Actor and climate activist Jane Fonda called for Americans to vote for “climate champions” up-and-down the ballot on Wednesday at the TIME100 Summit.

“Joe Biden provides us a context in which we can fight and he can be pressured,” Fonda said. “The orange guy, forget it. There’s no space to fight or disagree.” 

While Fonda did not explicitly touch on Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, her comments seemed to be targeted in part to those on the left frustrated with the Biden Administration’s reluctance to call for a permanent ceasefire and its continued military aid to Israel as it carries out what critics see as a genocide. Some have pledged not to vote for him. A December 2023 New York Times/Siena College poll found that nearly three-quarters of voters between 18 and 29 disapprove of Biden’s response to Israel’s conduct in Gaza. 

Fonda joined Greenpeace and other climate activists to advocate for Congress to pass the Green New Deal in 2019. She got arrested a few times for protesting. That legislation, a bipartisan bill that aims to bring down U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to net zero, has so far failed to clear Congress. 

Fonda says she is tired of Republicans blocking important climate legislation backed by science. “If you can’t change the people, change the people,” she says. (Fonda runs a Climate PAC under her name.)

Fonda, who’s traces her love of the environment to her childhood; she was a tomboy who escaped to nature when “things weren’t so great at home.” She recalled how there used to be more birds and no freeway or smog in Los Angeles in the 30s, when she was born.

“Nature was where I found solace,” she says. “When nature began to disappear, I noticed.”

Fonda’s chat with Time Editor in Chief Sam Jacobs was the closing conversation of the Time100 Summit, which preceded closing remarks from TIME CEO Jessica Sibley.

The TIME100 Summit convenes leaders from the global TIME100 community to spotlight solutions and encourage action toward a better world. This year’s summit features a variety of speakers across a diverse range of sectors, including politics, business, health and science, culture, and more.

Speakers for the 2024 TIME 100 Summit include actor Elliot Page, designer Tory Burch, Olympic medalist Ibtihaj Muhammad, WNBA champion A’ja Wilson, author Margaret Atwood, NYSE president Lynn Martin, comedian Alex Edelman, professor Yoshua Bengio, 68th Secretary of State John Kerry, actor Jane Fonda, and many more.

The TIME100 Summit was presented by Booking.com, Citi, Merck, Northern Data Group, Glenfiddich Single Malt Scotch Whisky, and Verizon.

The BeyHive is convinced Beyoncé will be making a surprise appearance at Stagecoach in Indio, California, under the moniker DJ Backwoods Barbie. Theories surrounding the superstar’s alleged appearance started to make the rounds on TikTok as the country music festival prepares to kick off on Friday. Keeping on theme with the album about reclaiming space for Black people in the country music space, Beyoncé making a surprise appearance would make more than enough sense.

Stagecoach is Coachella’s sister event, and it takes place at the Empire Polo Club in Indio just a week later. It announced its lineup back in September with Eric Church, Miranda Lambert, and Morgan Wallen as the headliners and many of Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter collaborators, such as Tanner Adell, Brittney Spencer, Willie Jones, Post Malone, and Willie Nelson are set to perform. The festival also announced that Diplo, who has worked with Beyoncé in the past, would be hosting the Honky Tonk, a set played at one of the tents on festival grounds. The set will feature a host of different DJs blending country and dance music.

Read More: Fans React to Beyoncé’s New Album ‘Cowboy Carter’

On March 11, Diplo posted a photo of the list of DJs set to perform, and the lineup includes an artist named “Backwoods Barbie.” On the festival’s website, each artist has a photo and links to their social media accounts. However, Backwoods Barbie has a photo of a Barbie doll with a cowboy hat and an Instagram account with no photos of the artist. The page features references to Beyoncé’s album, with one post saying, “Cowboy Carter on repeat.”

Backwoods Barbie only follows six accounts: Diplo, Stagecoach, Beyoncé, Morgan Wallen, Guy Fieri, and Dolly Parton. The name Backwoods Barbie is a reference to Parton’s 2008 album of the same name. The album was a return to mainstream country music for Parton after doing mainly folk, bluegrass, and pop-country records in the 90s and early 2000s.

The unknown artist is set to perform a two-hour set starting at 7:00 PM PST on Saturday, April 27, the day after CNN releases Call Me Country: Beyoncé and Nashville’s Renaissance, an analytical look at Beyoncé’s impact on country music and the Black musicians in the genre.

Some sleuthing from the BeyHive found that there is virtually no information about Backwoods Barbie. The BeyHive surmised that this could mean a surprise performance from Beyoncé.

During the second weekend of Coachella, a semi-truck with a promotion for Cowboy Carter emblazoned across it pulled up to the festival grounds. This led fans to believe that she would be one of the many surprise guests making appearances at the festival. It’s almost certain that nobody will know for sure before Saturday, so Backwoods Barbie will have a lot of eyes on their set.

