As the first Valentine’s Day in the #MeToo era approaches, you can almost smell the hot takes starting to sizzle. They’ll use the word “chilling,” and fret about the fate of ardor. They will wonder aloud if our most “romantic” holiday can even survive this onslaught of angry women. They are, in some instances, already here. Reuters invoked the frosty “c” word last week in the first line of their well-syndicated article (in which, full disclosure, I’m quoted): “#MeToo movement means changes for Valentine’s Day romance.” The movement to call out harassment and end assault, it seems, is killing sex.

Let’s talk about chilling experiences, shall we? The most profoundly chilling experience of my life was the night a guy I knew climbed into my bed when I was very drunk and decided, as I was slipping in and out of consciousness, to use my body for his own purposes.

That happened a long time ago, and these days, most of the time, I feel like I’m pretty thawed. But I still sometimes have trouble sleeping with someone else in the bed. And my body still goes into a deep freeze now and then, when something — a particular feeling of drunkenness, someone waking me up suddenly from a deep sleep — reminds me of that night. After I read the news about Aziz Ansari, I fell asleep with bile in my throat, thinking of every one of us whose bodily desires have been viewed as an obstacle course, trampled by men who forget we’re actual people. The next morning I couldn’t bear for my boyfriend to touch me.

If you haven’t experienced it, it can be hard to describe the hollow left behind when someone else’s violent decision separates you from the pure joy that your body can be. Even when, at the cost of years of grueling emotional labor and thousands and thousands of dollars in therapy and lost wages and school tuition, we are able to find real healing from the trauma, it’s never fully gone.

Every time I read one of those very concerned “contrarian” think pieces, I wonder if the “thinkers” have ever once stopped to consider the sexual appetites of those of us saying #MeToo. One way or another, those of us who have endured sexual violence will be shadowed by it our entire lives.

What about all the delicious sex we’re missing out on? What about our sexy fun? Why does no one bravely speak up about our sexual rights? Oh, right, that’s what #MeToo is actually trying to do.

You wouldn’t know it from the media coverage, but a some of us have been doing this work long before #MeToo as well. For years, I’ve been writing and teaching about how transforming the sexual culture can prevent sexual assault and make sex better for everyone (except those who enjoy using it to do harm). And for just as long, I’ve been told I “don’t understand how sex works” or that I’m trying to “criminalize male heterosexuality.” But that’s only true if you think sex is a zero-sum game in which one side emerges victorious and the other side is at best humiliated and at worst profoundly hurt.

The only way a movement of (mostly) women standing up against male abuses of power looks like it’s anti-romance is if you see romance as a literal pursuit, in which men must be free to hunt. If you think sex is primarily for men and about men’s appetites, that the real pleasure women should derive from it is the pleasure of being selected as the favored object of consumption, I can see how this reckoning could look like a crackdown on seduction.

It would even be understandable if you did see sex this way — it’s the way sex is commonly conceived of by both “liberal” Hollywood (which sells stalking as the height of romance) and the right-wing religious forces that control what passes for sex ed in far too many U.S. public schools, teaching young people that boys can’t control themselves when it comes to sex, leaving girls at “fault” for both consensual sex and male sexual violence.

So I’ll say it plainly here: Good sex isn’t what you can get away with. Good sex is never the result of wearing someone down. Good sex is a creative collaboration between two or more people. Between people who want to play, to connect, to explore their mutual fantasies, to enjoy each others’ enjoyment. You like to be seduced, dominated, ravished? Great. There are plenty of people who like to play that way consensually. You just have to talk about it with them first. But you can’t demand that the entire culture conform to your particular kink at the expense of women who don’t share it.

The only people for whom #MeToo is making the world less sexy are abusive men and their enablers. For the rest of us, it opens up a world of erotic possibility free of fear, shame, pain and trauma. If you think we’re ruining the fun with our insistence on consent and respect, it’s time to ask yourself whose “fun” you’re really defending.

Jaclyn Friedman is the author of Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape and Unscrewed: Women, Sex, Power and How to Stop Letting the System Screw Us All. She hosts the podcast “Unscrewed.”

A day before the 2018 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue dropped, the official SI Swimsuit Twitter account posted a photo with the caption “One day” above a photo of a woman’s midsection, cutting off her head and her feet. It felt almost too on the nose ― an image of a woman’s body meant to tease an audience, erasing the parts of her that allow her to communicate and move about in the world.

That’s the image to remember as you look over the issue, “the First Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue of the #MeToo Era,” as a Vanity Fair article put it. In it you’ll find a set of images of gymnast and Larry Nassar survivor Aly Raisman, posed nude with words like “Every voice matters,” “Survivor,” and “Abuse is never OK” written on her body.

