Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, now the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, took their vows Saturday at Windsor Castle and nudged the royal family into a more modern era, with a ceremony that bucked convention and tradition throughout.

Here are all the ways they made their moment in the world spotlight stand out:

Reverend Michael Curry’s energetic sermon...

Curry, who is American, spoke animatedly about love, God and Instagram in a long and partly improvised sermon before a bunch of royals who seemed... perplexed. He even evoked slavery as he spoke about “the dynamic power of love.”

It was just a bit of a shift from the sermon delivered at the 2011 wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

The reverend is the first black person to lead the Episcopal Church, which is part of the Anglican Communion like the Church of England.

Twitter lit up with Americans celebrating the significance of both Curry’s presence and his words. 

...which included a quote by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“We must discover the power of love, the redemptive power of love,” Curry said, quoting the late civil rights leader. “And when we discover that, we will be able to make of this old world a new world. Love is the only way.”

A gospel choir rendition of “Stand By Me”

The choir’s performance before a seated Harry and Meghan represented another element of black culture in the wedding ceremony.

The blog Black Girl Nerds called the whole thing “one of the most beautiful and BLACK weddings we’ve seen televised yet!”

Harry’s wedding band

Since wedding bands are a more modern tradition in the United Kingdom, it’s common for British aristocrats to skip them. 

But at Saturday’s ceremony, Meghan gave Harry a platinum band with a textured finish made by Cleave and Company, the British jeweler that also fashioned her rings.

Harry’s brother, William, chooses not to wear a band, like their grandfather. The royal brothers’ father, Prince Charles, doesn’t wear one, either, but he did opt for a signet ring at his 2005 wedding.

Harry’s beard

Harry didn’t shave. Good for Harry. 

The (non-tiered) cake

Royals have historically gone for grand tiered confections at their nuptials, but Harry and Meghan opted for something different. The couple chose a light sponge cake by American pastry chef Claire Ptak made with elderflower syrup and 200 lemons, with sections displayed atop separate golden stands.

The absence of the word “obey” in the couple’s vows...

It is a pretty creepy tradition when you think about it.

...and being named “husband and wife,” not “man and wife”

Yeah, feminism!

Now this is the epitome of class. 

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) appeared on C-SPAN last Thursday to chat about immigration and special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. During her segment, a Republican from Nevada called into the show and questioned whether she is a U.S. citizen. 

The congresswoman, who’s the first Indian-American woman to serve in the House of Representatives, tactfully responded. 

“You have to be a U.S. citizen to be in Congress,” she said calmly. “I’m a proud U.S. citizen. I became a citizen in 2000. I’ve actually lived in this country since I was 16 years old.” 

Jayapal, who was born in Chennai, India, has been in the U.S. since she attended college at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. She went on to get an MBA from Northwestern University. According to The Washington Post, her parents saved up money in order to send her to school.

In her response to the caller, Jayapal explained that she was on a student visa when she came to the U.S. She was on several different visas before obtaining her American citizenship. 

Her 2016 election to Congress drew praise from many in the Asian-American and immigrant communities, who view her as a role model. 

“I see young girls and women across the country, not only Indian but other immigrants as well, who see a different future for themselves because I’m there,” she told the Post. “It’s really very meaningful to me when people say, ‘It means so much to see you there because maybe I can run for Congress someday.’”

In her C-SPAN segment, Jayapal used her immigration story to pivot to the issue of immigration reform. She said she feels that there should be a solution in place not only for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program but also for U.S. immigration policies in general, citing a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, the family-based immigration system and the employment visa system as pieces that need to be reformed. 

“Most of our immigration laws — and a lot of people watching this may not know this — have not been adjusted for decades,” she said.

Jayapal’s comments follow the Trump administration’s announcement this month that temporary protected status (TPS) would end for immigrants from Honduras, leaving in limbo 57,000 Hondurans who fled their country after Hurricane Mitch in 1998. If they don’t find legal status by 2020, these TPS recipients will have to leave the country. Not long after that announcement, Attorney General Jeff Sessions declared that the U.S. will prosecute people who tried to enter the country illegally, leading authorities to separate parents from their children.

The TPS for Nepal was also terminated this year, affecting about 9,000 Nepalis, whose country was devastated by an earthquake in 2015. 

I’m 27 years old, and like a lot of women, I was put on birth control pills shortly after starting my period. If you had asked me at any point in the past, I would have told you I had never experienced an adverse side effect from my birth control. On the contrary, I loved and appreciated it for giving me reproductive autonomy while improving my acne-prone skin and taking the guesswork out of dealing with Aunt Flo.

My decision to quit the pill five months ago was about 65 percent a result of forgetting to go to the pharmacy and 35 percent curiosity to see if my body was capable of remembering how to menstruate on its own.  

As it turns out, after spending half my life on birth control, going off it has been nothing short of a revelation ― one that has made me question why I spent half my life trying to convince myself that the mild mental and physical symptoms I experienced over the years were “natural,” even when they happened to be some of the most common side effects attributed to the pill.

The first thing I experienced after stopping the pill ― in my case, the combined version ― was what I would describe as a total sexual awakening. While I’ve never considered myself asexual by any means, my libido was mostly limited to the surge of excitement one might experience during courtship or after many shots of tequila. But within weeks, that changed drastically: Almost like cranking up an ancient generator stored away in the basement, my lady parts began to hum and pulsate with a kind of energy I had never felt.

Practically overnight, my lubrication levels went from zero to “ripe papaya” – and for someone who has spent their life suffering through relatively uncomfortable, sometimes painful, under-lubricated sex, this was huge. The change was so noticeable that I wondered if there might be something wrong with me, until I began to read the abundant accounts of other women whose sex drives were temporarily extinguished by birth control.

Around the same time, another strange thing happened. I realized I felt happy. I’m happy right now. Even if nothing great happens, I’m quite sure I’ll be happy tomorrow. Quitting birth control was as invigorating for my mental health as that wonderful feeling of sun and breeze on your bare legs when you wear shorts for the first time after a long winter.

I was diagnosed with depression shortly after getting put on birth control – something that doesn’t seem so strange, considering that a recent, massive study concluded that women taking the combined oral contraceptive pill are 23 percent more likely to be diagnosed with depression. Other forms of hormonal birth control present an even greater risk.

Though I traded in antidepressants for my own coping mechanisms years ago, I’ve spent essentially my whole adult life battling frequent waves of depression, mood swings, anxiety, fatigue, and a persistent mental fog. But I can’t remember a time I’ve ever felt as consistently confident, motivated, and happy as during these past months without the pill.

As if truly enjoying sex and feeling good about life for the first time weren’t enough, I’ve also lost weight since going off the pill. It isn’t anything significant – I’ve never been overweight, but, like most women, I’ve always been overly self-conscious about the places where my body jiggles and dimples. Without any changes to what I eat or how I exercise, I suddenly have abs, and lean muscle mass now contours across my body in areas previously dominated by flab. 

The only real negative outcome I’ve had since going off birth control is a minor resurgence of acne and oily skin. While this has been frustrating, I’m honestly more than happy to deal with a few pimples if it means that I’m emotionally stable, energetic, confident, clearheaded, and sexually engaged.  

I fully recognize that going off birth control isn’t an option for many women, and many of those who do leave it behind probably won’t enjoy the same benefits that I have (sorry).