Authors Margaret Atwood and Lauren Groff agree: it can be more effective to write truthfully about the contemporary world by situating stories in the past or in the future.

Both writers discussed their creative choices in conversation with TIME correspondent Eliana Dockterman on Wednesday at the TIME100 Summit in New York City. Atwood, who has written dozens of books spanning fiction, essays and poetry, based her setting for The Handmaid’s Tale on 17th century New England. Groff set her most recent work, survivalist novel The Vaster Wilds, in that time and place as well.

Both works deal with issues facing women, greater culture and the environment today: As Dockterman put it, they are “stories about women in moments of survival.”

“I wanted to talk about the modern age, but do it slant,” Groff said. “Historical fiction is an amazing way to do that. Every book is of the time you’re actually in, even if you put it into the future or put it into the past.” 

Atwood noted that the challenge of writing a contemporary story is a general writers’ problem. “Present times are moving so quickly that it’s hard to get a point of fixation,” she said. “As soon as you write about something in the present day, it’s all changed.”

Those stories can nonetheless have profound effects on modern day society. Atwood published Handmaid’s Tale in 1985, and nearly 40 years later, the novel has taken on renewed significance after the fall of Roe v. Wade and threats to abortion access across the nation. Many protestors, in a nod to the garb in The Handmaid’s Tale, have been pictured filling legislative chambers and protest lines wearing long red robes and white bonnetts.

Groff also spoke of the current, growing threat in the U.S. to books themselves as groups push to ban books from schools or libraries that have content they disagree with. “Banning books is the first step to burning them,” she added.

Groff and her husband are opening a bookstore in Florida, where they have watched book bans grow to make up roughly 40 percent of the total bans in the country over the last few years.

“Talk about a Puritan theocracy,” Groff said with a nod to Atwood: “That’s what Florida is right now.”  Even the massive number of Florida’s book bans and challenges alone isn’t the extent of the issue, Groff explained, as teachers are afraid of attempting to teach books that could be challenged, whether for LGBTQ+ content, issues about race, or other targeted topics. She added that a certain county of Florida has banned the dictionary because it includes the word “sex.” 

“We wanted to be a lighthouse, we wanted to spread freedom of expression. We’re literally in the middle of the state in Gainesville, Florida, in the swamp, and we wanted to show that we’re watching. We’re here. The people whose voices are being erased, they matter,” Groff said. “The state of Florida doesn’t seem to value them, but we value them. We think that they’re important and they need to be heard and they need to see themselves reflected in the books.” 

The TIME100 Summit convenes leaders from the global TIME100 community to spotlight solutions and encourage action toward a better world. This year’s summit features a variety of speakers across a diverse range of sectors, including politics, business, health and science, culture, and more.

Speakers for the 2024 TIME100 Summit include actor Elliot Page, designer Tory Burch, Olympic medalist Ibtihaj Muhammad, WNBA champion A’ja Wilson, NYSE president Lynn Martin, comedian Alex Edelman, professor Yoshua Bengio, 68th Secretary of State John Kerry, actor Jane Fonda, and many more.

The TIME100 Summit was presented by Booking.com, Citi, Merck, Northern Data Group, Glenfiddich Single Malt Scotch Whisky, and Verizon.

Selena Gomez is committed to Rare Beauty, she said at the 2024 TIME100 Summit in New York City on Wednesday. Gomez launched the vegan and cruelty free makeup line in Sept. 2020, and it has since amassed a valuation of $2 billion, a figure that led to reports of a potential sale in Rare Beauty’s immediate future.

“I don’t think I’m going anywhere. I am enjoying this a little too much,” the actor and musician said, adding that Rare Beauty is her “pride and joy.” Gomez was joined on stage by Elyse Cohen, Vice President of Social Impact and Inclusion at Rare Beauty, for a conversation titled The Beauty of Impact, moderated by TIME senior editor Lucy Feldman in New York City. 

“I didn’t want to really enter the cosmetics world without a mission,” Gomez, 31, said of her decision to launch Rare Beauty. First and foremost is the brand’s focus on building a community to freely discuss mental health. “It was actually a dream that kind of happened within this brand, and on top of it we were able to make hopefully decent products.”

Gomez is personally committed to furthering conversations around mental health, by talking about her own journey. The actor, who had an early entry into the entertainment industry when she was seven years old, before becoming a household name starring in Disney Channel television series Wizards of Waverly Place, currently stars on hit comedy crime television show Only Murders in the Building, which airs its fourth season this summer. She also has a prolific career as a Grammy-nominated pop musician, with three studio albums to her name. In her 2020 documentary, Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me, she shared that she’d been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a decision she said was “freeing.” 