The shoot is affecting and powerful, in its way. It also exists alongside the sort of photos suggested by the teaser tweet, photos closer to what SI managing editor André Laguerre had in mind, in 1964, when he asked fashion reporter Jule Campbell, “How would you like to go to some beautiful place and put a pretty girl on the cover?”

A beautiful place and a pretty girl. The swimsuit issue may have evolved over the years, shifting with the cultural winds. The models may have gotten (ever so slightly) browner and blacker and occasionally bigger while the swimsuits got smaller; the presentation may have moved away from the blithe Lycra colonialism of its older shoots. But even with these new trappings of wokeness, the issue is still ultimately about those two things: beautiful places, and pretty girls who don’t talk or move, who are ultimately present for the pleasure of men.

Once a cultural juggernaut and a launchpad for models from Kathy Ireland to Kate Upton, the swimsuit issue has become somewhat of an anachronism, albeit still a highly profitable one. Best known for its just barely SFW titillation, SI has successfully packaged and monetized the male gaze for more than five decades.

As of 2013, the issue made up about 10 percent of Sports Illustrated’s yearly revenue.

In 2018, its editors decided the magazine needed an update ― to, as Vanity Fair’s Erin Vanderhoof wrote, “make a magazine where models were as much participants as objects.” The cover of the issue is still as conventionally sexy and tropical as ever, featuring model Danielle Herrington, the third black woman to land a solo swimsuit issue cover, posing in a hot pink bikini in Aruba. But the magazine also includes a nude spread titled “In Her Own Words” in which models chose descriptors like “Truth,” “Progressive,” “Artist,” “Strong,” “Woman” and “Nurturer” to be written on their bodies. “In Her Own Words” was shot by a woman photographer, Taylor Ballantyne, with an all-woman crew ― a first for the swimsuit issue.

The women featured in the series include models Paulina Porizkova, Robyn Lawley, Hunter McGrady, Ebonee Davis, Myla Dalbesio, Georgia Gibbs, Kate Wasley, Olivia Culpo and Sailor Brinkley Cook (daughter of Christie Brinkley), as well as Raisman. The photos are paired with in-depth, honest essays written by Porizkova, Lawley, Brinkley Cook and McGrady. (However, online readers looking for those essays might had a hard time on Tuesday. The link was not featured on SI Swimsuit’s front page, nor was it tweeted out by the brand’s account by mid-afternoon.)

Taken on its own, the “In Her Own Words” spread is good. The photos are pretty and the words are nice ― the magazine equivalent of a friend’s unobjectionable but ultimately forgettable new significant other. But SI Swimsuit editor MJ Day seems intent on positioning the issue as something that means more.

“It’s about allowing women to exist in the world without being harassed or judged regardless of how they like to present themselves,” Day told Vanity Fair. “That’s an underlying thread that exists throughout the Swimsuit Issue.”

Indeed, no woman should fear being harassed (or worse) for the way she presents herself. But in the world of the swimsuit issue, the answer to a very real problem ― that women, no matter how they present themselves, do have to worry about being harassed, belittled, overlooked and assaulted ― is to photograph scantily clad, mostly white, almost exclusively thin women and sell those images to hordes of straight men. The 2016 nod to body positivity was to put plus-size model Ashley Graham on one of three covers. The 2017 nod to sex positivity was a sexy photo of model Nina Agdal, wearing bikini bottoms and a very cropped tank top which read “A woman doesn’t have to be modest to be respected.” The 2018 nod to an international reckoning is to give a woman the camera and her subjects four to 10 phrases.

In Vanity Fair, Day comes off as almost comically self-congratulatory about the project. She laments that the media still propagates the idea “that there’s just one type of person that’s worthy of being celebrated,” and that “no one ever gives models a real opportunity to be who they are” — the implication being that the 2018 SI swimsuit issue represents strides in both arenas.

After all, Sports Illustrated gifted these beautiful, accomplished women the ability to speak ― via words inked onto their naked bodies. How magnanimous! The messaging just falls a bit flat when those photos are sandwiched between more sexy photos of all those pretty girls in those beautiful places who have yet to be given the commercial chance “to be who they are.”

Just weeks ago, the world watched as Raisman stood in a room in front of cameras. Her clothes were on, but she was stripped down. She looked her abuser in the eye. “This group of women you so heartlessly abused over such a long period of time, are now a force, and you are nothing,” she said, in her own words. Millions heard her.

