title: Citizens United v. FEC

text: Some have argued for a constitutional amendment to overturn the decision. Although the decision does not address "corporate personhood", a long-established judicial and constitutional concept, much attention has focused on that issue. Move to Amend, a coalition formed in response to the ruling, seeks to amend the Constitution to abolish corporate personhood, thus stripping corporations of all rights under the Constitution. In an online chat with web community Reddit, President Obama endorsed further consideration of a constitutional amendment and stated "Over the longer term, I think we need to seriously consider mobilizing a constitutional amendment process to overturn Citizens United (assuming the Supreme Court doesn't revisit it)". He further elaborated that "Even if the amendment process falls short, it can shine a spotlight on the super-PAC phenomenon and help apply pressure for change."


title: Citizens United v. FEC

text: Members of 16 state legislatures have called for a constitutional amendment to reverse the court's decision: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and West Virginia.


title: Citizens United v. FEC

text: Most of these are non-binding resolutions, but three states—Vermont, California, and Illinois—called for an Article V Convention to draft and propose a federal constitutional amendment to overturn "Citizens United". In Minnesota, the Minnesota Senate passed a similar resolution, "Senate File No. 17", on May 2, 2013, but the House of Representatives returned the measure to the General Calendar (meaning the measure did not pass) on May 15, 2013. Thirty-four states are needed to call an Article V convention.


title: Citizens United v. FEC

text: On a local level, Washington D.C. and 400 other municipalities passed resolutions requesting a federal constitutional amendment.


title: Citizens United v. FEC

text: Critics predicted that the ruling would "bring about a new era of corporate influence in politics", allowing companies and businesspeople to "buy elections" to promote their financial interests. Instead, large expenditures, usually through "Super PACS", have come from "a small group of billionaires", based largely on ideology. This has shifted power "away from the political parties and toward the ... donors themselves. In part, this explains the large number and variety of candidates fielded by the Republicans in 2016."


title: Citizens United v. FEC

text: According to a 2021 study, the ruling weakened political parties while strengthening single-issue advocacy groups and Super PACs funded by billionaires with pet issues. The ruling made it easier for self-promoting politicians to undermine political processes and democratic norms to promote themselves.


title: Citizens United v. FEC

text: "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission" has often been credited for the creation of "super PACs", political action committees which make no financial contributions to candidates or parties, and so can accept unlimited contributions from individuals, corporations and unions. Certainly, the holding in "Citizens United" helped affirm the legal basis for super PACs by deciding that, for purposes of establishing a "compelling government interest" of corruption sufficient to justify government limitations on political speech, "independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption".


title: Citizens United v. FEC

text: It took another decision, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, "Speechnow.org v. Federal Election Commission", to actually authorize the creation of super PACs. While "Citizens United" held that corporations and unions could make independent expenditures, a separate provision of the Federal Election Campaign Act, at least as long interpreted by the Federal Election Commission, held that individuals could not contribute to a common fund without it becoming a PAC. PACs, in turn, were not allowed to accept corporate or union contributions of any size or to accept individual contributions in excess of $5,000. In "Speechnow.org", the D.C. Circuit, sitting en banc, held 9–0 that in light of "Citizens United", such restrictions on the sources and size of contributions could not apply to an organization that made only independent expenditures in support of or opposition to a candidate but not contributions to a candidate's campaign.


title: Citizens United v. FEC

text: "Citizens United" and "SpeechNOW" left their imprint on the 2012 United States presidential election, in which single individuals contributed large sums to "super PACs" supporting particular candidates. Sheldon Adelson, the gambling entrepreneur, gave approximately fifteen million dollars to support Newt Gingrich. Foster Friess, a Wyoming financier, donated almost two million dollars to Rick Santorum's super PAC. Karl Rove organized super PACs that spent over $300 million in support of Republicans during the 2012 elections.


title: Citizens United v. FEC

text: In addition to indirectly providing support for the creation of super PACs, "Citizens United" allowed incorporated 501(c)(4) public advocacy groups (such as the National Rifle Association, the Sierra Club, and the group Citizens United itself) and trade associations to make expenditures in political races. Such groups may not, under the tax code, have a primary purpose of engaging in electoral advocacy. These organizations must disclose their expenditures, but unlike super PACs they do not have to include the names of their donors in their FEC filings. A number of partisan organizations such as Karl Rove's influential conservative Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies and the liberal 21st Century Colorado have since registered as tax-exempt 501(c)(4) groups (defined as groups promoting "social welfare") and engaged in substantial political spending. This has led to claims of large secret donations, and questions about whether such groups should be required to disclose their donors. Historically, such non-profits have not been required to disclose their donors or names of members. See "National Association for the Advancement of Colored People v. Alabama".