And don’t get it twisted ― even though my experience quitting birth control was a positive one, I totally refuse to side with anyone who believes that access to birth control, or any other women’s reproductive health procedure or treatment, should be limited in any way, so please don’t interpret this as such.

(While we’re at it, if you have any questions or concerns about your birth control, please consult your doctor.) 

Still, for me, quitting the pill has been both empowering and alarming. Why didn’t I do this sooner?  Like many women my age, I’ve spent my entire adult life on synthetic hormones. I never had a point of reference for what life was like without them, so I never made the connection between what was going on with me and the pill.  

I struggled with depression, mood swings, and a truly lackluster sex drive for years. The notion that these conditions are “normal” for women is reinforced so constantly in our society that I simply accepted that I was naturally a slightly sad, sexless lady.

Over the years, I have been offered antidepressants, therapy, lube, and other solutions to these problems. But I was never invited to seriously consider the possibility that something as seemingly innocuous as my birth control might be the culprit. I suspect this is the case for lots of other women like me.  

Despite scientific evidence showing that hormonal birth control can and often does have a negative effect on our emotional and physical well-being ― especially among young women ― we’re still being told that we shouldn’t be alarmed and that it is our “best option” ― often by men in our lives, whether they be doctors, scientists, politicians, or our own partners.

At this point, any argument that seeks to downplay the very real side effects experienced by women on birth control ― no matter how mild or “normal” they might seem ― is nothing short of a sexist attempt to rob women of the validity of their experiences.  

This wouldn’t be the first time our society has glazed over the dark side of birth control. 

Due to the illegality of contraception in the U.S. in the 1950s, and the lack of American women willing to put up with the unbearable side effects of the earliest forms of the pill, scientists forced their contraceptive experiment upon female residents of a Massachusetts mental asylum and young Puerto Rican medical students, who were told they would be expelled if they didn’t comply. Even when facing expulsion, many women dropped out of the study.

In need of bodies to experiment on, scientists then took the pill to an impoverished neighborhood in San Juan, where hundreds of women signed up for a medication they were told would prevent them from getting pregnant. What they weren’t told, however, was that they would be participating as human subjects in a medical experiment. Three women died during the study, and though the lead doctor determined that the pill had too many side effects to be acceptable, it was released to the public anyway.

The earliest form of the birth control pill contained 10 times the amount of hormones needed to prevent pregnancy. We should thank those who came before us for suffering through that early birth control, but even today, women continue to put up with a slew of common side effects that include mood changes, decreased libido, nausea, migraines, weight gain and breast tenderness.

While women are technically only fertile for a few days out of the month, men, on the other hand, are reproductively fertile 365 days a year. But advances in male hormonal birth control have been slow. The latest promising male birth control formula showed a 96-percent rate of effectiveness, but the study was called off. Why, you ask? Because men reported side effects such as mood disorders, acne, and weight gain during clinical trials, and the study was deemed “too risky” to continue. 

To be fair, the side effect rate recorded during the small study was relatively high compared with the average side effects recorded for women’s birth control. Nevertheless, it smells an awful lot like a double standard.

I don’t want to undermine the extraordinarily important role that the pill has played in our society ― from giving us autonomy over our reproductive systems, to paving the way for an increase in women’s employment, education, and wages, to being a legitimate treatment for a whole array of medical conditions.

All I’m saying is that we deserve better. What does it say about our society that serious risks like depression are considered acceptable ― even by those who experience them, like me?

For me, I’ve now passed the burden of birth control on to my partner, who is more than happy to consummate ― oops, I mean compensate ― for my brand-new sex drive with an endless supply of condoms.

Mario Batali, the world-famous chef and restaurateur who has been accused by at least 11 women of sexual misconduct, is the subject of an ongoing investigation by the New York Police Department into allegations of criminal sexual misconduct.

News of the investigation was first reported by the CBS news show “60 Minutes” this evening. A source at the NYPD confirmed the investigation to HuffPost but declined to elaborate further.

Sexual misconduct allegations against Batali first surfaced in December when Eater published a story detailing four women’s allegations against Batali that included sexual assault. At the time, Batali acknowledged that he engaged in inappropriate behavior and took leave from his restaurant group.

The “60 Minutes” story includes interviews with women who say they were sexually assaulted by Batali. One woman, who was interviewed in silhouette to protect her identity, is accusing Batali of drugging her and engaging in what she described as criminal sexual misconduct while she was unconscious. Batali, through an attorney, denied these allegations.

At the time, the woman, who worked for Batali in 2005, had a rape kit done and spoke to detectives in the special victims unit at the NYPD. Even though the detectives asked her to file a police report, she declined, telling “60 Minutes,” “They tried getting me to file a report. They tried, they tried. But I ― you know, a young actress, no resources, no money ― I couldn’t. I― I couldn’t do it.”

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Last year, I celebrated Mother’s Day with my two sweet girls, Hannah and Gretchen, then ages 4 years and 23 months. I was also awaiting the arrival of my unborn son, Caleb, whom I had been carrying for about 33 weeks at the time. This Mother’s Day will be very different. My two sweet girls are a year older, but my son is not. He died in my womb the very next month.

When I was 37 weeks pregnant, my placenta completely detached from my uterus, killing Caleb within minutes. What happened to me is called a placental abruption. I had no risk factors. My placental abruption was “invisible.” I neither bled nor had intense pain, the usual symptoms. The only reason we went to the hospital that night of Father’s Day 2017 was because I awoke around midnight and felt uncomfortable. Caleb also wasn’t moving, but that did not worry me too much because I had done a successful kick count three hours before and he usually didn’t move too much at night. Looking back now, the discomfort felt like when Caleb would push his butt hard on my ribs (which he did often), but it was constant. I knew something was off, but I never thought he could have died. I was two weeks away from our scheduled delivery.

We got to the labor and delivery unit at the hospital and eventually were put in a room. Coincidentally, it was the same room I had been in before delivering my first daughter. I had also been in it when we had a scare when pregnant with my second daughter ― pain from a bladder infection, pain that was much worse than what I was experiencing with Caleb. We weren’t in the room for long before the nurse put the monitor on my belly and couldn’t find Caleb’s heartbeat. The nurse called in another nurse to help, and she couldn’t find it either. We had some hope when they ordered an ultrasound, but the technician was clearly not in a rush. I remember asking my main nurse if the inability to find a heartbeat ever turned out OK. Her long pause before “maybe he’s just turned funny” told me the answer was no. At one point, while still waiting for the ultrasound, I started to scream and cry, prompting all of the nurses to come back in the room. The ultrasound finally happened, although the technician and nurses still wouldn’t tell us anything.

Finally, around 5 a.m., the on-call doctor officially informed us that my placenta had detached and Caleb had died. Because I was bleeding internally, I had to deliver Caleb immediately and without an epidural. That was a first for me. Soon after he delivered the news, my water broke, also the first time that ever happened naturally, and the contractions started. My regular doctor arrived and took over. She drugged me, but my body still knew how to deliver a baby.

Caleb Marcus Lens was born on June 19, 2017, at 6:09 a.m. He was 5 pounds, 15.8 ounces, and 19.25 inches long. He was our least hairy child; he had less hair on his head than both of our daughters did. He looked just like my younger daughter. The nurses wrapped him in a blanket and were very supportive of our spending time with him. It was mid- or later afternoon when we gave him our last kisses and said goodbye. We had a beautiful funeral for him a week later.

