These days, there’s a subscription service for just about anything—meal kits, clothing rentals, personalized wine recommendations, and yes, your reading list. A book subscription box may finally help kick your habits into high gear, especially now that you may find yourself spending more time indoors than ever, and your local bookstore may be dealing with mandatory closures. (P.S. You can check to see whether your local bookstore offers curbside delivery or pickup through Postmates.)
Whether you’re into steamy romance, Y.A. novels, or sci-fi, there’s a book box out there for you—and one that may deliver more than just a great read to your doorstep. Some book rental services let you join a virtual book club (hi, approved social distancing activity), or send socks and bubble-bath soap themed to your selection. From crowdsourced reads by women for women like the Feminist Book Club to expertly curated picks from Book of the Month, we found 12 of the best book subscription boxes that’ll please even the choosiest readers.
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The female hero is evolving rapidly, or maybe she just can’t be pigeonholed anymore. Whatever the case, it took long enough. Action movies with female leads, especially in the superhero subgenre, have certainly been few and far between compared with the slew of male-fronted films. Despite that, movies like Kill Bill, Foxy Brown, and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider paved the way for major female-fronted action franchises to take over the box office in the last decade, including The Hunger Games, Divergent, Star Wars, and, of course, Wonder Woman.
This weekend Marvel finally debuted its first solo female superhero movie, Captain Marvel—and with that came countless comparisons to DC’s Wonder Woman. But other than their genre and box office successes, the films—and their heroes—are nothing alike. In fact, as far as heroes go, Captain Marvel is the first of her kind.
Brie Larson as Captain Marvel
Marvel
Their differences are most notable in, where else, their superpowers. Wonder Woman’s defining message is that there’s strength in being feminine, and hers is tangible. We see it radiating off her glowing skin. We see the way her strapless breastplate and short skirt accentuate her curves and muscles. She’s an Amazon, a towering marvel of a woman. Wonder Woman’s calling card is that she’s unlike any male hero. She was literally created in the 1940s to be the antithesis of a male hero, an answer to masculinity—something that was not only revolutionary in its era but controversial.
Captain Marvel, as we’ve come to know her in the MCU, is not that. To start, her backstory is more modern: The character in her current iteration was created by Kelly Sue DeConnick in 2012. Carol Danvers is an Earth-born fighter pilot in the U.S. military. She’s one of us, she’s achievable. She shares our stories, our struggles in the real world. She’s bogged down by the chains of patriarchy, forced to find her own internal feminine strength to get back up each time she’s knocked down. She’s tomboyish—her off-duty wardrobe consists of Nine Inch Nails T-shirts, leather jackets, flannels, and baseball caps—and unlike Wonder Woman, her super-suit neither hugs her hips nor exposes her skin. But it’s not traditionally masculine, either. In some ways, Captain Marvel eludes gender, from her function-first suit to her nearly gender-neutral character development.
From left: Gal Godot as Wonder Woman, Daisy Ridley as Rey in Star Wars
Warner Bros/Disney
Both Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel are monumental characters, and their differences are what make each of them so special and lovable. But while feminine power exudes from Wonder Woman in every action scene, her idyllic form dancing through war-torn fields and obliterating men, Captain Marvel’s is in the subtext. Take the famed No Man’s Land scene in Wonder Woman; Diana stands out in lurid color against a sea of gray male soldiers, towering over them, her long locks twirling with her sword. Captain Marvel’s strength is in her story rather than the visual aids. There’s a subtle nod to girl power in a fight scene set to No Doubt’s “I’m Just a Girl.” In another scene, a montage of misogynists tell Carol she’s too emotional to be a pilot, not strong enough to be an athlete. We watch a pilot prod, “It’s called a cockpit for a reason.”
The most feminine part of Captain Marvel is her ability to overcome in the face of misogyny. It’s endurance—a feminine strength that may not be inherent but is certainly learned, or forced upon women in the real world. I love this about Captain Marvel, along with her inability to be pinned as any type of female hero that came before her. Because while Wonder Woman is powerfully female, many action franchises’ leading women are almost conventionally male. Rey in The Last Jedi and The Force Awakens is reminiscent of the golden boys of saviors past, a Harry Potter reboot. Ellen Ripley of Alien also contains conventionally masculine power, a morally sound badass with brawny muscles.
If there’s one moment that sums up Lakeith Stanfield’s abilities, I’d argue it’s this: Halfway through season two of Atlanta, his character, Darius, attends a party at Drake’s mansion (just go with it) and has a stoned conversation with a woman about the nature of illusion. Sitting in the middle of a pool, tossing an apple in the air, he cites Swedish philosopher Bostrom’s simulation argument, which suggests reality is computer generated. It’s weird—like, super weird—but something about the way he delivers the complicated dialogue has you nodding along with every word.
Stanfield, 27, first signed on to the FX series because he thought it might provide “some deeper insight into the Atlanta music scene.” But the surreal comedy, which stars Donald Glover as Earn Marks, the manager and cousin of a rapper named Paper Boi (Brian Tyree Henry), and Stanfield as their offbeat friend, has become a genre-defying treatise on all aspects of black life. “I began to realize it was a story about human beings, and coming to understand one’s self and place in the world,” Stanfield says. “Essentially what the show is saying is that being black is being human. I’m a human first—in black circumstances.”
