One of the less brutal reviews of Ivanka Trump’s book Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success, penned by The New York Times’ Jennifer Senior, described it as “a strawberry milkshake of inspirational quotes.”

Indeed, Trump does begin each chapter with a snippet of wisdom from a woman she, presumably, admires. Each is scrawled in darling, lopsided letters on a pink notecard, resembling a throw pillow more than a page in an actual book. Beneath every quote, Trump honors the intelligence and resilience of the featured writer with the thoughtful commentary #ITWISEWORDS. 

This recipe ― which NPR’s Danielle Kurtzleben accurately described as possessing “the aesthetic of a Pinterest board” more than a career guide ― is vapid and irritating enough. But some of the quotations Trump elects to include, particularly one from Toni Morrison, reveal the staggering extent of Trump’s privilege, entitlement and ignorance. 

The quote above comes from Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1987 novel Beloved, which, inspired by a true story, brings to light the odious ways slavery ripped apart black families through the lens of a mother trying to save her children from its horrors, and the ghastly lengths she endured to do so. 

The story follows a mother and escaped slave named Sethe who, upon being discovered by her master, attempts to kill her children to prevent them from being subjected to the barbarity of life on a plantation. Sethe succeeds only in killing her 2-year-old daughter by cutting her neck with a saw. The daughter’s ghost returns to haunt Sethe’s home years later, which is where the story begins.

“Bit by bit … she had reclaimed herself,” Trump quotes Morrison as saying. “Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”

While Morrison’s words reference the experience of liberation after being the literal property of another human being, Trump updates the phrase to address the modern dilemma of spending too much time on one’s phone. 

“Are you a slave to your time or the master of it?” Trump asks, seriously using the words slave and master, while quoting Toni Morrison, to talk about time management. “Despite your best intentions, it’s easy to be reactive and get caught up in returning calls, attending meetings, answering e-mails…”

This is not the only moment in the book Trump appropriates the words of others with no consideration or respect for those words’ context and weight. She quotes poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou while discussing negotiating for a raise. 

So far, at least one woman quoted in Trump’s book has spoken out with some skepticism about her citation: legendary primatologist Jane Goodall. Her quote, as featured by Trump, reads: “What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”

In an interview with CNN, Goodall said she “sincerely” hopes Trump “will take the full import of my words to heart. She is in a position to do much good or terrible harm.”

Unfortunately, because of the tasteless manner in which Trump has sprinkled the words of others throughout her book like glorified palate cleansers, stripping them of their original context and urgency, it doesn’t seem like she has taken any of the messages to heart. 

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When Danielle and Jon Murray learned they were expecting their fifth child, they shared the news with a fun parody of “You’re The One That I Want.”

Now that Danielle is at the very end of her pregnancy, she decided to vent her last trimester frustrations with another music video. This time the mom rewrote “How Far I’ll Go” from “Moana,” and the transition was surprisingly seamless.

Standout lyrics include: “I wish I could meet this perfect daughter, but I cannot break my water no matter how hard I try”; “Am I in labor? No, though I long to be”; “And no one knows how large I’ll grow!” and “There’s just no telling how long I’ll go!”

From the hot sauce to the trampoline, Murray is determined to put an end to her post-40 week angst.  

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In 2014, HuffPost featured a series from award-winning photographer Souvid Datta titled “In the Shadows of Kolkata.” The photos depict women living and working in Sonagachi, a red-light district in Kolkata, India, focusing on the relationships between mothers and daughters amidst a backdrop of sex work riddled with assault and abuse.

Upon seeing the HuffPost piece, a shrewd Bangalore-based reader named Shreya Bhat noticed something strange ― that a woman featured in the background of one of Datta’s photos suspiciously resembled a subject of the late photographer Mary Ellen Mark, who famously documented Mumbai’s red light district in the 1970s. 

In fact, Datta’s subject and Mark’s weren’t just similar, they were identical. 

“I was working in Calcutta, in the red light district of Sonagachi, as a social worker in the year 2014,” Bhat wrote in an email to HuffPost. “When I came across the picture in question, I started to look more closely, not because I thought it was doctored, but because the woman in the background looked familiar. Like I had seen her somewhere else, in another photograph.”

On a whim, Bhat decided to check Mark’s portfolio, as she considered the photographer’s work to be the most extensive when it comes to covering sex work in India. “I had looked through every bit of her work in the past and started doing that again, image by image,” she recalled. “Until I came to the photograph Souvid had nicked the woman from.”

