Lifestyle
Photos: These bold women stand up for justice, rights … and freedom
Jean, 72, a Chinese opera performer, poses for a portrait before performing in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Annice Lyn/Everyday Asia
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Annice Lyn/Everyday Asia
March 8 is International Women’s Day — a date picked in honor of a remarkable Russian protest.
During World War I, women in Russia went on strike. They demanded “bread and peace.” Among the results of their four-day protest: the Czar abdicated and women gained the right to vote.
This bold strike began on Feb. 23, 1917, according to the Julian calendar then used in Russia. That date translated to March 8 in the Gregorian calendar that much of the world uses. So that’s the day chosen for this celebratory event.
True to the spirit of those Russian women, the world pauses on this day to celebrate the achievements of women. This year to mark International Women’s Day, the United Nations is calling for “Rights. Justice. Action. For all women and girls.”
Sometimes, the true achievements are the ones that we barely see. The photographers at The Everyday Projects, a global photography and storytelling network, have shared portraits of women who in ways large and small are determined, like those Russian women over 100 years ago, to improve the lives of women and to build a better world.
Singing with strength
Kuala Lumpur-based photographer Annice Lyn likes to highlight the strength, resilience and the stories of women who are often overlooked.
That’s the inspiration for her portrait of Jean, 72, as she prepares for a performance of Chinese opera at Kwai Chai Hong, a restored heritage alley in Kuala Lumpur’s Chinatown in August 2024.
Such performances, typically staged during festivals and temple celebrations, combine singing, acting, martial arts, elaborate costumes and symbolic makeup to tell classical stories from Chinese folklore, history, and literature.
“Performers like Jean often dedicate decades of their lives to mastering this art form, preserving techniques and stories that are centuries old,” says Lyn. They told her that they may encounter negative reactions — questions like “are you wasting your time” or simply indifference.
“Sustaining a centuries-old practice in a modern urban setting requires both resilience and passion,” says Lyn, who made this picture minutes before the performance. “I wanted to give Jean the dignity she deserves through this portrait, a strong, intimate image that acknowledges her beauty, her discipline and the life she has dedicated to Chinese opera. I hoped to make her feel seen and heard, capturing not just a performance but a living cultural legacy.”
Dreaming of a toilet
Nkgono Selina Mosima, a resident of Thaba Nchu, Free State, South Africa, has hoped for years that she could afford to dig a pit toilet in her yard.
Tshepiso Mabula/The Everyday Projects
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Tshepiso Mabula/The Everyday Projects
The subject is Nkgono Selina Mosima, a resident of Thaba Nchu, Free State, South Africa, a region where poverty is rampant, Mosima is one of many residents who lack proper sanitation, says Tshepiso Mabula, a photographer and writer based in Johannesburg. Her wish was to hire someone to dig a pit toilet in her yard – in which human waste is collected in a pit and allowed to break down naturally over time – but she couldn’t afford the cost. The alternative is open defecation – finding a secluded place despite the personal risks and the potential health consequences of untreated human excrement.
“I was drawn to Nkgono by her unrelenting faith and positive outlook; despite her difficult circumstances, she constantly reiterated her hope that things would improve,” says Mabula. “This inspired the framing of the portrait: the bright colors, her headscarf and the belt around her waist all serve to highlight her strength, optimism and faith.”
The picture was taken in 2020. Today, Mabula says, many women still lack safe and effective sanitation options. Nkgono was a powerful voice for action and change as she eventually could afford to dig a pit toilet on her property.
Russian footballers
These women from Voronezh, Russia, participated in the country’s short-lived but intense American-style football league. They’re hanging out in the locker room.
Kristina Brazhnikova/Everyday Russia
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Kristina Brazhnikova/Everyday Russia
It seems improbable — starting an American football league for women in Russia. Not soccer but football. That’s what Portugal-based photographer Kristina Brazhnikova is documenting in her project “Mighty Girls,” which she shot between 2018 and 2021.
Any Russian woman could join, regardless of age, body type or level of training, she says. Coaches from the U.S. women’s national football team participated.
In the photo, the girls from the Voronezh team “Mighty Ducks” (Gabi, Katya, and Olesia) are in the locker room of a training camp preparing for practice. Team members came up with the name, she says.
“Everything was built on enthusiasm, so the players had to study the rules and playbooks on their own. Some women were invited by friends, others were drawn to the unusual nature of the sport, and some simply wanted to improve their physical fitness,” says Brazhnikova, who is Russian herself.
After the first practice, many women decided the game wasn’t for them, she says. It requires not only strength and endurance but the ability to memorize complex plays. Players had to buy their own protective gear, pay for field rentals and cover their travel expenses to competitions in other cities.