This is not to dismiss the individual “empowerment” (a word used so blithely and frequently that it has almost lost all meaning) that the women who participated in this or any other Sports Illustrated swimsuit photo shoot may feel. Brinkley Cook told E! News that the project made her feel “sexy,” but also “more emotional.”“It helped me accept myself,” she said. Raisman had similar praise for the project. “For me, ‘In Her Own Words’ serves as a reminder that we are all humans, we are all battling something, and it is OK to not be OK,” she said. “We are not alone and we need each other.”

The production of “In Her Own Words” may very well have been a powerful, even life-altering, experience for those involved with it. That’s beautiful and special. The fact that it happened within the context of an exploitative and demeaning project isn’t a contradiction; that’s basically the American story in a nutshell. But to conflate an individual’s positive feelings with an “empowering” end product is counterproductive and shameless, even by the standards of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.

As Jill Filipovic put it in a piece for Cosmopolitan in March 2016, “feeling good is criminally underrated, and making a bunch of money sounds cool — but feeling ‘empowered’ is not the same as real, actual power.” Actual power means economic, political and social access. It means your words will be heard, even if they aren’t splashed across your naked body.

The 2018 SI swimsuit issue seems to have made the women in it feel really good, and certainly made a handful of people a bunch of money, but did it bestow any “real, actual power” on women as a whole? Absolutely not.

Women learn early on that their greatest and primary value lies in their appearance, and whether that appearance is deemed desirable enough by men. The #MeToo movement is, in part, about exposing the ways in which women’s bodies are objectified and then weaponized against them. SI has spent decades making big money off of that objectification, and a handful of artful nudes and big block letters does nothing to counteract that. As the New Yorker’s Alexandra Schwartz put it, Sports Illustrated is simply “fighting fire with fire.”

But this is a tightrope the brand has always been comfortable walking, delighting in its own naughtiness, begging its critics to expose themselves as prigs while also winking about its own chauvinism. Either way, people are talking. Either way, the money rolls in.  

From its inception, the swimsuit issue has courted and basked in its own controversy ― both real and imagined.  After the original swimsuit issue ran in February 1964, the magazine published a letter from W. Frank Caston, of Columbia, South Carolina. “I most certainly do not want such pictures coming into my home for my young teen-age son to ogle,” wrote Caston, “much less myself.”

According to a 1989 Sports Illustrated history of the swimsuit issue, this reaction “amused” Laguerre.This kicked off a decadeslong tradition of publishing letters to the editor from people who were prudishly “scandalized” by SI Swimsuit.

The magazine largely treated feminist critiques of the issue with similar mockery and disdain. In that same 1989 piece, SI reporter Frank Deford argued that “today ... some zealots paint anything sensual with the broad brush of sexism,” before using a purported increase in breast augmentation surgeries to prove that if the swimsuit issue became a relic or disappeared altogether, it would only be because women had parroted its aesthetic.

“The real threat to the swimsuit issue may not be that women’s protests will bring it down,” he wrote. “No, the threat is that women will co-opt it. Instead of taking offense at the swimsuit models, women may have become more inclined to identify with them and to look like them. … More than 400 women a day get breast enlargements, lifts or reductions, and according to Self they tell plastic surgeons that the desire to change — to look more like an SI model — is their own, not some man’s, idea.”

In 2018, things are working in reverse. The swimsuit issue is trying to co-opt those aforementioned women’s protests, not the other way around.

On Tuesday morning, the official SI Swimsuit account tweeted about Raisman’s inclusion in the issue. The tweet contained no words, just a “praise hands” emoji, paired with a link to a gallery of images and a featured photo of Raisman laying out on a sandy beach in a black swimsuit. 

Another pretty girl in a beautiful place.

HuffPost reporter Emma Gray’s book, A Girl’s Guide to Joining the Resistance: A Feminist Handbook on Fighting for Good, is out Feb. 27, 2018. 

The idea that women are dainty about eating snacks has put a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths — and made them eager to poke fun at the concept of chips designed for women.

Last week, PepsiCo’s CEO Indra Nooyi discussed women’s supposedly meek snack-consuming habits in a Freakonomics interview.

The show’s host, Stephen Dubner, observed, “I understand that men and women eat chips very differently” and asked Nooyi to describe the difference.

She gave an example using Doritos, one of PepsiCo’s products. According to Nooyi, men enjoy licking Dorito dust off their fingers with “great glee,” and when they’re done with a bag, they enjoy dumping the “little broken pieces” from the bottom into their mouths.

But Nooyi suggested women are way too refined or self-conscious to eat Doritos that way.

“Women would love to do the same, but they don’t,” Nooyi said. “They don’t like to crunch too loudly in public. And they don’t lick their fingers generously and they don’t like to pour the little broken pieces and the flavor into their mouth.”

