genuinely believed what I was saying: "What if we didn’t package Black History Month at all? What if we took a break from selling this idea that Black History is something we should only think about for a month every February?" I was promptly dismissed from the meeting. The thing is, I was coming from a place of profound (and uneducated) cynicism, based on the belief that Black History Month was created by white folks. And I know I’m not alone in thinking this. Thank heavens for historian and author Imani Perry, whose book, South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation, covers this terrain, and who went ahead and set the record straight for me—because honestly, I simply did not know. Rebecca Carroll: Given that I was adopted into a white family, raised in a white town, and then went on to spend the bulk of my career in white media spaces, Black History Month has always seemed exploitative and commercialized to me—but I was so curious to learn from you that Black History Month actually has its origins in Black culture. Can you explain? Imani Perry: Black History Month was an outgrowth of Negro History Week. In the early 20th century, Black history programs and curricula were organized in segregated Southern Schools. They happened in February because that was the month of Abraham Lincoln's birth and Frederick Douglass's chosen birthday (he didn’t know his exact birthdate, having been born in slavery). In 1926, historian and organizer Carter G. Woodson formalized these practices and established Negro History Week [in February].  A COLORIZED PORTRAIT OF CARTER G. WOODSON, THE FATHER OF BLACK HISTORY MONTH (VIA GETTY IMAGES) Negro History Week was an extension of a very deliberate effort that began immediately post-emancipation to document Black history…and resist the false claim that people of African descent had contributed nothing meaningful to human history or civilization. Negro History Week, which became Black History Month in the early 1970s, was focused on young people…and became a robust tradition. There were Negro History Week curricula—books on Black U.S., Caribbean, and African histories and historic figures; essays, documents, plays, pageants, and academic exercises along with the ritual singing of "Lift Every Voice and Sing." Often, these school-based programs invited the entire community to participate, and so these were collective celebrations, as well as opportunities for people to learn. It wasn’t really until the late 1970s that white Americans even began to have any significant awareness of Black History Month, and much of that came through consumer culture. So, [as with] Kwanzaa, a ritual that was developed primarily within Black communities made its way to the larger public through advertising strategies intended to compel Black buyers rather than [achieve] substantive political transformation. So we get fast food companies celebrating Black History Month in ways that mean close to nothing or, at times, are even offensive. But despite that, there continue to be institutions in which Black History Month is rooted in a tradition of Black people writing themselves into history in ways that reject the logic of white supremacy and give a more expansive reach to the story of Black life both in this country and globally. And so what does Black History Month mean to you, both personally and professionally? Personally, Black History Month is one of those traditions, like Emancipation Day or Juneteenth or Watch Night, that I cherish because it anchors me in tradition and ritual. Professionally…because I’m very invested in ensuring that my students know the history of Black institutional life, I teach the ritual as an outgrowth of one of the most important periods of intellectual development in African American history. Traditionally, historians describe the Jim Crow era as the "nadir" of American race relations, the phrase used by historian Rayford Logan. And by that, he meant the lowest point, that horrifying period when the promises of Reconstruction had been completely denied. What is remarkable about that time is that Black people got to work despite the devastation. There was exceptional growth in African American civic life in this period. People were building organizations and networks, writing books and developing social theory, building schools, and churches at every turn. And so, even when society shut the door to opportunity and treated Black people with horrible brutality, they kept dreaming, doing, and creating. For me, that is not just a key point for understanding African American history, but it is an incredible daily inspiration for my own work. Do you think it's ever more necessary in this current cultural climate to uphold BHM, and if so, to what end? I don’t think of Black History Month as more or less important based on the political moment. I guess I would say it will be important indefinitely because we live in a white supremacist country and world, and counter-narratives that value freedom and dignity and resilience will always be necessary as long as stratifying people on the basis of identity is the norm. Surely you’ve had experiences where (almost always white) people will say something that is just all kinds of wrong regarding BHM—I’m sorry to say I have had several—or there is this unspoken sense of "We’re giving you this whole month, can you just be grateful?" Can you recall such an experience, and how you responded/flipped the script for your own sense of sanity? Thank goodness I've never had a white person say to me that they’ve given Black people Black History Month. It would frankly be something that I'd laugh at for a long time. Nothing could be further from the truth. Black people created it for Black people, and particularly for Black young people, and have been gracious enough to invite others to participate. They should feel fortunate.  ENJOY MORE OF THE METEOR Thanks for reading the Saturday Send. Got this from a friend? Don’t forget to sign up for The Meteor’s flagship newsletter, sent on Tuesdays and Thursdays. |