title: Citizens United v. FEC

text: In an August 2015 essay in "Der Spiegel", Markus Feldkirchen wrote that the "Citizens United" decision was "now becoming visible for the first time" in federal elections as the super-rich have "radically" increased donations to support their candidates and positions via super PACs. Feldkirchen also said in the first six months of 2015 the candidates and their super PACs received close to $400 million: "far more than in the entire previous campaign". He opined that super-rich donating more than ever before to individual campaigns plus the "enormous" chasm in wealth has given the super-rich the power to steer the economic and political direction of the United States and undermine its democracy. In October 2015, "The New York Times" observed that just 158 super-rich families each contributed $250,000 or more, while an additional 200 families gave more than $100,000 for the 2016 presidential election. Both groups contributed almost half of the "early money" for candidates in the 2016 presidential election as of June 30, 2015 through channels like super PACs legalized by the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision.


title: Citizens United v. FEC

text: At least in the Republican Party, the Citizens United ruling has weakened the fund raising power of the Republican "establishment" in the form of the "three major" Republican campaign committees (Republican National Committee, National Republican Congressional Committee, National Republican Senatorial Committee). Columnist Thomas B. Edsall notes that in 2008, "the last election before the Citizens United decision", the three campaign committees "raised six times" the money that "nonparty conservative organizations" did—$657.6 million vs. $111.9 million. By 2016 those party committees raised less than the independent groups—$652.4 million v. $810.4 million. Thus the new funding "freed candidates to defy" the party establishment, although not, it seems, to move policy making away from traditional Republican priorities.


title: Citizens United v. FEC

text: From 2010 to 2018, super PACs spent approximately $2.9 billion on federal elections. Notably, the bulk of that money comes from just a few wealthy individual donors. In the 2018 election cycle, for example, the top 100 donors to super PACs contributed nearly 78 percent of all super PAC spending.


title: Citizens United v. FEC

text: Studies have shown that the Citizens United ruling gave Republicans an advantage in subsequent elections. One study by political scientists at University of Chicago, Columbia University and the London School of Economics found "that Citizens United increased the GOP's average seat share in the state legislature by five percentage points. That is a large effect—large enough that, were it applied to the past twelve Congresses, partisan control of the House would have switched eight times. In line with a previous study, we also find that the vote share of Republican candidates increased three to four points, on average." A 2016 study in "The Journal of Law and Economics" found "that Citizens United is associated with an increase in Republicans' election probabilities in state house races of approximately 4 percentage points overall and 10 or more percentage points in several states. We link these estimates to on-the-ground evidence of significant spending by corporations through channels enabled by Citizens United." According to a 2020 study, the ruling boosted the electoral success of Republican candidates.


title: People (magazine)

text: People is an American weekly magazine that specializes in celebrity news and human-interest stories. It is published by Dotdash Meredith, a subsidiary of IAC. With a readership of 46.6 million adults in 2009, "People" had the largest audience of any American magazine, but it fell to second place in 2018 after its readership significantly declined to 35.9 million. "People" had $997 million in advertising revenue in 2011, the highest advertising revenue of any American magazine. In 2006, it had a circulation of 3.75 million and revenue expected to top $1.5 billion. It was named "Magazine of the Year" by "Advertising Age" in October 2005, for excellence in editorial, circulation, and advertising. "People" ranked number 6 on "Advertising Age"s annual "A-list" and number 3 on "Adweek"s "Brand Blazers" list in October 2006.


title: People (magazine)

text: "People" is perhaps best known for its yearly special issues naming the "World's Most Beautiful", "Best & Worst Dressed", and "Sexiest Man Alive". The magazine's headquarters are in New York City, and it maintains editorial bureaus in Los Angeles and in London. For economic reasons, it closed bureaus in Austin, Miami, and Chicago in 2006.


title: People (magazine)

text: Andrew Heiskell, who was the chief executive officer of Time Inc. at the time and the former publisher of the weekly Life magazine, is credited with coming up with the idea for People. The founding managing editor of "People" was Richard Stolley, a former assistant managing editor at "Life" and the journalist who acquired the Zapruder film of the John F. Kennedy assassination for Time Inc. in 1963. "People"s first publisher was Richard J. "Dick" Durrell, another Time Inc. veteran.


