Hundreds of people responded to Lucía Garrett’s Instagram reel with some version of the same thing: “I had no idea.”

The reel was about Mexican words with Náhuatl roots, such as chocolate, papalote, jitomate, and cacahuate. Words bicultural families use every day, in kitchens and playgrounds and conversations, without knowing they are also living pieces of Indigenous history that have made it into their everyday lives. The comments kept coming. And Garrett started thinking about the children.

“What if our children grew up knowing that from the very beginning?” she says. “What if, instead of discovering this as adults on social media, they simply understood that their language carries centuries of resilience and culture?”

That question became Mi primer libro de palabras con raíces náhuatl, a children’s board book written entirely in Spanish, illustrated by Garrett herself, and available now for pre-order at $13.99 through PatoPato, her children’s brand.

From Reels to Board Books

Garrett created PatoPato around a single goal: removing the barrier between parents who want to share their language and culture and those who actually do. The Náhuatl reel was part of that work. The response to it pushed her further.

“These words don’t belong in a reel that people scroll past,” she says, “but in the hands of the children who will carry them into the next generation.”

The book introduces children to 20 everyday Spanish words with Náhuatl roots through colorful illustrations, pronunciation guides, and fun facts about Mexican history and culture, according to the PatoPato product page. Garrett wrote and illustrated the book herself. It is built as a board book, designed for babies, toddlers, and preschoolers.

How She Chose the 20 Words

The selection started with one standard: words children actually say.

“There are thousands of beautiful words with Náhuatl roots, but I wasn’t trying to make a dictionary,” Garrett says. “I wanted a three-year-old to open the book and immediately recognize the vocabulary.”

She applied three criteria to each word: whether it is part of a child’s everyday life, whether its original meaning or story would surprise both parents and children, and whether it represents a meaningful aspect of Mexican culture, including food, nature, family, or daily life. Because she also illustrated the book, she considered whether each word could support a fun illustration.

Some words she loved did not make the cut. Aguacate, for instance, traces back to the Náhuatl word ahuacatl, which means “testicle.” That one, Garrett notes, may find its way into a future book.

Written Entirely in Spanish

The book contains no English. In a children’s book market where bilingual formats are standard, that is a deliberate choice.

“The connection between papalote and its Náhuatl roots disappears if you replace it with ‘kite,’” Garrett says. “The language itself is the story.”

She sees a specific gap in what bilingual books typically offer. “Too often, that means English is still the default, and Spanish is there as a translation or an addition. There’s a place for those books, but they’re creating a different experience, and they’re serving a different need.”

For the families PatoPato serves, Garrett wants a space where children can think, imagine, ask questions, and discover entirely in Spanish. “This book is creating one small space where Spanish gets to stand on its own,” she says.

For the Child Who Feels In Between

Garrett wrote this book with a specific child in mind: the bicultural child who has absorbed, in some form, the message that they are not Mexican enough or not American enough.

“Children feel connected to a culture when it feels familiar,” she says. “When their everyday is full of its food, its traditions, its stories, its language, and they begin to see themselves inside all of it.”

She describes the moment she hopes the book creates: a child opens it, recognizes a word they already use, and realizes the story behind it belongs to them. “Suddenly, they begin to realize this isn’t just their parents’ story. It’s theirs too. They begin to realize they’re part of something much bigger than themselves.”

The goal has never been to make a child choose. “Bicultural children don’t have to grow up feeling like they have to choose between identities,” Garrett says. “They can fully belong in the country they’re growing up in while also feeling deeply connected to where their family comes from.”

When a parent reads the book aloud and says “chocolate” or “papalote” with their child, Garrett hopes for a moment of shared wonder, a parent learning alongside their child, both of them realizing these words have been carrying a story forward without anyone noticing.

“Helping children realize that the words they speak every day aren’t just vocabulary,” she says. “Son nuestra herencia viva.”

A TikTok creator named Oz posted earlier this summer that her period was 13 days late “and counting.” “June has just been weird,” she said. “This is not typical for me.”

She was far from alone. Across TikTok, Reddit, and Instagram, thousands of women from the UK to South Africa to India to the United States reported the same disruption: periods arriving anywhere from four to ten days late, skipping June entirely, or showing up twice within the same calendar month. The conversation spread so quickly that it became genuinely viral, complete with competing theories about its cause.

Some pointed to astrology, others to climate. Some even pointed to CERN.

Here is what we actually know.

What Women Reported

The volume of reports demanded attention. On Reddit’s r/TwoXChromosomes, a thread asking whether other women had experienced an irregular June cycle attracted hundreds of responses. Women described periods arriving 4 to 10 days late, cycles stretching to 45 days in people with consistent 30- to 33-day cycles, and multiple instances of two full cycles within the same month. Pregnancy tests came back negative across the board.

“For 9 years I have regular cycles (28 to 32 days),” one Reddit user wrote. “Never got 2 in a month. Only happened in JUNE 2026. THAT’S WEIRD.”

Other women on the same thread reported no disruption at all and pushed back on the premise. “More people talking about it does not mean it’s happening more than normal,” one user wrote. Another put it in three words: “Confirmation bias in action.” They have a point worth holding onto, and we will return to it.

The Astrology Crowd Has a Theory

For a significant portion of online commenters, the timing suggested something cosmic.

June 2026 carried a high concentration of major astrological transits. Saturn, the planet astrologers associate with structure, timing, and delays, turned retrograde on June 28. The month also featured a New Moon in Gemini on June 15, a phase astrologers associate with fresh starts and resets, and a Full Moon in Capricorn on June 30, symbolizing culmination and release. Astrologers describe months like this as periods of disruption before a new rhythm settles in. For anyone tracking both their cycle and their cosmic chart, the convergence felt significant.

Others went further. Several Reddit threads referenced CERN’s four-year operational pause, which began on June 29, with some users speculating that the shutdown altered the nature of time itself and disrupted biological rhythms. Still others pointed to a karmic shift or a broader awakening of matriarchal energy as the underlying cause.

However, one thing is clear: there is no scientific evidence linking planetary movements to menstrual cycles. The CERN theories have even less grounding in documented physiology.

While Not a Planet, the Moon Does Have an Effect. And There, the Science Has More to Say

A September 2025 study published in Science Advances analyzed long-term menstrual records from 176 women over periods of up to 37 years and found that menstrual cycles historically synchronized with the lunar cycle, specifically with the full and new Moon, before 2010, per the study. After 2010, when LED lighting and smartphones became widespread, that population-level synchronization largely disappeared. The authors hypothesize that artificial light at night disrupts the lunar light signal that historically entrained the cycle.

Gravitational coupling persisted. The study found measurable synchronization of menstrual cycles with the Moon’s gravitational cycles, particularly in January, when the Earth is closest to the Sun and gravitational forces among the Moon, Sun, and Earth are at their strongest. The authors concluded that the human menstrual cycle behaves like a true circalunar clock, an endogenous biological oscillator that, given the right conditions, synchronizes with the Moon.

The reach of the astrological explanations still says something real about how many women are searching for a framework that matches the scale of what they experienced.

The Answer Might Be On Climate Change

The UK broke its record for the hottest June temperature this year, with a peak of 37°C (98ºF) in East Anglia. Since May, the UK alone experienced three heatwaves, and scientists estimate more than 2,700 excess deaths in England and Wales during the May and June heat periods, a toll they attribute to climate change. The rest of the world has experienced something similar.

And it has a documented effect on the menstrual cycle.

The hypothalamus, the part of the brain that regulates hormones, reads extreme heat as a physical stressor and prioritizes temperature regulation above nearly everything else, including the hormonal signaling that drives ovulation, per Nua Woman. Specifically, heat stress disrupts the pulsatile release of GnRH (gonadotropin-releasing hormone), which initiates the hormonal cascade that leads to ovulation, according to research cited by Nua Woman. Less GnRH means less ovulation signal. Delayed ovulation results in a delayed period.

A 2021 cross-sectional study found that climate and temperature shifts had measurable effects on menstrual cycle length. Warmer temperatures were associated with shorter cycles, while extreme heat events were associated with delayed or skipped periods.

Dehydration compounds the disruption. It thickens the blood, reduces circulation to the uterine lining, and makes periods heavier and more painful. Heat also degrades sleep quality, raising cortisol and further suppressing reproductive hormones. Being on your period already raises core body temperature by 33ºF. In a heatwave, every fraction of a degree adds up.

Pharmacist and TV health expert Thorrun Govind told Metro UK: “The menstrual cycle is sensitive to changes within the body and factors such as disrupted sleep and heatwaves can impact it.”

Dr. Nighat Arif, a UK women’s health expert, offered a clarifying note for anyone who experienced what felt like two periods in the same month: that pattern may reflect a shorter cycle in which ovulation occurred earlier than usual, per IOL. Two periods do not always mean two separate events. It can mean one cycle that started and ended within the same calendar window.

The Skeptics Have a Point, and So Does the Science

The confirmation bias concern is real. When a post goes viral asking, “Did your period do something weird in June?”, the women who experienced an irregular cycle are far more likely to engage than the women whose cycles were completely normal. Without population-level data from period-tracking apps like Flo or Clue, there is no way to confirm whether June 2026 represented a genuine statistical anomaly or a very noisy conversation about something that happens to someone every month.

Dr. Suzanne Wylie, GP and medical adviser for IQdoctor, said: “These effects are likely to be quite modest; they won’t happen to everyone.”

At the same time, the physiological mechanisms by which extreme heat disrupts ovulation are documented and published. The summer was record-breaking. The body does not operate in a sealed compartment separate from its environment. The idea that a June this extreme left menstrual cycles completely untouched requires more faith in biological impermeability than the evidence supports.

The honest answer is probably this: confirmation bias operating on top of a real environmental stressor, amplified by an algorithm that fed the conversation to everyone who clicked once. Some of the June reports reflect normal monthly variation that found an audience. Some of them reflect genuine disruption from heat, sleep deprivation, dehydration, and stress. The two are not in conflict.

It Was About Damn Time

The more interesting thing is that we are talking about it.

For a long time, menstrual irregularities were something women tracked quietly in apps and mentioned to their doctors in passing, if they mentioned them at all. The fact that thousands of women compared notes publicly, across countries, in real time, and demanded an explanation is something worth marking. They expected answers. They expected their bodies to be taken seriously. They expected the conversation to happen out loud.

Climate change will keep pressing on women’s bodies. Summers will keep breaking records. Heatwaves will become longer and more frequent. More Junes like this one are coming. The least we can do is keep talking about it.

And hey, if it’s a sign that the matriarchy is finally upon us, it was about damn time.

Love Island USA Season 8 ended Saturday night with Bryce Dettloff and Trinity Tatum taking home the $100,000 prize. They coupled up on night one of the June 2 premiere, navigated questions about their age gap (she’s 22, he turned 30 inside the villa), and won by popular vote on July 12. He told her he loved her. She said it back. They finally jumped in the famously underused villa pool.

Good for them.

Now, the season had more to say.

Making Breakfast Is Apparently a Grand Gesture Now

Somewhere between Season 1 and Season 8, the bar for romantic effort in the Love Island villa hit the floor.

Fans spent the season watching men get celebrated for doing the kind of things that used to be called basic courtesy: pulling a woman aside for a conversation, writing a letter (that production had to request), and making breakfast. And viewers all over the country agree. According to viewers on the Love Island US Fan Page on Facebook, the men largely skipped proactive pursuit all season. “No grand gestures that production didn’t have to ask them to do,” one fan wrote. “These men aren’t trying to actively pursue any of them.”

Reddit users observed the same pattern throughout r/LoveIslandUSA_. Fans treated men who showed the bare minimum of attentiveness as if they were doing something exceptional. The crowd’s response to it says something about how low the bar has become in general.

Casa Amor Reveals Everything

Casa Amor is the segment of the show where new islanders arrive, and existing couples are tested. It has become, season after season, the moment where you find out who was actually invested.

As expected, Season 8 followed the pattern. Several men who had appeared locked in with their partners immediately began entertaining new arrivals. Coast comfortably in an established couple, feel secure, then recalibrate when new options appear.

Zach’s behavior toward Kayda drew the most attention. Viewers noted he would pull back when Kayda tried to explore, cycle into reassurance-seeking mode until she settled him down, then repeat. “He’s playing the ‘I’ll keep her by making her insecure’ game,” one viewer wrote. KC’s resentment, multiple viewers noted, traced all the way back to day one, when no one initially picked him. Casa Amor became where that boiled over.

Called Out? Play the Victim

When the women confronted the men about their behavior, the season showed a consistent response: deflect, reverse the blame, act aggrieved that the conversation was happening at all.

Sincere’s final exchange with Sol, after he pursued her in Casa Amor and then returned to Melanie, became the clearest example. When Sol tried to address how his behavior had affected her, Sincere responded, “Are we just going to sit here and talk about how bad I am?” and “You’re no angel.” He deflected and reversed blame onto her, declining to engage with what she said.

