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Kesha's Performance at the 2018 Grammys Will Reportedly Reflect the #MeToo Movement


Kesha made a triumphant return to music last August when she released Rainbow, her first album in five years. The record is significant and powerful for several reasons: Chiefly, it’s her first effort without production credits from Dr. Luke, the hit-maker whom she sued for emotional and physical abuse in 2014. This lawsuit put Kesha’s music career in limbo for years; she was still contractually bound to Dr. Luke’s label, Kemosabe, but didn’t want to work with him. And while Rainbow was released under Kemosabe—and a judge dismissed several of Kesha’s claims against Dr. Luke in April 2016—it’s still inspiring that Kesha made this record on her terms and her way for the first time ever. She persevered.

Her story feels especially poignant right now, given the shift happening in our culture. Last fall, millions of women used the #MeToo hashtag to share their stories of sexual misconduct; in early January, a group of women in Hollywood launched the Time’s Up movement to end harassment and gender inequality at work. Kesha came forward roughly three years before these movements began. She was standing on her own, but now she has an army rallying behind her.

And her performance at the 2018 Grammy Awards on Sunday (January 28) will reportedly reflect this: Ken Ehrlich, a producer for the Grammys, told Yahoo! that Kesha is performing her ballad “Praying” at this year’s ceremony, and she’s making a big statement with it.

“I can tell you, obviously, that Kesha’s performance is definitely going to reflect what has happened to her in the past couple of years,” Ehrlich said. “‘Praying,’ that is what that song is all about, and that’s what she’s going to perform on the show. We are going to do something a little bit different with it. I think people will come away with the sense that we are supporting or allowing the artist to make a statement.”

If true, Kesha’s performance will no-doubt be one of many statements about #MeToo and Time’s Up made throughout the evening. Awards season this year has been less about glitz and more about raising sexual harassment awareness, which is incredible. The Screen Actors Guild Awards, Golden Globes, and Critics’ Choice Awards were all filled with impactful speeches, and the Grammys should be no exception.

We’ve reached out to Kesha’s team for comment on this story and will update when they respond.

Related Stories:

With Rainbow, I Feel Like I’m Hearing Kesha for the First Time

Kesha Just Got the Most Powerful Message Tattooed on Her Fingers

Kesha on Her Friendship With Taylor Swift: She Is a “F-cking Sweetheart”



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French Icon Catherine Deneuve Signs Controversial Open Letter Criticizing #MeToo Movement


Catherine Deneuve, the 74-year-old French actress known for her decades-long career, has joined 99 other women in signing an open letter that challenges the #MeToo movement and its French counterpart #Balancetonporc, claiming that the public campaigns infantilize women, limit sexual freedom, and contribute to “puritanical” and “totalitarian” thinking.

The letter was published Tuesday in French newspaper Le Monde, and its signatories are academics, entertainers, and writers, including author Catherine Millet, psychoanalyst Catherine Robbe-Grillet, and actress Christine Boisson.

“Rape is a crime. But insistent or clumsy flirting is not a crime, nor is gallantry a chauvinist aggression,” the women write, according to a translation printed in The New York Times. “As a result of the Weinstein affair, there has been a legitimate realization of the sexual violence women experience, particularly in the workplace, where some men abuse their power. It was necessary. But now this liberation of speech has been turned on its head.”

In the letter, the women also denounced #MeToo for punishing men too abruptly. Likening the public reckoning that’s ousted many high-profile men from positions of power to a “witch hunt,” they lamented that “expedited justice already has its victims, men prevented from practicing their profession as punishment, forced to resign, etc., while the only thing they did wrong was touching a knee, trying to steal a kiss, or speaking about ‘intimate’ things at a work dinner…”

The letter is likely an example of problematic generational divides that complicate the #MeToo conversation and fail to hold men accountable for their behavior: Last year, designer Donna Karan, 69, apologized after saying that women who were assaulted by film producer Harvey Weinstein were “asking for it.” Ninety-two-year-old actress Angela Lansbury also made the world cringe when she said women “must sometimes take blame” for harassment. And, in an interview with The Sunday Times Magazine back in 2015, rocker Chrissie Hynde, 66, said she took “full responsibility” for a sexual assault incident she experienced at age 21, in which she was raped by a motorcycle gang member who offered her a ride to a party.

Plus, as The Atlantic points out, there are also cultural differences at play here. While women in the U.S. may feel a strength in numbers and solidarity in speaking out French women may fear that “naming names will more likely win you accusations of being a ‘collabo,’ or turncoat, not to mention an affront to your own sex appeal.

Needless to say, Le Monde letter met with a wave of backlash that was swift and biting.

Italian actress Asia Argento—one of the first women to accuse Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct—tweeted “Deneuve and other French women tell the world how their interiorized misogyny has lobotomized them to the point of no return,” while a group of about 30 activists, led by French feminist Caroline De Haas, responded by saying that Deneuve and the co-signers had conflated flirting and sexual violence.

“One means treating the other as your equal, respecting their desires, whatever they may be. The other is treating them as an object at your disposal, paying no attention to their own desires, or their consent,” they wrote.