It’s been over 10 months since his birth and death, and I’m still adjusting to this new normal ― of being a parent to a child who died. Now I have to figure out how to celebrate Mother’s Day without one of my children. 

We recently moved to a new city, a city where no one saw me very pregnant and then wondered why I wasn’t carrying a baby car seat. Because of our young, living children, we encounter other families all the time. When asked how many children I have, I’m rarely happy with how I answer. I usually don’t want to bring up Caleb to a stranger, but I also don’t want to negate his existence. I can pretty easily say we “have two girls at home,” which doesn’t explicitly exclude Caleb.

But why don’t I also say, “We also have a son who passed away”? In class a few weeks ago, I told one of my students that it’s easy for me to remember her name because she has the same name as my older daughter. Why didn’t I say the same for the student named Caleb? I want to share that I also have a son — a sweet, beautiful boy who I loved to talk and sing to and who used to kick me excitedly when he heard his sisters’ voices. But, I also don’t want to have to comfort the person I’m telling about Caleb, the person who will inevitably apologize for inadvertently asking a question relevant to my dead son. I’m also afraid to encounter any dismissive comments that may imply that my loss is somehow less devastating because Caleb died before, instead of after, birth. 

Public acknowledgment is very related to Mother’s Day for me. On Mother’s Day, at the church we used to attend in Texas, the priest would ask mothers to come up to the front of church based on how many children they have. I had been attending that Mass every year I was lucky enough to be a mom. I went up to the front when I had one child (with sadness the year we were struggling to conceive our second), and then when I had two children. Of all places, a Catholic church, I should feel comfortable going up to the front this year when he asked for mothers of three children. I would like to think that I would have done so. But what I really feel is relief that I won’t be there this year.

At the same time that I’m having difficulty adjusting to my new normal, I also realize how extremely lucky I am. I do have two living children to hug and kiss on Mother’s Day. The need to try to make their lives as normal as possible despite their baby brother’s death helped us get through those first weeks and months, even though we also had to help them begin to process. Caleb’s death has given me extreme gratitude for my girls; I fully realize that I have it better than many.

But parenting is also very different. I don’t think jokes about “selling my kids” are funny. I don’t think parents’ tweets complaining about their kids are funny. I don’t want to vacation away from them. After Caleb died, so many people offered to babysit out girls. It was a nice gesture, but time away from my girls was the last thing I wanted. When one (or both) of my girls annoy me, I can’t just feel annoyed. Instead, I get to feel guilty. I should be thankful they are here and living and even able to annoy me. Although I am thankful for the gratitude, it can also be exhausting.

I like to think I’m still hopeful for the future. It took some time, but I am now able to look back on the day of Caleb’s birth and see it differently. It was not just the saddest day of my life, it was also one of the three happiest days. It was the only day that I’ll ever hold Caleb in my arms. I am forever grateful that I asked to hold him skin-to-skin that day, the same thing I did with his sisters. I look back and feel such intense joy that I got to hold him that way.

That change in my thought helps me be hopeful for the future. Things will never go back to the way they were before Caleb died. But happiness is still possible, even if it’s tinged with a bit of sadness. That is exactly how I feel when I see how much my girls love each other — I’m so happy and grateful, but also sad because Caleb isn’t with them. I’m also hopeful that I will one day figure out a way for him to be part of my public life. My older daughter often draws family pictures at school, and she always includes Baby Caleb. I hope to someday be able to do the same when I talk about my family.

Still, Mother’s Day will be especially hard for me. And, honestly, I expect that every Mother’s Day after this first monumental one will be hard. I will try my best to be present, celebrate with my girls and specifically remember the third child that makes me a mom. I recently learned a story about the origin for Mother’s Day — that it was created to recognize the pain of grieving mothers who had lost their sons in the Civil War. I find that very comforting, that the day was an acknowledgment of mothers whose children had died.

I hope to feel that same comfort this Mother’s Day, a day I am already specifically planning out hour-by-hour in hopes of minimizing my pain. To all mothers like me — those who have buried a child — I wish you comfort, peace and acknowledgment on Mother’s Day.

Jill Wieber Lens is an associate professor of law at the University of Arkansas (Fayetteville) School of Law, where she teaches torts, remedies and related subjects. She received her B.A. from University of Wisconsin-Madison and her J.D. from the University of Iowa College of Law.

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In one of the most memorable scenes from “Grey’s Anatomy” Season 2, intern Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) and head of neurosurgery Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey) get it on in a Seattle Grace Hospital exam room while their colleagues attend a prom-style event for Richard Webber’s (James Pickens Jr.) cancer-stricken teenage niece. The pair, having been torn apart by the sudden employment of Derek’s estranged wife and fellow doctor Addison (Kate Walsh), dramatically reunite in only the way a fated TV couple can, culminating in Meredith’s misplaced underwear being pinned on a staff bulletin board.

The whole thing is hot. It’s steamy. And it’s incredibly far-fetched.

Or is it?

There are lots of medical dramas on the air ― “Grey’s,” “Chicago Med,” “9-1-1,” “Code Black,” “The Resident,” etc. And each and every one features an unbelievable sex scene, during which surgeons hook up with interns (or nurses hook up with doctors, or chiefs hook up with residents ― you get it), turning their hospital’s on-call room into a veritable den of (consensual) sex among otherwise expertly professional co-workers.

Ahead of the “Grey’s” Season 14 finale, we found ourselves contemplating several questions. Will April Kepner (Sarah Drew) get a happy ending? Will Alex (Justin Chambers) and Jo’s (Camilla Luddington) wedding go off without a hitch? Will Carina (Stefania Spampinato) follow Arizona (Jessica Capshaw) to New York? But none were more pressing than this longtime contemplation: Are the sex scenes on the show realistic? 

So, HuffPost decided to get down to it and ask medical professionals what really happens in on-call rooms. Behold, the truth: 

Scenario 1: Sex In The Supply Closet (Or The On-Call Room, Or Empty Exam Rooms...)

In Season 2, Episode 16 of “Grey’s,” Izzie Stevens (Katherine Heigl) summons her friend-with-benefits Alex Karev (Justin Chambers) into a medical supply closet with the classic pickup line: “Do you want to stand there and talk metaphors or do you want to literally take off your pants?” Spoiler! He takes off his pants. Thus the question: Are doctors really hooking up in supply closets?

According to Dr. Jen Gunter, a San Francisco Bay Area OB/GYN and author, most on-call rooms in hospitals are “gross and often you share them with someone else.” 

“I have never, ever in my 30-plus years in the medical field heard of anyone ever making out in a supply closet. I have never heard of anyone having sex in an on-call room. Might it happen very occasionally? I guess,” she said. 

A Philadelphia-based registered nurse named Meg (who preferred not to use her last name in this piece, because, well, who can blame her), said stairwells ― not supply closets, on-call rooms or exam rooms ― are where the secret hookups happen. 

“I don’t know of it ever happening in empty patient rooms or supply closets. People are in and out of the supply room on the units all the time,” she said. “I have heard of people getting caught in stairwells and I have also heard of people getting caught in locker rooms.” 

“I know of a girl hooking up in a stairwell,” Jessica, an RN based in Boston, said. “Less scandal than people think in general, though!”

Eileen, a travel RN who’s worked in cities including New York, Seattle, San Diego and Boulder, said she knows of co-workers “sleeping with each other in their office and in an on-call room, always somewhere that has a lock on the door.”