The pattern held across the season. Viewers on r/LoveIslandUSA_ repeatedly noted that multiple islanders met accountability with indignation, unwilling to sit with discomfort long enough to acknowledge it.

And Then There Was “Epi-Tome”

One more thing Season 8 gave us: Sincere went viral for using the word “epitome” to describe Casa Amor and pronouncing it “epi-tome.” Separately, islanders’ confusion over tuna tartare, which descended into a conversation about cheese, made rounds on YouTube.

Yeah, these moments are funny. They are also, coincidentally, part of a larger conversation happening outside the villa. A recent Forbes piece argues that Gen Z’s communication struggles trace back to circumstances: the early career stage, pandemic disruption, and a genuine shift toward digital communication over live, high-pressure exchanges. “If every generation gets the same complaint,” says JP Pawliw, president of IHHP and the piece’s primary source, “the issue isn’t the generation,” per Forbes.

Last week, a woman on Reddit discovered why her shoulder had been in agony for eight months. Soon enough, she found some answers. However, she didn’t find out from her doctor. She didn’t find out from a specialist. She found out thanks to Penélope Cruz on a beauty brand’s YouTube channel.

“TIL that my frozen shoulder (that I’ve had for eight months) is likely due to perimenopause,” she wrote. “Not Penélope Cruz being better educated in the menopause than the myriad of male doctors I’ve seen over the past five years.”

She was not alone. When Cruz and her The Invite co-star Olivia Wilde sat down for Allure’s Truth Serum series this week, they talked openly about perimenopause, and specifically about a symptom most women have never heard of: frozen shoulder, also known as adhesive capsulitis. According to the Mayo Clinic, it is a multi-year condition in which the movement of one shoulder becomes limited and painful.

According to Midi Health, it may occur during perimenopause when falling estrogen levels lead to shoulder stiffness and restricted movement. According to countless women in the comments section, it has been agonizing. And nobody told them why.

This is what happens when celebrities say the things the medical system hasn’t bothered to explain.

What Penélope Actually Said

Cruz, 52, and Wilde, 42, are co-stars in The Invite, the A24 film directed by Wilde that premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival to a standing ovation and opened in theaters on June 26. Cruz plays Pína, a therapist and sexologist. One of Pína’s scenes, in which she talks openly about perimenopause, was not in the original script. Cruz put it there herself.

“I wanted to bring that to her,” Cruz explained to Entertainment Weekly. “If she is going to talk about sex, she has to talk about this.”

On the Allure set, Wilde asked Cruz to share the part of perimenopause she thinks is least discussed publicly. Cruz didn’t hedge.

“It can last 10, 12 years,” she said. “It can start as early as 40. The ups and downs can be crazy.” She described being 41 when her doctor told her that her hormones would be “doing this crazy dance for the next 10 or 12 years.” Her first reaction: “I thought it was a really bad joke. I thought it was not possible to handle that.”

She then described her own experience in precise, clinical terms: she develops ovarian cysts almost every month, cysts that spike estrogen levels so dramatically that labs have flagged the results as errors. “You can go from a number 30 of estrogen to a number 500,” she said. “They would look at that and say, ‘No, this is a mistake from the lab, let’s repeat the test.’ And it was right.”

“People have to know,” she said, “because you have to prepare yourself.”

She also credited bioidentical hormones, used in hormone replacement therapy to treat perimenopause and menopause symptoms, for helping her manage. “God bless bioidentical hormones,” she said.

The Frozen Shoulder Heard Around the Internet

It was Wilde who brought up frozen shoulder during the Allure conversation. Cruz had shared the symptom with her while researching Pína’s role, knowledge she credited to board-certified OB-GYN Dr. Mary Claire Haver.

As many, Wilde said she now thinks about frozen shoulder constantly. “I’m just waiting for my shoulder to freeze,” she laughed.

The internet was not laughing. Comment sections filled with women connecting dots they had never been given the chance to connect. “I’m nine months into mine and had no idea until now as well,” one person wrote on Reddit. “The doctor and I even discussed how our elderly mothers have experienced this. I knew about hot flashes and night sweats, but not this. It has been agonizing at times.”

Others wrote about their mothers, who had considered shoulder surgery without ever being told that perimenopause might be the cause.

Speaking to Tyla, Dr. Ravina Bhanot described frozen shoulder as an “under-recognized perimenopause symptom,” explaining that falling estrogen is thought to increase inflammation and stiffness around joints, with shoulders particularly vulnerable in women around ages 50 to 60. Studies suggest that hormone replacement therapy can also lower the risk of frozen shoulder in post-menopausal women, according to research cited by Duke Health. And the prognosis, Dr. Bhanot clarified, is good: “It’s very treatable with physiotherapy and anti-inflammatories, and it does resolve.”

That information exists. It simply was not reaching people through the channels it should have.

This Is Bigger Than a Beauty Segment

Cruz has been making this argument for years. In a 2019 interview with Tatler magazine, she said: “There are too many taboos surrounding women’s bodies, and I think it equals a big lack of respect. Words like ‘period’, ‘post-partum depression’, ‘menopause’. Even today, those words, you bring them up at a dinner table, everybody gets nervous.”

She sharpened that argument in Entertainment Weekly this week: “It’s shocking that over decades, we’ve stuck to the same information about how women’s bodies work. Look at funding for investigation into any illness that affects only women — we don’t get even half the investment. It is a level of control or suppression.”

“Without health, we have nothing,” she said. “You talk about real equality? Why don’t we start with health?”

She is not the only one saying it. Two weeks ago, Alanis Morissette, also 52, called menopause her “truth serum” in an interview with The Sunday Times. “The procreative imperative keeps me ooey-gooey, then when that goes away I’m in my authentic truth,” she said. When asked why she would start hormone replacement therapy if stopping later could bring symptoms back, she had one answer: “Who’s going off it?!”

The regulatory landscape is also slowly catching up. In November 2025, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that the FDA had begun removing “black box” warnings from menopausal hormone therapy products, according to AARP. Those warnings had discouraged generations of women from pursuing treatment. Hormone therapy is not for everyone. AARP notes it is generally not recommended for people with a history of blood clots, breast cancer, heart attack, or certain other conditions. But for many women, the option had been effectively taken off the table.

What Cruz did on a beauty brand’s YouTube channel was not glamorous. It was just necessary.

The Symptoms We Are Adding to Our List

The National Menopause Foundation has identified 36 known symptoms of perimenopause and menopause, according to the Cleveland Clinic. Hot flashes and night sweats are on that list. So is everything below — and according to menopause specialist Dr. Zubina Mawji, MD, about 20% of patients present with symptoms that are never immediately connected to perimenopause at all.

“Women oftentimes know when they’re experiencing the most obvious signs,” Dr. Mawji told the Cleveland Clinic. “But it’s only when we start delving into other possible symptoms that they realize it could all be related.”

Here is what they might not realize is related, per the Cleveland Clinic and UCLA Health:

Skin, hair, and nails: Sudden acne recurrence (sometimes teenage-level breakouts), hair thinning and loss, brittle nails, dry and itchy skin, and unexpected body odor.

Mood and mental health: New or worsening anxiety, depression (in approximately 20% to 30% of women, according to the Cleveland Clinic), and panic disorder, which develops or worsens around menopause in an estimated 10% of women.

Gut and digestion: Constipation, diarrhea, bloating, heartburn, and acid reflux, all connected to estrogen receptors in the gastrointestinal tract, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

Energy and sleep: Fatigue, insomnia, and night sweats that wake you up for months at a time.

Nervous system and senses: Difficulty concentrating, dizziness, “body zaps” (brief electric shock sensations), tingling in hands and feet, and dry eyes, which affect up to 60% of perimenopausal women, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

Joints and muscles: Joint pain, which affects up to 60% of women in menopause according to the National Menopause Foundation, muscle tension, headaches, breast pain, and frozen shoulder.

Heart: Heart palpitations, which affect up to 42% of perimenopausal women according to a review cited by the Cleveland Clinic, and changes to cholesterol levels as estrogen’s protective effects decline.

Everything else: New or worsened allergies, urinary urgency and incontinence, increased UTIs, loss of libido, and elevated risk of osteoporosis (10% to 20% of bone loss occurs in the first five years of menopause, according to the Cleveland Clinic).

UCLA Health ob/gyn Dr. Rajita Patil, director of UCLA Health’s Comprehensive Menopause Care program, put the mandate plainly: “Don’t suffer silently. Recognize what’s going on and then advocate for the care you need.”

By Carmen Aub.

I remember an old home video shot on a camcorder. I’m about nine, missing a tooth, and dressed in pink. When asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I answered without hesitation: famous.

Today, I think about my inner child—the one I cry with after a “NO” at an audition, and the one I celebrate with by dancing to the songs from “El Diario de Daniela”. With a career spanning nearly 17 years, much of my life has unfolded on set. I started fueled by goals, but also shadowed by insecurities about what it truly meant to be an actress.

Over the years, I discovered that I wasn’t looking for fame; I wanted to be taken seriously.

I wanted to be respected for my work, my talent, and who I am. Fame can come through many paths, but building a career and finding your place within an industry is something completely different.

When I was 20 years old, I got the call that changed my life: “You got the role of Flor Cáceres for ‘¿Dónde está Elisa?’” Without knowing it, that milestone would bring questions about appearance, physical standards, and the expectations we women face. However, the true turning point came in 2014 when I joined the cast of “El Señor de los Cielos” to play Rutila Casillas.

Spending over a decade on such a production was a unique era of growth.

I matured alongside the series in the public eye, learning that a character can become a powerful reflection for the audience.

In the beginning, joining a story that portrays such raw worlds meant challenging stigmas and traditional narratives. But Rutila broke paradigms by showing a woman with power, a voice, ambition, and the agency to make her own decisions. Through characters like Rutila Casillas, Mónica Robles, and Diana Ahumada, I realized that women do not have to choose just one version of themselves. We can be feminine and strong, sensitive and powerful, vulnerable and capable.

I also learned the value of women supporting women.

For a long time, we were taught to compete against one another, when in reality, we go further by lifting each other up. That doesn’t mean we stop being human; we might feel insecure or envious because those emotions exist, but the difference lies in how we respond to them. I have learned to transform those feelings into admiration, allowing me to look at another actress and say, “You deserve this, you are amazing.”

While we have made progress, there is still a long way to go. More and more women are occupying key spaces as leaders, entrepreneurs, and activists, yet we continue to face inequalities. We still earn less than our male colleagues, and we face twice the pressure to prove our capability in an industry where physical appearance and age seem to have a countdown clock.

When a woman stands firm in negotiations or sets boundaries, she is often stigmatized as “difficult,” “demanding,” or a “diva,” whereas that exact same behavior in a man is applauded as leadership and strength of character. I learned that you can be kind and firm at the same time, without shrinking yourself to be accepted.

And over the years, I have also witnessed the immense pressure surrounding aging.

For a woman, growing older still feels like something we are supposed to hide, as if the years strip away our value. Experience is celebrated in men, but for us, it becomes a contradictory demand: to possess the maturity of age, but the appearance of youth.

If I could look back today and speak to that nine-year-old girl, or to the young Carmen who stepped onto the set of “El Señor de los Cielos” for the very first time, I would tell her not to confuse fame with a calling. I would tell her never to lose her peace chasing approval, and that her worth isn’t found in likes, but in what is real.

I would also tell her to be bolder in defending herself, to ask for what she deserves. To remember that the entertainment world, while a place where dreams come true, is still a business. And just like in any business, everyone looks out for their own interests. That is why we must learn to look out for ourselves and confidently occupy the space we have worked so hard for.

Now, as a mother, I understand these expectations even more deeply, and I embrace the past 17 years with gratitude. What comes next for me is to keep building, exploring new facets, and leading my own projects, all while keeping my values and the voice I discovered along the way fully intact.

Argentina entered the 2026 World Cup having done something genuinely striking. The government of Buenos Aires compiled a list of 13,000 people, mostly fathers who owe child support, and submitted it to U.S. homeland security, requesting that they be banned from attending matches. “Those who fail to meet a responsibility as fundamental as feeding their children must face the consequences, said Buenos Aires Mayor Jorge Macri.

Argentina’s squad then took the field. All while two of their players have faced sexual assault allegations. Gonzalo Montiel was charged in 2023 and acquitted in 2024. Thiago Almada was investigated and not charged. Both are playing, as if nothing was happening.

They are far from alone, and the list of players who have faced rape or sexual assault allegations is long.

At Least Eight Players at This World Cup Have Faced Rape or Sexual Assault Allegations

Thomas Partey of Ghana is facing seven counts of rape and one count of sexual assault brought by four different women in England, according to The Athletic. He was first charged in July 2025 and faced two additional counts in February 2026. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges and denies any wrongdoing. His trial is expected in 2027 at Southwark Crown Court. Ghana coach Carlos Queiroz justified his inclusion on the grounds of “the presumption of innocence.”