When Freakonomics asked Nooyi if PepsiCo was playing around with the idea of creating “a male and female version of chips,” Nooyi said the company was.

“It’s not a male and female [version] as much as, ‘Are there snacks for women that can be designed and packaged differently?’” Nooyi said. “And yes, we are looking at it, and we’re getting ready to launch a bunch of them soon.”

Though Nooyi did seem to confirm that the company was working on new snack products geared specifically toward women, she never specifically mentioned which brand would make these products or what they would be called. (PepsiCo also owns brands like Lays and Cheetos.) A spokesman for PepsiCo declined to comment to HuffPost about whether the company had conducted research about snack consumption based on gender.

But that didn’t prevent the phrase “Lady Doritos” from trending on Twitter on Monday ― and let’s just say people found the entire idea pretty crummy.

Read the best tweets below.

Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio recently teamed up for their most important role of all ― benefactors for a cancer patient who couldn’t afford her treatment.

Gemma Nuttall and her mother appeared Monday on the British show “This Morning,” where they talked about how Winslet learned of Nuttall’s battle and how the actress helped save her.

Nuttall was diagnosed with an aggressive form of ovarian cancer at the same time she found out she was 16 weeks’ pregnant. After a cesarean section at 36 weeks brought baby Penelope into the world, the new mom began six months of chemotherapy and radiation treatments, according to her GoFundMe page. Then she learned she had brain and lung cancer as well. The prognosis wasn’t good, and doctors told her to make a will and provisions for her daughter. 

“After what seemed like a unbelievably long and exhausting battle we were told by the doctors here in the UK that nothing more could be done for her,” Helen Sproates, Nuttall’s mom, wrote on the GoFundMe page. “She was put on palliative care and we were told she had just a few months to live.” 

But after doing some research, Sproates located a clinic in Germany that offered immunotherapy, a treatment method that uses the body’s own immune system to help fight cancer. Unfortunately, each treatment cost nearly $98,000 ― and Nuttall needed six. 

Fortunately, Kate Winslet came across Nuttall’s story last year while researching clinics in Germany for her own mother, who was suffering from ovarian cancer. 

“My heart sank,” Winslet said when she phoned in to “This Morning” as a surprise for Nuttall. “I saw how much money she needed to raise ... and I just thought I can’t have this happen.” 

“My own mother was very, very unwell, and I just thought my mum would be incredibly proud if I could do this for somebody else,” the actress said as her voice broke. Winslet’s mother died in May of last year. 

So she teamed up with Nuttall’s mom to raise funds, and eventually she called in DiCaprio, her close friend and former co-star. 

“I phoned Leo and I said, ‘Do you think we could do a charity dinner or something?’” Winslet told People magazine. “And he said, ‘Let’s go one better. Come with me to St. Tropez, to my big fundraiser for the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation,’ which is back in July, ‘and we will auction off a dinner with Jack and Rose.’” 

The “Titanic” stars auctioned off three dinners with themselves and raised over $1.35 million for treatment, according to People.

Nuttall, who spoke to Winslet directly for the first time on Monday’s show, told the actress that she couldn’t be more grateful for her help. 

“I just want to say thank you so much for all your hard work and [helping] me being able to have my treatment that I really did need,” Nuttall said before she began crying. “You saved my life and I just want you to know that.” 

Though the initial round of treatment was a success, Nuttall isn’t totally out of the woods yet. 

“Gemma needs further urgent specialist cancer treatment in Germany. Without it, she will die,” Winslet said in a statement provided to Us Weekly on Monday. “We are all so thrilled that we were able to send Gemma off to the Hallwang for her first round of treatment. I will continue to assist with her costs, but we do still badly need your donations.” 

Winslet added, “Join me in supporting this 28-year-old mum! Let’s truly do our best to keep her alive for her 3-year-old daughter, Penelope, who loves and needs her Mummy so much.” 

WASHINGTON — SpaceX made history Tuesday afternoon when it successfully launched its new Falcon Heavy rocket carrying an electric car bound for deep space and returned two of three 15-story boosters back to Earth for perfect vertical landings.

The initial test launch of what is now the world’s most powerful operational rocket marks the latest milestone in billionaire Elon Musk’s quest to send humans to Mars and eventually colonize the red planet. 

The Falcon Heavy consists of three Falcon 9 rockets, which SpaceX has been using for years to deploy satellites and run resupply missions to the International Space Station. With 27 engines, Falcon Heavy gives off more than 5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff — equivalent to 18 Boeing 747 aircraft — and is capable lifting 140,000 pounds into orbit. That’s equivalent to a fully loaded 737 aircraft. 