And a pediatrician in Westchester County, New York, who asked to remain anonymous, only wished life in a hospital was so exciting. “It may be that pediatricians are just way more boring than doctors in other specialties. I do know of a teenage patient who was caught hooking up with her boyfriend while admitted to the hospital ― we had to set up some stricter rules on visitors after that.”

Scenario 2: Big-Shot Surgeons Who Hook Up With Their Junior Colleagues 

Throughout “Grey’s” Season 5, plastic surgeon Mark Sloan (Eric Dane) pursues intern Lexie Grey (Chyler Leigh) ― R.I.P., but let’s NOT relive that devastation ― despite warnings from Meredith and Derek against it. (Lexie is Meredith’s younger half-sister, after all.) The will-they-or-won’t-they, “inappropriate” relationship between Mark and Lexie became one of the most beloved by fans. But, do surgeons actually hook up with nurses, interns or students? 

“I am aware of a scrub tech nurse who was involved with an orthopedic surgeon. They had a sexual relationship and she would send him naked pictures, which he would email to himself in the call-dictation room and save to the computer there to look at,” a Virginia-based nurse practitioner, who preferred to remain anonymous, explained. “Needless to say, he didn’t always remember to close out of the pictures before leaving. We all knew a lot more about that nurse than we wanted to!” 

Meg said she knows a few residents who have dated junior colleagues, with some relationships eventually resulting in marriage.

“We had a RN dating her manager ― it was kept hush-hush until she resigned and now they are married. Really it happens a ton!” she said. “I think there is a draw to a co-worker you spend lots of time with, who is smart and accomplished. They understand your stress level and what you go through. I think that it’s a lot harder to find a non-medical person who understands what a person in medicine would understand. Residents often marry other residents for this reason.” 

Still, the nurse practitioner said, television shows tend to amp up the drama in these budding romances. “I no longer watch medical shows very much. I dislike how much romance there is among staff members, because I feel like it’s unrealistic.” 

“It is a lie,” redditor TsukasaHimura reiterated in a thread about this topic. “Most doctors I work with are old and mean. I won’t have sex with any of them.” 

Eileen, however, said she actually knows of a few racy doctor-nurse hookups. 

“I have a friend who was engaged to be married and started working at my hospital. She started seeing this doctor we work with and started sleeping with him almost immediately. He was way older and not attractive, but he had money, power and gave her a whole lot of attention. I remember her telling me she would go into the staff bathroom and take nude pictures to send to him. I know they had sex in a staircase and in his office. She broke off her engagement because she felt guilty, and she did not end up with the doctor.”

Scenario 3: Habitual Drunken Nights Out With Colleagues

On many an occasion, the employees of Grey-Sloan Memorial Hospital head to their local bar, Joe’s Pub, to let loose. Darts are thrown, shots are taken, dancing ensues. Is Joe’s Pub a fantasy, or is there truth to those tequila-filled nights?

“My nurse friends and I absolutely got hammered together,” the nurse practitioner said, with Jessica adding, “Nurses be crazy!”

“I went out more when I worked a night shift. Bloody Mary’s and beers at 7:30 a.m. before going to bed is way better than you would think,” Eileen said. “I haven’t really seen a post-work outing get drunk, but I have definitely seen it at retirement parties, birthday parties, etc.” 

“All of the units I have worked on over the last 10 years always involved booze,” Meg said. “Usually, there is a bar or restaurant that is favored and you often see other employees there from different departments. I have also seen physicians out at restaurants being quite close to females that I know are not their wife!”

The Westchester pediatrician, however, said drunken nights out have dwindled since the days of residency training.

“I definitely went out frequently after shifts then. And getting drunk was certainly one way we coped with the stress and exhaustion of 80-hour work weeks during residency,” the pediatrician said. “I did know of colleagues who would go out to happy hour and then go to work a midnight ER shift. It was always a careful balance and calculation to make sure you were sober well before your shift started.”

Scenario 5: All The Cheating Scandals 

In probably the most famous cheating scandal from “Grey’s,” Derek’s wife Addison sleeps with his best friend, Mark Sloan. (McDreamy vs. McSteamy, remember? Both of them are now dead, unfortunately.) The affair is told over the course of a few seasons, leading to Derek’s eventual, on-and-off romance with Meredith. But how common are cheating scandals in hospitals?

Common, it seems.

“Worked in a place full of affairs between various staff members,” a doctor with a hidden username on Reddit wrote. “Got accused of it myself many times but was smart enough to not stick my hand in that trap.”

“We had an attending who had an affair with a nurse and [he] got her pregnant,” a Chicago-based labor and delivery nurse, who chose to remain anonymous, told me. “He stayed with his wife and paid off the nurse.” 

“There have been wife visits that accidentally overlap with girlfriend visits that result in security being called,” Meg added. “When the baby stroller was thrown I just walked the other way.” 

The hospital atmosphere lends itself to flirtatious exchanges, the medical professionals explained, as long shifts or hours in surgery can grow dull. 

“There will always be doctors who are flirty and enjoy the interaction between young nurses and them in a position of power,” Meg said.

Eileen watched a good friend’s marriage fall apart due to an affair with a doctor at her hospital.  

“One of my best friends was sleeping with a doctor we worked with, even though she was getting married soon after that happened. This doctor had some serious charm and tried to get in the pants of any young, attractive, female employee. It worked. On a lot of them. She even slept with him the night before her wedding,” Eileen revealed. “This continued post-wedding even though she tried to stay away. This doctor made sure he was always around and on her mind. She is now divorced and no longer has a relationship with this doctor.”

“Being married can be hard. Relationships are hard,” Gunter explained. “Along the way I have met doctors who have left their spouses for other doctors or for nurses or other medical professionals. I wouldn’t call that a scandal. It’s not 1918.” 

Bonus Scenario 1: While We’re On The Subject, What About Drug Use?

Sex isn’t the only taboo topic addressed on hospital shows. On the latest season of “Grey’s,” some of the residents accidentally eat weed cookies, and stereotypical madness ensues. We’ve also seen Amelia Shepherd (Caterina Scorsone) grapple with serious addiction issues on both “Grey’s Anatomy” and spinoff “Private Practice.” Are drugs a real issue in the medical world?

Drug use is actually pretty common in hospitals, with some employees selling meds, as well. 

“There are physicians with addiction issues like there are in any field,” Gunter said.

According to Meg, some of her co-workers have been caught using and distributing drugs on the job. 

“I know that in situations where nurses were using they were offered rehab and had strict rules to adhere to. They had to leave bedside nursing for treatment and once completed they were able to return to less stressful work in the hospital under more supervision until they were deemed ready for greater responsibility,” she said. “I think for the most part things are kept very quiet when these situations occur.”

“My un-expecting co-worker was fired for stealing drugs,” Jessica said. “This happens more often than people think.” 

“I live in Colorado. Most of my coworkers smoke pot, but not on the job and not before going to work,” Eileen added. “I do know of two nurses who have stolen IV and PO pain medications for themselves. I do not know if they were ever impaired while working, but they were both caught and neither will ever be a nurse again.”