However, Partey’s participation required some maneuvering. His original visa application to Canada stated he had no criminal charges, which was inaccurate given the charges against him. Canadian authorities denied him entry, and he missed Ghana’s opening match in Toronto. He played freely in the United States.

Morocco’s captain Achraf Hakimi, widely considered one of the best defenders in the world, will stand trial in France for rape stemming from a 2023 allegation. He lost his appeal during the second week of the World Cup, according to Front Office Sports. He denies the allegations. Morocco coach Mohamed Ouahbi has said the team is “behind” him, according to ESPN. During Morocco’s penalty shootout, Fox Sports lead analyst Stu Holden called Hakimi the team’s “star man” before listing his accolades. Hakimi missed his kick. Morocco is still advanced.

Similarly, Cape Verde captain Ryan Mendes is under active police investigation in New Zealand for allegedly raping his team’s FIFA liaison during a tournament in March 2026. He has not publicly commented. And Cape Verde’s federation did not respond to requests for comment.

For his part, Japan’s Kaishū Sano was arrested in July 2024 after he and two others allegedly gang-raped a woman at a hotel in Tokyo, according to South China Morning Post. During interrogation, he reportedly denied the allegations, and charges were dropped after a private financial settlement with the victim. Sano then publicly offered what he called a “sincere apology to the victim for my actions that caused great trouble.”

The Japan Football Association categorized the incident as a “personal mistake” and issued no long-term ban or expulsion from the national team. Meanwhile, Sano scored Japan’s only goal in a 2-1 Round of 32 loss to Brazil. Similarly, his teammate Junya Ito was investigated for sexual assault in 2024, denied the allegations, and sued the woman who accused him. Prosecutors dropped the case, citing a lack of evidence. The woman’s lawyer called that outcome “extremely unjust.”

But nothing of this is new. Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo has been in and out of courts for nearly two decades over a woman’s allegation that he raped her in Las Vegas in 2009. The two settled in 2010 for $375,000. She sued again in 2018, claiming she had been pressured into the settlement and a non-disclosure agreement. The case was dismissed in 2022. Her appeal was denied in 2023.

Meanwhile, Ronaldo has denied the allegations throughout. He even appeared at the White House alongside Donald Trump as part of a Saudi delegation in November 2025. He scored for Portugal against Croatia on July 2 before Spain eliminated the team on July 6.

FIFA’s Response Has Been Consistent: Silence

When Front Office Sports asked FIFA for comment on the multiple players competing under rape or sexual assault allegations, the organization did not respond. Regarding Ryan Mendes specifically, FIFA said in a statement that it “takes any allegation of misconduct extremely seriously.”

Jennifer Simmons Kaleba, a spokesperson for the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, told Front Office Sports what that statement amounts to: “That’s the standard line we hear whenever any organization’s governing body is looking into accusations of sexual assault. But taking sexual assault charges seriously should also include creating and insisting upon environments where the behavior is neither tolerated nor swept under the rug.”

Canada Was the Only One That Drew a Line

When Canada denied Partey entry, court documents showed immigration officials making a specific distinction. The fact that Partey had not been convicted was “irrelevant” to their analysis. “Given the explicit nature of the allegations in the indictment, it was open to the (immigration) officer to conclude that the applicant committed serious acts of sexual violence that render him inadmissible to Canada,” the documents read.

Canada recognized a difference between the presumption of innocence, which entitles someone to a fair trial, and the assumption that nothing should change until a verdict arrives. No other country, federation, or governing body did so at this tournament.

The NFL, in contrast, has a publicly available conduct policy that reads: “It is not enough simply to avoid being found guilty of a crime in a court of law. We are all held to a higher standard and must conduct ourselves in a way that is responsible, promotes the values of the NFL, and is lawful.” FIFA has no equivalent.

Football journalist Cerys Jones, who spent months investigating football’s relationship to violence against women, wrote in The Athletic: “If the issue is not thrust into the spotlight by high-profile allegations, football does not give violence against women a second thought. Decision-makers do not consider it worth their time to come up with clear policies, or consider the message that they want to send in these situations — both to players about what is acceptable and to survivors about what the consequences will be of them coming forward.”

The World Cup final is on July 19. The list is eight names long and not getting shorter.

On July 3, 2026, approximately 1,000 guests gathered at Madison Square Garden in New York City to watch Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce get married. Thousands of fans stood outside. The internet devoted itself entirely to the flowers, the dress, the guest list, and the cake. And while all of that happened, the rest of the world kept moving — because it always does.

Here is what was happening at the same time.

1. The United States Was Actively at War

Since February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel have been at war with Iran, following joint airstrikes that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The war has cost U.S. taxpayers an estimated $113.3 billion as of mid-June. It triggered a global fuel crisis after Iran blocked the Strait of Hormuz. By the wedding weekend, U.S. and Iranian officials were holding indirect ceasefire talks in Doha, through Qatari and Pakistani mediators. Vice President JD Vance said the talks were “going well.”

2. Iran Was Burying Its Supreme Leader, and No One Could Find the New One

The man killed in the February airstrikes, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was being given a seven-day state funeral from July 3 to 9. Millions of mourners gathered across Tehran, Qom, Najaf, and Karbala. Organizers expected between 15 and 20 million people to participate in the processions, making it the largest state funeral in Iran’s history. Representatives from more than 100 countries were attending.

And Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the slain Ayatollah and the man selected to lead the Islamic Republic through its biggest crisis in 47 years, was not there. He has not been seen or heard publicly since taking power, according to Time. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in March that Mojtaba had been “wounded and likely disfigured” in the same strikes that killed his father, and Reuters reported in April that he may have lost a leg.

3. The Venezuela Earthquake Death Toll Was Still Rising

On June 24, twin earthquakes measuring 7.2 and 7.5 struck the northern coast of Venezuela. By July 3, the death toll had risen to 2,645, with nearly 50,000 people still unaccounted for. More than 60,000 buildings had been damaged or destroyed, and the country had experienced more than 862 aftershocks.

Among the missing and the dead were 146 Venezuelan nationals who had been deported by ICE from Miami that same morning. Their flight landed at 10:22 a.m. Venezuelan authorities placed them in a hotel that collapsed the same evening.

4. America’s 250th Birthday Was a Disaster

July 4, 2026, was the 250th anniversary of the United States’ Declaration of Independence. The celebrations did not go as planned. A historic heat dome had blanketed the eastern two-thirds of the country, forcing the cancellation of parades and fireworks displays in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Hartford, and elsewhere, according to Al Jazeera. A thunderstorm delayed Trump’s anniversary speech at the National Mall by almost two hours.

When Trump did speak, he praised the ongoing war in Iran and railed against what he called “communists.” Pope Leo XIV, who has clashed repeatedly with Trump over immigration and the Iran war, chose the same day to call for “moderation” in U.S. public discourse, urging Americans to find “common ground” and “unity.”

5. A Historic Heat Dome Was Killing People Across 28 States

More than 200 million Americans were under heat alerts over the July 4 weekend, according to NBC News. It was the largest heat event in years. Temperatures reached 106°F in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on July 4. At least 22 people died in New Jersey alone, according to CNN. Nearly 800,000 homes and businesses lost power across multiple states, and the Department of Energy ordered all generators to run at full capacity for the second time that summer.

6. The Supreme Court Ruled on Birthright Citizenship

In the days before the wedding, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the Constitution guarantees automatic birthright citizenship to virtually all children born in the United States, according to NPR. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion. The ruling directly rejected a Trump executive order signed on his first day in office, which had sought to strip citizenship from babies born in the U.S. to parents who are undocumented or on temporary visas. It was one of the most consequential immigration rulings in years.

7. ICE Arrested 10,000 People in Five Days, Without Anyone Noticing

Without public announcements or the city-by-city sweeps that drew attention the prior year, ICE arrested more than 10,000 people in the five days ending July 1. Agency leaders had set 2,000 arrests per day as the new standard. Top officials were instructed to keep as many officers as possible working seven days a week, with 80 percent of them assigned to arrest operations. The scale was unprecedented. But the coverage? Yeah, it was minimal.

8. The Supreme Court Also Ruled That States Can Ban Transgender Girls From School Sports

In one of several major decisions issued at the close of its term, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that states may ban transgender girls from participating in sports at publicly funded schools. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion. The ruling handed states broad authority to exclude transgender athletes from competition, and was handed down just days before the wedding.

9. Mexico Was Eliminated From Its Own World Cup, and the Azteca Said Goodbye

On Sunday, July 5, England defeated Mexico 3-2 in the Round of 16 at the Azteca, knocking the host nation out of the tournament. Goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa, who had announced his international retirement before the tournament, was one of the last players to leave the field. The crowd gave Mexico a standing ovation. Outside the stadium, the celebrations continued anyway.

Mexico’s 40-year wait for a quarterfinal extends to at least 2030.

10. The United States Moved to Make Citizenship More Expensive

In a July 1 update, USCIS proposed raising the cost of the naturalization application for U.S. citizenship, with the online filing fee increasing from $710 to $1,280, according to Crown World Mobility’s immigration update. The paper filing fee would rise to $1,330. The change arrives as the administration has also expanded scrutiny of all immigration applications, required more interviews, and instructed USCIS officers to treat adjustment of status as discretionary rather than guaranteed.

The ceremony at Madison Square Garden lasted a few hours. The rest of this will take years to sort out.

Dua Lipa has had a year. She got married in a secret London wedding in June, released a live album recorded in Mexico, and gave a keynote speech at the 10th anniversary of the International Booker Prize. And on June 27, she opened a permanent library of 100 banned books inside one of the most beautiful bookshops in the world, in Porto, Portugal.

And if you ask us, this is what consistently showing up looks like.

The Manifesto Library lives inside Livraria Lello in Porto and houses books that have been banned, censored, removed from school shelves, or otherwise suppressed by governments and institutions around the world. It opened as part of BABELL, a new international book festival, and it is permanent.

“This library is a shrine to books that have disappeared, to authors whose courage unmasks structures of power and control, and to readers who refuse to be told what book they are allowed to read,” Lipa wrote on Instagram. “Because sometimes the most subversive thing you can do is read a book and then talk about it.”

The Library Lives Inside the Most Famous Bookshop in the World

Livraria Lello is an iconic space that has inspired authors and readers alike. Time Out named it the oldest bookshop in Portugal, and it has been cited as one of the most beautiful bookshops on the planet. Its new cultural auditorium, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Álvaro Siza, is where the Manifesto Library permanently lives.

Francisca Pedro Pinto, head of brand at Livraria Lello, described what the library means to the space in a statement: “For 120 years, Livraria Lello has been built on a simple conviction: the book is a technology of freedom. The Manifesto Library grows from that belief. Because what is at stake is not only the future of reading, but a society’s ability to imagine, interpret, and build its own future.”

For Dua Lipa, it was “a dream partnership.”

The Four Categories That Organize This Library Are Also a Diagnosis of the Present

Power, Control, Voice, and Memory. These are the four themes that organize the Manifesto Library’s 100 titles. And the organizing logic is unmissable.

Power gathers works that directly confront dominant structures: political regimes, social systems, and cultural norms. Among them: Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Grapes of Wrath, The Second Sex, and The Crucible. Control brings together books about surveillance, propaganda, and ideological conditioning — from Animal Farm and Brave New World to Fahrenheit 451 and The Handmaid’s Tale.

Voice amplifies those who have historically been silenced or excluded across race, gender, identity, and geography, according to Vogue. The Color Purple, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Gender Queer, Heartstopper, Things Fall Apart, and We Are Not Numbers: The Voices of Gaza’s Youth are all here. Memory preserves what war, dictatorship, and exile have tried to erase: The Diary of a Young Girl, Persepolis, Beloved, Maus, One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Alexei Navalny’s Patriot.

“Here you will find one hundred books that ask questions, or have been questioned,” Lipa said in a press release. “Some have been banned by school districts for themes of race or sexuality. Others, written for LGBTQIA+ readers, have been restricted from display. In some cases, the author has paid for their words with their life.”

According to PEN America, as reported by Inc. and Time Out, 6,870 schools in the United States banned books during the 2024-2025 school year. A number of those exact titles are now permanently on the shelves in Porto.

She Has Been Building Toward This Since 2022

Dua Lipa founded her Service95 Book Club in 2022, which she recently renamed “Same Page,” according to Time Out, and has since released monthly author interviews on her podcast and published a monthly book recommendation. This year, she appeared as a keynote speaker at the 10th anniversary celebrations of the International Booker Prize. She is also curating the Southbank Center’s 2026 London Literature Festival, running from October 21 to November 1.

In other words, the literary world treats her as a peer because she earned it.

The Manifesto Library is what that work looks like at scale.

“When I founded the Service95 Book Club, my ambition was for it to become a home for writers and readers, wherever they are and whatever their circumstances,” Lipa said. “Reading the world brings us closer — but sadly, not everyone is in favor of that.”