That Tuesday’s launch at 3:45 p.m. from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida went off without a hitch is remarkable. 

“This is a test mission,” Musk told The New York Times ahead of liftoff. “There is so much that can go wrong.”

In an interview with CNN, Musk warned that spectators could expect either “a great rocket launch or the best fireworks display they’ve ever seen.”

The payload on the inaugural test flight was, rather appropriately, a product of Musk’s other brainchild, Tesla. The electric car, a red convertible Roadster, is slated to be deployed six hours after liftoff. If all goes well, it and a dummy driver named “Starman” will be sent into orbit around the sun. They will reach a speed of 7 miles per second and travel approximately 250 million miles from Earth, eventually passing close by the red planet.

The car could remain in orbit for a billion years. And there’s an “extremely tiny” chance that it could crash into Mars, Musk told The New York Times. 

“That was awesome,” a SpaceX commentator said roughly five minutes into the launch. “That’s all I can really say.” 

Along with a successful maiden launch, Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, managed to recover two of its boosters. Both were used during previous flights in 2016 and landed simultaneously on land at Cape Canaveral.

A third booster was expected to land on a floating platform in the Atlantic. But instead of capturing a successful landing, the onboard camera appeared to show smoke before cutting out entirely. More than 45 minutes after the launch, SpaceX had not provided an update on the fate of the center booster. 

In late 2015, the company sent shockwaves through the space community when it landed a booster back on Earth — the first ever successful attempt to recover a rocket from an orbital flight. At the time a SpaceX commentator compared the feat to “launching a pencil over the Empire State Building, having it reverse, come back down, and land on a shoebox on the ground during a windstorm.” 

Less than a year later, after four failed attempts to land a Falcon 9 on floating platforms in the Atlantic, SpaceX nailed a seemingly impossible at-sea landing aboard a drone ship named “Of Course I Still Love You.” 

SpaceX is developing rockets that can be reused in an effort to make space flight cheaper and easier. While it costs between $200,000 to $300,000 to refill the rocket, the rocket itself costs $60 million, Musk has said. 

The effort has come with many setbacks. In September 2016, for example, a Falcon 9 burst into flames on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral. Musk called it “the most difficult and complex failure” the company has had in its 14-year history. 

In 2016, Musk unveiled plans to make humans a “multi-planet species.” He hopes to eventually build a self-sustainable Martian colony of 1 million people by building a massive “Interplanetary Transport System.” Like something out of a science fiction film, giant spaceships would shuttle upward of 100 people ― perhaps many more in the future ― plus luggage and other cargo to and from the red planet.

To help pay for it, the billionaire business magnate and tech entrepreneur has proposed launching a network of 4,425 satellites ― each the size of a car ― to provide the entire globe with high-speed internet.

Tuesday’s launch by SpaceX comes just a few days after BuzzFeed News published an exposé on workers’ injuries at Tesla’s factory in Fremont, California. Tesla operates the only nonunion U.S.-owned vehicle plant in the nation.

Break out your umbrellas and put on your rain boots because Stormi (Scott? Jenner?) is here, people. 

Kylie Jenner announced her baby girl’s name Tuesday and posted a sweet photo of her daughter in a pink outfit on Instagram. Stormi is her first child with rapper Travis Scott. 

The name was an unexpected choice, since there were rumors the 20-year-old would name her daughter Butterfly, or Mariposa (Spanish for “butterfly”) after Scott’s song, “Butterfly Effect.” 

But naturally, people on Twitter had a lot of thoughts about the newest addition to the Kardashian-Jenner fam.

Some Twitter users liked it, especially those named Stormy or Stormi themselves. A lot of people weren’t fans of the name, though it’s probably more accurate to say they just don’t like the Kardashians. 

A lot of fans were upset that they wasted all their time on complicated butterfly theories to no avail.  

Others decided the Kardashian-Jenner family was trying to get into weather forecasts.

Others made references to adult entertainer Stormy Daniels, whose name has been in the news a lot lately. (Let’s try and remember we’re talking about a baby here, people.) 

But most importantly, Stormi’s relatives seem to be big fans. 

Director Quentin Tarantino may have some more explaining to do, a day after he expressed regret over a “Kill Bill” driving stunt that injured star Uma Thurman.

A 2003 radio interview with Howard Stern in which Tarantino downplayed Roman Polanski’s sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl went viral, placing the Oscar winning filmmaker in an uncomfortable spotlight.

“She wanted to have it,” the “The Hateful Eight” creator said of Polanski’s victim in the clip below.