Mark’s 1978 photograph, titled “Transvestites getting dressed in a courtyard. Falkland Road, Bombay, India” and shown above, depicts four women helping one another with their saris. The woman on the left is featured with the exact same clothing, pose and expression as the figure in Datta’s photo.

In an essay featured on The Scribbler, Datta explained the story behind his image ― or at least, what he claimed the story was before taking his comments offline. Thankfully, PetaPixel took a screenshot before the comments were removed.

“Radhika, 17, in the room of a veteran sex worker, Asma, in Sonagachi (featured dressing in background). The two have grown close over Radhika’s period here; she respects and learns from Asma’s experience and matter of fact, survival attitude, while Asma feels a fondness for Radhika’s unfettered ‘kindness, curiosity’ and innocence. Strong bonds can often form within brothels as girls learn to support each other and find self-empowerment through group assertion and collective experience.”

How could Asma in 2013 be the same woman that Mark photographed in 1978? Obviously, she couldn’t.

“I was amused, amazed and repelled at the same time,” Bhat said. “I did a re-check. I was right. I did share the whole finding on email with two of my colleagues at that point. They too were amazed and shocked. I did consider writing to Souvid, but it would have been a pointless exercise. I also checked if I could write to [HuffPost], but the piece was dated January 2014 and it was April when I came across it. I thought it would be too late for you to want to act on it. I was probably wrong!”

Eventually, Bhat decided to reach out to photo blog PetaPixel with her findings. They published a piece enumerating her claims just this month, along with side-by-side images of Mark’s and Datta’s images, on their website. The similarities are staggering. 

Upon learning of Bhat’s detective work, HuffPost reached out to Datta for comment with no reply. Since the allegations were published on Wednesday, he took down his website, Facebook and Twitter accounts. One day later, in an interview with Time, the photographer appeared to have admitted to plagiarism.

“I foolishly doctored images,” Datta said, “inexcusably lied about others’ work being my own and then buried these wrongdoings in the years that followed.”

Datta also used his Time interview as an opportunity to admit to doctoring and poaching other images throughout his career. He acknowledged “stitching and cloning” elements from photos of India taken between 2013 and 2014 and going overboard with post-production techniques on photos taken in China. He also conceded to “appropriating” images by photographer Daniele Volpe and claiming them as his own. (Datta had already deleted the images from his portfolio but never came forward with having stolen the images in the first place.) 

“A colleague sent me the links of his post, it was around November 2016,” Volpe wrote to HuffPost. “At first I didn’t understand. I knew some of Datta’s work and considered him a professional. I saved the screenshots with the intention to write him a private message but I never did. […] I felt sad to know that it was a Datta’s ‘modus operandi’ and that is what moved me to make this public. I don’t feel sad about my pictures or Mark’s work. I felt sad for the people in his pictures. He touched very important issues, very sensitive ones. Those people deserve more respect.”

In his Time interview, Datta appears to genuinely regret his wrongdoings, arguing that his youth and the pressure of freelancing led to unscrupulous conduct. Volpe added that he took issue with Datta’s defense, which he thought used excuses to justify his dishonesty. “It’s absurd he used his age as a defense,” Volpe said. “And the rules of ethics, honestly, are the first things to keep in mind in this job (and in daily life in general).”

This is far from the first time a photojournalist’s reputation has been tarnished as a result of plagiarizing or doctoring photos. Most famously, Steve McCurry, the photographer behind “Afghan Girl,” was accused of Photoshopping images last year. 

In his Facebook post, Volpe expressed that he didn’t entirely blame Datta for poaching his work, but rather the cutthroat photography industry as a whole, which compels young photographers to take shortcuts to get ahead. If Datta’s controversy can teach us anything, it’s that the shortcut certainly isn’t worth the mess left behind. 

“I am glad he did admit to doctoring those images,” Bhat concluded. “I am also hoping his response sets a rule; you don’t build false sob stories around the dreary and helpless lives of women in sex work, unless of course those stories are legit and come from the women themselves. You also do not cash upon these lives and earn awards because none of that is helping improve their daily living conditions, unfortunately.”

Note: Interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity. 