title: People (magazine)

text: Stolley characterized the magazine as "getting back to the people who are causing the news and who are caught up in it, or deserve to be in it. Our focus is on people, not issues." Stolley's almost religious determination to keep the magazine people-focused contributed significantly to its rapid early success. It is said that although Time Inc. pumped an estimated $40 million into the venture, the magazine only broke even 18 months after its debut on February 25, 1974. Initially, the magazine was sold primarily on newsstands and in supermarkets. To get the magazine out each week, founding staff members regularly slept on the floor of their offices two or three nights each week and severely limited all non-essential outside engagements. The premiere edition for the week ending March 4, 1974, featured actress Mia Farrow, then starring in the film "The Great Gatsby", on the cover. That issue also featured stories on Gloria Vanderbilt, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and the wives of U.S. Vietnam veterans who were Missing In Action. The magazine was, apart from its cover, printed in black-and-white. The initial cover price was 35 cents ().


title: People (magazine)

text: The core of the small founding editorial team included other editors, writers, photographers and photo editors from "Life" magazine, which had ceased publication just 13 months earlier. This group included managing editor Stolley, senior editors Hal Wingo (father of ESPN anchor Trey Wingo), Sam Angeloff (the founding managing editor of "Us" magazine) and Robert Emmett Ginna, Jr. (a former Life writer and also a film and television producer); writers James Watters (a theater reviewer) and Ronald B. Scott (later a biographer of Presidential candidate Mitt Romney); former "Time" senior editor Richard Burgheim (later the founder of "Time"s ill-fated cable television magazine "View"); Chief of Photography, a "Life" photographer, John Loengard, to be succeeded by John Dominus, a noteworthy "Life" staff photographer; and design artist Bernard Waber, author, and illustrator of the "Lyle The Crocodile" book series for children. Many of the noteworthy "Life" photographers contributed to the magazine as well, including legends Alfred Eisenstaedt and Gjon Mili and rising stars Co Rentmeester, David Burnett and Bill Eppridge. Other members of the first editorial staff included editors and writers Ross Drake, Ralph Novak, Bina Bernard, James Jerome, Sally Moore, Mary Vespa, Lee Wohlfert, Joyce Wansley, Curt Davis, Clare Crawford-Mason, and Jed Horne, later an editor of "The Times-Picayune" in New Orleans.


title: People (magazine)

text: In 1996, Time Inc. launched a Spanish-language magazine entitled "People en Español". The company has said that the new publication emerged after a 1995 issue of the original magazine was distributed with two distinct covers, one featuring the murdered Tejano singer Selena and the other featuring the hit television series "Friends"; the Selena cover sold out while the other did not. Although the original idea was that Spanish-language translations of articles from the English magazine would comprise half the content, "People en Español" over time came to have entirely original content.


title: People (magazine)

text: In 2002, "People" introduced "People Stylewatch", a title focusing on celebrity style, fashion, and beauty – a newsstand extension of its Stylewatch column. Due to its success, the frequency of "People Stylewatch" was increased to 10 times per year in 2007. In spring 2017, People Stylewatch was rebranded as PeopleStyle. In late 2017, it was announced that there would no longer be a print version of PeopleStyle and it would be a digital-only publication.


title: People (magazine)

text: In Australia, the localized version of "People" is titled "Who" since there was already another magazine published under the title "People". The international edition of "People" has been published in Greece since 2010.


title: People (magazine)

text: On July 26, 2013, Outlook Group announced that it was closing down the Indian edition of "People", which began publication in 2008.


title: People (magazine)

text: In September 2016, in collaboration with "Entertainment Weekly", "People" launched the People/Entertainment Weekly Network. The "free, ad-supported online-video network... covering celebrities, pop culture, lifestyle and human-interest stories", was rebranded as PeopleTV in September 2017.


title: People (magazine)

text: In December 2016, LaTavia Roberson engaged in a feud with "People" after alleging they misquoted and misrepresented her interview online.


title: People (magazine)

text: Meredith purchased Time Inc., including "People", in 2017. In 2019, "People" editor Jess Cagle announced he was stepping down from his role. It was later announced he would be replaced by deputy editor Dan Wakeford, who previously worked for "In Touch Weekly". Liz Vaccariello was named the new Editor in Chief on February 23, 2022, replacing Dan Wakeford.


title: People (magazine)

text: On October 6, 2021, Dotdash purchased "People", including "Entertainment Weekly", "InStyle", and "Chip and Joanna Gaines' Magnolia Journal" in a $2.7billion deal.