The Full List: All 100 Books in the Manifesto Library

Power

• A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif

• A Dictator Calls by Ismail Kadare

• A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel

• Felon by Reginald Dwayne Betts

• Free by Lea Ypi

• Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo

• In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

• Jerusalem by Gonçalo M. Tavares

• Kleptopia: How Dirty Money Is Conquering the World by Tom Burgis

• Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books by Kirsten Miller

• Men Who Hate Women by Laura Bates

• Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

• One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El-Akkad

• Putin’s Russia by Anna Politkovskaya

• The Crucible by Arthur Miller

• The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa

• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

• The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir

• Unfree Speech: The Threat to Global Democracy and Why We Must Act by Joshua Wong and Jason Y. Ng

Control

• A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

• Ai Weiwei on Censorship by Ai Weiwei

• Animal Farm by George Orwell

• Blindness by José Saramago

• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

• Careless People: A Story of Where I Used to Work by Sarah Wynn-Williams

• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

• Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs

• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

• The Accusation by Bandi

• The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han

• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

• The Melancholy of Resistance by László Krasznahorkai

• The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa

• The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes

• The Trial by Franz Kafka

Voice

• A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

• Another Country by James Baldwin

• Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume

• Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

• Decolonizing the Mind by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

• Erasure by Percival Everett

• Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe

• Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo

• Hard Like Water by Yan Lianke

• Heartstopper by Alice Oseman

• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

• Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

• Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur

• My Friends by Hisham Matar

• My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird by Afghan Women

• Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult

• Olhos d’Água by Conceição Evaristo

• On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

• Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi

• Swimming in the Dark by Tomasz Jędrowski

• That Hair by Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida

• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

• The Color Purple by Alice Walker

• The Dark Side of Skin by Jeferson Tenório

• The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

• The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

• The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

• The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

• The Three Marias: New Portuguese Letters by Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta, and Maria Velho da Costa

• The Vegetarian by Han Kang

• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

• There There by Tommy Orange

• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

• This Book Is Gay by Juno Dawson

• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

• We Are Displaced by Malala Yousafzai

• We Are Not Numbers: The Voices of Gaza’s Youth edited by Ahmed Alnaouq and Pam Bailey

Memory

• Beloved by Toni Morrison

• Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

• Istanbul: Memories and the City by Orhan Pamuk

• Looking at Women Looking at War by Victoria Amelina

• Maus by Art Spiegelman

• Oblivion: A Memoir by Héctor Abad Faciolince

• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

• Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

• Patriot by Alexei Navalny

• Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

• Soldiers of Salamis by Javier Cercas

• The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak

• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

• The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk

• The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

• The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

• The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon by Richard Zimler

• The Machine to Make Spaniards by Valter Hugo Mãe

• The Most Secret Memory of Men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr

• The Murmuring Coast by Lídia Jorge

• The Return by Dulce Maria Cardoso

• The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

• The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

• Wild Swans by Jung Chang

She turned around in the stands at Kansas City Stadium on June 26, got down on one knee, and asked the man she loved to marry her. He was somewhat distracted, but said yes. The crowd around them erupted. The internet, however, did not.

The moment came during the Netherlands versus Tunisia 2026 FIFA World Cup group-stage match and was captured on video and shared across social media. In a stadium full of cheering fans, the proposal drew applause from the people immediately surrounding the couple. Then it traveled online, where men with very tender egos found it deeply troubling.

The jokes wrote themselves. The comments filled up. And a woman’s decision to propose to the person she wanted to spend her life with became, somehow, a topic of national debate.

Let’s have that debate, shall we?

Only 2% of Women Propose to Men, and That Number Says Everything

According to a survey by wedding platform Zola, only 2 percent of heterosexual women propose to men. A 2017 survey by The Knot found an even smaller share, just 61 proposals out of 12,657 brides surveyed. For a generation that overwhelmingly considers itself equal to its partner, that gap demands an explanation.

Zola’s own survey found that 77 percent of straight-identifying women had never even thought to propose, even though 98 percent viewed themselves as completely equal to their partner, according to Rachel Jarrett, President and COO of Zola. Thirty-six percent said the man is just “supposed to propose.” 16% worried that a proposal might wound their partner’s ego. 14% said they were ready to commit but were still waiting for confirmation in the form of a ring.

“Why are women and men who fight for equality in all other aspects of their lives clinging to a tradition that inherently does not put them on equal footing?” Jarrett wrote in an essay for Zola.

It is a fair question.

The Tradition Has Roots That Have Nothing to Do With Romance

The reason the proposal has historically been the man’s job has nothing to do with sentiment. When the modern institution of marriage took shape, men were the sole financial providers, and a marriage proposal was also an economic proposition. The person controlling the resources made the offer. Women across much of Western history had no independent financial standing.

It is worth remembering that in the United States, women could not get a credit card in their own name until less than 50 years ago. While the economics changed, the ritual took centuries to follow.

Rosemary Hopcroft, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, explained the tradition’s staying power to Time magazine. “There’s a psychological and emotional reason why women still want their husbands to provide, and that doesn’t seem to have changed,” she said. “It’s obviously not rational. There is no need for it. But we’re not just rational actors. We’re emotional.”

That honesty matters. Tradition does not have to be rational to feel real. What it cannot do is go unexamined forever.

Most Men Would Actually Love to Be Proposed To

Here is the part the fragile-ego commenters missed: most men are not opposed to being proposed to. A Glamour survey of 500 men found that 70 percent would be “psyched” if a woman proposed, according to Hi Holden. Match.com’s seventh annual Singles in America study found that 95 percent of men said they would welcome women making the first move, according to Hi Holden.

Elizabeth Taylor proposed to the British actor Michael Wilding in 1952, and Diane Von Furstenberg and Judge Judy also proposed to their respective partners, according to Hi Holden. None of them appears to have suffered for it.

In a Reddit thread on the topic, one commenter described his experience directly: “My wife proposed to me, it was terrific, she surprised the heck out of me even though we had discussed marriage in the months prior.” Another said he would have been flattered if his partner had proposed to him during their five years together before he eventually asked her. The men who said they would feel uncomfortable were not hard to find in the thread either. But neither were the ones who said they would welcome it.

“Of course, a woman can propose to a man,” said Tina B. Tessina, a psychotherapist who has been counseling couples for four decades, in an interview with Clarity.

There Is No Single Script for a Relationship That Works

This is the actual point.

And relationship expert Adina Mahalli, MSW, agrees: “Authenticity, creativity, and a show of love are the basic requirements for a proposal. Where you go from there is up to you, regardless of your gender.”

Some couples want the grand gesture. Some want a quiet conversation over breakfast. Some men have spent years envisioning their own proposal and want to be the one to ask. Others are waiting for someone to relieve them of the pressure of performing a ritual they never asked to carry alone. Some couples propose together, buy the ring together, agree first, and announce second. Some skip the whole production entirely and simply decide.

None of these is wrong. The problem only emerges when one version of a proposal gets treated as the only legitimate one, and when a woman who acts outside that script becomes the subject of ridicule from people who have nothing to do with her relationship.

Ariel Meadow Stallings, founder of Offbeat Bride, told Refinery29 that LGBTQ+ couples have been the ones to push tradition forward, often out of necessity. “When you see your gay brother get proposed to by his longtime boyfriend, and then your lesbian BFF proposes to her girlfriend, I think it starts to rattle the cage of tradition and gender norms about who’s supposed to propose,” she said.

The ground in Venezuela was still shaking when the warnings began circulating through social media. People were posting simultaneous news reports and appeals regarding people trapped under the rubble and missing children.

Within hours of the magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 earthquakes that struck northern Venezuela on June 24, Venezuelans who lived through the 1999 Vargas catastrophe began sounding alarms that most international outlets have not covered: in the turmoil of a disaster of this scale, children get separated from their families, and that separation creates an opening that predators have exploited before.

And they knew what they were talking about.

Venezuela Has Not Forgotten What Happened to the Children of Vargas in 1999

In December 1999, the mountains above the coastal state of Vargas gave way after 15 continuous days of rain, sending roughly 20 million cubic meters of sediment crashing into the towns below. The disaster killed tens of thousands and displaced more than 100,000 people, according to officials cited by Cinco8, a Venezuelan investigative outlet. In the confusion of the evacuation, children were separated from their parents by the dozens.

“We searched for people who, even if injured, were alive,” Ángel Rangel, then-director of Civil Defense, recalled in testimony published in a university thesis and later cited by Cinco8. “We followed a procedure in which we first got out the elderly, children, and the disabled, then women, and finally men. Yes, children traveled even alone because of what their parents did. Parents handed them over, and one, as an officer, received them as part of the rescue effort, also out of humanity.”

The Association of Missing Relatives eventually counted 49 boys and 70 girls who had been separated from their families and never returned. As of 2006, 81 families were still searching, according to Cinco8. By 2019, researcher Rogelio Altez had compiled a list of only 20 minors he believed could still be alive based on cases he documented between 2002 and 2004. Among them: a girl named Cindy Yesenia Buitriago, who was last seen on December 9, 1999, at a passenger terminal in Cúcuta, traveling with her grandmother toward Caracas. Her mother, Rocío Vargas, was still searching for her in Colombia as recently as 2019.

Rumors of trafficking circulated from the beginning. Willmary Comus, a Vargas survivor, told Cinco8: “Even before the tragedy, there were people watching children. Then, amid the desperation of many parents who handed them over to be saved, it is likely that they fell into strange hands.”

No government agency, neither Civil Defense nor the Ministry of Interior and Justice, ever published confirmed figures on the number of children who disappeared. “It is hard to say it, but in people there persists this vague idea of having seen them,” Manuel Guacarán, the civil chief of La Guaira at the time of the tragedy, told Cinco8. “Over time, those stories faded.”

They have not faded for everyone.

680,000 Children Need Humanitarian Aid After Venezuela’s Earthquakes

Twenty-seven years later, the same conditions that made Vargas so dangerous for children are already in place. UNICEF estimates that 680,000 children are among the 1.8 million people who need humanitarian assistance following the June 24 earthquakes. Separately, demographic estimates place 3.9 million children in the regions directly affected by the earthquakes.

“Hospitals are functioning beyond capacity, thousands of children do not have reliable access to safe drinking water, and many schools have been damaged,” Manuel Rodríguez Pumarol, UNICEF’s representative in Venezuela, said in a statement reported by UN News. In the capital alone, preliminary reports indicate damage to 432 schools, more than a third of the total, some of which are now being used as temporary shelters for displaced families.

The destruction of public records offices, the collapse of health infrastructure, and the displacement of families into overcrowded shelters create the exact conditions that child protection experts say trafficking networks exploit. Eight hospitals in the affected areas have been evacuated, according to El Nacional, further disrupting any capacity to verify family ties or accelerate reunification.

Suspicious Messages About Children Appeared on Social Media Within Hours

The warnings did not come first from institutions since, to be honest, they don’t exist. They came from Venezuelans who remembered.

Among the first to raise the alarm was artist Soy Ange Rodríguez, who shared publicly that she had begun receiving messages from unknown accounts asking where children could be found in the disaster zone. “I have received many very concerning messages from very random accounts asking me: ‘Where are the children to take care of?’ ‘I want to take care of children and babies,’ ‘I offer to take care of children and babies,’” she said. “With so many ways to help, why so much interest in accessing children and babies?”

Venezuelan content creator El del Gorrito Azul also sounded warnings on social media, sharing screenshots of messages he had received that appeared to offer children for sale. The warnings spread rapidly through Venezuelan digital communities inside the country and across the diaspora.

“A lot of people are taking advantage of this situation to take children, girls, and babies,” Rodríguez said. “It is very sad that these children are now orphans, and it is our duty to care for and protect them, because unfortunately, anything that could happen to them would be much worse than a life as an orphan.”

Child Protection Organizations Are Demanding Protocols Be Activated Now

Cecodap, a Venezuelan organization dedicated to promoting and defending the rights of children and adolescents, issued a formal statement calling on national, state, and municipal authorities to incorporate an all-encompassing approach to child protection into all emergency response actions, according to Diario Las Américas.

“Family reunification must be a priority from the first hours after the disaster,” Cecodap said in its statement. “The urgency of the emergency can never justify procedures that increase the risks of disappearance, trafficking, or the irregular appropriation of children.”

The organization called for the immediate creation of a registration and identification system for separated children, the activation of search and reunification mechanisms, and the suspension of any adoption or permanent separation process for the duration of the emergency. No child, Cecodap stated, should be handed over to anyone claiming to be a relative without first verifying their identity and the relationship.

UNICEF and Save the Children have issued parallel warnings. Save the Children stated that without rigorous identification controls and safe spaces, children separated from their families “could be at risk of exploitation and abuse” by criminal networks that routinely exploit the chaos of disasters, according to El Nacional. The organizations drew on lessons from earthquakes in Nepal, Haiti, and, more recently, Turkey and Syria. International humanitarian law specialists have also recommended suspending any international adoption process or cross-border transfer of minors whose family situation has not been fully verified.