“All these confusing things were happening,” Gomez said on stage. “Once I finally found the answer, it wasn’t ‘Oh, I have this problem.’ It actually made me feel better to know and understand what was happening in my mind.” 

Gomez says the single most important thing she does for her own mental health is to seek out alone time. Cohen, who also serves as president of the Rare Impact Fund, the beauty brand’s commitment to youth mental health awareness, said her mental health priorities are two-fold: Her first is to surround herself with people who uplift her, she said. Her second is to find power in telling our own stories. 

“Once you start to share a tiny bit, you just realize how much less alone you are and how so many of us are more alike than we are different,” she said. Cohen added that the Rare Impact Fund has raised more than $13 million since its launch, which supports 26 organizations in supporting young people. Before a single product was sold, Gomez pledged that 1% of all sales, not profits, would go towards mental health action. Rare Beauty channels also drive its followers toward mindful resources, rather than just products. 

“We have such an opportunity to bring the gift of someone like Selena, a new brand, and an issue that was coming to the headlines,” Cohen said. 

Gomez added that the community Rare Beauty has built is what sets the brand apart from its competitors: “That is what makes me happy every night when I go to sleep because it’s mission driven.”

During the conversation on Wednesday morning, Gomez also opened up about her relationship with social media: “I find it frustrating. Then I get a little mouthy and I want to defend the people I love.” The most-followed woman on Instagram, with 429 million followers, Gomez has had her ups and downs with the platform. “I took four years off of Instagram, and I let my team post for me for those years. I felt like it was the most rewarding gift I gave myself,” she said.

The TIME100 Summit convenes leaders from the global TIME100 community to spotlight solutions and encourage action toward a better world. This year’s summit features a variety of speakers across a diverse range of sectors, including politics, business, health and science, culture, and more.

Speakers for the 2024 TIME100 Summit include actor Elliot Page, designer Tory Burch, Olympic medalist Ibtihaj Muhammad, WNBA champion A’ja Wilson, author Margaret Atwood, NYSE president Lynn Martin, comedian Alex Edelman, professor Yoshua Bengio, 68th Secretary of State John Kerry, actor Jane Fonda, and many more.

The TIME100 Summit was presented by Booking.com, Citi, Merck, Northern Data Group, Glenfiddich Single Malt Scotch Whisky, and Verizon.

Elliot Page says he experienced a mixture of feelings when he came out as transgender on an Instagram post in 2020.

“I felt utterly elated and beyond grateful to finally be in a place where I could accept and love myself and do what I needed to and wanted to,” the 37-year-old actor, director, and LGBTQ+ activist told the audience at the 2024 TIME100 Summit in New York City on Wednesday. 

After a soulful live performance by Leslie Odom Jr. and opening remarks from TIME CEO Jessica Sibley, Page sat down with TIME Contributing Editor Sam Lansky to kick off a series of panel discussions featuring the global TIME100 community.

It’s been three years since the actor graced the cover of TIME magazine alongside his pet dog to share—in full for the first time—his journey towards publicly announcing that he is a gender non-binary transgender person. 

“That cover, which was shot by a trans man, Wynne Neilly in Toronto, and having that opportunity, it meant so much,” Page said. “It was also very overwhelming, as you can imagine,” he said, adding that he was experiencing trans joy alongside feelings of anxiety, grief and anger. 

Since then, Page has been busy with a number of personal and professional projects. He filmed two more seasons of popular Netflix series The Umbrella Academy, which streams its fourth season in August, and published an instantly bestselling memoir Pageboy in June 2023, which is out in paperback next month.  

“Steve [Blackman], the showrunner of Umbrella, is actually one of the first people I came out to,” Page told Lansky of the show’s creator. He had starred in two seasons of the series before he announced that he was transgender, but later worked with Blackman to weave his transition into his character’s storyline alongside pursuing gender affirming surgery.

“I called him nervously and he was incredible,” recalls Page. “If anything, he was the one who was very insistent on immediately having it be a part of the show and supported me to be able to access the care I was hoping to get at that time.”   

Page added that Hollywood still has a “lack of representation for trans people,” but said he looks forward to being able to tackle varied roles and stories. These characters, he notes, may be easier to embody now that he has transitioned. “To get to start from the foundation of just being there is so thrilling,” Page said.  

Page made waves when he starred in Jason Reitman’s 2007 film Juno as the titular protagonist, a loveable yet loud mouthed pregnant teenager. The actor earned an Oscar nomination for his performance but struggled with panic attacks while suppressing his gender identity. 

The actor also held prominent roles in the X-men franchise in 2006 and 2014, as well as Christopher Nolan’s 2010 film Inception. 

But between Page’s recent memoir and his independent feature film Close to You—which will open in theaters on Aug. 16—the actor has found “joy” in stepping into more writing roles. “So much of my mind had been occupied by unhealthy, toxic thinking and now I have the space where my consciousness is just like flowing,” Page said, adding that writing is one of his favorite things to do post-transition.  