A Bigger, Badder, Bunnier Bowl
  February 5, 2026 Hey there Meteor readers, Nona and I both woke up this morning with fevers and intense cases of the daycare schmutz. So this newsletter is brought to you by Tylenol, Ricola, and some nasty-ass ginger tea.  Today, we’re going full Sporty Spice with some emotional prep for Bad Bunny’s halftime performance this weekend. Plus three questions about what athletes are facing at the Winter Olympics. Achoo 🤧, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONDomingo Gigante: Last weekend, during his Grammy acceptance speech for Album of the Year, Bad Bunny opened with a vastly underappreciated line: “Puerto Rico, créeme cuando te digo que somos mucho más grandes que 100 por 35.” If you haven’t gotten your Duolingo minutes in today, that’s “Believe me when I tell you, we’re so much bigger than 100x35,” which are the land measurements of Puerto Rico’s main island. The rest of his message, delivered mostly in Spanish, touched on perseverance. But the idea of being bigger is what’s stayed with me these last few days, particularly in a political moment where the best thing anyone can be is unseen. Unseen by ICE agents lingering in train stations. Unseen by trigger-happy police officers. Unseen by right-wing extremists. Stepping out of my house every day, my greatest desire is for my family to go completely unnoticed and make it back safely. But throughout his career, Bad Bunny has defied the idea of being small, of asking permission to enter a space as his authentic self. He just shows up. He simply is, and he does it loudly, boldly, and sometimes in a fabulous gown. He’s done so in a way that his musical forefathers—DY, Marc Anthony, Tego Calderon—never could because they were either trapped in the Latin music gilded cage, or chose to avoid politics until much later in life. For all their fame, they were also kept smaller by (mostly) American audiences and an industry that sees Latin music and people as separate from the American identity. But in the words of another great, Residente, “América no es solo USA, papá.”  HOW WE'RE ALL ABOUT TO BE SMILING THIS SUNDAY. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) Of course, the ability to make yourself more or less visible is rooted in privilege. White and light-skinned artists can take a step back *cough* JLo *cough* in a way that protects them from the ire of entire administrations. After all, Turning Point wasn’t running counter programming in 2020 when JLo and Shakira headlined the halftime show. Conservatives did, however, have a ton to say after Kendrick Lamar’s performance last year. (I guess a Black, California-born Pulitzer Prize winner just isn’t American enough?) And despite making no noise over Green Day, who are performing on Sunday as well and have an entire album devoted to political criticism, conservatives have been spending the last few months proselytizing about how un-American it is to have a Spanish-language artist take center stage at the Super Bowl. (Let’s all be honest with ourselves for a minute, y'all don’t want most of these songs translated. I promise you chocha is not going to hit the same in English.) Which is why Bad Bunny’s choice to use his privilege to step into the fray rather than avoid it is so important. His pride is not a performance piece he takes on and off when the mood suits—and that kind of authenticity encourages others to walk in pride. It’s bigger than a 15-minute set we won’t remember a year from now. It’s bigger than 100x35. It’s a call to know who you are—your history, your symbols, your land, your people—and to stand tall, whether or not you are acceptable to the powers that be. Especially when you’re not. AND (promise a sports break):
 PENNY THE DOBERMAN PINSCHER, THIS YEAR'S BEST IN SHOW. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)  Three Questions About...This Year's Winter OlympicsThe trailblazers to watch and the ICE of it all.BY SHANNON MELERO  LAILA EDWARDS (FRONT, BLUE) AND TEAM USA HOCKEY FACED OFF AGAINST CZECHIA THIS WEEK, AND SECURED THEIR FIRST WIN OF THE GAMES. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) Jamie Mittleman has the kind of job that, if it were explained in a Netflix rom-com, would sound entirely made up: She talks to Olympic and Paralympic athletes all day. Fine, it’s more than that; she’s the CEO and founder of Flame Bearers, a media company centered around women Olympians and their stories. But the fun part of her job is working with athletes and traveling to the Games. The summer Olympics usually get all of the shine, but this year, the roster for Team USA is, as I think the kids say, bussin’. Two-time gold medalist Chloe Kim is back chasing a third podium. Figure skater Alysa Liu is out of retirement at the ripe old age of 22 and skating better than ever. Lindsey Vonn plans to compete on a totally destroyed ACL (girl, please don’t do that) and, of course, we’re all ready to get our Heated Rivalry on and cheer for the women’s ice hockey team captained by the incomparable Hilary Knight. Ahead of her travels to the Milan/Cortina Olympics, Mittleman took some time to talk to us non-Olympians about what to expect. The Olympics have always had political undertones. As someone working closely with so many women athletes ahead of Milan/Cortina, are there themes you’re seeing pop up? A major theme I’m hearing from athletes is access. Who gets into winter sports? Who can afford it? Who sees themselves in it? Winter sports remain some of the least diverse athletic spaces in the world, and athletes are acutely aware of that. They talk about the cost of equipment – how expensive is a ski pass? Hockey gear? A bobsled? [Plus] the lack of local facilities. Do they have to drive to get to the track? What if they don’t have a car? Nobody from my community competes in this sport…and how all of these compound over time. There’s also a strong thread of athletes wanting to use their visibility to widen the doorway for the next generation. I’ve now worked with just shy of 400 Olympians and Paralympians from 55 countries, and many are navigating being “firsts” in their sport—first from their country, first openly queer, first Black athlete in their discipline. They’re proud, but they’re also very aware of the weight of representation they carry. It’s a privilege, but it’s also a responsibility they didn’t necessarily sign up for. Speaking of firsts, Team USA has two major ones on the roster this year with Amber Glenn, the team’s first openly queer figure skater, and Laila Edwards, the first Black woman to play ice hockey for the U.S. What are you hoping viewers can take from watching them compete?  EDWARDS AT A WELCOME EVENT IN MILAN MAKING BLACK HISTORY DURING BLACK HISTORY MONTH. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) Seeing Amber Glenn and Laila Edwards on this stage matters far beyond medals. I hope young viewers see that there is no single mold for who belongs in sport. In her "Making It To Milan" interview, Hilary Knight mentioned, "There is a place for everyone in sport.” You can be openly queer and compete at the highest level. You can be a Black woman in a sport that has historically excluded you. You don’t have to shrink yourself to fit into a system. For many young people watching, this may be the first time they see someone who looks like them, loves like them, or comes from a background like theirs on Olympic ice and snow. That moment of recognition matters. It’s often the first spark of belief: Maybe I belong there too. That belief is why my company exists—to make it clear that you do. It’s also important to mention that just as many “firsts” exist in the Paralympics, which begin immediately after the Olympics—and I highly recommend tuning in. We recently learned that ICE is also going to Milan with Team USA—which as an Olympic fan, fills me with embarrassment during a time I’d normally be feeling a rare moment of national pride. Does that change the viewing experience for you at all? ICE traveling with the U.S. delegation is fundamentally at odds with the spirit of the Olympic Games, a hollow stunt of performative power. While hidden under the guise of ‘protection’, this move reads less as a safety measure and more as a PR maneuver—an attempt by the Trump administration to reclaim international relevance and authority at a moment when the US is increasingly isolated and losing credibility. Coming on the heels of Davos, where international leaders such as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney signaled clear resistance to Trump’s agenda, ICE’s presence is an attempt to project strength at a time when US influence has clearly decayed. Outside the US, the context is very clear: ICE is not relevant, nor wanted. The International Olympic Committee has said their presence is ‘distracting and sad.’ The Mayor of Milan explicitly said they are not welcome. Since the announcement of their presence, several organizations have moved to disassociate from the word “ICE.” The Milan hospitality suite, once called the “Ice House” has already been renamed. [But their presence] reinforces why the athletes’ stories—and their humanity—matter even more. The athletes are showing up to compete after lifetimes of work. This is about them. Their journeys. Many come from immigrant families, from underrepresented communities, from places where sport was their pathway to opportunity. The geopolitical backdrop is real, but what I see up close is athletes trying to hold onto the purity of why they do this in the first place. You can listen to Flame Bearers' full Making it to Milan series here.  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
The Formula for Equal Parenting