Bonus Scenario 2: Tell Us About The Ghosts 

In Season 5 of “Grey’s,” Izzie, hallucinating thanks to a brain tumor, strikes up a romance with a ghost version of her late fiancé, the adored and never forgotten Denny Duquette (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). (This whole storyline was reportedly concocted to give Heigl the “Emmy-worthy material” she wanted. Instead, it led some viewers, and Heigl, to quit the show.) Actually, spirits were common enough on “Grey’s,” and for the 300th episode, Shonda Rhimes brought back “ghosts” or look-alikes of Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh), George O’Malley (T.R. Knight) and Izzie to bring viewers back to the early days of Seattle Grace Hospital.

As chilling as it sounds, spirits do exist in hospitals, at least according to Meg. 

“Sometimes monitors do weird things or you feel a tingle on the back of your neck! If you believe in spirits you have to think they are there. So many souls are departing from the hospital every day. If you can’t open the window, I have known nurses that flush the toilet to let the spirt leave!”

All in all, however, the lives of doctors or nurses on medical dramas are markedly more implausible than their real-life counterparts. Most of the sources I spoke to said they don’t really watch the procedurals anymore, as the storylines are overly dramatic and fairly unrealistic.

Eileen admitted, “I definitely see similarities: dealing with a patient who goes into cardiac arrest, a massive trauma, hospital overload due to a natural disaster, a gunman in the hospital. However, these are more rare than commonplace. Maybe once or twice a month I have shift as crazy as one they portray on TV.”

“I think some shows do a better job,” Meg added. ”‘Nurse Jackie’ did a better job than most.” In Gunter’s opinion, “Scrubs” “got to the heart of medicine the best.”

“From what I remember, I think ‘ER’ was the most accurate,” the pediatrician added. “The drama on ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ definitely was way more extreme than anything I encountered in a real hospital.” 

While headlining Alabama’s Hangout Music Festival on Sunday, Kendrick Lamar brought a white female fan onstage to rap his song “m.A.A.d City” but had to interrupt her after she repeatedly used the N-word featured in the lyrics.

The video, it should go without saying, includes some harsh language.

The woman, who identified herself as Delaney, uses the word three times during the song’s chorus before Lamar stopped her rendition.

“You gotta bleep one single word, though,” he said after cutting the music. She apologized, adding, “I’m used to singing it the way you wrote it.”

Delaney asked to stay onstage, and Lamar gave her another shot, even though the crowd was clearly done with her. When her second attempt fell flat, the 2018 Pulitzer Prize–winning rapper got her offstage and quickly moved on with his show. 

Ali Alghamdi, a 24-year-old engineering student at Texas A&M University, was running an errand early this month in Kingsville, Texas, when he noticed the car in front of him running a stop sign.

It was odd, Alghamdi told HuffPost, but not that uncommon. But as the car drove on, the driver kept slamming on the breaks, forcing Alghamdi to do the same. Alghamdi grew worried, he said.

Suddenly, the driver of the black Chevrolet swerved and blocked Alghamdi at a corner. A man stormed out of his car and began screaming racist profanities at Alghamdi, calling him a terrorist, the 24-year-old said.

That’s when Alghamdi decided to start recording ― “in case something happened to me,” he explained. He was worried the man might have a gun.

“I was just shocked; honestly, I was scared,” Alghamdi said.

The video he filmed shows a man in a cowboy hat accusing Alghamdi of tailgating him. Alghamdi uploaded the footage to YouTube and submitted it to HuffPost’s Documenting Hate project, a database that tracks incidents of hate and bias.

“This is America, dumbass,” the driver can be heard saying halfway through the expletive- and slur-laden video below.

“You better learn how to drive in America,” the man says. “This isn’t Pakistan, bitch. This is not Pakistan, Afghanistan or Kuwait, motherfucker.”

“What?” Alghamdi can be heard asking from his car. “Say that again.”

“This is not Pakistan, Afghanistan or Kuwait. We have rules in this fucking country,” the man rants, later adding, “You sound like a fucking Arab.”

Almghadi said the driver eventually ended his racist tirade and got back into his car. But just when Alghamdi thought the encounter was over, he said, the man followed him to his destination, then spoke to a clerk while Alghamdi finished his errand. The man left shortly thereafter.

Minutes later, four police officers arrived and asked Alghamdi for identification, Alghamdi said.

When Alghamdi told the officers that he had recorded the entire incident, “I swear, that’s when the whole process changed 180 degrees,” he said. The police asked Alghamdi to file a police report and turn over the video so that they could look into what had happened. 

By Monday, Kingsville police had identified the man in the video, though his name has not been publicly released. Officials will pursue disorderly conduct charges against him, Lt. Bradley Lile told HuffPost.

Alghamdi said he realized when he started filming that this wasn’t just a regular case of road rage. This was an incident motivated by hate, he said.

“Yes, it’s road rage, it happens to everyone,” Alghamdi said. But as soon as the man realized “I look different, that’s when the incident went further,” he added.

“Absolutely, race was part of it.” 

Alghamdi said he visited the police department at least three times since the incident and wants to make sure that other minorities are aware of their legal rights. He signed an affidavit form, which HuffPost reviewed, and said he plans to follow up in court, should the case go to trial.

“I didn’t know what this guy is capable of,” Alghamdi said. “But just because I look different, just because I sound different, doesn’t mean you can attack me.”

America does not do a good job of tracking incidents of hate and bias. We need your help to create a database of such incidents across the country, so we all know what’s going on. Tell us your story.

Every woman I know who watches “The Handmaid’s Tale” has a strategy.

One of my friends only watches during daylight hours. Another, who usually loves to indulge her junk food cravings while watching her favorite TV shows, has decided she can’t eat anything when it’s on. Another is planning to wait until the season ends, so she can review each episode’s plot summary and decide whether to watch, skip or skim. I watch each episode twice, partly because I cover the show for work, and partly because the initial watch is so stressful that on the second viewing I’m able to take in details that my anxiety doesn’t allow for the first time.

The Hulu series’ first season, which aired in 2017 and ended (like the novel that inspired it) on a note of ambiguous hope, was critically acclaimed and almost universally praised among my own circle of peers. But the second season, which premiered earlier this year and moves beyond the plotline of Margaret Atwood’s beloved feminist novel, has received an icier reception.

Lisa Miller at The Cut compared the first few episodes of Season 2 to “torture porn,” questioning whether “it’s feminist to watch women enslaved, degraded, beaten, amputated, and raped?” (She concluded it was not and announced she was “done.”) The Atlantic’s Sophie Gilbert asked if all the on-screen suffering is really necessary for the show to make obvious its parallels to our own rights-deprived world. (She’s still on the fence.) The Guardian’s Arielle Bernstein wrote that it saddens her “that ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ has become the quintessential feminist text of 2018 when so much of its ethos is about making women feel angry, sad and guilty about the state of the world we live in.” Natalie Zutter at Tor wondered how many times she could “watch hope get extinguished” before it simply became too much.

Despite these valid critiques and very public declarations that some women are giving up on or disappointed in the show, people are still tuning in ― enough people that a Hulu representative told me that “in its first week, viewing of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Season 2 more than doubled its audience versus Season 1.” That was enough people to get the series renewed for a third season a week after the second season began.

So, for those of us who still find ourselves captivated by a show admittedly full of human suffering ― specifically women’s suffering ― why are we still tuning in?

Do we feel some feminist obligation to see June’s journey through? Is it cathartic to face down some of the worst potential outcomes of our current reality from the safety of our couches? Is it actually motivating? Or do we just love the show’s stunning visuals and equally stunning performances? Do we like signaling that we’re woke using the vernacular of a TV series marketed specifically toward the identities of progressive, millennial women? What, exactly, are we getting out of a series that feels punishing at every turn?