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The surprise film of the year may well be The Promise, about the Ottoman Empire’s massacre of 1.5 million Armenians (the Armenian Genocide), on which Turkey is still in denial. A hundred years ago, both my parents’ families escaped certain death. That makes me the son of holocaust survivors. A part of me does not want to revisit the 1915 horrors. And yet I know that by doing so we understand better our current world.

What choice do we have but to face up to such human cruelty in the past if we are indeed to transcend it in our time?

Growing up in my Armenian family in Cairo, Egypt, I recall fondly the sound of Turkish, a language I learned from my grandma Peka and grandpa Asadour, who were from the village of Adana. Where cultures coexisted, as they did in that part of Eurasia, they shared the same foods and beverages; however, after we emigrated to Toronto, my mother Lucie would insist on only serving “Armenian coffee”—not Turkish.

In my autobiography, The Life Of A Children’s Troubadour, I included first hand accounts of my parents’ families’ flight from annihilation. Here’s an excerpt:

Both my parents’ parents came from the part of Armenia that was under Turkish occupation at the turn of the century, part of the substantial Armenian territory that international geopolitics left within Turkish borders. Although Armenian was my mother tongue, in my family Turkish was spoken as well, especially with Peka Grandma.

Like all Armenians of my generation, I was taught from a young age about the Armenian genocide, the systematic deportation and death of a million or more Armenians by Turkish authorities. April 24, 1915, is the origin of the annual April 24th Remembrance of Armenians’ greatest tragedy, one that nationals inside the country and abroad observe. The hope is that one day officials in Turkey will open their archives and concede the past infamy, so that reconciliation may begin the healing of this gaping wound in the Armenian community.

In the words of [my mother] Lucie, from an audio-tape recording:

“My father was married, and had three girls; when the Turks came to take them away from their home, he put the girls on a donkey with his wife, kissed them, and said good-bye, that’s all; everything was finished.

My mother was married once before, before marrying my father. When the Turks began the massacre, they took her husband to jail. Meantime she had a son. When the son was five months old, news came that they hanged her husband. On hearing this, her breast milk went bad, and she had fever. The child suffered, became ill and died. When the Turks ordered the evacuation, she had to quickly gather her things; they didn’t let her bury the infant.

My parents met after the war. My father was such a good storyteller, I was able to visualize everything. He was sentenced to death seven times. But each time he was interrogated, it was learned he was a building foreman and he was set free because he could be of use.

My father Arto was a baby when his father Ohannes used his wits and exceptional artistry at a critical moment to get his family exempted from deportation the following day. Again, in Lucie’s words:

That night, as they were huddled in a room, he found a small picture of the general commanding officer in charge. His name was Jemal Pasha. Ohannes found this small picture and he said to my mother-in-law, “Give the milk to the child (my husband Arto, then one month old) and take this candle in your hand, I’m going to draw.” So he found a big piece of paper, and he drew from night to morning, a black-and-white charcoal portrait of the commanding officer—the last hope.

Somehow, Ohannes managed to get Jemal Pasha to see his portrait.

The general said, “Bring the artist.” Ohannes was summoned to the general’s hotel, Hotel Baron, a big hotel. “Who did this portrait?” “I did.” “Go, quickly, take your family. From now on, you will be the drawing instructor of our school in Aleppo.” [This was 1916. Aleppo, then among the chief cities of Asiatic Turkey, is now in Syria]. Ohannes agreed, and saved twenty-five to thirty people from the deportation caravan, by saying they were family, aunts and uncles.

The family stayed a while in Aleppo, then went to Jerusalem. In the Armenian Quarter there, Ohannes prayed his gratitude to God: “You saved us from the massacre, now I’m going to do something for you.” He met with the Patriarch of the Armenian convent, the St. James convent. For nine months, on ladders, like Michelangelo, Ohannes repaired the wall paintings of the convent, for no pay. The family lived in the convent, along with other refugees. And the Patriarch gave to our family a painting of the Last Supper, done on black velvet, in appreciation. [Framed, it hung in our home for as long as I can recall.]

Decades later, that my family survived the genocide fills me with an obligation to revisit those stories, and to share them once again. Seeing the film The Promise opened up the ancient wound once again. Armenian intellectuals rounded up and killed, entire villages evacuated, the horrors of that dreadful time reminded me of the historical pain my parents carried all their lives. Once again, I was moved to tears. And I sense that if millions see this film around the world, they might understand that had the international community been able to come to the aid of the Armenians in 1915, the WW2 holocaust of Jews perpetrated by Nazi Germany might have been prevented. Imagine that change in the course of history.