title: People (magazine)

text: In 1998, the magazine introduced a version targeted at teens, called "Teen People". However, on July 27, 2006, the company announced that it would shut down publication of "Teen People" immediately. The last issue to be released was scheduled for September 2006. In exchange, subscribers to this magazine received "Entertainment Weekly" for the rest of their subscriptions. There were numerous reasons cited for the publication shutdown, including a downfall in ad pages, competition from both other teen-oriented magazines and the internet, and a decrease in circulation numbers. Teenpeople.com was merged into People.com in April 2007. People.com will "carry teen-focused stories that are branded as TeenPeople.com," Mark Golin, the editor of People.com explained. On the decision to merge the brands, he stated, "We've got traffic on TeenPeople, People is a larger site, why not combine and have the teen traffic going to one place?"


title: People (magazine)

text: In a July 2006 "Variety" article, Janice Min, "Us Weekly" editor-in-chief, blamed "People" for the increase in cost to publishers of celebrity photos:


title: People (magazine)

text: "People" reportedly paid $4.1 million for photos of newborn Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, the child of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. The photos set a single-day traffic record for their website, attracting 26.5 million page views.


title: People (magazine)

text: The annual feature the "Sexiest Man Alive" is billed as a benchmark of male attractiveness and typically includes only famous people. It is determined using a procedure similar to the procedure used for "Time"s Person of the Year. The origin of the title was a discussion on a planned story on Mel Gibson. Someone exclaimed, "Oh my God, he is the sexiest man alive!" And someone else said, "You should use that as a cover line."


title: People (magazine)

text: For the first decade or so, the feature appeared at uneven intervals. Originally awarded in the wintertime, it shifted around the calendar, resulting in gaps as short as seven months and as long as a year and a half, with no selection at all during 1994 (21 years later the magazine did select Keanu Reeves to fill the 1994 gap, with runners-up including Hugh Grant and Jim Carrey). Since 1997, the dates have settled between mid-November and early December.


title: People (magazine)

text: Dates of magazine issues, winners, ages of winners at the time of selection, and pertinent comments are listed below.


title: People (magazine)

text: , former winners John F. Kennedy Jr., Sean Connery, and Patrick Swayze have since died. Kennedy Jr. and David Beckham are the only non-entertainers to have won the accolade.


title: People (magazine)

text: In 2019, "People" selected its first Cutest Baby Alive, Andy Cohen's son Benjamin. In 2020, Anderson Cooper's son, Wyatt Morgan was named the Cutest Baby Alive.


title: People (magazine)

text: At the end of each year "People" magazine famously selects 25 news-making individuals or couples who have received a lot of media attention over the past 12 months and showcases them in a special year-end issue, the '25 Most Intriguing People of the Year'. This series of full-page features and half-page featurettes includes world leaders and political activists, famous actors and entertainers, elite athletes, prominent business people, accomplished scientists and occasionally members of the public whose stories have made an unusual impact in news or tabloid media.


title: People (magazine)

text: "People"s 100 Most Beautiful People is an annual list of 100 people judged to be the most beautiful individuals in the world. Until 2006, it was the 50 Most Beautiful People.


title: People (magazine)

text: Julia Roberts holds the record for most times named, with five. Michelle Pfeiffer, Jennifer Aniston, and Kate Hudson have appeared twice.


title: People (magazine)

text: In 2020, Goldie Hawn, Kate Hudson, and Hudson's daughter Rani made history becoming the first multigenerational cover stars of the Beautiful Issue. In addition, Hawn and her granddaughter concurrently became the oldest and youngest to cover the Beautiful Issue.


title: People (magazine)

text: People Magazine Yearbook is an annual publication released by publishers of People Magazine, currently Meredith Corporation. The Yearbook broadly covers all the major events that happened in the year that it covers. This includes socially relevant news events that made headlines around the world in general but more specifically in the United States. Besides the news headlines, it covers celebrity weddings, splits/divorces, births and deaths, and also scandalous events that generated a lot of news when they happened. Over the years, it has covered headlining events in the world of Music (Grammy Awards), Movies (Oscar Awards, The Golden Globe Awards), and Television (Emmy Awards) in a bite sized recap of the event and the award winners. The People Yearbook has had the year (say, 2010) written in Bold accompanying the word "Yearbook" on the front cover since the People Yearbook 1995, although this gradually changed in the more recent editions. Since 2015, the "year" appeared in a more inconspicuous way on the front cover until the 2019 issue and the bold style of writing the "year" made a comeback in the 2020 issue. The Year also appears on the spine.