What People on the Ground Are Being Asked to Do

Content creator Karen Explora shared detailed protocols for shelter operators and volunteers in a widely circulated social media video. Her instructions are specific: shelters need a single, monitored access point so that no one enters or leaves without being identified. “Nobody enters or leaves that shelter without us knowing who they are,” she said. Every child must be registered with their name, age, and the data of the adult accompanying them. Children must be kept in a physically delimited area, visible and monitored at all times, where no adult can interact with them without authorization.

“We need one single access point under constant watch by a designated volunteer,” she said.

Mothers, activists, and volunteers have already begun putting those protocols into practice. A website, rescateinfantilvenezuela.com, was launched in the days following the earthquakes as a coordination point for tracking and protecting children across the disaster zone. People on the ground are following the instructions being circulated.

The Warning Is Not Hypothetical. Venezuelans Know That Firsthand.

El Nacional noted that, as of its reporting, there are no confirmed complaints or evidence of trafficking in the most affected areas, including La Guaira and northern Caracas. But the organizations sounding the alarm are explicit that the point is to act before the first case appears, not after.

“The protection of children cannot be considered a complementary action within the humanitarian response,” Cecodap said, according to Diario Las Américas. “It is a legal obligation of the state and a key condition to ensure that the emergency does not generate new violations of rights.”

Venezuela has already lived through what happens when those protocols are absent, when children disappear inside the chaos, and no one can account for where they went. The ground has barely stopped shaking in 2026, and the people who remember 1999 are not waiting for history to repeat itself.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor kept her eyes on Chief Justice John Roberts as she read her dissent from the bench on Monday morning. He never met her gaze.

It was Sotomayor’s second dissent from the bench in four days, a step the Supreme Court reserves for its most serious disagreements. The case was Trump v. Slaughter, and she didn’t mince words in what she had to say. The ruling, she warned, handed President Trump more power than the English king the country’s founders revolted against.

What the Supreme Court Just Ruled in Trump v. Slaughter

The court ruled 6-3 on Monday that Trump can fire Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission, without cause, according to multiple reports. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion. The decision overturned Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, a 1935 precedent that had allowed Congress to protect the heads of independent federal agencies, including the FTC, from being removed by the president without cause.

Sotomayor Says the Ruling Gives Trump Power the English Crown Never Had

In a 49-page dissent joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sotomayor wrote that the ruling gave Trump “a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted, elevating him above his once coequal branches.” She read that dissent from the bench for nearly 20 minutes. Sotomayor argued that the British Parliament had “often restricted the Crown’s ability to remove even high-level royal officers,” and that the Constitution’s framers had “never intended” to give the president “the complete set of powers” the English Crown held, let alone more.

Sotomayor wrote that the ruling transforms the president’s “duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed into a license to act in defiance of those very laws.”

The 90 Year Precedent the Court Just Erased

For nearly a century, Congress operated under the understanding that it could shield certain federal agencies from direct presidential control, an understanding the Supreme Court itself had endorsed since Humphrey’s Executor in 1935. Sotomayor wrote that the majority pulled off “such a profound bait and switch on a coequal branch” that it amounted to telling Congress, after 90 years of relying on the court’s own precedent, that it had been operating in “open defiance of the Constitution all this time.”

“Its conclusion is wrong,” she wrote.

She also noted that the majority carved out an exception that protects the Federal Reserve from the ruling, but questioned whether that exception was rooted in principle or in convenience.

“Chaos Will Follow”

Sotomayor wrote that overturning Humphrey’s Executor will “unleash only chaos” for federal agencies, Congress, and lower courts because the majority “simply refuses to explain where its theory leads or where it ends.” She wrote that the ruling replaces “90 years of proven, workable practice with a half-baked theory of executive power that is simultaneously all-encompassing yet also subject to necessary but undefined exceptions.” Her closing line on the bench was just as direct. “The one thing that does appear to be clear going forward is that chaos will follow,” she said.

She warned that “dozens of independent commissions are now likely to become purely executive agencies, shifting tremendous power over broad swaths of American life into the President’s hands.”

Why Sonia Sotomayor’s Dissent Resonates Beyond the Courtroom

Sotomayor, the first Latina to serve on the Supreme Court, joined the bench in 2009 after President Obama nominated her. Her dissent on Monday came four days after she also read a dissent from the bench, that time after her Republican appointed colleagues allowed the Trump administration to turn away asylum seekers who had not set foot on U.S. soil.

Both dissents came from the same trio of Democratic appointed justices, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson, the court’s current minority. With palpable anger, Sotomayor called Monday’s ruling “grievously wrong” and accused the majority of pushing an “absolutist” view of presidential power that leaves no room for what she called a necessary “counterbalance.”

A justice who has become the loudest voice of dissent on a court reshaped by a conservative supermajority is now screaming fire from the rooftops. Fealty to the Constitution, she wrote, means respecting “not just what it says, but what it does not say and by its silence leaves to others to decide.”

Briella can still picture her conservatory professors reacting to what she does now. The Venezuelan singer and songwriter, born María Gabriela Otaiza in Valencia, spent years inside one of the country’s strictest classical music systems before turning toward a genre many of those same teachers still treat with suspicion. Five years and three projects later, that tension between formal training and street swagger has become the engine of her career.

How a TikTok Cover of Maluma Launched Briella’s Career

Briella built her earliest audience on TikTok, posting covers that layered her own verses over other artists’ hits. “If Maluma’s ‘Hawái’ came out, I’d show up and write a new verse and post the cover,” she said. The format caught the attention of fellow Latin star Natti Natasha, who ran a challenge called “Las Nenas,” inviting fans to write an original verse to one of her songs. Briella entered and finished among the competition’s five winners, taking home a $1,000 prize she still calls overwhelming for her at the time. That money became the budget for her first official music video, and with it came her debut single, “Otra Vez,” released in 2021.

Before Briella embarked on a solo project, she and her boyfriend, who is also her producer today, ran a small alternative pop duo that even placed songs in telenovelas, she said. “It was a very small, very alternative project,” she told FIERCE, calling it her training ground. “I learned to mix the vocals myself, and say, okay, I want this here, I want that there.” When she launched Briella as her own project in 2021, she pointed it squarely at reggaeton.

The Conservatory Training Behind Briella’s Reggaeton Sound

At 14, Briella began five years of classical piano training. At 16, she moved into music theory and harmony courses at the Carabobo Conservatory of Music while earning a degree in Music Education from the University of Carabobo, graduating Cum Laude in 2021 with the highest GPA in her faculty. She also met her boyfriend and current producer there, she said.

That formal training still shows up in every session, even on a reggaeton track. “All the knowledge we had from the conservatory was there. Okay, let’s start at this tempo, let’s do the switch here, let’s change it,” she said of producing with her boyfriend. But she said the genre gave her something the conservatory never did. “I studied music, I studied classical piano, I went through a conservatory that was extremely rigid, and I feel like reggaeton was what let me get out of that box,” she told FIERCE. Her early sound, she clarified, “wasn’t a nasty urbano, it was more like a pop urbano.” Still, she said, “that dirty touch gave me the flow I felt like I was missing.”

Inside Briella’s New EP Tinikijima, Out June 25

Briella’s new EP, Tinikijima, arrives June 25 as what her label describes as a soundtrack for summer, self-discovery, and emotional growth, exploring femininity, heartbreak, healing, friendship, and self-love through a sound rooted in Latin and tropical influences. The name comes from a real place. “Tinikijima is a beach in Choroní, the most spectacular beach my eyes have ever seen,” Briella said. The entire visual universe of the EP, every video and every shoot, was filmed there, she said. The word means “hidden place,” and she said it felt right the moment she heard it. “I felt like the name was calling to me,” she said.

Why Briella’s New Songs Are Making Conservative Men Uncomfortable

The EP’s tracklist leans into themes she calls deliberately provocative. The lead single, “Devuelve a Tu Marido” (“Return Your Husband”), builds on a simple joke. “Basically, if your husband comes factory-damaged, return him. That’s the concept of the first single,” she said. The track has already pulled in 67,000 YouTube views and 45,000 streams. Another track, “Dos Novios” (“Two Boyfriends”), runs with the premise of having two partners at once and has logged 16,000 YouTube views and 18,000 streams of its own, while the focus track, “Princeso,” takes aim at men she describes as acting entitled, building toward the line that a queen doesn’t go around with little princes.

Briella said the reaction has split along predictable lines. “Venezuela is a very conservative country, and obviously, there are comments from people who are hurt,” she said. She described two types of men responding to the project: some telling her they love what she is doing, and others getting offended by the subject matter, often without recognizing the humor beneath it, she said. “Honestly, I do feel quite free right now.”

What Briella Wants Listeners to Feel Years From Now

Briella said her priorities have shifted since her TikTok-cover days, when virality was the goal. “Now I want people to listen to this song one, two, three years from now and say, what a good song, it doesn’t sound old, the production still sounds current,” she said. “That’s what I wanted most with this EP, for the music to last, for it not to be something that lasts a month and disappears, but something that lasts for years.”

Briella’s Bogotá Media Tour and a First Hometown Concert in Caracas

Briella said she is heading to Bogotá for a media run that includes an acoustic performance at Cumbia House and presentations at local schools. Talks are also underway for her first official concert in Venezuela, in Caracas, though she said no date has been set. “It’s in the works,” she said.

“We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now,” said Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during a speech in 1962. And that’s a lesson the Black community in the U.S. has never forgotten. What’s more, it’s one that the Latino community might need to catch up with.

For a few years now, the conversation about Latino identity in this country has circled back to the myth of the monolith. We are not one thing. Mexican, Puerto Rican, Salvadoran, Dominican, Afro-Latino, Indigenous, recent immigrant, fifth generation, the differences inside that word “Latino” are real, and pointing them out has become commonplace in our own media, including this one. The argument is fair. But lately that conversation feels unfinished. We’re quick to name every fracture within our community and slower to ask how a community broken into a dozen subcategories finds its way back to one another to fight the same fights.

This Juneteenth, I keep thinking about a community that figured that part out a long time ago.

What Juneteenth Actually Commemorates

Juneteenth marks June 19, 1865, the day Major General Gordon Granger stood on Texas soil and read General Orders No. 3, informing enslaved Texans that they were free. The announcement came two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, a delay caused by the fact that Texas had seen little Union military presence and had even become a haven for enslavers fleeing other states. Granger’s arrival in Galveston freed more than 250,000 people still held in bondage.

Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021, but freedmen in Texas had already been marking the date as Emancipation Day, Jubilee Day, or Freedom Day since 1866.

The Roots of the Black Community’s Unity

The cohesion Black Americans built afterward was a diligent, almost fervent, process. Generations of chattel slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and exclusion from white institutions pushed Black communities to build their own, the Black church chief among them, alongside historically Black colleges and universities.

Political scientists Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird, writing for Princeton University Press, describe how segregation made Black Americans’ social networks unusually interconnected, since exclusion from white neighborhoods, schools, and churches meant Black kinship and friendship circles stayed concentrated within the Black community itself.

When Black Unity Decided an Election in Alabama

White and Laird point to the 2017 Alabama Senate special election as proof that the infrastructure still functions. Republican Roy Moore was expected to win easily in a state Donald Trump had carried by 28 points the year before. Then sexual misconduct allegations surfaced, and Black turnout exceeded 2012 levels for Barack Obama, delivering 96 percent of the Black vote to Democrat Doug Jones, including 98 percent of Black women, according to NPR exit polling. That margin, built through the kind of close-knit social networks White and Laird describe, decided the race.

A Diverse Black Community That Still Moves as One

None of this means the Black community is uniform. The number of Black immigrants in the United States more than doubled between 2000 and 2024, reaching 5.6 million, with Jamaica, Haiti, and Nigeria among the top countries of origin, according to the Pew Research Center. Ideological diversity within the Black community has also grown substantially, with nearly a third now identifying as conservative, up from less than 10 percent in the 1970s, according to White and Laird.

Yet 80 to 90 percent of Black Americans still identify as Democrats, a consistency the researchers attribute to what they call racialized social constraint, the social expectation, enforced informally through families, churches, and friendships, that group unity outweighs individual political drift.

What Latinos Can Learn From the Black Community’s Unity

That’s the footnote that Latino media rarely sit with. We’ve gotten comfortable naming our internal differences. We’re less practiced at building the kind of social infrastructure that turns a fractured population into a force that shows up together, term after term, fight after fight.

The lesson isn’t that Latinos should pretend to be something we’re not. Diversity inside a community and solidarity between its members were never opposites to begin with. The Black community has spent generations proving that a group can hold its differences and its unity at the same time, and that the second one doesn’t have to wait for the first one to disappear.

That’s worth celebrating today, and worth learning from long after it.

The 2026 World Cup has literally taken over the world. But last Saturday, in the middle of all that excitement, a float rolled down Paseo de la Reforma during Mexico City’s World Cup parade carrying a group of elderly women in tricolor jerseys, waving to a crowd chanting “México, México, México.” Some of the women cried. So did some of the people watching. Almost nobody in that crowd knew who they were.