In the decade since Page was outed as gay on the X-men film set in 2014, he has developed into a prominent LGBTQ+ activist. He has also been a vocal advocate against the proposed rollback of laws in Alberta, Canada, to protect trans people, which he said runs parallel to similar regression in the U.S.

“Sometimes I think Canada hides behind a bit of its branding,” said Page, who was born in Canada. He adds that the “same anti trans rhetoric, misinformation” is perpetuated by Canadian politicians and high profile figures.

But nonetheless, Page said he still manages to find some moments of hope within his community and among those who wish to make the world a better place. Among those he finds inspiring are British writer Travis Alabanza and Canadian filmmaker Chase Joynt. “Hope for me is for those who continuously resist and support each other.”

The TIME100 Summit convenes leaders from the global TIME100 community to spotlight solutions and encourage action toward a better world. This year’s summit features a variety of speakers across a diverse range of sectors, including politics, business, health and science, culture, and more.

Speakers for the 2024 TIME100 Summit include designer Tory Burch, Olympic medalist Ibtihaj Muhammad, WNBA champion A’ja Wilson, author Margaret Atwood, NYSE president Lynn Martin, comedian Alex Edelman, professor Yoshua Bengio, 68th Secretary of State John Kerry, actor Jane Fonda, and many more.

The TIME100 Summit was presented by Booking.com, Citi, Merck, Northern Data Group, Glenfiddich Single Malt Scotch Whisky, and Verizon.

Correction, April 24, 2024

The original version of this story misstated the year that Elliot Page came out as transgender. It was 2020, not 2021.

Rom-com fans, rejoice: Anyone But You has finally come to streaming. The sleeper hit, released theatrically in December, stars Euphoria’s Sydney Sweeney and Top Gun Maverick’s Glen Powell (although rom-com fans may know him better from Netflix’s Set It Up). The R-rated enemies-to-lovers film became a surprise box-office smash thanks to a savvy social media campaign and rumors of an off-screen romance (which Sweeney called “obviously not true”). The film also stars Barbie‘s Alexandra Shipp, Brothers & Sisters’ Rachel Griffiths, Darren Barnet of Never Have I Ever, Michelle Hurd of Star Trek: Picard, and rom-com royalty Dermot Mulroney, also known as the object of Julia Roberts’ obsessive affection in My Best Friend‘s Wedding. 

While movie studios haven’t invested in as many romances lately and options at the theaters have been dominated by franchises and spin-offs, fans were apparently eager to indulge in a light comedy, helping Anyone But You become a slow-burning hit. Director Will Gluck says that while many modern rom-coms have gone straight to streaming, Anyone But You benefited from being shown in theaters. “I think a big part of our movie was how people felt watching it with others in a theater,” he told the Hollywood Reporter. 

There’s also the added bonus that the movie comes from an original script, but one steeped in literary references. More specifically, it borrows from the characters and plot of Much Ado About Nothing. And Shakespeare, of course, has been popular with audiences for over 400 years. Hard to argue with that track record!

Here’s what to know about the movie’s months-long rise and the Shakespearean references scattered throughout.

What is the plot of Anyone But You?

The story follows Bea (Sweeney) and Ben (Powell), who have a suitably adorable meet-cute in a coffee shop, involving a rule-following employee, bread for grilled cheese night, and a hand dryer aimed at an unfortunate wet spot, followed by a memorable date that ends in disaster. The two are reunited by coincidence on their way to a destination wedding in Australia, where Ben’s friend and Bea’s sister are getting married. Faced with Bea’s pushy family and their two exes conveniently waiting in the wings, in true rom-com fashion they decide they must fake a relationship to survive the wedding. 

Is Anyone But You based on a book?

The plot of the rom-com is loosely inspired by William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, in which Benedick and Beatrice act out the now-stereotypical enemies to lovers trope, which has since inspired the storylines of countless romance books and movies. In both the play and the movie, an early courtship goes awry, leaving the pair waging a “merry war” of words. It’s not just the storyline that is borrowed from The Bard: The protagonists’ names, clearly, also take their inspiration from Shakespeare. Screenwriter Ilana Wolpert, previously best known for her work on High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, took Shakespeare’s play and updated it into a modern romantic comedy. 

“Much Ado About Nothing is my favorite Shakespearean piece, and I kept coming back to it at school, even throughout my studies in college,” Wolpert told her alumni paper. “There is so much farce, great humor, and so many great characters. It’s about family and friendship, but also a battle of wits and genders. It’s really a wonderful play. I always felt it would make an amazing movie.” 