title: People (magazine)

text: The People Magazine Yearbook was first published in the Year 1991 by The Time Inc. Magazine Company and it was called "Private Lives". This issue did not mention any year conspicuously on the front page or the inner page but the front flap of the hardcover version of the magazine described Private Lives as ""People's" chronicle of an extraordinary year - 1990", clearly describing that the events covered inside were from 1990. Next Year, the 1992 sequel to Private Lives was published and it was called "Private Lives Volume II". The first page had an additional tagline that described the magazine as The Year in Review: 1991 Private Lives. In 1993, there was another change in the publication and also its cover title. The year was added on the cover for the first time and this annual issue was called "Private Lives 1993". The "Year" appeared in Bold on the front cover. The first page described the publication as Private Lives The Year in Review: 1992. Next year, in 1994, People Books released Private Lives 1994 with the first page that said Private Lives Year in Review: 1993. The year 1996 ushered in the single biggest change in the magazine title. The title was reworked and found a new moniker - It was called "People Yearbook 1995". Previous title of "Private Lives" was dropped completely and the publication was defined as a "yearbook" for the first time.


title: People (magazine)

text: In all the years since its inception, People Magazine Yearbook has covered events from the previous year and not the year on the front cover, and this is true even from the time period when it was called Private Lives. For example, People Magazine Yearbook 2008 covered events of 2007. And People Magazine Yearbook 1998 covered the events of the Year 1997. 2014 was the last year for this to happen. The 2014 yearbook covered events of 2013. In 2015, a shift happened in the magazine that changed for the first time the year it actually covered within its pages. Instead of covering the events of 2014, this issue covered the events of 2015 and arrived on the stands towards the end of 2015. To make the shift properly understood, the first page of this yearbook included a tagline "The Most Memorable Moments of 2015". With this move, People Magazine Yearbook changed its own 25-year-old tradition. This shift, however, resulted in the year 2014 never being covered by the People Magazine Yearbook and 2014 became the only year not to be covered since its inception in 1991. Since then, the People Magazine Yearbook has been covering events of the same year that are on the Front Page. Another typeface change was experimented for two years when People Magazine Yearbook 2013! and People Magazine Yearbook 2014! had an exclamation mark following the year. This was dropped in the 2015 Yearbook and the publication discarded the exclamation mark. However, this issue dropped the Bold writing of the "Year" on the front cover and replaced it with a more inconspicuous style and it was like that until the 2019 issue. The 2016 Yearbook was a special "flip cover" issue wherein it combined a special edition memorabilia to cherish the memories of people that died in 2016. The list included Prince, David Bowie, Nancy Reagan, Alan Rickman, Doris Roberts, Muhammad Ali etc. The special edition could be accessed by flipping over the magazine. In November 2017, Meredith Corporation announced that it would acquire Time Inc. for $2.8 billion. The acquisition was completed on January 31, 2018. Time Magazine, People Magazine and also People Magazine Yearbook are now published by Meredith Corporation. The copyright of the 2018 Yearbook was described as belonging to Time Inc. Books, a division of Meredith Corporation and published by People Books, an imprint of Time Books. This issue included the tagline, "The Most Memorable Moments "of" 2018" on the cover. However, in the 2019 Yearbook, the copyright was described as belonging to Meredith Corporation, without any prominent tagline. The prominent bold writing of the "Year" on the front cover made a comeback with the 2020 Yearbook, along with a tagline saying "Our Extraordinary Year Together". The trend continued with the 2021 Yearbook, along with a tagline saying, "When We All Got Together Again".


title: People (magazine)

text: The magazine has inspired the television series "People Magazine Investigates", a true crime series which debuted in 2016 on Investigation Discovery, and "People Puzzler", a crossword puzzle-themed game show which debuted in 2021 on Game Show Network.


title: Dairy product

text: Dairy products or milk products, also known as lacticinia, are food products made from (or containing) milk. The most common dairy animals are cow, water buffalo, nanny goat, and ewe. Dairy products include common grocery store food items in the Western world such as yogurt, cheese and butter. A facility that produces dairy products is known as a "dairy". Dairy products are consumed worldwide to varying degrees (see consumption patterns worldwide). Some people avoid some or all dairy products either because of lactose intolerance, veganism, or other health reasons or beliefs.


title: Dairy product

text: Milk is produced after optional homogenization or pasteurization, in several grades after standardization of the fat level, and possible addition of the bacteria "Streptococcus lactis" and "Leuconostoc citrovorum". Milk can be broken down into several different categories based on type of product produced, including cream, butter, cheese, infant formula, and yogurt.