I urge you to see this exceptional movie, The Promise: a film which deals with the Armenian tragedy artfully. You’ll be entertained, informed, and moved to tears.

Raffi Cavoukian, C.M., O.B.C., is a singer, author, and founder of the Centre For Child Honouring. He holds four honorary degrees and has received the Order of Canada and Order of BC awards. Raffi is a passionate children’s advocate, and a defender of democracy.

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Whether you’re a Jo, a Meg, a Beth or an Amy, we have good news: your favorite treatise on girlhood and growing up is back.

Masterpiece and PBS announced on Thursday that the network has an adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women underway, in conjunction with Colin Callender’s Playground and the BBC.

So far we know that the two-volume novel will be turned into a three-hour miniseries, though further details, such as casting choices or release dates, have yet to be announced. The U.K.-U.S. production team will begin principal photography as soon as July.

In a press release, series writer Heidi Thomas, who also adapted “Call the Midwife,” said the story’s “humanity, humor and tenderness never date, and as a study of love, grief and growing up it has no equal. There could be no better time to revisit the story of a family striving for happiness in an uncertain world […]”.

It seems that showrunners and filmmakers have shared this sentiment in the past. The March sisters have seen their share of on-screen time. The book was adapted in 1917, 1918, 1933, 1949, 1950, 1958, 1970, 1978 and 1994. Three of those remakes were BBC miniseries. The novel has also been turned into a Broadway play and two anime series. In 2015, The CW announced that it would take on Alcott’s story, but with a sci-fi bent; the project was later abandoned.

If you’re unfamiliar with the book, its story centers on Jo March and her three sisters as they come of age amid the American Civil War. The tale grapples with selfishness, will power and ambition, and is loosely based on Alcott’s own family.

Thomas said, “we hope to deliver a new screen version that will speak to contemporary audiences, meet the expectations of the book’s ardent fans and bring a whole new generation to this great classic.”

In the meantime, we’ll be waiting by our closest PBS-enabled device, collectively mending the family bed sheet in solidarity.

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Blockbusters, once associated only with the dog days of summer, are now year-round events. But as long as studios keep packing the hottest months with one big-budget spectacle after the next, we’ll offer some recommendations on which ones look the most promising. (Sorry, “Transformers.”) 

In between all that computer-generated action, you’ll also find indie charmers, thoughtful documentaries and a few intimate genre pieces likely to generate buzz. (Enough with you, “Transformers.”)

Here are 23 options fulfilling all sides of the moviegoing spectrum. (Bye, “Transformers.”)

All release dates are subject to change.

The above video was edited by Gabe Piscione.

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May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, and what better way to celebrate it than with the perfect GIF to punctuate your social media?

In honor of the monthlong tribute, Giphy, the popular graphic-making site, released this week a series of original GIFs that explore and celebrate those in the Asian American Pacific Islander community.

Similar to their Black History Month and Women’s History Month campaigns, Giphy’s latest project honors what AAPIs have contributed to the country. The website is also sharing individuals’ take on what it’s like to be an AAPI minority in this country through the “I Am” interview project. 

“We’re mindful of ensuring Giphy portrays the diversity of America as much as possible,” content strategy director Yosub Kim told HuffPost. “I definitely felt we needed to drive conversation for other underrepresented communities, which led us to the AAPI community.”

To truly represent the community, Giphy Studios commissioned Asian-American artists to create a series of GIFs that spotlight a variety of trailblazing AAPI individuals who have made a lasting impact in the United States.

For example, David Ho, a Taiwanese doctor whose breakthrough research helped tens of thousands of AIDs patients live longer lives, is memorialized in a winking graphic, where he spins an atom on his fingertip. Kristi Yamaguchi, the former Olympic figure skater, has been turned into a Claymation figure twirling in her iconic blue dress and gold medal.

Other notable people featured include Patsy Mink, the first Asian-American congresswoman; Ellison Onizuka, the country’s first Asian-American astronaut; and Kamala Harris, the first Indian-American senator.

Jasmyn Lawson, Giphy’s culture editor, interviewed 25 New Yorkers who were Asian Americans or Pacific Islanders for the “I Am” project. She says it was an opportunity for her to learn about the diversity within America’s AAPI communities and listen to what types of problems they face.