Sweeney and producer Jeff Kirschenbaum liked the script enough to start shopping it to studios with Sweeney onboard to play Bea. “Ilana took such a cool, modern twist on Shakespeare, I felt like I was reading an early 2000s rom-com,” Sweeney told the New York Times. “I loved wanting to be kissed in the rain, wanting to fall in love once I finished reading the script, wanting to cry, laugh, feeling all the feels.”

Sweeney and Kirschenbaum brought on Gluck, who had previously directed both Emma Stone in Easy A and Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis in Friends With Benefits. Gluck re-worked the script before taking on the role of director. Both Gluck and Wolpert are credited as writers for the film, but Shakespeare’s influence is woven throughout, in ways both subtle and decidedly not.

At one point, as ScreenRant notes, Bea walks by a mural emblazoned with a line from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, “Here’s much to do with hate, but more to do with love.” Later someone has written in the sand the lines “Bait the hook well; this fish will bite.” That comes from the second act of Much Ado About Nothing, where two characters are spreading the rumor that Beatrice is desperately in love with Benedick, who just so happens to be eavesdropping on the conversation. Anyone But You has plenty of its own eavesdropping scenes as characters humorously try to convince Bea and Ben to fall in or out of love.

At one point the camera pans to a bedside table where someone has been reading a book titled Men Were Deceivers Ever, which is both a novel by Patricia Veryan and a line from Shakespeare’s play. To really bring the point home, in the film’s final montage, as Natasha Bedingfield’s 2004 single “Unwritten” plays, Ben and Bea dance under a huge sign that reads, “Much Ado About Nothing.”

Where can you stream Anyone But You?

Anyone But You was initially released in theaters just in time for Christmas on Dec. 22. It was then released for rent or purchase on YouTube, Apple TV, and Amazon Prime Video. On March 19, Netflix announced that the film would be available to stream beginning April 23 for all subscribers.

A Netflix UK release date is yet to be confirmed, but the film is currently available to rent or buy in the UK via Prime Video and iTunes, per Digital Spy.

How did Anyone But You become a box-office hit?

Despite a trailer that ran in theaters before Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour film, Anyone But You didn’t garner much buzz, critical acclaim, or box-office success during its first week. “I kept my expectations low and, in retrospect, not low enough,” Gluck told the Times about the film’s $8 million opening weekend. But that disappointing first week performance was not indicative of the film’s future.

TikTok was soon flooded with videos of fans reenacting the film’s credit sequence, dancing to and singing snippets of “Unwritten,” which plays a key role in the movie. Rumors of an off-screen romance between Powell and Sweeney helped create more buzz, which the actors’ friendly behavior on the publicity tour fed into even as the two denied their veracity. In addition to skewering the rumors during Sweeney’s Saturday Night Live appearance, the two stars created a TikTok video where they whispered to each other, a clip which racked up a reported 18 million views, far outnumbering the 10 million views of the film’s official trailer, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Soon the film was pushed into the top five at the U.S. box office, staying there each weekend through the end of January. In February, the film was re-released for Valentine’s Day with extra footage, per Variety. It eventually grossed over $200 million globally off what Variety reports was a $25 million budget.

Will there be a sequel to Anyone But You?

While no sequel has been officially announced, during Sweeney’s appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in February, the actor teased fans with the possibility that she might reunite with Powell for another romance.

“Fans are hoping for a sequel, do you think that maybe we’ll see a sequel?” Fallon asked her. “Maybe like, a high nine chance,” Sweeney told an enthusiastic audience. 

Unfortunately, the studio may not be as excited by the idea. Tom Rothman, chairman and chief executive of Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group told the New York Times that they may have other ideas for the duo. “Not that we wouldn’t consider a sequel—obviously, we would,” Rothman said. “But I think maybe the healthiest opportunity is another original starring the two of them.” While the future may not hold an Anyone But You, Part II, perhaps Sweeney and Powell could be this era’s Goldie Hawk and Kurt Russell or Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. 

Ahead of the Curve begins at what seems like the end. The documentary, which premiered in 2020 and arrived on Netflix this week, traces the legacy of the iconic lesbian and queer women’s magazine Curve and its founder, the singular Franco Stevens.

When the film opens, both the magazine and its founder are at a precipice. Curve, which Stevens had sold to an Australian publisher, is in financial trouble. “The magazine might be coming to an end,” she tells Jen Rainin, her wife and one of the film’s directors (the other is Rivkah Beth Medow). “Should it come to an end, or should it change into something else?”

“Do you want to be a part of figuring out what that is?” Rainin asks in response. 

These questions—what can Curve be, and where will Stevens take it next?—have been at the heart of her life for decades. Stevens was only 23 in 1990 when she founded Curve, originally called Deneuve, launching the magazine with a fist full of cash she won at the races and her own face on the cover. 

“In my wildest dreams, it would last for five years,” Stevens told Reuters. “After so long, to still hear women say that it saved their lives really makes it worthwhile.” 