title: Dairy product

text: Milk is an ingredient in many confectioneries. Milk can be added to chocolate to produce milk chocolate.


title: Dairy product

text: Yogurt, milk fermented by thermophilic bacteria, mainly "Streptococcus salivarius" ssp. "thermophilus" and "Lactobacillus delbrueckii" ssp. "bulgaricus" sometimes with additional bacteria, such as "Lactobacillus acidophilus"


title: Dairy product

text: Cheese, produced by coagulating milk, separating curds from whey, and letting it ripen, generally with bacteria, and sometimes also with certain molds.


title: Dairy product

text: Rates of dairy consumption vary widely worldwide. High-consumption countries consume more than per capita per year. These countries are: Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Costa Rica, most European countries, Israel, Kyrgyzstan, North America and Pakistan. Medium-consumption countries consume to 150 kg per capita per year. These countries are: India, Iran, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Mongolia, New Zealand, North and Southern Africa, most of the Middle East, and most of Latin America and the Caribbean. Low-consumption countries consume under 30 kg per capita per year. These countries are: Senegal, most of Central Africa, and most of East and Southeast Asia.


title: Dairy product

text: For those with some degree of lactose intolerance, considering the amount of lactose in dairy products can be important to health.


title: Dairy product

text: Dairy products may upset the digestive system in individuals with lactose intolerance or a milk allergy. People who experience lactose intolerance usually avoid milk and other lactose-containing dairy products, which may cause mild side effects, such as abdominal pain, bloating, diarrhea, gas, and nausea. Such individuals may use non-dairy milk substitutes.


title: Dairy product

text: Consumption of dairy products does not cause mucus production, and does not worsen common cold or asthma symptoms. A 2019 review indicated there is no convincing evidence on whether an association between dairy consumption and risk of cancers exists.


title: Dairy product

text: Some groups avoid dairy products for non-health-related reasons. Some religions restrict or do not allow the consumption of dairy products. For example, some scholars of Jainism advocate not consuming any dairy products because dairy is perceived to involve violence against cows. Orthodox Judaism requires that meat and dairy products not be served at the same meal, served or cooked in the same utensils, or stored together, as prescribed in Deuteronomy 14:21.


title: Dairy product

text: Veganism is the avoidance of all animal products, including dairy products, most often due to the ethics regarding how dairy products are produced. The ethical reasons for avoiding meat and dairy products include how dairy is produced, how the animals are handled, and the environmental effect of dairy production. According to a report of the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization in 2010 the dairy sector accounted for 4 percent of global man-made greenhouse gas emissions.


title: Hindustani language

text: Hindustani (; Devanagari: , ; Perso-Arabic: , , ) is the "lingua franca" of Northern and Central India and Pakistan. Hindustani is a pluricentric language with two standard registers, known as Hindi and Urdu. Thus, the language is sometimes called Hindi–Urdu. Despite these standard registers, colloquial speech in Hindustani often exists on a spectrum between these standards.


title: Hindustani language

text: Ancestors of the language were known as "Hindui", "Hindavi", "Zabān-e Hind" (), "Zabān-e Hindustan" (), "Hindustan ki boli" (), Rekhta, and Hindi. Its regional dialects became known as "Zabān-e Dakhani" in southern India, "Zabān-e Gujari" () in Gujarat, and as "Zabān-e Dehlavi" or Urdu around Delhi. It is an Indo-Aryan language, deriving its base primarily from the Western Hindi dialect of Delhi, also known as Khariboli. Hindustani is a pluricentric language, best characterised as a continuum between two standardised registers: Modern Standard Hindi and Modern Standard Urdu. Depending on the social context and geographical area, the language leans towards either side.


title: Hindustani language

text: The concept of a Hindustani language as a "unifying language" or "fusion language" was endorsed by Mahatma Gandhi. The conversion from Hindi to Urdu (or vice versa) is generally achieved just by transliteration between the two scripts, instead of translation which is generally only required for religious and literary texts.


title: Hindustani language

text: Some scholars trace the language's first written poetry, in the form of Old Hindi, to as early as 769 AD. However this view is not generally accepted. During the period of the Delhi Sultanate, which covered most of today's India, eastern Pakistan, southern Nepal and Bangladesh and which resulted in the contact of Hindu and Muslim cultures, the Sanskrit and Prakrit base of Old Hindi became enriched with loanwords from Persian, evolving into the present form of Hindustani. The Hindustani vernacular became an expression of Indian national unity during the Indian Independence movement, and continues to be spoken as the common language of the people of the northern Indian subcontinent, which is reflected in the Hindustani vocabulary of Bollywood films and songs.