Deneuve has spoken about women’s issues in the past, even admitting to having an illegal abortion in France in the 1970s. However, it’s not the first time she’s denounced #MeToo—she called the movement “excessive” last fall. She’s also been criticized for defending the director Roman Polanski, who pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.





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Lululemon In Movement Leggings Review


This is a long backstory, but bear with me: A few weeks ago, I signed up for a two-day prenatal yoga workshop that I thought would teach me how to modify yoga poses during my pregnancy. The first morning, when I arrived, I realized it was actually a prenatal yoga teacher training, and I was the guinea pig student. The master instructor had a room full of eager, hopeful new yoga teachers, and she was going to show them how to lead a prenatal yoga class by using me and one other mom-to-be as examples. The other student was well past her due date, so that “class” ended up being some swaying around, some chanting, and a lot of laying on our sides. I left a little frustrated (I like a hard workout, what can I say), so before day two I signed up for my normal Sunday yoga class for later in the day to make sure I’d get a real workout in.

But day two of the prenatal workshop was totally different. The overdue mom-to-be wasn’t there, and she was replaced by another woman was a few weeks behind me in her pregnancy. With someone a little more mobile as my co-guinea pig, we got to work. I was sweating and struggling to keep up as we flew through poses meant to test our endurance to prep us for labor. I definitely had done my work for the day. But rather than risk a cancellation fee, I dutifully went to my second yoga class that afternoon. And that is how I discovered how amazing the In Movement tights from Lululemon are.

For one thing, they’re comfortable as hell. The fabric, a new one for Lululemon called Everlux, is baby-hair soft but decidedly not see through or flimsy. The waistband comes up high (a big perk when you’re rocking a baby bump) but didn’t cut into me in any weird spots or roll down when I was moving through vinyasas. I was still happy to be wearing them when class #2 finished.

And this brings me to the most amazing thing: They. Didn’t. Smell. I sat around post-prenatal for about 6 hours before my second class, then wore them to that, then wore them to dinner. Nothing. Not a whiff. And I can tell when I’m a little funky. But even with the two-plus hours of yoga sweat, these pants did not give me away. The Lululemon website doesn’t say anything about them being smell-wicking (is that even a thing?), so I can’t totally explain it, but the site does say they “dry so fast it’s like magic,” so I can only assume the fast-drying magic has something to do with it.

I don’t necessarily recommend a two-yoga-class day (particularly if you’re pregnant!) but if this is going to happen to you, the In Movement tights are the ones you want to be wearing. If they stood up this well to that much work, you know they’ve got you covered for a normal, one-workout day. And no one will ever smell you coming.

Lululemon In Movement 7/8 Tight, $98, lululemon.com



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Activist Tarana Burke Started the "Me Too" Movement 10 Years Ago


PHOTO: Courtesy of subject

Tarana Burke

While thousands of stories of sexual harassment and assault have flooded Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram in recent days, the #MeToo social movement did not, in fact, originate this past weekend. Instead, it goes back a decade—and was originated by activist Tarana Burke.

Burke, who also founded the youth organization Just Be Inc. and is now a program director at Girls for Gender Equity, started the “Me Too” campaign in 2007 to help sexual assault survivors in underprivileged communities. These were women who did not have access to rape crisis centers or counseling and as a survivor of sexual violence herself, Burke wanted to create opportunities for women to heal. As Burke told Democracy Now, the mission of the movement is “empowerment through empathy” and her goal was to bring “messages and words and encouragement to survivors of sexual violence where other people wouldn’t be talking about it.”

The phrase quickly became a trending topic after actress Alyssa Milano encouraged others to speak out and tag their posts with the #MeToo hashtag. While Burke told Ebony that it was “powerful” to see “Me Too” take off, she wants people to know that her movement goes beyond this viral moment.

“It wasn’t built to be a viral campaign or a hashtag that is here today and forgotten tomorrow,” Burke said. “It was a catchphrase to be used from survivor to survivor to let folks know that they were not alone and that a movement for radical healing was happening and possible.”

She added: “What’s happening now is powerful and I salute it and the women who have disclosed but the power of using ‘me too’ has always been in the fact that it can be a conversation starter or the whole conversation—but it was us talking to us.”

As the hashtag took off on Sunday night, Burke shared her thoughts on Twitter and reinforced that “Me Too” is more than a hashtag.

On Monday, Milano tweeted that she had been made aware of Burke’s creation of the “Me Too” movement and shared Burke’s story. However, the trending topic—and the initial credit to Milano as being its first champion—revealed yet another pervasive issue. As noted by the Huffington Post, “Feminist movements are often whitewashed when they’re brought into mainstream conversations.”

“In this instance, the celebrities who popularized the hashtag didn’t take a moment to see if there was work already being done, but they also were trying to make a larger point,” Burke told Ebony. “I don’t fault them for that part, I don’t think it was intentional but somehow sisters still managed to get diminished or erased in these situations. A slew of people raised their voices so that that didn’t happen.”

And just as Burke said, plenty of women took to Twitter to share their support for “Me Too” and thank her for starting such an important conversation.



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