Kyndall Cunningham

In 2020, it’s hardly a shocking story when a seemingly random, formerly unknown person achieves astronomical success via Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, or TikTok. Names like Tana Mongeau, Logan Paul, his brother Jake, James Charles, Jojo Siwa, Shane Dawson, Jeffree Star, and Tati Westbrook casually show up in the news cycle alongside politicians and entertainment juggernauts for their respective controversies and intracommunal beefs, with little to no explanation of how they came to be some of ...

he new Katy Perry is a lot like the old one—or at least one of the old ones in her era-defined pop career.
Her album Smile, released on Aug. 28, feels like a B side to her third album Prism, released seven years ago, that found her healing from a short-lived marriage to Russell Brand and the intensity of her record-smashing Teenage Dream run. Instead of pursuing personal happiness amid commercial success and public heartbreak this time, Perry is rehabilitating from the crash and burn of her p...

rowing up in Christian spaces, I heard all types of bad analogies and gender-essentialist arguments about human sexuality—but none like the one I heard at my Catholic high school. In an unofficial sex ed course, we received a lecture from a teacher on the sacredness of female virginity. He spoke about the confined nature of female genitalia, comparing a vagina to a cave and virginity to treasure. He said that the interiority of a woman’s genitalia compared to the exteriority of a man’s signif...

wo years after his embarrassing defense of a then MAGA-repping Kanye West—followed by a lengthy Notes App apology—Chance the Rapper has decided to die on yet another hill defending his rap mentor’s uninformed, stunt-based politics.
On Monday morning, the Chicago rapper and activist took to Twitter to ask his 8 million followers whether they supported the Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden over West, who tweeted that he was running for president on the 4th of July and elaborated on his ...

In a 2016 TED Talk on the renewed urgency of her theory of intersectionality, feminist scholar and law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw began with an illuminating exercise. She asked audience members to stand as she read the names of Black victims of police brutality. She then instructed individuals to sit down as soon as she said a name that they were unfamiliar with.
Crenshaw started by reading off the names of Eric Garner, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice and Freddie Gray. A few people took their seats a...

fter years of doubling down on racist jokes and choosing to “opt out” of critical conversations about her portrayals of people of color, Tina Fey’s work has finally caught up with her.
Last Tuesday, the Saturday Night Live alum joined a chorus of Hollywood comedians and showrunners trying to rectify acts of racism and racial miscasting by requesting the removal of certain 30 Rock episodes containing blackface—four, to be exact—from Hulu and other digital platforms. While the internet didn’t s...

ust before Bravo announced its decision to fire a handful of cast members from Vanderpump Rules for accusations of racism and past racist tweets, MTV had done some Black Lives Matter-related purging of its own.
On June 8, the network’s legendary reality-competition series The Challenge announced on Twitter that it had permanently cut ties with the show’s reigning champion, Geordie Shore alum Dee Nguyen, for offensive remarks she made on Twitter about the current civil rights movement. In resp...

Kyndall Cunningham is freelance writer based in Baltimore, MD. Her work covers a range of topics including pop culture, film and television through a Black, feminist lens. You can read more of her writing at kyndall-cunningham.com and follow her on Twitter.
In the 15 years since The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants arrived in theaters, I’ve realized several (slightly obvious) things about the well regarded “chick flick.”
1) It’s co-written by Nora Ephron’s daughter, You’ve Got Mail co-writer...

It’s difficult to write about Netflix’s Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness without using descriptors like “wild” and “chaotic” that are already implied in its title. Maybe a more insightful observation beyond noting the Tiger King’s blatant absurdity is that the series displays equally messy storytelling. The hit docuseries, set in the corrupt world of big-cat collecting and private zoos in Florida, Oklahoma, and South Carolina, attempts to investigate a murder-for-hire plot that involves...

It's not unusual to spend coffee breaks or happy hours complaining about work — even when you're grateful to have a job.
Too much work, misunderstandings with coworkers, a case of the Mondays: We spend a lot of time in our jobs and it's normal for it to get tiresome from time to time.
But sometimes our complaints about work deserve more attention than just a casual venting session. Are you offended by your boss's incessant offensive jokes about customers? Are you being asked to do something t...

This article is part of Rewire's Coronavirus: Information You Can Use series.
As the COVID-19 crisis limits our ability to congregate in shopping malls, bars and gyms, the great outdoors has become a new hot spot for people desperate to get out of their homes.
While many states have issued stay-at-home orders, most allow people to engage in outdoor activities like walking, running, climbing and hiking as long as they’re practicing social distancing rules, like staying six feet apart and inter...

Marriage Story has a misleading title. Noah Baumbach’s Netflix film is not, in fact, about marriage, but about the legal, logistical, and emotional trials and tribulations of getting a divorce. It opens with two affectionate voiceover montages from spouses Charlie (Adam Driver) and Nicole (Scarlett Johansson), each sharing a list of habits and characteristics they appreciate about the other. Charlie and Nicole both have normal human quirks and imperfections—Nicole leaves clothes on the floor,...

It’s hard to summarize the past year in Black American film as smoothly as I could if I was doing so at the end of 2018. It wasn’t just that this year’s most notable critical darlings failed to strike an emotional chord with Black audiences in comparison to recent years. There was also a lot of intense, misguided discourse online about the year’s most highly anticipated studio films like Harriet and Queen & Slim. The best of this year's crop - Fast Color, Luce and Little Woods - flew under th...

Long before actor Joaquin Phoenix was asking celebrities to forgo their private jets for environmental reasons at this year's Golden Globes, famous people have been using awards shows as opportunities to address social causes they're passionate about.
From Marlon Brando to Meryl Streep, the tradition of privileged Hollywood stars using a self-congratulatory night as a platform to address issues close to their hearts and seemingly outside of their social bubbles has prompted mixed reactions fo...

Our thanks to contributing writer Kyndall Cunningham for putting together this collection!
There’s never a wrong time to seek out Black cinema. But if you’re feeling especially festive this Black History Month, several streaming services have you covered in terms of classic novel adaptations, period pieces, and biopics that you might have missed.
Maybe you enjoyed Barry Jenkins’ mesmerizing If Beale Street Could Talk. But did you know there’s a television movie adaptation of James Baldwin’s f...