She is the artist who has launched a thousand thinkpieces. Everything that Beyoncé does is extensively critiqued. Her songs and their accompanying videos, her tours, outfits and statements have become “events”: not just because of the media and public attention they generate, but also because of their function in black women’s lives. Beyoncé speaks of…
Category: Women in the news
Six years after its subject swept the board at the Grammys, winning five awards including record of the year and song of the year, Amy, the documentary about the life and death of Amy Winehouse, has won the singer another Grammy. Asif Kapadia won a Grammy award for best music film for Amy in Los…
With references to the Black Lives Matter movement, Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, Beyoncé’s half-time show at the Super Bowl on Sunday might be the most radical political statement from the superstar in her 20-year career. Backing dancers wearing Black Panther-style berets and clad in black leather were photographed after the performance posing with…
Toni Morrison wants everyone to know that she hates the title of her newest novel, God Help the Child. The original title, Morrison said last week at Congregation Beth Elohim in New York, was The Wrath of Children, and in her opinion it was wonderful. It provided more clarity about a key theme of the…
He has not been elected and he cannot vote on policy, but five-month-old Diego was one of many new faces as the Spanish parliament convened for the first time since last month’s inconclusive general election. In the absence of any progress towards forming a coalition government, Diego, son of the Podemos MPCarolina Bescansa, stole the…
The annual calendar produced by Pirelli tyres – which traditionally centres on the artfully lit nude bodies of female supermodels – has been unveiled, presenting a dramatic shift in subject matter and aesthetic. Gone are the gym-toned limbs and heaving bosoms; in their place for the 2016 calendar, shot by Annie Leibovitz, are simple portraits…
History repeated itself recently when students from the #FeesMustFall protest movement marched to the Union Buildings in Pretoria to demand that the government freeze university fees for 2016 and to drive home their message that education should not be a privilege reserved only for the wealthy. Forty-nine years ago, on August 9 1956, about 20 000 South African…
For anyone who ever peered at the sun-kissed photo of some Instagram “star” and thought, “This just can’t be real life,” this should be validating: Essena O’Neill, one of Instagram’s bright, beautiful stars, has decided to quit social media — and, in the process, expose how what we see isn’t always what it seems. O’Neill, 18, an…
Pitted against nine other titles — from Zadie Smith’s On Beauty to Eimear McBride’s A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel of the Biafran war, Half of a Yellow Sun, has been named the best winner of the women’s prize for fiction of the last decade — by both the public…
“If there’s any female rapper that can do it better than me, I owe you 10 grand, yo!” said an animated Gigi Lamayne during a pre-performance interview at Johannesburg’s Maftown Heights in December. “Even male!” interjected Thabo, a member of Gigi’s dance crew, Supreme I. Lamayne stared right into the camera: “If there’s any male…
Oprah Winfrey is such a fan of Weight Watchers that she has just bought 10% of the company. “I believe in the programme so much I decided to invest in the company and partner in its evolution,” the talkshow host turned billionaire businesswoman said on Monday as she announced the deal, which includes personal endorsements…
When Aqeela Asifi accepted the Nansen refugee award in Geneva this month, the 49-year-old Afghan teacher appeared with her husband, Sher Mohammed, and youngest daughter, Sawera, 11. It was a moment to celebrate Asifi’s “brave and tireless dedication to education for Afghan refugee girls” in Pakistan. But the fact that Asifi says she feels like…
Barring her great showing at the 2008 BTA Anglo Platinum short-story competition in which she won first and fourth prize, Nozizwe Cynthia Jele was a relative unknown when she turned in the manuscript for her novel Happiness is a Four-letter Word. There was also an outside chance that the book, like many other books of…
The most prestigious science book prize in Britain has been won by a solo female writer for the first time in its 28-year history. Gaia Vince, a journalist and broadcaster based in London, was named the winner of the 2015 Royal Society Winton prize for Science Books at a ceremony in London on Thursday evening….
TV appearances, telephone interviews and frantic preparations for her upcoming exhibition takes up most of artist Turiya Magadlela’s time these days. So tracking her down for an interview is not easy. The Soweto-born artist, who juggles a day job with a thriving art career, is the winner of the FNB Art prize. She will present…