“Those who stayed, however, found a new family,” says Brazhnikova — and a new form of expressing emotions, including aggression. The women told her that playing American football made them braver and more decisive. They allowed themselves to step outside their comfort zones and push beyond the limits of their usual lives. They changed jobs and left relationships that had run their course. And the sound of pads colliding on the field became their favorite,” she says.
The league ceased to operate in 2022.
Hunting for missing loved ones
Hilaria Arzaba Medran of Mexico stands with tools she’ll use as she searches a clandestine burial site for the grave of her son, Oscar Contreras Arzaba, who disappeared in 2011 at age 19.
James Rodríguez/Everyday Latin America
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James Rodríguez/Everyday Latin America
Hilaria Arzaba Medran, 57, is no stranger to loss. Her son Oscar Contreras Arzaba disappeared on May 22, 2011, at the age of 19. A resident of the Mexican state of Veracruz, she’s a member of Solecito, an organization whose 250 members go out and look for their missing relatives on a regular basis. Holding tools in this photograph taken in Feb. 20, 2018, she searches for her missing son and other victims in a location known to have served as a clandestine grave.
“This collective is primarily led by women, and I was awe-struck by their determination to find their loved ones despite horrific violence and real-life threat to their own well-being,” says photographer James Rodríguez.
On this occasion in 2018, Rodriguez and others in the group had received an anonymous tip of a possible clandestine cemetery on the outskirts of Cordoba. She went searching with several other collective members, digging tools in hand. “We went into an isolated rural field that felt macabre in itself and [we] had no sort of security personnel with us. I was truly astounded by their conviction and courage,” he says.
A demand for housing
Janaina Xavier, a community leader, holds her son in a building in São Paulo, Brazil, that was occupied by people without housing in 2024.
Luca Meola/Everyday Brasil
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Luca Meola/Everyday Brasil
Janaina Xavier, a community leader, holds her son while looking out the window of the building where she lives with six of her 10 children near the Cracolândia district in São Paulo, Brazil, on April 23, 2024.
She currently serves as a council member for the Coordination of Policies for the Homeless Population and advocates for the rights of people living in and around Cracolândia.
“I’ve known Janaina Xavier for many years, since I began my long-term work documenting Cracolândia in São Paulo. She has long been involved in struggles for housing rights for people living in this highly stigmatized region of the city,” says photographer Luca Meola.
This photograph was taken inside a building being illegally occupied by Xavier and dozens of other families – a way for them to secure housing in the city center.
“For many low-income families, occupying empty buildings is one of the only ways to remain in the central area and access essential services and work opportunities,” Meola says.
In 2025, the city evicted Xavier, her family and the other residents.
The mother leaders of Madagascar take charge
In the Grand South of Madagascar, women known as “reny mahomby,” or mother leaders, perform a welcoming dance before starting a session to teach women in the community how to improve their lives.
Aina Zo Raberanto/The Everyday Projects
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Aina Zo Raberanto/The Everyday Projects
In this photo from the Grand South of Madagascar, in Amboasary Sud, women known as “Reny Mahomby,” or “mother leaders” perform a welcoming dance.
The “mother leaders” inspire other mothers in the community to make changes in their lives – to improve hygiene, to educate their children, to start small businesses, says photojournalist Aina Zo Raberanto, who lives in this African island nation but had never before visited the Grand South.
The dance took place at the start of a training session, says Raberanto. In this photo from November 2021, she says. “These mother leaders welcome us with a traditional dance from the region. I was deeply moved by their commitment to their community.”
The mothers of Madagascar “are the pillars of the household while sometimes facing difficult realities such as violence or early marriage,” she says. “I took this photograph to show both their strength, their dignity, their joy for life and the warmth of their welcome despite the hardships. Behind their smiles and movements lies a great determination to continue supporting their families and to build a better future for their children.”
Marching for their rights
Members of Puta Davida, a feminist collective advocating for the labor and human rights of sex workers, take part in a march during Carnival in downtown Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Feb. 14, 2026.
Luca Meola
/Everyday Brasil
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Luca Meola
/Everyday Brasil
This photograph was taken during Carnival in Rio de Janeiro this February.
“I have been accompanying the collective Puta Davida for about three years. [It] works to create public debate around sex work, advocating for the recognition of sex work as legitimate labor and for the protection of sex workers’ human and labor rights,” says photographer Luca Meola.
The Puta Davida is a feminist collective from Rio de Janeiro created in the early 1990s by the sex worker and activist Gabriela Leite, a historic figure in Brazil’s movement for sex workers’ rights.