The making of Curve

Curve gave lesbians and queer women the chance to see themselves on glossy magazine pages—not just as objects of sexual intrigue or political outrage, but as fully realized people. The proud and pointed inclusion of “lesbian” on Curve’s covers was something Stevens and the rest of the magazine’s staff put a lot of thought into. 

“I can’t even verbalize today how much I was ridiculed and bashed, even from within our own community by putting the word lesbian on the cover,” Stevens says in the documentary. She also worried that labeling the magazine so clearly would present a barrier for those who might want to read it, but were not yet out. At the same time, brightly branding Curve “a lesbian magazine” made its inclusion on any shelf alongside other magazines also covering lifestyle, art, and politics an unambiguous statement: we belong here.

Stevens herself was already married to a man when she learned for the first time that it was possible for a woman to be gay, in a human sexuality course she was taking in college. When she realized she was a lesbian, Stevens chose to tell her husband—only for him to unceremoniously out her to her entire family. She asked her family for help in establishing a life on her own, but was told by her mother that she “had made her bed.” Stevens continued to attend school while living in her car, and eventually got a job at gay San Francisco bookstore A Different Life. There, she found the people who helped her make the idea that would become Curve a reality. 

Stevens put out a notice that she was looking for writers for a new lesbian magazine, and received hundreds of interested responses. When author and lesbian romance publisher Barbara Grier of Naiad Press sent an advertisement out to her mailing list, Stevens was inundated with more subscriptions than could fit in her mailbox. And still, in the magazine’s early years, the team struggled to fund each issue. At one point, Stevens and her girlfriend at the time stationed themselves outside bars in San Francisco’s Castro district and had the lesbian equivalent of a car-wash fundraiser, asking $20 to detail motorcycles. Much of the financial strain was due to a lack of advertising revenue—mainstream companies were afraid to be associated with a lesbian magazine.

Celebrities were similarly wary of appearing in the pages of Curve, then called Deneuve. Melissa Etheridge announced she was a lesbian during a political event in 1993, and became the first celebrity to appear on the cover. “I was so happy to be able to help the magazine, and for them to be able to help me,” she says in the film. Shortly after, the magazine landed its first ad from a major company, Budweiser. More followed suit, testing the waters and laying the groundwork for what would one day become a roaring trade of marketing to queer people (when convenient, at least) and serving as a legitimizing force.

The magazine was hitting its stride. Then in 1996, Deneuve was sued for copyright infringement by French actress Catherine Deneuve. Although Deneuve had delivered several iconic sapphic performances, Stevens insisted the magazine was not named after her. And yet, Stevens foundered under the weight of legal fees, taking out loans to keep it afloat. “The lawsuit was the most stressful time of my whole life,” she says. 

A swell of support arrived in the form of the Alive and Kicking Fundraiser, which brought together artists, actors, comedians, authors from across the lesbian community to party as hard as possible in the face of an existential threat. “It was by the love of the community and the contributions of the people that performed that allowed us to keep going,” says Stevens.

The magazine was able to settle with Deneuve, and in 1996 it was re-christened Curve. “It’s a much better name,” Stevens says in the film. “A curve isn’t straight, it’s like the curves of a woman’s body. And, people can pronounce it.” 

Curve began to thrive once again—but in 1997, Stevens was injured while carrying a stack of heavy boxes. She broke her foot, and though doctors initially told her it would get better, it didn’t. Instead, the pain grew worse and worse, with Stevens undergoing repeated surgeries and other treatments for nerve damage that affected both her feet. Chronic, unpredictable pain became a part of her everyday reality. 

“This is why I didn’t continue to do the magazine,” Stevens explains to Rainin, holding a pair of scissors suspended above her wife’s hands. “I can’t sit here and be completely present, because of the pain. And not only the physical pain, but this anxiety of, ‘Okay, concentrate now, you never know when this is going to come down and stab you,’”—she mimes attacking Rainin’s hands with the scissors, and she flinches away. “It’s very exhausting.” Unable to work regularly, Stevens was forced to sell Curve.

Ahead of the Curve and the influence of Franco Stevens

In Ahead of the Curve, we see Stevens participate in a panel at the LGBTQ women’s media conference ClexaCon, where she asks her audience what “lesbian” means to them. For the ClexaCon crowd—and the larger community—the word has evolved since it first adorned Curve’s cover. Some in the room, especially the younger audience members, heard “lesbian” for the first time not as an identity but as a porn category. The association trans-exclusionary radical feminists have endeavored to build between their bigotry and lesbian identity has also created further distance. Others still feel deeply connected to its history, and the specificity and community it represents. 

Ultimately, the moment underscores the diversity of perspectives that make up a community too often referred to monolithically. It also makes Stevens’ philosophy about the future of not only the magazine, but the lesbian community in general, clear: it will be collaborative and inclusive, and young people will lead the way.