  February 3, 2026 Greetings, Meteor readers, I made croissants this weekend. From scratch. I’m not saying that I’m better than y’all now, but I am typing this with my nose up a little higher than usual.  In today’s newsletter, Nona Willis Aronowitz upsets all the granola moms. But before that, we take a look at the DOJ’s latest blunder. Butter fingers, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ON“Indefensible”: Like manna from the depths of hell, another bundle of Epstein files was released to the public last Friday, six weeks later than promised. The drop included millions of documents and redactions to the nth degree, but as we quickly learned, not everyone got the same level of black-box protection. The New York Times first reported that the DOJ published several images of naked women, some of whom may have been teenagers, while covering the faces of Donald Trump and other unnamed men who are seen in photos with well-known figures (Steve Tisch, Elon Musk, and Casey Wasserman, to name a few). As ABC News reported over the weekend, names of and identifying information about victims that had not previously been made public were also exposed in this drop. The images were later corrected after the Times alerted the DOJ to the errors. But, for those whose names and identifying information were left unredacted for hours on Friday, the damage had already been done. Lawyers representing over 200 accusers requested that the documents be taken down altogether so the DOJ could redact the documents properly. Another group of survivors released a statement, which reads in part, “This is a betrayal of the very people this process is supposed to serve. The scale of this failure is staggering and indefensible.” It couldn’t be any clearer who the DOJ truly wants to protect, which is probably why survivors are calling on Attorney General Pam Bondi to answer for these failures when she appears before the House Judiciary Committee on February 11. What happens now? According to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, “There’s a lot of horrible photographs that appear to be taken by Mr. Epstein or people around him,” he said, “but that doesn’t allow us necessarily to prosecute somebody.” He also added that with the release, everyone could check the documents themselves and “see if we got it right.” My law degree from the academy of Dick Wolf Productions doesn’t exactly qualify me to double-check the work of the Department of Justice, but it’s safe to say that telling victims to DIY their own cases against the richest and most powerful men in the country is a non-starter. Meanwhile, Bill (who appears in several photos in the latest files) and Hillary Clinton have agreed to testify before the House Oversight Committee. It will come as a surprise to absolutely no one if, after their testimony, the DOJ suddenly decides prosecuting Trump’s biggest enemy is a top priority. AND:
 A Feminist Love Letter to Baby FormulaIs it the key to a more equitable partnership? The Meteor’s Nona Willis Aronowitz makes the caseBY CINDI LEIVE  NONA'S PARTNER, DOM, AND THEIR TWO CHILDREN. (PHOTO COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR) Two days ago, in The New York Times, my colleague Nona tossed a lovingly crafted, deeply researched grenade into one of the more passionately held beliefs about parenting: that breast is best. The title of her piece, “The Secret to Marriage Equality is Formula,” argues exactly that, but it goes further—Nona argues that formula (often a source of raised eyebrows in feminist circles for some very good reasons) can also be the secret to less stress and happier parenting for women in or out of partnerships. The piece struck such a nerve that the comment section is now closed. But after breast-feeding two babies myself, and feeling guilty whenever I used formula, I had questions. First off, for those who didn't read the piece, how did you personally discover that the secret to marriage equality is baby formula? I discovered this the hard way. The first time around, with my daughter Dorie, I breastfed because it seemed like the default: Everybody assumes that if you can breastfeed, you should breastfeed. While breastfeeding was a very nice way to bond, the experience was also very intense: It led me to desperately want to control the feeding realm. I was learning so much about her, which led me to push my partner, Dom, out of the space (he didn’t exactly argue—socialization runs deep!). Meanwhile, I was sleep-deprived, isolated, and resentful. I felt like I hadn’t signed up for being Mom-In-Chief with a hapless underling as a co-parent. My husband and I fought constantly, which wasn’t good for any of us, including the baby. So, when we had a second daughter, Pearl, we figured we should try to prioritize equality, even if it undermined breastfeeding. It seemed like a small price to pay for a harmonious experience, and for my baby to genuinely have a wonderful bond with her father from the get-go. And you know what? It worked almost instantly. I breastfed exclusively for two weeks just to establish breastfeeding, and it was like PTSD—all of the bad feelings came flooding back. But as soon as we started introducing formula and Dom started doing overnight feeds, the vibe in our household totally changed.I felt so much closer to him, I felt so much happier to see my baby in the morning, and he really learned Pearl in a way that he didn't learn Dorie until she was a toddler. As we used more formula and bottles, he was just as good at soothing the baby as me. The comments on your piece are copious and mostly very positive, from women saying thank you, we should have options. There were two other strains of responses I wanted to ask you about. First, from people who say: Just pump! And second, from people noting that the scientific evidence shows that breastfeeding is medically superior. Let’s start with the idea that pumping breast milk could solve the equal parenting issue.  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