“I have been accompanying the collective for about three years. [It] works to create public debate around sex work, advocating for the recognition of sex work as legitimate labor and for the protection of sex workers’ human and labor rights,” says photographer Luca Meola.
In 2026, one of the community organizations that prepares music, dance, and large performances for Carnival parades chose to dedicate its parade to sex workers
Meola, who photographed the members of this group as they marched, says: “For me, what is powerful about this moment is how these women reclaim visibility in public space. Through political organization, performance and collective presence, they challenge stigma and assert their rights — which I believe strongly resonates with this year’s theme [for International Women’s Day] of justice and action,” says Meola.
Kamala Thiagarajan is a freelance journalist based in Madurai, Southern India. She reports on global health, science and development and has been published in The New York Times, The British Medical Journal, the BBC, The Guardian and other outlets. You can find her on X @kamal_t
Author Julia Elliott won for her short story collection Hellions.
Forrest Clonts/Tin House
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Forrest Clonts/Tin House
Writer Julia Elliott has won this year’s Carol Shields Prize for Fiction for her short story collection Hellions. The award honors work by women and nonbinary authors in the U.S. and Canada.
Elliott, who also authored the novel The New and Improved Romie Futch and the short story collection The Wilds, is known for blending elements of Southern gothic horror, surrealism and fairy tale. Hellions, published in 2025, includes stories set against backdrops like a plague-stricken medieval convent, a feminist art colony, and small Southern towns.
“This eerie, eclectic, genre-leaping collection takes no half-measures; every sentence of Hellions crackles or crawls,” wrote the prize jury in a statement. “Here, human folly moves against a backdrop of horror and magic … But for all its wildness, there is tremendous control.”
The prize, named after a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, awards $150,000 to one winner each year. Novels, short story collections, and graphic novels by women and nonbinary authors are eligible.
This year’s finalists included Quiara Alegría Hudes (The White Hot), Lee Lai (Cannon), Megha Majumdar (A Guardian and a Thief), and Sonya Walger (Lion). They will each receive $12,500.
The Carol Shields Prize went to writer Canisia Lubrin in 2025.
You can listen to actor Donna Lynne Champlin read Elliott’s story “Hellion” on the Death, Sex & Money podcast here.
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By Helen Shaw, Vanessa Friedman, Léo Hamelin, Laura Salaberry and Sutton Raphael
June 2, 2026
At around 1 in the morning at the Sassafras Saloon in Hollywood, four masc lesbians in cowboy hats and chaps were dancing on top of the bar while bartenders attempted to continue making espresso martinis beneath them.
One performer crawled into the crowd and between the spread legs of an audience member, licking the air between their thighs. Another wrapped a belt around their girlfriend’s neck while thrusting against her to Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name.” The ravenous audience, almost entirely women, fluttered dollar bills all around, while easily filling the saloon’s 300-person capacity.
Across Los Angeles, countless strip clubs and revue shows were unfolding at that same hour, though none quite like this and likely few provoking this level of frenzy. The night had all the riotous energy of a scene from “Coyote Ugly,” with the choreographed masculinity of “Magic Mike.” Playing on the latter’s name, this was the doing of Magic Mascs, an all-masc lesbian and translesbian revue, by sapphics for sapphics.
Skye Valentinez, from left, Alexa Legend, Daddii Syd and King Captain are members of Magic Mascs, an all-masc lesbian and translesbian collective, that started in February.
“Our idea was to give lesbians what men get all the time at a strip club, but instead of just sitting around and singing ‘Pink Pony Club,’ actually going wild,” said group founder Daddii Syd, a.k.a. Syd Latimore.
The performers, self-described “daddies” — Daddii Syd, Alexa Legend, Skye Valentinez and King Captain — formed Magic Mascs in February. The performance at the Saloon was their third overall, but the group has already become an institution within lesbian nightlife in Los Angeles. They will make their debut during a Pride Month performance on Friday at Womxn Pride’s rooftop party in downtown L.A.
The members come from professional dance backgrounds. King Captain entered dance school at age 12 and taught dance for nearly a decade. Daddii Syd has danced since childhood. Alexa Legend spent years go-go dancing across clubs in the city before joining the troupe. Skye Valentinez, the baby of the group — cherub-faced, smiling through braces — is the newest to performing, though she steps into it naturally, exhibiting the same living, breathing caricature of masculinity as the rest of them.
“No one’s trying to be cisgender,” King Captain makes clear. “We’re not trying to be the kind of men who are born into and fed by patriarchy,” Daddii Syd added. “We’re redefining masculinity.”
King Captain gets their underwear stuffed with dollar bills from the crowd.