I phoned Jennifer Wagner-Lawlor, a professor of English and women’s studies who has written extensively about Atwood, to try and get answers, but she seemed just as confused as I was. She’s still watching “The Handmaid’s Tale,” even though she relates to the recent critiques of Season 2. While she wouldn’t go so far as to call it torture porn (“just torture”), she finds the violence somewhat gratuitous and resents, in particular, the writers’ decision to break June’s (Elisabeth Moss) spirit in Episode 4.

Indeed, after nearly a season and a half of watching June’s inner voice withstand separation from her husband and child, ritual rape, psychological torture at the hand of Aunt Lydia and Serena Joy, and dashed hopes for escape, Episode 4 sees her tormentors finally convince her that what has befallen her is ultimately her fault. June’s external voice becomes robotic as a result, her inner voice all but disappearing. “My fault. My fault. My fault. My fault,” she repeats over and over and over again.

Wagner-Lawlor found this to be “jolting.” “That seemed to me to come out of nowhere,” she said. “There was no real sign to me up to this point that [June] would actually suddenly break.” She wondered aloud whether the show had “gone a little overboard this season.”

By the end of our 40-minute conversation, Wagner-Lawlor was even more torn. “I will keep watching,” she said, “but I’m not waiting for it like I was before.”

In 1970, Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori coined the term “uncanny valley” to describe the revulsion humans feel when confronted with a robot that has an eerie number of human-like qualities but is still clearly inhuman. Once something becomes too much like us ― and yet recognizably not us ― it becomes deeply uncomfortable, even repulsive.

“The Handmaid’s Tale” Season 2 is essentially the uncanny valley of America in 2018. The season premiere included a scene in which a line of handmaids is noosed to the sounds of Kate Bush’s “This Woman’s Work.” Just weeks before The Atlantic had hired (and then fired) conservative writer Kevin Williamson, who had previously suggested that women who have abortions should be hanged. The second episode featured a flashback in which ICE agents swarm airports, detaining individuals whose papers are deemed invalid ― including Emily (Alexis Bledel), who is cruelly separated from her wife and child. Just this month it was reported that hundreds of immigrant children have been separated from their parents at the U.S. border. Gileadean society is not our own, and yet pieces of the show hit nauseatingly close to home. 

For women of a certain age and political leaning, it’s almost too relatable ― as “SNL” pointed out, it’s “basically our ‘Sex and the City.’”

But perhaps this is also how we derive our utility. Just as “Sex and the City” functioned as a cultural touchstone for women in the early 2000s aching to divine the meaning of 30-something singledom, “The Handmaid’s Tale” serves as a ready-made talking point for women in 2018 who are trying to find a way to make sense of the politics coursing through Washington, D.C., and beyond, however unsettling that may be.

My colleague Claire Fallon argued that another show, NBC’s brilliant sitcom “The Good Place,” provides us the memes by which we can explain our current reality, distilling the utter despair many on the left feel down to a bite-size phrase: “This is the bad place!” “The phrase is both comically mild and comically extreme,” wrote Fallon. “We’re literally in hell, but we’re going to say it with a smile.” “The Handmaid’s Tale” does something similar, but instead of pithy memes that allow us to talk about our collective hell with a smile, the show gives us a shorthand to point to the hell that could be looming in the not-so-distant future ― and get angry about it now.

When a columnist wrote about the potential “redistribution of sex” as though men who feel entitled to women’s physical affection possess a valid point, women on Twitter asked if we already are “sort of” in Gilead.  When a Texas teacher was barred from the classroom after showing students a photo of her wife, my roommate deemed it “some Handmaid’s Tale shit.” “Under his eye,” “Praise be” and “May the Lord open” have become wry acknowledgments of mutual understanding and fear. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the rest of President Trump’s female enforcers are Aunt Lydias. The 52 percent of “nice white ladies” who voted for Trump in the first place are Serena Joys.

And the women pushing back on an oppressive status quo? Well, they’re handmaids of course.

What makes “The Handmaid’s Tale” such a powerful symbol for our potential dystopian future is that it not only gives us a language to discuss such a future, but also an aesthetic to represent it. When women showed up in the Texas Senate chambers in March 2017 dressed in blood red robes and white-winged hats to protest anti-abortion measures, they hardly needed to speak. Anyone who had read Atwood’s novel or had even seen a poster for the Hulu show knew the point they were making. Since then, handmaids have popped up across the country ― in California, Alabama, Ohio, Washington D.C., Florida, New Hampshire, New York and Missouri. The overarching message is clear: We will not walk quietly forward into a future where women have no autonomy over our bodies and our lives. We will not help create Gilead through silence and complicity.

Part of the backlash to Season 2 might be a symptom of the show’s precise marketing and promotional scheme. The fandom energy around Season 1 was initially driven by adoration of the novel, but a secondary groundswell formed out of the adaptation’s unintentional timeliness ― after all, Hulu acquired the show before Trump was elected and his administration began instituting eerily Gileadian policies.

“Nothing about the show changed, but the frame changed,” Atwood said during a recent Times Talk, referring to Trump’s influence on the series as its evolved.

The marketing reflected this evolution. To promote Season 1, Hulu enlisted women dressed as handmaids to roam around Austin during SXSW in 2017, and yet its cast and showrunner were still reticent to label the show as explicitly feminist. Season 2 is squarely of the Trump era. It’s no longer just accidentally relevant, but intentionally so. At this year’s SXSW festival, Hulu gave out jean jackets covered with resistance patches. The marketing materials I received before the premiere were emblazoned with #ResistSister. Margaret Atwood herself has indicated that she considers the second season of the show to be a call to action, while Elisabeth Moss has pushed back on those who avoid the series because it’s “too scary.” “Really? You don’t have the balls to watch a TV show?” she said in a May 5 interview with The Guardian. “This is happening in your real life.” 

“The Handmaid’s Tale” is so clearly tailored to a certain group of women that I understand bristling at the implication that we need to watch in order to validate our #feminist #resistance credentials. “You think we don’t know that the world is terrifying, that Iowa just passed the strictest abortion ban in the country, and that Nazis are emboldened?” we rail at our television screens, some of us eventually deciding that our emotional energy would be better spent elsewhere. It (understandably) might feel too exhausting to march and keep up with the news, to make calls to Congress and donate to all the causes that need our money, to speak up for communities we are a part of and those we aren’t ― and also watch a TV show that constantly reminds us not just how bleak a place our nation has become, but how much bleaker it could get.

And yet, I watch.

“There’s this constant thread of hope that things will change,” my friend Maya said when I asked why she also still watches the show. “I have to know what will happen.”

At the end of Episode 5, which aired on May 16, June’s voice returns after a stretch of being psychologically beaten into silence. Just when you’d be forgiven for assuming June was gone for good, in the episode’s final moments, after a suicide attempt and a miscarriage scare, she comes alive again.

“They do not own you,” she whispers through gritted teeth and a single tear to the baby growing inside of her. “And they do not own what you will become. Do you hear me? I’m gonna get you out of here. I’m gonna get us out of here. I promise you. I promise.”

Even in the darkest of circumstances, June finds the means of lighting her own fire. In a perverse way, watching “The Handmaid’s Tale” helps me believe that we can do the same. So I keep watching, week after week, torturous episode after torturous episode, looking for that reassurance, searching for answers.

