Noah Berlatsky

Illicit passions aren't less enjoyable because they're illicit. Quite the contrary.

Bulimia.com has reworked superhero images to show more realistic body types—and their efforts are valuable in more than the expected ways.

Banks' "Ice Princess" video shows that it's not only white people who can pick up someone else's culture.

Metal aggression isn't sexual, but existential. As a result, women in the genre are both rare and unexpectedly equal.

The founder of the brilliant fyeahblackrockmusic Tumblr talks racial politics, Kelis, and . . . the Doobie Brothers?

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

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

This doesn't mean that the outcomes of domestic violence are always equal; men tend to be bigger and stronger than women, and therefore are more likely to cause serious harm, even in situations where violence is reciprocal. Still, the fact that women are frequently perpetrators of violence in domestic situations substantially undermines the typical story of domestic abuse—and helps to show just how harmful that story is.

Action movies don't usually bother much with romance. The trailer for The Transporter: Refueled certainly doesn't. The hero is cool — sexy women, plural, throw themselves at him, or at least stand near him and things blow up; there are fights and revenge and high production values. Romance is, at best, a secondary concern.

The acclaimed solo album of former Danity Kane member Dawn Richard raises questions about the very nature of "cred." Is pop antitethical to artistry?