“By being visibly queer and visibly Latinx I can hopefully make it easier for other younger folks in my family and in my community,” says advocate and scholar Andrea Pino-Silva during the panel. 

One of the key points discussed by the writers, editors, artists, and activists interviewed in Ahead of the Curve is how visibility, when not coupled with support and acceptance, can be dangerous. As transgender people remind us each Trans Day of Visibility, sometimes a higher profile means a bigger target. “It was nothing to walk down the street and have somebody smack you or hit you,” says author and poet Jewelle Gomez. “Once I had a guy spit in my face.”

At the same time, visibility coupled with connection can be alchemized into community. Ahead of the Curve includes nostalgic, self-shot footage of Stevens and her contemporaries criss-crossing the country in their twenties with stacks of magazines in the trunk, visiting festivals and bars full of lesbians and queer women, all basking in the sun and in one another’s presence. Although it’s hard to imagine in the era of the internet, many people simply had no idea they could be lesbians at all. In Ahead of the Curve, members of the magazine’s original staff share letters from people all over the country, thanking Curve for introducing them to possibilities they had never envisioned for themselves.

In the years since selling Curve, Stevens has had to fight for necessary medical care, challenging California’s laws about resources allocated to those injured at work in court. This facet of her story highlights the doubled labor many disabled people face as they navigate both their professional work, and the sheer amount of administrative work it takes to secure vital accommodations and care. Today, Stevens uses a wheelchair and motorized scooter to navigate her queer coalition-building.

“It’s like I turn into everyone’s coat rack,” Stevens quips as she and Pino-Silva frame a selfie together outside the bookstore that used to house A Different Life. It’s moments like this that prove Stevens is continuing to do what she always has: making the possibilities of queer life legible, now as a visibly disabled icon of the lesbian movement. In the final shot of Ahead of the Curve, she reclines on a blanket at the park as we’ve seen her do in archival footage throughout the film, surrounded by friends and community.

In answer to the question posed at the beginning of the film—and 30 years before—Stevens founded The Curve Foundation. The Foundation awards prizes for lesbian and queer journalism, and focuses on archiving and raising awareness of lesbian history. It also continues to publish Curve—a recent issue focused on butch identity, and included an essay from Stevens herself. 

“I feel lucky. Most people can spend a lifetime and still never know why they were put here on earth. I was here to create the magazine. Every time we put out a magazine it felt groundbreaking,” Stevens says. “And the work is not done.”

A former cameraman for Megan Thee Stallion has accused her of harassment and fostering a hostile work environment in a lawsuit filed with the Los Angeles Supreme Court on Tuesday.

Emilio Garcia, who worked as a personal cameraman for the rapper from 2019 to 2023, alleges that he was stuck in a moving car with Megan Thee Stallion while she had sex with a woman. According to the lawsuit, a copy of which was obtained by TIME, Garcia traveled to Ibiza, Spain with Megan Thee Stallion in June 2022 and was in a car with her and another woman when they began having sex. Garcia says he was unable to leave because the car was moving.

Speaking with NBC News, Garcia says he felt “uncomfortable” and “shocked” at “the overall audacity to do this right, right beside me.” Megan Thee Stallion asked him if he was in SUV and he confirmed that he was, the lawsuit says. She told him not to speak about what he saw and Garcia also said in the lawsuit that she hurled fatphobic comments at him, calling him a “fat b-tch” and telling him to “spit your food out,” saying, “You don’t need to be eating.” “To hear someone who advocates about loving your body tell me these things, I felt degraded,” Garcia says.

“This is an employment claim for money—with no sexual harassment claim filed and with salacious accusations to attempt to embarrass her,” Alex Spiro, an attorney for Megan Thee Stallion, said in an email to TIME. “We will deal with this in court.” Representatives for Megan Thee Stallion and Roc Nation, her management company, did not immediately respond to TIME’s requests for comment.

In a statement to TIME, Garcia’s attorney, Ron Zambrano, says, “Megan just needs to pay our client what he’s due, own up to her behavior, and quit this sort of sexual harassment and fat-shaming conduct.” He continues, “Emilio should never have been put in a position of having to be in the vehicle with her while she had sex with another woman. ‘Inappropriate’ is putting it lightly. Exposing this behavior to employees is definitely illegal.”

According to the lawsuit, Garcia alleges that after the trip he went from earning a monthly rate of $4,000 to being paid for each task he did for Megan The Stallion. The lawsuit says Garcia “essentially worked during all waking hours of a day … always answering calls and running other tasks under Stallion’s direction” and claims he was denied overtime pay and regular breaks. In June 2023, when Garcia was already planning on quitting, Roc Nation told him that his “services were no longer needed,” per the lawsuit.