“He didn’t rape a 13-year-old,” Tarantino told Stern. “It was statutory rape. That’s not quite the same thing. ... He had sex with a minor, all right. That’s not rape. To me, when you use the word rape, you’re talking about violent, throwing them down.”

Tarantino added: “Throwing the word ‘rape’ around is like throwing the word ‘racist’ around. It doesn’t apply to everything that people use it for.”

When radio co-host Robin Quivers said the girl didn’t want to have sex, Tarantino countered: “She wanted to have it.”

Quivers pointed out that the girl had been given drugs and alcohol, but Tarantino didn’t waver.

Polanski, director of “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Chinatown,” was charged with raping a 13-year-old girl in 1977. He pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with a minor, but fled the country before sentencing.

Quivers noted that Polanski could have avoided trouble in the first place by staying away from the 13-year-old, who really didn’t have legal standing to say yes or no. “He likes girls,” Tarantino said.

Tarantino conceded that if the victim were his daughter in a similar situation, “I’d beat the hell out of him.” But the victim in the case of Polanski, he said, “was down to party with Roman.”

In an unrelated development Monday, Tarantino told Deadline that having Thurman drive in a “Kill Bill” stunt that resulted in a crash that injured her neck and knees was “the biggest regret of my life.”

In an earlier New York Times piece, Thurman discussed an alleged assault by Harvey Weinstein and the car incident.

Reps for Tarantino didn’t immediately respond to a HuffPost request for comment.

Goodbye, dragons. Hello, droids.

David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the creators of “Game of Thrones,” are going to write and produce a “Star Wars” film series, StarWars.com announced Tuesday.

The series will take place in a galaxy far, far away, but will not be tied to the trilogy being developed by “The Last Jedi” filmmaker Rian Johnson or the episodic Skywalker saga.

“David and Dan are some of the best storytellers working today,” Kathleen Kennedy, president of Lucasfilm, said in the announcement. “Their command of complex characters, depth of story and richness of mythology will break new ground and boldly push Star Wars in ways I find incredibly exciting.”

“In the summer of 1977 we traveled to a galaxy far, far away, and we’ve been dreaming of it ever since,” Benioff and Weiss said in a joint statement. “We are honored by the opportunity, a little terrified by the responsibility, and so excited to get started as soon as the final season of Game of Thrones is complete.”

Though some may be excited about the news, people on Twitter were a bit skeptical.

Many fans were concerned that tropes from the popular HBO show, such as incest and rape, would seep into the “Star Wars” universe.

In July, HBO also announced that Benioff and Weiss were going to work on its upcoming Civil War drama “Confederate,” a show whose premise immediately sparked criticism. This prompted others on Twitter to question the decision to have them write and produce the new “Star Wars” series.

Some Twitter users were disappointed that a woman or a person of color wasn’t chosen for the role, especially since Kennedy has mentioned in the past that she would like to see a woman direct a “Star Wars” movie (though the announcement did not say whether Benioff and Weiss would direct the series they will create).

There is no release date as of yet, which we’re sure is making both Jon Snow and Kylo Ren incredibly sad.

You don’t want to toy around with tigers, which is why police in Peterhead, Scotland, sprang into action Saturday night.

It started when local farmer Bruce Grubb called the North East Police to report the presence of a large fearsome cat with stripes on his farm.

“I got the fright of my life,” Grubb told The Scottish Sun.

The creature appeared to be crouched on a ramp in Grubb’s barn.

Officers immediately dispatched several vehicles, including an armed response team to the farm. In addition, police contacted a nearby wildlife park to check if a tiger might have escaped, according to the BBC.

There was a 45-minute standoff before officers realized the tiger in question was just a giant stuffed toy, according to the New York Post.

Inspector George Cordinor told the BBC he was happy at how the responding officers handled the situation, and emphasized that Grubb wasn’t a prankster.

“Our ultimate aim is to protect the public and keep our officers safe when faced with uncertain situations. Until you know exactly what you are dealing with, every option has to be considered,” he said. “We appreciate that it was a false call made with genuine good intent.”

The North East Police had fun with the call on Facebook a few days later, saying “officers had a roaring shift on Saturday night.”

 In addition, UK Cop Humour, a Facebook page geared toward British law enforcement, had lots of fun with the incident by posting pictures of people in tiger suits that it claimed could be “negotiators.”

Ever since they got married, Sherine and Alessandro Valverde have done their best to blend Sherine’s Indian heritage with Alessandro’s Hispanic heritage. Now that the San Antonio couple is preparing to have their first child, they’re determined to teach their son to embrace both of his cultures ― and they’re preparing these lessons while he’s still in the womb. 