What lingers with me after watching “The Handmaid’s Tale” is ultimately not the most brutal moments of torture ― hung bodies, torched arms, clitoridectomies. The real staying power is in the symbolism, the shorthand that lets us cut to the core of the terror we feel. There is a satisfaction inherent in using fiction to process reality. Like Gilead, America is an ugly place made palatable with grand rhetoric and beautiful visuals.

Praise be.

If you’re tapped into the world of pregnancy trends, you’ve likely seen milk bath maternity photos.

This style of photography has grown in popularity in recent years, as mothers and photographers share stunning images on Instagram, Pinterest and beyond. Milk bath maternity photography features pregnant women reclining in ― you guessed it ― milk baths. Typically, the baths are also filled with colorful flowers, and the expectant mothers pose in lace or tulle dresses, lingerie, or even nude.

Photographer Daisy Beatty told HuffPost she first came across the photographic trend a year-and-a-half ago and immediately started offering it to her clients.

“Milk bath photography has become popular in the last few years, but milk baths themselves date back a lot further than that,” Beatty said. “Legend has it that Cleopatra took milk baths in ancient Egypt. They are a great way to moisturize your skin ― they are even offered by some spas!”

Although milk bath maternity photography is still relatively uncommon, Beatty said that of the photo shoot options she offers, it’s one of the most asked about and most requested styles.

It’s difficult to trace the style’s exact origins. Husband-and-wife photography duo Annie Zhou and David Zhang told HuffPost they first noticed milk bath maternity photos around 2015, and photographer Michelle Santiago said she came across the poses on Pinterest around the same time.

Google searches turn up milk bath maternity pictures going back to 2014, and a 2017 Women’s Day article said that some have credited photographer Tiffany Burke with starting the trend. The rise of milk bath maternity photography also seems to have come after the concept of postpartum herbal baths hit the U.S. photography scene. 

Milk bath imagery without the pregnancy aspect seems to have earlier roots. Discussions of this style appear on photography forums going back to 2009. In 1984, Annie Leibovitz photographed Whoopi Goldberg bathing in milk, a take on her onstage bit about a little black girl trying to whiten her skin with Clorox.  

The 2012 film “Snow White and the Huntsman” depicts Charlize Theron’s youth-and-beauty-obsessed character Queen Ravenna taking a milk bath. Actress Claudette Colbert (in)famously bathed nude in milk as Empress Poppaea for the 1932 movie “The Sign of the Cross.” Brigitte Bardot filmed a milk bath scene when she played the same character in 1956.

Milk bath imagery has appeared in the fashion world for decades. Today it is also a popular style for art and boudoir photography.

Santiago believes the style has taken hold in the maternity world for a few reasons. 

“I think many people were looking to do something a little different than the traditional maternity portraits, and they are so peaceful and relaxing as well,” she said. “It’s a great excuse to be pampered for a little while. Just like any other trend, I think it will eventually plateau, but for now, I’m really enjoying this style of [photo] session!”

For Zhang and Zhou, their first milk bath client was Zhou herself while she was pregnant with their daughter.

“I felt like a million bucks when laying in the warm milk, surrounded by beautiful flowers, and I think every woman deserves to be pampered like this once in a while,” Zhou said. 

Photographer Sarah McDaniel, who first started doing milk bath shoots to raise awareness around eating disorders and make women of all sizes feel comfortable and beautiful, said she believes the photo style flips the idea that pregnant women can’t be sexy. 

“We as women are expected to only feel sexy before children, and then only feel beautiful when we are pregnant,” McDaniel said. “Why can’t we do both? Why can’t mothers feel sexy? We can feel powerful. We can feel sexy!” 

Creating a milk bath is a fairly simple process, as it’s typically a combination of whole milk and water. Condensed milk and various coffee creamers can work as well.

“Many people use real milk, which studies have proven to have benefits for the skin, although you should always thoroughly rinse off the milk afterwards to prevent any yeast infections,” Santiago said, adding that she prefers other ingredients. 

“I personally do not like using a large tub full of real milk as I find it wasteful for a photoshoot that will only last 30 minutes to an hour, so I use powdered creamer most of the time,” she said. “There are also milk bath soaps and bath bombs that can be used to create the same effect.”

Milk bath photography tends to involve bright lighting, and photographers experiment with different wardrobes and flowers, which are usually real, as fake flowers don’t float.

Many expectant mothers enjoy their milk bath photo sessions so much that they choose to take postpartum milk bath photos with their newborn babies. Dads have also gotten involved in the milk bath photography fad ― both earnestly and for comedic effect. Mothers have also parodied the trend.

As the style becomes more widespread, some people have questioned and criticized it for being wasteful or just plain “weird.” Beatty, however, said she’s never experienced any negativity. “I haven’t encountered criticism. People generally seem to really like the milk bath portraits,” she said. “The images are vibrant and unexpected, and get a lot of positive feedback and enthusiasm.”

Ultimately, Beatty hopes people who see her milk bath maternity photos see the beauty and strength in motherhood and femininity. 

“I hope they enjoy the beauty of the female form and are awed by what women can do,” she said. “I try to imbue the images with many forms of natural beauty. I hope the portraits instill viewers with wonder and respect for women and nature.”

Santiago echoed this sentiment, noting that she enjoys the close-up image of a mother and child in a peaceful setting, in contrast to the “epic landscape” maternity photos that are also popular today. 

“I love the basis of my photos to be about the natural beauty of a mother surrounded by nature. Whether that be in a pretty field or in a tub of flowers, I feel like a woman growing a child is the ultimate symbolism of Mother Earth,” she said. “It is one of the most beautiful things that happens in this world ― I mean, mothers are superheroes, and I feel it should always be celebrated.”

The New York Times published a story last week about the “high-fashion makeover” of Manhattan’s Canal Street, the main artery of Chinatown, that more or less gentrified Chinese people out of the narrative. Their voices were displaced with those of a founder of a “high-end” design firm, an owner of a fine jewelry label and a musician with an event space.

“Canal Street Cleans Up Nice,” read the original headline, which appeared in the Times’ Style section above a subheading that referred to the street as a “once derided thoroughfare most synonymous with fake designer goods.” 

After an outcry, the editor of the section expressed contrition and the story received a new headline: “The Gentrification of Canal Street.” Gone from the subhead were the words “once derided.”

“We can do better! This should have been better. And I’m glad people spoke up,” Choire Sicha, the Times’ Styles editor, wrote in an email to HuffPost.

In place of a frank insensitivity, the piece now displays a more genteel kind of racism. But even in its softened form, the story is still a product of the same historical forces behind the gentrification it describes.

From writer Hayley Phelan’s first very paragraph, describing “shrink-wrapped counterfeit purses displayed on a blanket,” the Times dispatch evokes a neighborhood of sordid, exotic character.

Herb Tam, curator and director of exhibitions at the Museum of Chinese in America in Manhattan, told HuffPost the Chinatown the Times sniffs at — the various “low” exotica, the wares being hawked, the tourists — is rooted in immigrants’ desire to make a living.

“Business leaders throughout Chinatown’s history have tried to lure with tourism,” Tam said. “Some of the architecture is sort of exaggerated Chinese motifs to draw tourists here, for example. For a lot of business people, they think that tourism is survival.”

