Cautionary Women

From a play-it-safe country chanteuse, Taylor Swift has morphed into a kick-ass pop tart not afraid to play up her progressive (Meredith? Olivia?) side. Millions of viewers saw that facet of hers at least in the music video for "Bad Blood," which promptly broke a VEVO record within 24 hours of its release. For the video, Taylor rounded up her ever-populous cadre of famous friends, including OG BFF Selena Gomez, to slip into $13,000 worth of clothes from a Los Angeles-based sex shop called The Stockroom  (NSFW). If you're not really a die-hard Swiftie, the biggest of your #squadgoals would probably be the outfits Selena wore to the video. We've got you covered, so no bad blood between us, okurr? In character as the deceptive Arsyn, Selena wore The Stockroom's $360 Syren latex blouse called the Garbo. Guaranteed to "help you project your inner vintage film diva," the Garbo blouse has a high collar with a pussy bow and flows into bishop sleeves. ...

DANCING QUEEN. Dazzler is Marvel's mutant pop star For every Wonder Woman, there's a Storm prepared to electrocute her.  For every Captain Marvel, there's a goddess-like Selene  able to suck the spiritual viscera out of her.  Emma Frost. Rogue. Psylocke. All great mutants for a solo movie. All ready to dash Ike Perlmutter's sexist confirmation bias . Movie studios can even walk the road less trodden and bring to the big screen a mutant relatively unknown, someone underutilized. Someone who was supposed to have a movie that for some reason was shelved. Someone perhaps like...Dazzler?  I LOVE ROCK 'N' ROLL. Alison Blaire is more Joan Jett than Britney Spears in the Earth-1610 reality. As you may know, Dazzler a.k.a. Alison Blaire is Marvel's Madonna, the mutant Queen of Pop. (Incidentally, Madonna had her own comic book .) She was literally born for the concert stage. She is a walking light show, able to convert sonic vibrations into vari...

It's bad enough to be diagnosed with intestinal parasites—how much more a disembodied spirit? Unfortunately for the following fictional women, invisible entities have chosen to squat in their bodies.  Roman, "Roman Holiday" Live at the Grammys 2012 Fresh off her Super Bowl set with the Queen of Pop—itself dogged by accusations of Satanism and subliminal Illuminati symbolism—Nicki, in a red Versace number that made her look like Little Red Riding Hood from Hell, walked the Grammys red carpet with a man dressed as the Pope. She later brought her escort onstage for a truly diabolic performance, which introduced her fiendish alter-ego 'Roman' and culminated with the rapper ascending toward the Staples Center ceiling. It was high camp more than anything, but conservatives and gospel-leaning hiphop fans failed to see the theatrical artistry in it.  Emily Rose,  The Exorcism of Emily Rose Emily Rose's character is loosely based on the case of ...

Maleficent may have shockingly strong powers, but at the end of the day, you've got to ask: Who's got the crown? Snow White's stepmother is queen bee among Disney villains in more ways than one. She's First Evil in Disney's full-length animations and the highest-ranking animated character in AFI's list of greatest villains . And sorry, ye ageist Mirror: In the beauty department, she can more than hold her own in an apples-to-apples comparison with Snow White. Now, now, we all know Grimhilde (the character was only named after the fact) is a two-in-one bargain among Disney villains. You could either a.) dress up as the 1930s screen goddess or b.) the cackling crone. This guide will skew younger for now. Without further ado, here's how you can be fairest of them all on Halloween night: Costume To shroud my clothes, the black of night   Short of an evil spell, just print out a full-body pic of the Queen and let your tailor or seamstress do the mag...

Remember when we half-jokingly voted Sabrina Spellman for Supreme ? We take back the laughs. Archie Comics is readying a darker, more mature iteration of everyone's favorite adolescent magician in time for Halloween 2014. Titled Chilling Adventures of Sabrina , the new series will track her rise to power in the 1960s, as she dodges the forces that seek to check it and the ever ominous threat of being outed. She will do battle with Madame Satan, among many other malevolent characters, and fend off the most potent hexes this side of Greendale.  Chilling...Sabrina will be set in the 1960s, the era of Nancy Drew and  Rosemary's Baby . See what they did there? Chilling Adventures comes on the heels of Afterlife with Archie , which warps Riverdale and its famous occupants in a zombie apocalypse. The writer of that series, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, is on hand for Chilling .  Doctor Who 's Robert Hack joins him for illustrating duties. We've...

They say there are two sides to a story, so Disney created Maleficent , a multimillion-dollar attempt to find a reason for the Sleeping Beauty villain's grudge besides not receiving a party invite.  As it turns out, Disney had already revised Maleficent's story in 2004, in a children's book series called My Side of the Story . It features Disney's animated movies as told from the point of view of the heroes, and when you flip the books, their antagonists. Literally the other side of the story.  Reading from the perspective of the heroes is barely half the fun. You've heard it all before, haven't you? What really gets the party started is when you leaf through the villain's hilarious efforts to clear their names.  So you have Snow White's tale on one side, the Queen on the other ; Cinderella and her stepmother each making their cases; Peter Pan and Captain Hook getting their turns to speak; Ariel and Ursula sharing contradictory stor...

So you figured you're fairy enough to wear Angelina Jolie's costume from Maleficent . The question is, which costume?  Angelina Jolie went through no less than nine costume changes to portray Disney's most famous gatecrasher. While the original Maleficent got by with her literally flaming robes, the Angelina-Jolie Maleficent pulled out all the stops in dressing up, slipping into everything from faux-fur-lined suede capes to pants. In all these, one thing—or two—remains consistent: the horns. Horny all night long In Sleeping Beauty, viewers couldn't wrap their heads (no pun intended) around Maleficent's horns. Were they really part of her head? Or were they really  just kickass hennins typical of Medieval folk ? In Maleficent , you are as certain of the horns' anatomical profile as you are confounded by the owner's rectitude. In any case, Jolie wore a total of six Maleficent headpieces. Horn-ily enough, milliner Justin Smith built them...