They were the 1971 Mexican women’s national soccer team, the one that played a World Cup final at Estadio Azteca in front of more than 110,000 fans, more than half a century before anyone officially decided to remember them.

Before Mexico Hosted a World Cup, It Hosted a Secret One

Organized women’s soccer in Mexico has roots that go back further than most people assume. Interest took off after a Costa Rican women’s team toured the country in 1963, inspiring Mexican women to form their own clubs. By 1969, there was enough momentum to hold the country’s first women’s championship, with 17 teams competing around Mexico City.

That same energy was building in Europe, where an organization called FIEFF, the Federación Internacional y Europea de Fútbol Femenino, began organizing its own unofficial women’s tournaments outside FIFA’s control, with backing from the Italian beverage company Martini & Rossi. In 1970, FIEFF staged the Coppa Martini & Rossi in Italy, a tournament now widely considered the first unofficial Women’s World Cup. Mexico was not originally invited. The team only got a spot after Argentina and Brazil dropped out.

Mexico made the most of it. The team’s opening match in Bari ended in a 9-0 win over Austria, with Alicia Vargas scoring four goals. Vargas, who had grown up playing street soccer and joined a Guadalajara club at 13, kept scoring throughout the tournament and picked up the nickname “La Pelé.” Mexico went on to lose to the host, Italy, and beat England, finishing the tournament in third place.

Mexico City Built a Women’s World Cup FIFA Refused to Recognize

FIEFF’s organizers decided the 1971 tournament would be held in Mexico, and this time at full scale: Estadio Azteca in Mexico City and Estadio Jalisco in Guadalajara, with six national teams competing.

The Mexican Football Federation wanted nothing to do with it. FIFA had already moved to ban member federations from involvement in unsanctioned women’s tournaments after the success of the Italy event, and Mexico’s federation threatened fines against any club that let women play in its stadiums, Sports Stories reported. Organizers got around the threat by booking stadiums that the federation did not control, since Azteca and Jalisco were privately owned, and their operators wanted the broadcast revenue.

What followed was a marketing campaign built almost entirely on novelty and spectacle. Organizers created a mascot named Xóchitl, a cartoon girl with pigtails in a tricolor uniform, splashed across posters and keyrings across Mexico City, and painted the goalposts pink. Sponsors included Martini & Rossi, the beer brand Carta Blanca, and the diet soft drink Dietafiel, according to the BBC. One tournament organizer told The New York Times at the time that the appeal was simple: “It’s a natural combination of the two passions of most men around the world: soccer and women.” The New York Times’ own coverage carried the headline “Soccer goes sexy south of the border.” Organizers had told the press the players’ uniforms “will be as close as possible to hot pants,” according to Women in Sport’s review of the documentary “Copa 71.”

Behind the spectacle were real players who had fought just to get on the field. Silvia Zaragoza of Mexico had loved the game since childhood, but had to play in secret because her father would beat her if he found out.

A Final Watched by More Than 110,000 Fans, by a Team That Wasn’t Paid

Once the tournament began, crowds showed up in numbers nobody had predicted. Mexico’s opening match against Argentina, a 3-1 win, drew 100,000 fans. Mexico also beat England in the group stage, then beat Italy 2-1 in the semifinal in front of 90,000 spectators.

The final, against Denmark on September 5, 1971, drew more than 110,000 fans to Estadio Azteca. Denmark won 3-0, with 15-year-old Susanne Augustesen scoring all three goals.

Before that final, the Mexican players asked organizers for a bonus. They had been playing for more than a year without pay while the tournament generated significant ticket and sponsorship revenue, and the request leaked to the Mexican press, which turned on them. Rather than risk disappointing the country that had filled Azteca for them, the players decided to take the field anyway.

The Welcome Home That Took 55 Years

The cameras and crowds disappeared almost as fast as they had arrived. FIFA technically lifted its ban on women’s soccer after 1971, but offered no funding or support, leaving the sport in the hands of federations that mostly ignored it. England’s Football Association banned the players who had taken part in the tournament, including Leah Caleb, though the ban did not last. “By taking part in the event, we jolted the FA. We were banned from playing for taking part in an unofficial World Cup,” Caleb told the BBC. “But they realized very quickly they were being ridiculous, and our bans were lifted.” Harry Batt, the English team’s organizer, was blacklisted by the Women’s Football Association for going around it, and his club folded.

Denmark’s federation eventually took over the women’s game but never called up Augustesen, the final’s hat-trick scorer, for an official cap. In Mexico, the players returned to dusty fields and volunteer coaching, with no institutional backing to build on what they had just done. It would take another two decades before FIFA staged its first officially sanctioned Women’s World Cup, in China in 1991.

The story stayed largely forgotten in Mexico until 2023, when documentaries including “Copa 71,” produced by Venus and Serena Williams, brought the tournament back into public view.

Mexico Finally Gives the 1971 Team Its Parade

That renewed attention has slowly turned into formal recognition. In March, Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada led a tribute to the players, saying they “changed the fate of women’s soccer and should never have remained forgotten.” The team was honored earlier this month again at a Mexico-Serbia friendly in Toluca, Los Angeles Times en Español reported, before Saturday’s parade put them in front of the biggest crowd they had seen since 1971.

Among the players who once filled Estadio Azteca and have now been formally recognized are Lourdes de la Rosa, Eréndira Rangel, Alicia Vargas, María Eugenia Rubio Ríos, Patricia Hernández Montoya, María de la Luz Hernández, Silvia Zaragoza Herrera, Yolanda Ramírez Gutiérrez, Bertha Orduña, Martha Coronado Díaz, Sandra Tapia Montoya, Elsa Huerta Méndez, Elvira Aracen Sánchez, Irma Chávez Barrera, Cristina García Gómez, Guadalupe Tovar Ugalde, Elsa Salgado Pérez, María Acela Nila Mejía, Rebeca Lara Pérez Tejada and María de la Luz Cruz Martínez, along with teammates Paula Pérez Padierna and Teresa Aguilar Alvarado, who have since died. Récord singles out Vargas, Rangel, Rubio Ríos, and Esther Mora as the team’s standout figures from that run to the final.

Growing up, cheating had a very clear definition in my household, and I suspect in yours, too. You either did it or you did not. The word came in one size. And nobody needed a qualifying adjective.

And then someone on the internet invented the prefix “micro,” and I’m in serious need of a glossary.

The term micro-cheating has been circulating on social media since at least 2024, when it went viral on Threads and X after a post listed behaviors that supposedly qualify as micro-cheating: deleting messages, secretly messaging someone, and “seeking friendship with people you find attractive.” The post gathered 24,500 likes and 8.7K reposts. The comments, as you might imagine, were everywhere.

“There’s no such thing as micro cheating,” one user wrote. “Cheating is cheating.” Another observed with appropriate alarm: “Creating a dating profile? Nothing ‘micro’ about that.” And the response that perhaps best captures the collective confusion: “That’s MACRO cheating 😭.”

What micro-cheating actually means, according to the experts

Micro-cheating refers to small, repeated behaviors that exist in the gray zone between loyalty and betrayal: texting someone you find attractive more than your partner knows about, keeping an old flame on social media and regularly checking their profile, describing yourself as “basically single” to someone new, or maintaining a work wife or work husband dynamic that you would feel uncomfortable showing your partner in full detail.

According to Psychology Today, micro-cheating involves behaviors that lead someone to question their partner’s emotional or physical commitment without constituting a physical affair. For Emma Spector and Christina Pérez, the behavior includes small transgressions with one thing in common: they are done covertly and violate the implicit agreements of the relationship, as they wrote in their column for Vogue.

Australian TV personality Melanie Schilling might have popularized the term, though there is limited academic scholarship on it. But what the term has instead is an enormous online footprint and no shortage of disagreement about what qualifies. Is cyberstalking someone you find attractive micro-cheating? Removing your wedding ring before a night out? Complaining about your partner to a friend you used to date? The lists vary depending on who is writing them, which tells you something important about the concept itself.

Here is what therapists actually care about

When couples arrive in therapy using this term, the verbiage is almost beside the point. What matters, according to Empathi, is the secrecy.

“If your relationship is a house,” Empathi writes, “micro-cheating behaviors are often like leaving windows cracked open. Not wide enough for someone to climb through, but just enough for cold air to get in. Over time, the whole house gets chilly.”

London-based psychotherapist Daren Banarsë, quoted in Vogue, makes a similar argument: “What makes micro-cheating particularly insidious is how it operates through secrecy, emotional investment, and a subtle sexual undercurrent. Even without physical contact, it can create a parallel emotional world that excludes your partner.”

But for licensed marriage and family therapist Lori Schade, of Compassionate Connections Counseling, the warning is unequivocal: “The problem with crossing boundaries is that you’re safe until you’re not.” In her clinical practice, she has never heard an affair client say they went looking for one. What she hears instead is: “It just happened.” “I can’t believe I’m in this situation.” “I never planned this.” The micro behaviors, accumulated over time, reach a tipping point. A gradual slide that felt harmless at every individual step.

But here is what gets lost in the debate about labels. The question “Does this count as cheating?” is often a way of managing guilt without doing the harder thing: asking why I am doing this in the first place. What is this other connection giving me that I am not getting, or not asking for, at home?

Couples can spend months arguing over whether liking an ex’s photo constitutes a violation. Meanwhile, they have not had a real conversation in weeks. They are fighting about the symptom while the actual problem sits untouched in the corner.

The one-size-fits-all trap

The age-old problem with relationship conversations is that we keep searching for universal rules to apply to something that is, by nature, particular. My gay male friends, the vast majority of whom are in open relationships, would find this entire conversation faintly bewildering. Women who date women have their own patterns entirely, from remaining close with exes to moving in together faster than anyone else has finished their first coffee. What reads as a red flag in one relationship is a Tuesday in another.

The micro-cheating conversation, if you look at where it tends to originate, circulates most heavily in heterosexual contexts. And frequently, the approach arrives from the male side of that dynamic, probing the flexibility of what fidelity is supposed to mean. That alone should tell us something.

One Threads commenter offered a point worth sitting with: “You’re going to need other people when your relationship is rocky. Your partner cannot be expected to be your everything at all times.” Someone else replied that when he had leaned on platonic friends during a rough patch, his partner considered it a betrayal anyway. She had dictated who he was allowed to lean on, even when she did not want him leaning on her. That, as the thread agreed, is its own kind of problem entirely.

The answer is not as complicated as the internet wants it to be

Anything done in violation of the mutual agreement you and your partner have made, against the other person’s explicit wishes, is a betrayal. Not just in terms of attraction or flirtation with others, but in terms of respect for what the other person is willing to tolerate, negotiate, or accept. Secrecy is the variable that turns gray-zone behavior into a genuine breach of trust. Hide something from your partner because you know they would be hurt by it, and the behavior has already answered the question of whether it crosses a line.

There is no universal list. There is no algorithm for it. There is only the specific agreement that two specific people have made with each other, and whether both of them are honoring it.

Micro-cheating? The word itself is almost beside the point. What we are actually talking about is trust, and what happens to it when someone decides that what their partner does not know will not hurt them.

It usually does.

Content creator Kimberly Munz finally named something in therapy that millions of Latinas could spend a lifetime trying to pinpoint. She shared that she realized in therapy that “because our Hispanic mothers told us ‘ponte a hacer algo, ponte a barrer, limpiar, etc.’ whenever we were resting or relaxing, has caused us to have high functioning anxiety.”

I had to pause the vid to digest the weight of that realization. I rewound my mental cassette and remembered the frustration I felt with my mother every time she said the exact same thing. Now, as an adult, and very much aligned with Kimberly, I understand that conditioning has shaped my work ethic and my nervous system.

What’s worse, we Latinas grew up with the conviction that these mechanisms were badges of honor. And the consequences? We manage them so well—because we show up, we deliver, we don’t fall apart—nobody notices we’re drowning.

So, let’s call a spade a spade, shall we?

What high-functioning anxiety looks like to the outside world

One thing I found in my research is that high-functioning anxiety isn’t a clinical diagnosis. It doesn’t appear in the DSM-5, the diagnostic manual used by mental health professionals. Instead, according to the Mayo Clinic, most people with high-functioning anxiety are actually diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, even if they don’t completely fit the stereotype.

To a stranger, or even to family, a person with high-functioning anxiety appears competent. They seem organized, dependable, and proactive. They meet their deadlines and manage their careers. Hell, they even volunteer. But beneath that surface, according to the Mayo Clinic, they’re wrestling with persistent feelings of stress, self-doubt, and the fear of not measuring up. It’s the persistent discomfort of significant self-criticism.

Then, HelpGuide, a nonprofit health resource, offers a beautiful metaphor: it describes it as living like a duck on water: everything above the surface appears calm and relaxed, but underneath, there’s a constant whir of hectic paddling. People with high-functioning anxiety could experience racing thoughts, chronic worry, self-doubt, difficulty relaxing, or a persistent fear of failure despite their success. They may experience headaches, sleep problems, muscle tension, or stomach upset. However, because they’re managing, because they’re still functioning, nobody sees there’s an issue.