The day we talk, his circumstances have led him to Good Morning America, where a stylist (“some dude named Adam”) helped him pull together his outfit (“a nineties-style button-up, corduroy pants, Christmas socks, and Saint Laurent shoes”). The experience has led him to ponder those absurd moments of fame. “When it becomes about me, it feels a bit strange,” he says. “It feels like the focus is wrong. And sometimes it makes me feel like I want to get out of there.”
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In a world everyone is trying to break into, Stanfield may seem like an outlier, but “that’s something Hollywood’s trying to put on me,” he says. “I’ve never felt weird.” Still, he admits he’s a bit of a loner, even more so now than when he was a kid who wrote poetry and had a tree for a friend while growing up in Riverside, California. “I was always a people watcher and thought people were really peculiar,” he says. “I’d start fights because I thought it was strange that people could be bothered by so many things.”
His plan was to be an actor, but not on television. “TV to me seemed more fake. I guess ’cause of all the commercials,” Stanfield says. “I liked movies because they were like short stories.” He managed to hustle his way into film auditions by sending out résumés padded with fake productions—“I figured once they let me on set, they would figure out that I’m good enough”—and first captivated audiences as a troubled teen in 2013’s Short Term 12 and then as a terrorized body-snatch victim in last year’s Oscar-winning Get Out.
PHOTO: Jeff Vespa/Vespa Pictures
Television became more appealing once he met Glover at a Hollywood party, where the Atlanta creator pitched him the series on the spot. “When he saw me, he was like, ‘Hey, what’s up? I got this role you might be good for,’ and handed over the script. I think he was out looking for his Darius. I was just like, Here’s an opportunity. And it turned out to be cool.”
Cool is an understatement. Stanfield now finds himself at the center of an overdue small-screen black renaissance that includes everything from Black-ish to Insecure and The Chi while also building a career as a movie star. In July he earned raves as a struggling telemarketer in Sorry to Bother You; next month he’ll play an NSA expert in the thriller The Girl in the Spider’s Web.
This career versatility is more gut instinct than game plan. “I’m attracted to stories that move me,” he says. “Sometimes those are surreal, but more often they’re just stories that deal with characters who have to overcome challenges and get through and adapt.” I ask whether he’s worried that the trappings of fame might somehow change who he is or how he sees the world. “No,” he says quickly.
“You’re solid?” I offer.
“Solid as a rock.”
Atlanta returns to FX next year. Clover Hope is a writer in Brooklyn and an editor at Jezebel.
It’s fair to say that Meghan Markle is pretty resilient. How she handled the media attention after her relationship with Prince Harry went public was nothing short of graceful and brave. And Prince Charles has taken notice of Markle’s toughness—so much so that he has a nickname for her based on it.
The royal patriarch reportedly calls his new daughter-in-law “Tungsten”—which is a type of metal—as a testament to the fact that she is “strong and unbending,” according to the Daily Mail. “Prince Charles admires Meghan for her strength and the backbone she gives Harry, who needs a tungsten-type figure in his life as he can be a bit of a softy,” a source told the publication. “It’s become a term of endearment.”
Strange? Sure. But also really, really sweet.
The New York Daily News reported that Markle helped inspire Prince Harry to quit smoking and live a healthier lifestyle, so the moniker certainly makes sense.
From the outside, it seems like Markle and Prince Charles have quite a close relationship. After Markle’s own father was unable to attend the royal wedding, Prince Charles was tapped to walk her down the aisle at St. George’s Chapel, and was reportedly “terribly touched” to have had the honor. Markle was also said to have helped repair the elder prince’s relationship with his son. “Meghan met Charles and was bowled over by his charm,” a source toldDaily Mail. “She told Harry he was wonderful: welcoming, warm, hard-working, kind, and stable. She made it clear that he should appreciate him and bond more.”
Prince Charles had equally flattering praise for Markle, according to Daily Mail: “She is so intelligent and so nice. She makes Harry happy. We could not like her more,” he reportedly thinks.
When I go to the dentist, I tend to sleep in to the last minute (nerves) and then hurriedly throw on something that gives a nice impression to the dentist that yes, I do floss regularly. But I am not Rihanna, who, being Rihanna, who wore a glorious pink coat, white camisole, jeans, and a denim skirt to what sources say is the dentist. It was a lewk, and with a seriously unconventional twist: Rihanna wore the denim skirt as a top over the camisole—and it’s actually pretty brilliant.
Here, the photo evidence. First, the close up:
PHOTO: Gotham/GC Images
Second, the full lewk.
PHOTO: Gotham/GC Images
As you can see, the denim skirt appears to be unbuttoned almost all the way down and shrugged on over a white, silky, lace-trimmed cami—a piece from her inclusive upcoming Savage x Fenty lingerie line, naturally—as kind of a makeshift bustier. It’s kind of like when she wore that ’90s Prada bra as a top, but with a more ’00s feel.
She coyly referenced the look on her Insta, too, posting a pap photo with the caption, “when yo skirt too short.” All hail the queen.