The Valverdes strove to celebrate what they call their “IndiSpanic” culture during a maternity shoot in January at Harry Myers Park in Rockwall, Texas. 

During the first part of the shoot, Sherine was resplendent in a vibrant and heavily embellished red sari. The couple held tiny red juttis, traditional Indian shoes.

For the second half of the shoot, Sherine said she wanted to represent her husband’s Hispanic culture. She wore a flower in her hair and a green floral print dress, while Alessandro wore a white, half-sleeved shirt. Sherine hoped the elements gave off “more of a tropical feel.”

“My vision for the shoot was to accurately represent who we were, and what was important to us with our new and growing family,” Sherine told HuffPost in an email.  

The couple has long attempted to immerse themselves in each others’ cultures, Sherine said. She compared their married life together to the fusion food “chicken tikka tacos” ― “two unique styles of culinary art meld together so flawlessly to create something entirely set apart,” she wrote.

Their wedding featured music from a Mexican mariachi band and a performer playing the Indian dhol, a traditional barrel-shaped drum. Sherine, a physician, said she practices Spanish at work with her patients and has a Latino radio station preset in her car. Meanwhile, Alessandro is learning Malayalam, an Indian language, from Sherine’s parents. Her family is also introducing him to the wide range of food that is particular to the southern Indian state of Kerala, where they’re from.

“We often find our conversations laced with spurts of Malayalam, Spanish and English, in essence creating our own unique culture,” Sherine said. “That was what I wanted these pictures to convey, the NEW culture we had created.”

The Valverdes also plan to give their son a traditional Indian first name, to complement his father’s Hispanic last name. 

“We want our child to identify equally with both of his cultures, and be seen by those around [him] as Indian and Hispanic, dare I say ‘IndiSpanic,’” she wrote. “Ensuring that his name reflects that allows us as parents to some degree communicate this desire to the world around us.”

According to Nancy George, the couple’s photographer, one of the trickier parts of the shoot was working with Sherine’s red sari ― making sure it was draped correctly and flattered her belly. 

George said she believed Sherine’s vision illustrated the beauty of bringing two separate cultures together. 

“Our cultural identity is something that’s hard for children to grasp and understand at times,” George told HuffPost. “I think it’s wonderful that mothers out there are trying to teach their children about their cultural background even from within the womb.”

The Valverdes expect to welcome their baby in April. Sherine hopes that when their child is old enough to reflect on these photos, he’ll see his parents’ love shining through. 

“I truly hope that he appreciates ― beyond the shiny fancy jewelry his Mom spent way too much time picking out, the cool hipster glasses his Dad had cleaned meticulously the night before ― there was a simple man and women who could not be happier to meet their cherished baby boy,” she said. 

In 2008, Katy Perry rocketed onto the global pop music scene by telling the world she kissed a girl and she liked it. 

A decade later, Perry says she’d change a few things about her breakout single, “I Kissed a Girl,” noting that the song perpetuates “a couple of stereotypes.” 

In the above video for Glamour, the pop songstress checks out fan covers of her biggest hits, including “Firework,” “Unconditionally” and “The One That Got Away.” By the time she gets to an acoustic version of “I Kissed a Girl” by Ramona Rox, however, she offers a renewed take on the song’s message. (Her comments on “I Kissed a Girl” begin around 8:23.) 

“I think we’ve really changed, conversationally, in the past 10 years. We’ve come a long way,” she notes. “Bisexuality wasn’t as talked about back then, or any type of fluidity.”

Though Perry had praise for Rox’s “nice vocal texture,” she says she “probably would make an edit” to the song if she were to write it today.  

“Your mind changes so much in 10 years, and you grow so much,” she said. “What’s true for you can evolve.”

In the 10 years since its release, “I Kissed a Girl” has sparkeda fair amount of debate among music critics and LGBTQ activists over how to interpret its lyrics. (The fact that another one of Perry’s early singles, “Ur So Gay,” referenced sexuality and gender roles didn’t help.) 

Perry, who has since been recognized for her work on behalf of LGBTQ equality, said in 2012 that anyone who took serious offense to the song “was either looking for a fight, or taking it completely out of context.”

Joann van den Herik’s profile as a model is growing, especially on social media.

Soon you’ll be seeing her on billboards sporting lingerie from Debenhams and after reading these facts about her, you’ll see why they were quick to snap her up for their campaign. 

Here are eight things you should know about curve model-on-the-rise Joann van den Herik. 

She is...