The Latina-specific roots of high-functioning anxiety

Sandra Arboleda, a Latina licensed clinical social worker who works with Latina and immigrant communities, sees this pattern daily in her practice. “Part of this stems from growing up in environments where rest or stillness was sometimes judged,” she explains. “For many of us, taking a break wasn’t considered healthy or necessary. Instead, it was often viewed as being lazy, selfish, or not contributing enough.”

From childhood, many Latinas learn to be responsible, productive, helpful, strong, and emotionally contained. A survival inheritance, if you will. And, hey, we get it. Many Latino parents were raising their children through resource scarcity, immigration, and their own trauma. For us, the children, being hardworking was how you proved you deserved to be there, how you made your parents’ sacrifice mean something, but, most importantly, how you made sure you didn’t burden anyone.

Ligia Orellana, an LMFT and anxiety specialist working in Los Angeles, gave me a different perspective, although she sees the same truth: “For many First Gen and BIPOC folks, especially within Latinx culture, emotions were minimized, and productivity was the primary way to earn safety and belonging.” When staying busy, achieving more, and taking care of everyone else becomes the coping strategy, rest starts to feel strange, uncomfortable, and even unsafe. Allowing yourself to need support can feel like failing expectations that were handed to you before you could speak.

The cultural systems that drive this are astonishingly real and specific. Familismo teaches Latinas to prioritize family needs over their own. Marianismo and the perpetuation of the Madonna-whore complex demand self-sacrifice, moral superiority, and the ability to endure suffering silently, yet looking gorgeous. Perfectionism doesn’t require merely success, but the appearance of ease.

Why the medical system misses it in Latinas

Once more, Latinas’ experiences fall into the health system’s blind spot. According to Cleveland Clinic psychologist Adam Borland, the primary difference between high-functioning anxiety and generalized anxiety disorder is how a person responds. With GAD, people tend toward the “fight or flight” response. They might try to remove themselves from situations that trigger their anxiety. With high-functioning anxiety, the response is more “fight”: a person pushes themselves to work harder to combat the anxiety.

God, by now, you should call us superheroes, then. We show up, don’t complain, and perform with such competence that doctors, therapists, and loved ones don’t think to look any closer. What’s worse, Kate Sheehan, managing director of UCLA CARES, an anxiety awareness program, notes that many high-achievers with moderate to severe anxiety don’t know what it feels like to live without their anxiety. They believe their anxiety is a necessary part of their success. They work hard to make their achievements seem natural and easy.

At one point, we trick ourselves so well that it’s easy to overlook the symptoms. Latinas might dismiss their negative thoughts, feelings of unease, and difficulty relaxing as simply “the price of success.” For many, being stressed and anxious all the time is so normal that it just feels like being alive. And if being a Latina meant learning not to burden others with your struggles, asking for help can feel like the ultimate betrayal of everything you were taught.

What Latinas are actually experiencing beneath the functioning

Arboleda expanded on what high-functioning anxiety looks like from the inside: overthinking, constant internal pressure, being dependable but resentful, and managing everything while feeling deeply stuck. Many Latinas don’t slow down long enough to notice the toll until someone close to them says something, or they find themselves at the edge of burnout. By then, it’s been years.

Or, as it is in my case, you snap, pack your bags, and move to the middle of nowhere.

And the physical toll is just as real. According to UCLA Health, anxiety shows up as back and neck pain, headaches, increased heart rate, insomnia, shortness of breath, stomach upset, and chronic tension. High-functioning anxiety may cause burnout, digestive issues, elevated blood pressure, and an increased risk of depression.

But here’s what Arboleda emphasizes. “Many Latinas receive praise for their ability to function, but no one considers the cost of that functioning.” Ergo, we are noted for our resilience, while our exhaustion is treated as a character strength. We are told we’re so strong, so capable, so dependable. And no one asks if we want to be any of those things.

The system that reinforces it

From the micro to the macro, high-functioning anxiety in Latinas is also a cultural and structural issue. We are raised to manage it silently, yes. We are praised for managing it well. But then, we are punished for daring to ask for support. Orellana describes this trap: “There is immense pride in being the strong one, the responsible one, the achiever, until it starts to feel heavy. There is also guilt in thinking about stepping away from those roles, which leads to many struggling to get support.”

The medical system doesn’t catch what it can’t see. When high-functioning anxiety presents as ambition, reliability, and success, it’s nearly impossible for a clinician to spot without specific cultural knowledge and the right questions. Latinas may have believed for so long that their worth depends on their productivity that they don’t even bring up their anxiety unless directly asked. And even then, they might minimize it because the shame is too heavy. We end up dressing it up as commitment, or, in the worst cases, reframing our suffering as proof of love.

Recognition is not resolution, but it’s a first step

Kimberly Munzz’s reel was a huge reckoning moment, for her and for all of us who came across it. We recognized how our mother’s voice became our own internal critic, and it’s a huge first step. But acknowledgment alone changes nothing. Knowing why you’re anxious doesn’t stop your heart from racing at rest, at least not for me.

What I think changes is when we Latinas start to understand that our anxiety isn’t our fault, and that healing doesn’t require abandoning our culture. It requires interrogating which parts of our inheritance serve us and which quietly kill us. It means examining why survival is treated as a virtue.

For my part, this is where I plan to start. Not managing anxiety more quietly, but building a relationship with rest that doesn’t feel like failure. God knows it will be hard, but I’d rather not work harder to prove my worth every single day and try to put my feet up once a weekend without feeling I need to be doing something productive.

In the end, I want to be allowed to be something other than strong. Don’t you?

For those of us who grew up in the ‘90s, dating has been a ritual that has evolved over the decades. After all, we’re the last hybrid generation—we’ve experienced life both before and after the internet. While we were the first to experience online dating, meeting people at bars or concerts was a common habit well into our 20s. We knew little about mental health, red or green flags, or the exhaustive categorization of personality traits. We navigated the dating scene blindfolded, trusting our instincts at best, and musical compatibility at worst. The closest we came to the performative nature of relationships was the dreaded moment of introducing someone to the family and saving ourselves from the “So, what about a boyfriend?” for a few months. That is, if you were lucky.

But not having social media everywhere gave us the freedom to make fools of ourselves with our partner choices, or to have the most beautiful love story without leaving any evidence. In the end, it was a win-win. Our failures were ours alone. Our victories belonged to us first, to everyone else later—if we decided to share them at all.

And then social media found us.

Before the Algorithm Knew What Love Should Look Like

Back then, you could date someone for six months, and nobody knew about it except the people you actually told. You could break up, cry into your pillow, process it at your own pace, and move on without a thousand people asking where he went or why you unfollowed him. You could send a terrible text message without agonizing over whether he saw it immediately. You could like a photograph of an ex without triggering a three-hour spiral about what it meant. You could be in love without proving it to anyone. You could be heartbroken without performing your heartbreak for an audience.

Your relationship was yours. Not a content opportunity. Not a reflection of your worth. Not a metric to be measured against someone else’s highlight reel. Yours.

But we gave that up. We handed it over to platforms designed to keep us scrolling, comparing, doubting. And now we’re living in the rubble of that decision.

What Social Media Built in Place of Love

If you’re a straight or bisexual woman, men are expected to do this or that, respond to your texts at this speed, behave in this way, and never forget a list of requirements that reads like a PDF too large to attach to an email. If you’re a straight or bisexual man, the conversation is even more toxic. While there’s still a glimmer of hope in men who talk about emotional availability, healthy relationships, and what it really means to be in a couple, there’s a growing majority that talks about demonizing women as a whole.

For the gays, the dykes, and the dolls, things have always been complicated. But we’ve learned, through years of struggle, having to hide our love away, to build communities. And maybe our straight friends could take a cue. But that’s a conversation for another day.

On Reddit, however, the conversation speaks volumes. A user shared a reel in which an influencer said, “See, this is why I keep telling you girls—never settle for less,” because a guy had written something cute on the back of a bill.

A 16-year-old girl shared that she was so upset that her boyfriend didn’t pay for their date himself, didn’t plan it himself, didn’t know the exact words to say when proposing to be her boyfriend, that she felt he was emasculated. At sixteen. Because social media told her that love is performative, and there’s a rigorous script to follow.

The result? A checkmate that’s eroding the willingness of millions of people to even try to meet someone. According to the Liberty Champion, 34 percent of young adults have felt uncertain or jealous because of how their partner interacts with others on social media. A simple like from an ex, or a misinterpreted comment, can send lovers into a frenzy. And according to research from ManyChat, nearly 80 percent of people have questioned their partner’s fidelity due to social media activity.

We’re not in relationships anymore. We’re in a perpetual state of surveillance, comparison, and doubt.

The Algorithm’s Most Dangerous Invention: Universal Red Flags

Here’s what social media did that might be its most insidious trick: it told us that there’s a universal standard for what constitutes a red flag, a green flag, a healthy relationship, a dealbreaker. As if human connection is a checklist.

The social media algorithm is designed to show you content you’re interested in, but depending on the type of content you interact with, it can backfire. Videos like “5 Ways to Know He’s Cheating on You” or “How to Tell if She has Lost Interest” often show up on people’s feeds, creating new insecurities. When you interact with even one of these posts, more similar videos begin to appear. The algorithm carefully sorts and matches content to audiences with similar preferences. In theory, it’s meant to make scrolling a positive experience. In practice, it’s a tailspin of negative emotions.

But perhaps we should propose a middle ground here: what if, instead of talking like a broken record about mental health, we engage in deep psychoanalysis (or any approach that fits you best)—the kind that takes years and gets to the root of the issue—to understand that the insecurities perpetuated by social media are a simulation that has nothing to do with othersand everything to do with our own demons?

The red-flag content isn’t about your partner. It’s telling you about yourself. About the parts of you that were already fragile, with due reason. Social media didn’t create those insecurities. It just gave them a megaphone. Then, what if we throw that megaphone out the window and look inside? Maybe, just maybe, we will build ourselves so strong that we will have our own irremovable standards. And no influencer is going to tell us how high or low our bar is.

Or, What If We Just Told Social Media to Go to Hell?

Yes, we’ll have our share of failures. But at least the stories we’ll tell over the years will be more interesting. After all, without those stories there would be no music, no poetry. And God knows how much we need music and true poetry these days.

I’m not saying, “Delete Instagram. Delete TikTok. Delete the apps altogether.” You can take a break (or two) and enjoy content about pups and cats, history, or old movies. But those accounts that have convinced you that love is a performance metric? Yeah, they should go to hell. Stop watching people who are making money off your insecurity. Stop measuring your relationship against someone else’s job.

Believe me, the couples who are thriving aren’t the ones posting about it. They’re the ones who turned off their phones, had a conversation without documenting it, made a mistake without an audience, and built something private.

Love doesn’t need an audience. It never did. We just forgot that somewhere between the algorithm and the likes and the comments section. We completely forgot that the most beautiful parts of a relationship are the ones that exist only for you and the person you love.

So here’s what I’m asking: what if we gave ourselves permission to be bored by social media? What if we decided that our love story doesn’t need to trend? What if we actually, truly, turn off our phones and go out and live a little?

I think we’d make horrible mistakes, but we will also remember what love actually feels like.

Anna Faris didn’t audition for Scary Movie expecting to become a star. She didn’t expect to become anything, really. In the summer of 1999, she was a fresh college graduate from Seattle who had moved to Los Angeles to follow a guy. She’d never done comedy in her life. She waited tables, then recorded an audition tape from her childhood home and sent it in just to see what would happen.

That tape changed everything.

Scary Movie became a blockbuster. It made $278 million on a $19 million budget. And it launched Anna Faris onto the A-list, or at least close enough that Hollywood noticed her. But as she looks back now, 26 years later, returning to that franchise for Scary Movie 6, Faris has had to confront something she’s been too polite to say out loud for a very long time: Hollywood systematically undervalued her when she was the one making them money.

Anna Faris Was Number One on the Call Sheet. Yet, She Wasn’t on the Poster

In 2011, Vulture ran a profile asking whether Anna Faris would finally make the leap to genuine A-list status. She was on the verge, they said. She’d had The House Bunny, a lead role she produced herself. She was in talks for major films. But even then, the reporting made clear what Hollywood’s gatekeepers really thought: Faris straddled two worlds and properly occupied neither. She was almost, but not quite, in the same tier as Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, and Katherine Heigl.

What the 2011 analysis didn’t address was something Faris herself didn’t say publicly. She had already been systematically underpaid and undervalued in the very franchise that made her famous. She was the star of Scary Movie, number one on the call sheet, and the character everyone remembered. But she wasn’t in the first poster. And while the films were making massive money, she wasn’t being paid like a star.

“I was number one on the call sheet but wasn’t in the first poster and wasn’t paid anywhere near the most,” she revealed in an interview on Josh Horowitz’s podcast this year. “It was a humbling start.”

