Noah Berlatsky

A new Facebook post calls into question cover depictions of hyper-sexualized men and women.

Their sexuality traps and destroys male innocence, as they grad hold, by the penis- the better to lead him to castration. Make no mistake that castration is greeted with fear, terror, and disgust—but also with glee. Women as super villains allow their characters to be super powerful; a force for evil is at least a force. In a media landscape where women are often rendered secondary, invisible, and passive, the femme fatale, in her icy violence, seizes female agency along with the phallus that she so efficiently cuts off.

According to an Academy Awards voter, the right sort of people, with the right sort of education and connections, can't be racist.

With the death of Leonard Nimoy, it's a good moment to pay tribute to (and question) his most famous character.

Iin a passionate Facebook thread last week, children's author Meg Rosoff rejected the idea that there are "too few books for marginalized young people," as librarian Edith Edi Campbell had suggested.

Bus ads comparing Muslims to Hitler have been replaced with images of a superhero. And not just any superhero.

Rather than seeing Beyoncé's sexual performance as linked to destruction, we can consider whether eroticism might be an alternative to violence.

As a white woman, Swift can afford to celebrate carelessness. Beyoncé, though, knows that even her casualness has to be perfect.

So, if there are so many ways to sing this song, and if it's meant different things at different points, why complain about Beyoncé's version?

These covers remind us of the lengthy, rich—but often obscured—history of female songwriters.