title: Hindustani language

text: The language's core vocabulary is derived from Prakrit (a descendant of Sanskrit), with substantial loanwords from Persian and Arabic (via Persian). Hindustani also borrowed Persian prefixes to create new words. Persian affixes became so assimilated that they were used with original Khari Boli words as well. The process of hybridization also led to the formation of words in which the first element of the compound was from Khari Boli and the second from Persian, such as "rajmahal" ‘palace’ ("raja" ‘royal, king’ + "mahal" ‘house, place’) and "rangmahal" ‘fashion house’ ("rang" ‘colour, dye’ + "mahal" ‘house, place’). As Muslim rule expanded, Hindustani speakers traveled to distant parts of India as administrators, soldiers, merchants, and artisans. As it reached new areas, Hindustani further hybridized with local languages. In the Deccan, for instance, Hindustani blended with Telugu and came to be called Dakhani. In Dakhani, aspirated consonants were replaced with their unaspirated counterparts; for instance, "dekh" ‘see’ became "dek", "ghula" ‘dissolved’ became "gula", "kuch" ‘some’ became "kuc", and "samajh" ‘understand’ became "samaj".


title: Hindustani language

text: As of 2020, Hindi and Urdu together constitute the 3rd-most-spoken language in the world after English and Mandarin, with 810 million native and second-language speakers, according to "Ethnologue", though this includes millions who self-reported their language as 'Hindi' on the Indian census but speak a number of other Hindi languages than Hindustani. The total number of Hindi–Urdu speakers was reported to be over 300 million in 1995, making Hindustani the third- or fourth-most spoken language in the world.


title: Hindustani language

text: Early forms of present-day Hindustani developed from the Middle Indo-Aryan "apabhraṃśa" vernaculars of present-day North India in the 7th–13th centuries, chiefly the Dehlavi dialect of the Western Hindi category of Indo-Aryan languages that is known as Old Hindi. Hindustani emerged as a contact language around Delhi, a result of the increasing linguistic diversity that occurred due to Muslim rule, while the use of its southern dialect, Dakhani, was promoted by Muslim rulers in the Deccan. Amir Khusrow, who lived in the thirteenth century during the Delhi Sultanate period in North India, used these forms (which was the "lingua franca" of the period) in his writings and referred to it as "Hindavi" (). The Delhi Sultanate, which comprised several Turkic and Afghan dynasties that ruled much of the subcontinent from Delhi, was succeeded by the Mughal Empire in 1526.


title: Hindustani language

text: Although the Mughals were of Timurid ("Gurkānī") Turco-Mongol descent, they were Persianised, and Persian had gradually become the state language of the Mughal empire after Babur, a continuation since the introduction of Persian by Central Asian Turkic rulers in the Indian Subcontinent, and the patronisation of it by the earlier Turko-Afghan Delhi Sultanate. The basis in general for the introduction of Persian into the subcontinent was set, from its earliest days, by various Persianised Central Asian Turkic and Afghan dynasties.


title: Hindustani language

text: Hindustani began to take shape as a Persianised vernacular during the Delhi Sultanate (1206–1526 AD) and Mughal Empire (1526–1858 AD) in South Asia. Hindustani retained the grammar and core vocabulary of the local Delhi dialect. However, as an emerging common dialect, Hindustani absorbed large numbers of Persian, Arabic, and Turkic loanwords, and as Mughal conquests grew it spread as a lingua franca across much of northern India; this was a result of the contact of Hindu and Muslim cultures in Hindustan that created a composite Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb. The language was also known as "Rekhta", or 'mixed', which implies that it was mixed with Persian. Written in the Perso-Arabic, Devanagari, and occasionally Kaithi or Gurmukhi scripts, it remained the primary lingua franca of northern India for the next four centuries, although it varied significantly in vocabulary depending on the local language. Alongside Persian, it achieved the status of a literary language in Muslim courts and was also used for literary purposes in various other settings such as Sufi, Nirgun Sant, Krishna Bhakta circles, and Rajput Hindu courts. Its majors centres of development included the Mughal courts of Delhi, Lucknow, Agra and Lahore as well as the Rajput courts of Amber and Jaipur.