That word—humbling—encapsulates everything she didn’t say for 25 years. Yes, she was grateful. She knew she’d gotten lucky. She was a long shot. But she was also being exploited à la Hollywood, meaning, when the person being exploited starts to believe they deserve it.

Then They Cut Her Out Entirely

For Scary Movie 3 and 4, Faris stayed on. The Wayans brothers, who created and starred in the franchise, weren’t asked back after the second film. But Faris was contractually obligated. As the professional she is, she showed up. She did the work. And then, in 2013, when Scary Movie 5 came around, she wasn’t invited. Nobody called. The franchise that had defined her career simply moved forward without her.

For 20 years, she didn’t speak to Marlon Wayans. When her agent called every few years to suggest maybe new executives would bring the series back, maybe there’d be another opportunity, she’d say no. She felt undervalued financially. After all, she had other work. She had moved on, or at least she pretended to.

But here’s the thing: the Wayans brothers fought to get their franchise back. They went to war with the studios. Marlon Wayans has repeatedly said they had the franchise “taken from them,” and he directly named Harvey Weinstein and his brother Bob as instrumental in losing those rights. There was a contractual dispute and a negotiation. A pissing contest, if you will.

For her part, Anna Faris was just replaced. She wasn’t fighting because she felt she wasn’t in a position to fight. She was one woman who had been underpaid from the jump. And when Hollywood decided to move on, she stayed quiet and gracious.

The Pratt Years: Visibility Doesn’t Mean Agency

In 2009, Anna Faris married Chris Pratt. From the outside, this looked like a power move. Pratt was rising, and she was established. Together, they were a Hollywood couple. But, as it’s often the case, over the next nine years, Faris’s individual identity merged into “Chris Pratt’s wife.”

She had a successful career in the industry. She appeared in Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain and Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation. These were roles that should have confirmed her as a serious actress, not just a comedienne. But the industry had already decided what she was. A 2011 agent quoted in Vulture said, “There’s not a lot of girls like her who do ‘hot’ and ‘funny.’” The implicit perception was that she couldn’t do anything else.

When Lost in Translation came out, people assumed her role was a dig at Cameron Diaz. That assumption followed her for years. In 2026, she finally addressed it on a podcast: “It felt like it took a little something away from my flavor, and because I had auditioned for it and earned it as that performance. I always felt, like, ‘No, I’m not part of some grand, weird sabotage.’” She had, once again, to defend the legitimacy of her own work.

During those Pratt years, Faris had visibility, though not agency. She was visible because of her marriage, yet she wasn’t being courted for roles; casting directors saw her as “Chris Pratt’s wife.” And when the marriage ended in 2018, she was left with something worse than being underpaid in a blockbuster franchise. She was left with the wreckage of being publicly associated with a man whose career only went up, and the subliminal accusation of “maybe you did something wrong.”

The Gendered Math That Hollywood Won’t Admit

Let’s break it down: Two groups of people built Scary Movie’s massive success. The Wayans brothers and Anna Faris with Regina Hall. The Wayans negotiated power, got cut out, fought back, and won their franchise back. Faris and Hall got cut out and stayed cut out. One way or another, they became background elements in a story about the Wayans taking back their creation.

This is the same old Hollywood story where men have leverage and agents who fight for them, and women must be grateful, pleasant, and available if the industry decides to use them again.

That’s why, when Faris was asked to return for Scary Movie 6, she had “complicated feelings,” as she’s described them. She said she always imagined that if she came back, “it would be a concession of my soul. Because I imagined I would be a cameo and get paid a lot of money, but not enough. Not enough for my pride.” Talk about systemic undervaluation.

Anna Faris’s Return Is Not Going Unnoticed

When Marlon Wayans called in February 2025 to tell her they got the franchise back, something changed. Faris came back for Scary Movie 6. And for the first time in 25 years, she felt what she described as genuine valuation.

“I felt valued in a way that I never thought the franchise would give me,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “It felt very, very, very meaningful and powerful to me to be able to look at Marlon in particular and be like, ‘Dude, I love you. Your family gave me something huge. And I’m beloved by association.’”

While Faris was genuinely thanking him for valuing her, we cannot help but notice that she’s still performing gratitude for being treated fairly.

In The End, The Question Isn’t Whether Hollywood Did Her Dirty. It’s Why She Had to Be So Nice About It.

Anna Faris is an adored comedienne and part of the life of an entire generation. She’s had a long career, working with major directors. By any measure, she’s had success.

But the question isn’t whether she made it. It’s what she lost along the way by being too polite to fight back. It’s what her career would have looked like if she’d had the same leverage, the same institutional support, the same assumption of power that the men around her had. It’s what happens when a woman is told she’s lucky to be there, so many times, that she starts to believe it’s true.

Today, when Faris talks about her role in Primetime, a small dramatic part opposite Robert Pattinson, she describes it as “incredible.” Yeah, the movie might be great, but she’s still conditioned to be gracious. That’s what happens when you spend 25 years in an industry that’s convinced you that being paid less than you’re worth is actually a gift.

By Yamily Habib.

When I decided at 38 to move to the countryside, my mother immediately offered to help. Despite her autoimmune disease, she didn’t want me moving alone again. She understood better than anyone what it means to do everything alone, even when married.

Once I settled in and saw the neglected land ahead, my mother had a panic attack. “It’s too much work for you alone,” she said. But after watching her figure out her life, despite a husband who added to her burdens, I replied, “Watch me.”

Leaving home young taught me to be self-sufficient, but my new challenge was different. Still, I never thought it was impossible. I learned the tools and tricks for land management, survived accidents and mistakes, and remain stubbornly independent—not because help isn’t needed, but because my internal code resists it.

We’re All Breaking the Same Cycle

Seeing Erika Cruz’s reel on social media, I realized my experience isn’t unique. This conditioning is deeply rooted in many Latinas in their 30s.

“Most of us grew up watching the generation before us stay in situations that didn’t serve them because they heavily relied on a man financially and to make decisions,” Cruz wrote in the caption of her video. “That has shifted. Women are more likely to pursue higher education, and we are starting businesses at a faster rate. This doesn’t mean that we don’t want romantic love, but it does mean that we care about having independence and the opportunity to pursue our calling.”

To say she hit the nail on the head is an understatement.

My mother married at 20 while pregnant and had her three children before 30. She wasn’t financially dependent on my father, but social conditioning and pride weighed heavily on her. She raised us, finished medical school, earned many degrees, and after separating, became independent. That’s when I saw her truly shine.

These early lessons stuck with me. Growing up watching her bound by a self-imposed yoke fueled a building frustration inside me. By age seven, I swore I would never let anything tie me down that way. My choices—good or bad—would be my own, and I would refuse to depend on anyone, no matter the hardship.
And yes, this came at the cost of an irremediable reluctance to commit and an unbearable discomfort with intimacy. But this is most likely just my own issue. For I look around and see so many women of my generation achieving both, and I am grateful for our titanic capacity to break generational curses—though I am also grateful for therapy.

The Emotional Work Nobody Asked For

I am not the eldest daughter, and I greatly admire all those who are, like my mother, and the decision-making burden of parentification they were subjected to from a very young age. My experience was different, though not very far removed. As the middle daughter between two boys, my responsibility was (and still is, though I’m working on it) to tune in to the family’s emotions, to translate the emotional atmosphere, and to explain what’s really going on before the escalating drama devoured us all. These experiences also explain why Latinas of my generation are so obsessed with setting boundaries, returning emotional baggage to its rightful owner, and trying to sublimate our own.

These patterns carry into our professional lives as well. While we’ve diligently built our careers, honoring our mothers’ tenacity but learning not to repeat their mistakes, I see that there’s still work to be done—at least for me.

I recognize how hard it is to delegate, work as a team, or say “no” instead of taking on responsibilities that aren’t mine—filling weekends and losing sleep.

The Privilege of Choice

But as I write these lines, I realize that the bulk of the work is already done. At my age, my mother was tired enough for three lifetimes, and the possibility of doing things on her own terms didn’t seem possible. For my part, I live the life I always wanted, despite the difficulties and obstacles that come with the contract of life. I am completely independent, and it is by my own choice.

The privilege is undeniable.

This summer, women of all ages are wearing swimwear that would have felt scandalous five years ago. And they are doing so unapologetically.

The skimpy bikini boom is real. And it’s not about exposure.

The skimpy swimwear trend—from thong bikinis to micro cuts to strategic cutouts—is a quiet revolt happening in plain sight. Women are saying, “This is my body. I’m comfortable in it. I’m going to wear what makes me feel good.” And we want in.

The Shift From “Flattering” to “I Feel Good”

For decades, women were told that certain bodies could wear certain things. The constant argument was to prioritize looking “flattering,” which really meant minimizing your flaws, hiding your “problem areas,” and making yourself smaller.

Fortunately, that word is basically dead now, and we owe it all to Gen Z.

We’ve moved into what Shaun Cole, an associate professor of fashion at the University of Southampton, calls “another age of body consciousness—a much more expressive moment.” People are saying, as he puts it: “It’s my body, and I can show it off in ways that I choose to.”

This is to say, instead of conforming to one ideal, we are collectively rejecting the idea that there’s only one ideal in the first place.

Women of all shapes and sizes are embracing bolder cuts with real confidence, bypassing the marketing brainwashing and throwing other people’s opinions out the window.

What Changed, Exactly?

Three things, to be exact.

First, the fitness obsession with glutes shifted the cultural conversation about bodies. For years, the fitness industry sold flat abs and thin thighs. Now it’s sculpting, building, and celebrating the posterior. So when women went to the gym and built the bodies they wanted, the image in their heads finally matched the one in the mirror.

Second, Gen Z arrived and refused to play the game. This generation is fundamentally less interested in the concept of being “flattering.” They’re not interested in dieting their bodies into clothes but in finding clothes—or wearing no clothes—that celebrate who they actually are. The phrase “that’s not flattering” will earn you a side-eye, and rightfully so. Because the response is basically: “So what? I like how I look anyway.”

Third, the internet finally did something right when it comes to body standards. Social media gave women a way to see other women wearing bold swimwear. Not models. Real women. Women with stretch marks and cellulite, and bodies that don’t fit into the narrow bandwidth of magazines that are still stuck on the ultra-skinny model. When you see 500 women on TikTok confidently wearing a thong bikini, it stops feeling scandalous and starts feeling normal.

Add e-commerce into the mix, and suddenly you could actually buy these things without explaining yourself to a store clerk, if that’s your pet peeve. You could try them at home, read reviews from real bodies like yours, and make a choice based on what you really want.

The Trend Itself: What’s Actually Happening

The skimpy summer aesthetic has several key silhouettes, and the important thing to understand is that none of them are new. What’s new is that they’re now being featured side by side, as a beautiful spectrum of choices.

The micro bikini—the one that’s basically string and triangles—has been around since the 1960s, influenced by Brazilian beachwear. However, for decades, it was considered extreme, reserved for celebrities and people with specific body types. Now it’s mainstream, showing up everywhere from Miami Swim Week runways to ecommerce platforms.

The thong bikini (or what’s sometimes called the cheeky cut or dental floss style) used to be the ultimate goal for many, if and when you achieved that body. Now, you see it on everybody and every brand. From high-street retailers to luxury brands, fashion insiders note that thong styles are being marketed more diversely than ever before. Women of all shapes and sizes are leaning into this cut, and the industry is finally catching up.

Then there’s the ‘90s minimalist wave—sleek, clean-lined one-pieces and two-pieces in neutral colors like mocha, black, and white that feel almost like shapewear with contoured lines. This one is interesting because it bridges the gap between “revealing” and “elevated.” You can look like you walked off a runway and also feel completely yourself.

The cutout situation deserves its own mention. Strategic cutouts on bikinis and one-pieces—asymmetrical, at the sides, on the back, defining the waist—are everywhere.

The Shift Is About Comfort and Self-Determination

When you wear a swimsuit you actually like—one that fits your body, celebrates it, makes you feel confident—you wear it more. You walk from the towel to the shore with an unknown yet liberating confidence. You’re simply not spending mental energy worrying about coverage or how you look from certain angles. And, God, does that feel good!

For decades, women’s relationship to their bodies in public was mediated by shame, the male gaze, and respectability politics. The idea that showing your body meant you were asking for something or deserving something. And we are finally free.

Body positivity—the real version, not the Instagram version—is about the radical acceptance that all bodies are worthy of taking up space, of comfort. All bodies deserve clothes that fit them, celebrate them, and make them feel good.

According to research on India’s fashion ecommerce market, which is expanding rapidly and seeing significant growth in inclusive sizing options, curve-friendly fashion has exploded as women realized they didn’t have to wait for permission. They could just buy a swimsuit that worked for them.

The shift toward extended sizing, diverse marketing, and designs that work with bodies rather than against them is evidence of what would happen if marketing actually paid attention to what people want, not to what certain powerful interests want to see out there.

And we are here for it.