Magic Mascs’ success follows a broader trend of lesbians confidently stepping into masculinity before hungry eyes. In the past year, performative masc competitions have appeared across the country, with lesbians — hair slicked back and carabiners dangling from their Carhartt jeans — showing off in front of leering crowds. Magic Mascs feels like a more professionalized version of that phenomenon, less tongue-in-cheek — just tongue.
“We always knew there was a huge hunger for this,” Daddii Syd said.
Their first performance, in San Diego, sold out fast.
“I knew right away we were onto something special,” Daddii Syd said.
Videos of the troupe traveled far across sapphics’ algorithms, especially clips of King Captain, whose devoted fan base — known collectively as “The Castle” — make arduous trips just to see them in the flesh. One fan drove more than 20 hours from Dallas to San Diego to see Magic Mascs. Another sent an edible fruit bouquet from Australia.
Backstage, every gesture from the troupe was ultra-confident. Captain, wearing briefs stuffed with a sock full of rice, talked to me with a leg cocked on the footrest of my stool. Daddii Syd, Alexa Legend and Skye Valentinez stood pelvis-forward, hands behind their heads, flexing ropey muscles. They loved the camera, eyeing it like prey while tipping the brims of their cowboy hats. (“You guys are like the modern-day Beatles,” our photographer said.)
King Captain gets the Hollywood crowd into a frenzy during a recent show.
Everything in the show revolved around their hips. The performers rolled and glided before delivering sudden, mechanical thrusts powerful enough to rattle nearby glasses. Their bodies were taut with effort and exaggerated lust. Daddii Syd performed with her girlfriend Jamie in matching plaid, not leaving much to the imagination as they licked whipped cream off each other.
Alexa Legend, who described herself as shy offstage, eventually stripped down to nipple pasties and a cowboy hat, firing confetti from her crotch into the crowd. King Captain swerved their hips like a powerful mechanical bull. “Oh, Captain, my captain,” someone in the crowd said, hand pressed dramatically to her forehead.
They paid particular attention to a woman in a wheelchair in the crowd — typical of their performances — asking if they could sit on the wheelchair. They received keen consent. “That was, um, very nice,” she told me after, still a little lost for words.
“We’re huge on consent,” Daddii Syd said. At the start of the show, they told the crowd to cross their arms in a Wakanda Forever pose if they didn’t wish to be touched. They checked in constantly while moving through the crowd, leaning close to ask questions like, “Is this OK?” and “Anywhere you don’t like to be touched?”
Captain learned these habits through work in intimacy coordination and under the mentorship of Tonia Sina, among the first professional intimacy coordinators in Hollywood. That ethos of care extended beyond their interactions with the audience and into the way they interacted with one another offstage.
“We want everyone in the crowd to feel gorgeous,” King Captain said before the recent show at Sassafras Saloon in Hollywood.
King Captain, left, and Lauren Henson, a stage kitten for the Magic Mascs, perform together on the bar.
Forming a sanctuary for themselves was just as important to the troupe as emboldening others’ desire. “It’s hard to find other masc friends,” Daddii Syd said. “Everybody’s weirdly competitive and trying to sabotage each other.” King Captain agreed, asking: “Why can’t we all be daddies at the same time?”
Daddii Syd and King Captain, who are both in their 30s, had little butch representation or friendship growing up and they have now become something like father figures to Alexa Legend and Skye Valentinez, who are in their 20s.
“We have to protect each other,” King Captain said. “We have to look out for each other.”
Daddii Syd put her arm around Skye Valentinez and said: “Look at this beautiful baby we have.”
That tenderness carried straight into the night. There was a striking seriousness to the whole performance, which spanned from just past 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. Unlike a bachelorette party or the typical male revue, there was no giggling in the room, and no wink of camp from the performers. Here was a rare claim to unabashed public sapphic desire; it was given the scale and seriousness routinely afforded to heterosexual display, like the gleeful bravado of a man striding into Hooters.
By the end of the night at Sassafras Saloon, the performers had stripped down nearly to nothing, pouring water over themselves while the audience roared. The atmosphere felt like one of collective release, a recognition that masculinity and desire don’t belong only to men — that a group of four masc lesbians can be horny, inspire horniness and ultimately stir a hysteria that once greeted Channing Tatum or even the Beatles.
It was the magnitude of the response that night at the Saloon, as on every other night they’ve performed, that’s inspiring their next moves: total domination in sum. The troupe is already planning a national tour through Florida, Dallas and Sacramento, though Daddii Syd’s ambitions extend much further.
“The idea,” she told me, “is to go global. Like a boy band.”
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