“Some people shared stories about having immigrant parents and what it was like trying to fit in when your parents can’t necessarily teach you that,” Lawson told HuffPost.

“Other people shared stories about dating and how their race and ethnicity has complicated that for them, whether it be fighting against blatant racism or not being aware if someone likes you for you or if they are only dating you because you’re Asian,” she added.

For Giphy’s Kim, a South Korean man who grew up in the U.S., this project felt personal and “incredibly important.”

“I’ve dealt with a lot of the insecurities of being Asian American,” he told HuffPost.

Kim recalled a time when he was an 18-year-old drama student and an Army recruiter asked him about joining the military. Kim said he told the recruiter that he’d rather be an actor, to which the recruiter replied, “Oh, you want to be the next Jackie Chan?”

“It hit me that his only reference for Asians in American media was Jackie Chan,” Kim said. “I will never forget that.”

Experiences like that fuel Kim’s passion for including a more diverse collection of identities on Giphy’s website.

“This is why we wanted to make GIFs of all the Asian Americans we brought in so we can start showing representation through reaction GIFs,” he said. “We’re taking on the challenge of original content that paves the way for minorities.”

If you want to honor Asian Pacific American Heritage Month with style, use any of Giphy’s graphics below to show your friends what diversity looks like.

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House Republicans passed legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act on Thursday, slashing health care coverage for millions, capping Medicaid expansions, and potentially allowing for discrimination against individuals with pre-existing conditions ― some of which essentially amount to being a woman. 

An amendment added to the Affordable Health Care Act could allow insurance companies to charge higher premiums for citizens who have experienced postpartum depression, pregnancy, a C-section, domestic violence or rape. On the same day, the House also voted to defund Planned Parenthood, stripping approximately 390,000 low-income women of access to birth control and preventive health care.

It’s difficult to know what to say when lawmakers are knocking back beers while millions of poor and sick Americans contemplate their mere survival. Instead, illustrator and writer Courtney Privett posted her response to the “cruel and deadly” bill in the form of a drawing. 

The illustration features a woman holding a protest sign reading, “I am a human being.” Various medical conditions including anxiety, cancer, HIV and sexual assault survivor are scrawled across her body and face. An elephant’s trunk pops into the frame, along with a speech bubble reading: “Human being? All I see is a pre-existing condition!” 

Beneath the image, Privett wrote a response to the bill’s passing, expressing her disgust and disbelief with the news.

I’d hoped that we’d never regress back here. No one should have to choose between death and remaining alive but being unable to afford to live. PPD, sex assualt [sic], domestic violence as preexisting conditions shames the population into potentially fatal silence via financial blackmail.

Pre-ACA and before I got married, I was declined by every insurance carrier I applied for except for one, which wanted to charge me more money than I was earning. The first exclusion cited: knee arthroscopy, which was necessitated by a freak accident that dislocated my knee. Anything can be cited as a pre-existing condition, and under the proposed plan used to box you into a lifetime of medical debt.

In an email to HuffPost, Privett expanded upon her feelings regarding what she described as “a long day.”

We are not our diseases, conditions, disorders, or injuries. It’s dehumanizing to be seen as nothing but a label or a risk, and it’s humiliating to be shamed for circumstances outside of our control. Our lives are worth more than that, and much more than a number on a bill, but there are those who look at their fellow humans and see only profit or loss margins. That mentality leads not only reversion to the stigmas and stereotypes we’ve fought so hard to erase, but also to the devaluation of all of us from human beings into commodities.

Privett has been drawing politically inclined work since Trump’s inauguration. Following Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)’s now infamous silencing of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) with the phrase “nevertheless, she persisted,” Privett created a drawing that soon went viral. 

She then went on to create a series of works celebrating the resilience of other marginalized groups including immigrants, queer couples, people with disabilities and survivors of sexual assault. 

When HuffPost interviewed Privett about her work in February, she summed up her intended message with four simple words: “We are not alone.”

Certainly those words feel necessary right now. 

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The spinoffs are (reportedly) coming.

And so are the hilarious suggestions as to what the four new proposed “Game of Thrones” shows should be called.

After reports emerged Thursday that HBO wants to extend its epic fantasy drama which is based on George R. R. Martin’s books, it didn’t take long for Twitter users to begin imagining amusing titles for the new additions to the “Thrones” universe.

Check out some of the best ideas below:

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