Hello, sparkling waters! How are you? How was your week? I just realized that I start 19th grade in three days and everything feels very urgent and too soon. This summer feels/felt so long but now that it’s ending I feel very overwhelmed. It’s not helping that it doesn’t feel like the beginnings of autumn, even a little bit, in Austin. It has been over 100º each day for the past week! We’re really living la vida loca over here! Well, please ignore my heat delusions and please enjoy these fun stories of the week.

The Most Heartwarming Stories First

+ Lucky Charms has a new unicorn shaped (flavored?) marshmallow, and the commercial introducing it stars the most perfect gender-ambiguous child, and reader, I am too old for sugary cereal but I might buy a box! (Also, this video needs some upvotes on Youtube!)

+ 15 LGBTQ teens talk about the LGBTQ people who inspired them to come out! Get those tissues ready because this is so sweet. 

+ BBC Three’s “A Queer Night at the Prom”

DJ and Event Promoter Vicki Cook and her partner Jules organise ‘Queer Prom’ in Brighton for all those who felt excluded during their school prom. “Queer Prom is really designed to give people the second chance for a prom that they never had, that they were never able to attend as themselves, whether it was because of their sexuality or their gender identity” says Vicki.

+ Companies like You + Sundry are working to make going to the salon an affirming experience for queers.

Queer Art

+ Robyn is a pop oracle. On her video for “Call Your Girlfriend,” Jessica Hopper writes:

 She humps the ground in a way that recalls both Prince and a cartoon caterpillar while intoning the line “Tell her that I give you something you never even knew you missed.” The camera does not zoom in on her body; it does not grant the reassurance a close-up of Robyn’s smiling or seductive face would provide. Robyn then rolls away on the floor in her Muppet-y sweater. She’s not here to seduce us in all the hackneyed ways that are so familiar. She’s here to give us something we never even knew we missed.

+ A queer art show in Brazil that closed due to homophobes has reopened to record-breaking crowds. Take THAT, meanies!

+ “The Wedding” takes a look at queer Muslims’ lives. 

+ This lesbian slasher film works to correct the way queers have historically been portrayed in film.

Big Voting Energy

+ A proposal to close most of the voting locations in a rural, mostly Black, Georgia county was defeated!

+ And in even more exciting news, the consultant who proposed the closings got fired!

+ While we’re on this voting high, do you know how to register to vote and how to vote? Here’s how you can do it in the US, Canada, Mexico, and the UK. Whenever and wherever you can vote, please do it!!!

Okay pals, have the best week that you can! Drink water, pet a cute animal, smile at a baby, and definitely flirt with a babe. I’ll see you right here again next week!