Debenhams New DD+ model

The 19-year-old is a fashion world up-and-comer, who just landed her first UK campaign modelling Debenhams’ DD+ lingerie line. 

Related To The Hadids

Van den Herik is related to Gigi and Bella Hadid. She is their cousin, being the daughter of one of Yolanda Hadid’s siblings. 

And it’s not just the women in the family making a name for themselves as models. Gigi and Bella’s younger brother, Anwar, is also a model, who debuted at Tommy Hilfiger’s SS18 catwalk during London Fashion Week.

Body Positive

Like all models, Van den Herik’s Instagram feed is filled with perfectly lit images in various flattering scenarios. She does, however, also post empowering messages - a voice the fashion industry needs to hear more from.

Using her platform of over 58K Instagram followers, she aims to empower others to love their own bodies by writing about her experiences with body shaming and bullying. 

“I felt like I was nothing just because I had a different body type,” she wrote on 23 January. “It’s easier said than done but: Don’t let people’s words get to you.”

Anti Retouching

Often posting comparison photos of herself with and without Photoshop to make a point about self acceptance and natural beauty, it’s not surprising that van den Herik chose not to have her campaign photos retouched for her first major UK gig.

Though some may argue that she comes from a position of privilege - with her ideal proportions and the help of her cousins to give her fiercest poses - van den Herik’s choice to show realness is still commendable as many others in her position would not do so. 

Dutch

The name might’ve been a bit of a giveaway, but the model is neither American nor Palestinian like her successful cousins, but actually Dutch.

Anti Slut-Shaming

Among her Insta-friendly photos, she also shares thought-provoking posts like this one with wry humour. 

Taking An Active Stand Against The Idea That Models Can Only Have One Type Of Body

Van den Herik made a conscious decision to accept her body and go against the grain of the fashion industry. 

“I was literally obsessed with my body and losing weight, just because everyone kept telling me I should look like the models on the magazine covers and I didn’t look like that,” she told  HuffPost US.

“I’m finally at a point where I accept myself and my body. I look in the mirror and tell myself every day ‘I LOVE MY CURVES!’”

Signed To A British Agency

Van den Herik is signed to London-based model agency 12+, a leading agency representing plus size models. Being from a famous family, with powerful connections in the fashion industry, she could potentially have had her pick of agencies.

The fact that she chose to be represented by an agency that empowers curvier women speaks volumes to how seriously she takes her values on body positivity. 

Halliwell it’s about time.

The CW’s “Charmed” reboot is inching closer to actually happening now that descriptions of the three sisters at the center of the magic, mayhem and ― judging by the original series ― leprechauns have been released. 

The network announced last month that “a fierce, funny, feminist reboot” of long-running fantasy series was in development with “Jane the Virgin” writers Jessica O’Toole and Amy Rardin at the helm. The Charmed Ones will still be three young women who discover they’re witches. 

Perhaps most notably, one of the sisters will be a “strong-willed feminist” lesbian named Mel with a police detective girlfriend. According to TVLine, which first reported the news, the network is looking to cast actresses of “all ethnicities” for the central roles. 

The CW is also seeking a “devilishly handsome” actor to play a Whitelighter a la Leo (Brian Krause) in the former WB series. 

Read the full character descriptions per TVLine below: 

MACY | A witty, intense science nerd, Macy — who is in her late 20s — is a Ph.D. in quantum physics who’s moving with her boyfriend Galvin to Hilltowne, Michigan, to work in the university lab. Macy has reason to believe that she is the sister of Mel and Madison. Her power is telekinesis.

MEL PRUITT | A strong-willed feminist, she feels deeply and is a bit controlling. Mel — who is in her mid 20s and a lesbian —  is the sister of Madison. In the wake of a tragic accident, the grieving Mel becomes angry, defiantly unkempt, even violent, pushing away those who might help her, including her girlfriend, Detective Soo Jin. Mel’s power is time-freezing.

MADISON PRUITT | Mel’s younger sister (she’s 18-ish), an athletic (pilates, cheerleading) college student pledging a sorority, Madison is the opposite of her feminist sister with a desire to fit in. Madison is horrified to learn she is a witch. Her power is hearing people’s thoughts.

The reboot has received a less-than-stellar reception from the original series’ stars, with actress Holly Marie Combs leading the charge. 

The “Pretty Little Liars” star took to Twitter after the casting descriptions were announced Wednesday to slam the reboot for having “nothing to do with our legacy.”

She wrote, “It’s official. They really have never watched it.” 

So perhaps it will take more than the Power of Three to get Combs ― or Alyssa Milano, Shannen Doherty and Rose McGowan, who’ve also expressed concerns about the reboot ― to return.