NBC reports that Garcia is seeking more than six figures in damages. According to the lawsuit, he is also fighting for unpaid wages, interest on the unpaid wages, unpaid overtime wages, and other employee benefits at the legal rate.

“If you don’t know that you’re being done wrong, you don’t really know how to advocate for yourself until you start asking. Maybe you start asking your peers who have representation, they have agents, they have management, they have attorneys,” he tells NBC. “So I just really just want to encourage people to advocate for themselves.”

PEN America has canceled its prestigious 2024 awards ceremony after nearly half the writers nominated for a prize withdrew their work in protest of the organization’s stance on the war in Gaza.

The group, which is dedicated to free expression, announced on Monday the cancellation of the April 29 awards in New York City. Some 28 of the 61 authors and translators who were nominated for awards had this year withdrawn their books, citing PEN America’s alleged lack of support for Palestinian writers.

Nine out of ten authors nominated for the $75,000 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award—the event’s most lucrative honor—withdrew their work from consideration.

“We greatly respect that writers have followed their consciences, whether they chose to remain as nominees in their respective categories or not,” PEN America’s Literary Programming Chief Officer Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf said in a press release on Monday. 

“We regret that this unprecedented situation has taken away the spotlight from the extraordinary work selected by esteemed, insightful, and hard-working judges across all categories,” Rosaz Shariyf said.

The annual awards ceremony has, since 1963, recognized outstanding literary voices across multiple genres including fiction, poetry, children’s literature, and drama. 

This writers’ boycott comes amid growing discontent in the literary sphere over PEN America’s response to Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza, as the conflict approaches its 200th day. Since February, over 1,300 writers and poets have called on PEN America to “find the same zeal and passion that they have for banned books in the U.S. to speak out about actual human beings in Palestine.”

A second open letter—published last week—saw 30 nominated writers and translators demand the resignations of PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel, PEN America President Jennifer Finney Boylan, and the entire PEN America Executive Committee.

There are also question-marks about PEN America’s World Voices Festival, due to take place in New York City from May 8 to 11 and Los Angeles from May 8 to 18. Last month, prominent writers such as Naomi Klein, Michelle Alexander, and Zaina Arafat, signed an open letter withdrawing from the festival.   

Following the boycott, PEN America shared the names of its 2024 finalists and winners online. The organization said it is considering how to allocate funds for each award on a case by case basis.

The estate of Jean Stein has directed PEN America to donate the $75,000 prize money to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, calling Stein a “passionate advocate for Palestinian rights” in PEN America’s press release. 

“Proud, inspired,” wrote novelist Maya Binyam, one of the nominees who withdrew their work, on social media platform X. “Thank you to all the authors who withdrew their work, to the PEN staff who supported our action, to the writers who withdrew from the WVF and charted a path forward, to Jean Stein for saying what PEN America refuses to—Gaza will be free.”

Early Monday, Marvel dropped the highly anticipated trailer for Deadpool & Wolverine, in which Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman reprise their roles after leading their own movies, Deadpool and Logan. Deadpool & Wolverine officially marks Deadpool’s introduction to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But Deadpool isn’t the only one making an MCU debut. As the trailer reveals, villain Cassandra Nova, played by The Crown’s Emma Corrin, is being introduced into the ever-expanding universe.

Who is Cassandra Nova and how does she fit into the MCU?

Cassandra Nova will be one of the many obstacles standing in Deadpool and Wolverine’s way as they try to work together to save the universe in the new movie, out July 26. The first Marvel release of the year, coming after the studio announced they would be scaling back from three movies a year to one, sees Deadpool being recruited by Paradox (played by Matthew MacFadyen), an agent at the Time Variance Alliance, for a mission that will change “the cinematic universe forever,” Deadpool says in the recently released trailer, and set up the future of the Avengers movies.

In the trailer, we see a Wolverine variant, wearing the classic blue and gold suit (the first time Jackman’s character has worn the suit in a live-action movie), that “let down his entire world.” Deadpool enlists Wolverine’s help to save his own world to ensure the safety of his newfound friends and family. The two seem to be going to “Battleworld,” which, according to the comics, is made up of the “remnants of destroyed realities following the Multiverse’s collapse.”

As the trailer shows, the pair faces obstacles, including a bald woman with telekinetic powers fighting against Wolverine. This is Charles Xavier’s twin sister, Cassandra Nova. According to the Marvel comics, while in the womb together, Charles “recognized her evil presence and killed” Cassandra, resulting in her stillbirth. Over the years, she formed a new body, intent on getting revenge on Charles.

It’s unclear what Cassandra’s motives are in Deadpool & Wolverine. The trailer gives us a glimpse of what’s to come. About halfway through it, she appears and says, “Boys are so silly.” Time will tell what to expect from this new character, but she seems to be one to watch out for.