Asians now have the second-highest poverty rate of any ethnic group in New York City, behind Hispanics. There are about 26,000 people of Asian descent living in Chinatown, with 44 percent living below the poverty line. But they’re not represented in the Times story either in terms of historical context or modern-day opinion. 

Much of the problem lies in the article’s facile view of gentrification as an aesthetic event, something that exists outside of historical and political considerations. Twitter users pointed this out:

Some of the language in the Times piece chimes with America’s longstanding view of Chinese communities as “racially unassimilable.” 

Beth Lew-Williams, an assistant professor at Princeton specializing in Asian-American history, previously told HuffPost that other Americans believed these communities “could not become Americanized. They were simultaneously racially inferior, backwards, savage, heathen ― and in some dangerous ways ― superior.”

Ironically, the Times published its article in the middle of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, which marks the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, built largely by Chinese immigrants from 1864 to 1869. Those immigrants were paid less than white workers ― and were described before Congress in 1877 as “a perpetual, unchanging, and unchangeable alien element that can never become homogenous; that their civilization is demoralizing and degrading to our people; that they degrade and dishonor labor; and they can never become citizens.”

The U.S. would later implement the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, stemming further immigration of Chinese laborers. It was the first major law that banned a group of people from immigrating to the U.S. because of their ethnicity.

During this exclusion era, most landlords wouldn’t rent to Chinese people.

“In the broadest strokes, Chinatowns were products of extreme forms of racial segregation,” Ellen D. Wu, a history professor at Indiana University Bloomington and author of The Color Of Success: Asian Americans And The Origins Of The Model Minority, told HuffPost in a past interview.

“That’s really how Chinatowns came into being,” Wu said, “not how we think about them now, as a fun place to get a meal or buy some tchotchkes, but as a way to contain a very threatening population in American life.”

Tam points out that Chinatown is still a working-class neighborhood today, even if it is flanked by two of the city’s most affluent neighborhoods.

“A lot of older folks who live here are on food stamps, and affordable housing issues are a big concern,” he told HuffPost.

One quote in the Times piece was particularly perplexing to Tam, he said ― “I think people were afraid of Canal Street for so long, and now they’re recognizing there are just so many advantages to the area,” Beth Bugdaycay, co-founder of the jewelry label Foundrae, told the paper.

“I’m not sure what was meant by being scared of Canal Street in the article, but one could read it in a historical lens,” Tam said. “Chinatown was once a place of vice and gambling and opium dens. But to call Canal Street and Chinatown scary, that is very much based on an Orientalist perspective.”

Tam also said Bugdaycay could have been referring to more recent history ― a wave of Chinese immigration to the U.S. in the 1970s and 1980s that led to the establishment of Chinatown’s youth gangs, which had origins in Hong Kong.

The stereotype of Chinese and Asians in general in America as being threats or “hustlers” is intertwined with immigration history. It dates back to the railroads, to exclusion, to what became Chinatowns.

In the counterfeit purse imagery in the Times story, Tam saw the persistence of that trope.

“The stereotype is that Chinese will do anything to make a little money, including selling designer-knockoff handbags. That’s also not everybody, and there are a lot of layers to that industry. Some of it is cultural, economic and political.”

Tam was also struck by another quote in the story: “I think we’re just beginning to see the neighborhood come alive,” Bugdaycay told the Times.

“When I see Canal Street being described as in need of revitalization or that there are new kinds of hip places for food and fashion, that is offensive,” Tam said. “That negates the culture that’s already been created and that’s very much alive here.” 

Readers have previously criticized the Times for its problematic takes on Asian-American communities and culture. Ellen Pollock, the Times’ Business Day editor, expressed regret last year after readers complained that a story about bubble tea came across as a “discovery” of a long-popular drink.

Jordan Cohen, New York Times communications director, told HuffPost that the newspaper learns from these instances.

“The Times takes the reactions and critiques seriously and use them to encourage conversations about better ways to report and present stories,” Cohen wrote. “We urge desks, especially for stories that might be culturally sensitive, to seek out a wide range of colleagues’ perspectives before publication.”

Tam, for his part, also had some thoughts. 

“Editors need to do a better job of providing historical context,” he said. “If they’re going to write about real estate and not talk about the affordable housing issues, it seems really out of touch for the journalistic chops that they claim to have. I don’t care what section of the newspaper it’s in. Whatever section, they need to do a better job.” 

For Martin, learning to live as his authentic self didn’t have an age limit. 

An 86-year-old photographer, he opens up about his decision to come out as gay as part of 5 Gum’s “No Regrets” online short film series. He said concealing his true identity for 85 years left him riddled with insecurities and self-doubt. 

“It’s tough to be an outsider,” he explains in the clip, which can be viewed above. “I regret being such a sissy, so nervous, so bloody shy.” 

Later in the clip, Martin beams as he watches video footage of young LGBTQ people saying how his personal journey affected them, then he steps out into a crowd of dancers at his very first LGBTQ pride parade. 

“Regret is a powerful, universal emotion, and 5 Gum believes that you regret the things you don’t do in life more than the things you do,” 5 Gum’s brand manager Ashley Findlay told HuffPost. “When we heard Martin’s story, we knew we had to help him share it with the world to encourage younger generations to live life to the fullest.” 

Martin is one of five seniors profiled in the “No Regrets” series, which debuted online last week. Also featured is Stanford, a black man who cast aside his passion for swimming at a largely white high school in 1960s Chicago, and Lin, a Chinese opera singer who was so dedicated to her craft, she never had the time to travel and leave her homeland. 

Former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama’s post-White House legacy will now include being media moguls, marking a new step in expanding their already influential cultural footprint.

The Obamas will produce films and series for Netflix, the streaming service confirmed on Monday, after several news outlets reported earlier this year that the deal was in the works.

Representatives for Netflix and the Obamas declined to comment on the deal’s details, including the timeline for their projects or what subjects the Obamas might explore. A source close to the deal told HuffPost that the earliest the Obamas’ work would appear on the streaming platform would be in late 2019.

A source told CNN that some of the projects will include the Obamas appearing on camera, while they’ll be working behind the scenes on others.

“One of the simple joys of our time in public service was getting to meet so many fascinating people from all walks of life, and to help them share their experiences with a wider audience,” the former president said in a statement. “That’s why Michelle and I are so excited to partner with Netflix ― we hope to cultivate and curate the talented, inspiring, creative voices who are able to promote greater empathy and understanding between peoples, and help them share their stories with the entire world.”

The former first lady said in a statement that she and her husband “have always believed in the power of storytelling to inspire us, to make us think differently about the world around us, and to help us open our minds and hearts to others. Netflix’s unparalleled service is a natural fit for the kinds of stories we want to share, and we look forward to starting this exciting new partnership.”

According to the streaming service, the Obama’s work will include a variety of content, adding to Netflix’s already large catalog of original programming, according to the streaming service. Their projects will appear across all of Netflix’s international editions, potentially reaching 125 million members in 190 countries, the service said.

The Obamas will produce their work through a newly founded company, Higher Ground Productions, the streaming service said. 

Their work will likely focus on some of the issues they championed in the White House, part of a wide range of projects and initiatives they have launched in their post-White House life, including public service fellowships and ongoing plans for the Obama presidential library in Chicago.

Netflix head Ted Sarandos called the Obamas “uniquely positioned to discover and highlight stories of people who make a difference in their communities and strive to change the world for the better.”

The former president recently appeared on the Netflix show “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction,” hosted by comedian David Letterman.