title: Hindustani language

text: In the 18th century, towards the end of the Mughal period, with the fragmentation of the empire and the elite system, a variant of Hindustani, one of the successors of apabhraṃśa vernaculars at Delhi, and nearby cities, came to gradually replace Persian as the lingua franca among the educated elite upper class particularly in northern India, though Persian still retained much of its pre-eminence for a short period. The term "Hindustani" was given to that language. The Perso-Arabic script form of this language underwent a standardisation process and further Persianisation during this period (18th century) and came to be known as Urdu, a name derived from Persian: "Zabān-e Urdū-e Mualla" ('language of the court') or "Zabān-e Urdū" (, 'language of the camp'). The etymology of the word "Urdu" is of Chagatai origin, "Ordū" ('camp'), cognate with English "horde", and known in local translation as "Lashkari Zabān" (), which is shorted to "Lashkari" (). This is all due to its origin as the common speech of the Mughal army. As a literary language, Urdu took shape in courtly, elite settings. Along with English, it became the first official language of British India in 1850.


title: Hindustani language

text: Hindi as a standardised literary register of the Delhi dialect arose in the 19th century; the Braj dialect was the dominant literary language in the Devanagari script up until and through the 19th century. While the first literary works (mostly translations of earlier works) in Sanskritised Hindustani were already written in the early 19th century as part of a literary project that included both Hindu and Muslim writers (e.g. Lallu Lal, Insha Allah Khan), the call for a distinct Sanskritised standard of the Delhi dialect written in Devanagari under the name of Hindi became increasingly politicised in the course of the century and gained pace around 1880 in an effort to displace Urdu's official position.


title: Hindustani language

text: John Fletcher Hurst in his book published in 1891 mentioned that the Hindustani or camp language of the Mughal Empire's courts at Delhi was not regarded by philologists as a distinct language but only as a dialect of Hindi with admixture of Persian. He continued: "But it has all the magnitude and importance of separate language. It is linguistic result of Muslim rule of eleventh & twelfth centuries and is spoken (except in rural Bengal) by many Hindus in North India and by Musalman population in all parts of India." Next to English it was the official language of British Raj, was commonly written in Arabic or Persian characters, and was spoken by approximately 100,000,000 people.


title: Hindustani language

text: When the British colonised the Indian subcontinent from the late 18th through to the late 19th century, they used the words 'Hindustani', 'Hindi', and 'Urdu' interchangeably. They developed it as the language of administration of British India, further preparing it to be the official language of modern India and Pakistan. However, with independence, use of the word 'Hindustani' declined, being largely replaced by 'Hindi' and 'Urdu', or 'Hindi-Urdu' when either of those was too specific. More recently, the word 'Hindustani' has been used for the colloquial language of Bollywood films, which are popular in both India and Pakistan and which cannot be unambiguously identified as either Hindi or Urdu.


title: Hindustani language

text: Although, at the spoken level, Hindi and Urdu are considered registers of a single language, Hindustani or Hindi-Urdu, as they share a common grammar and core vocabulary, they differ in literary and formal vocabulary; where literary Hindi draws heavily on Sanskrit and to a lesser extent Prakrit, literary Urdu draws heavily on Persian and Arabic loanwords. The grammar and base vocabulary (most pronouns, verbs, adpositions, etc.) of both Hindi and Urdu, however, are the same and derive from a Prakritic base, and both have Persian/Arabic influence.


title: Hindustani language

text: The standardised registers Hindi and Urdu are collectively known as "Hindi-Urdu". Hindustani is perhaps the "lingua franca" of the north and west of the Indian subcontinent, though it is understood fairly well in other regions also, especially in the urban areas. This has led it to be characterised as a continuum that ranges between Hindi and Urdu. A common vernacular sharing characteristics with Sanskritised Hindi, regional Hindi and Urdu, Hindustani is more commonly used as a vernacular than highly Sanskritised Hindi or highly Persianised Urdu.


title: Hindustani language

text: This can be seen in the popular culture of Bollywood or, more generally, the vernacular of North Indians and Pakistanis, which generally employs a lexicon common to both "Hindi" and "Urdu" speakers. Minor subtleties in region will also affect the 'brand' of Hindustani, sometimes pushing the Hindustani closer to Urdu or to Hindi. One might reasonably assume that the Hindustani spoken in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh (known for its usage of Urdu) and Varanasi (a holy city for Hindus and thus using highly Sanskritised Hindi) is somewhat different.


title: Hindustani language

text: Standard Hindi, one of the 22 officially recognized languages of India and the official language of the Union, is usually written in the indigenous Devanagari script of India and exhibits less Persian and Arabic influence than Urdu. It has a literature of 500 years, with prose, poetry, religion and philosophy. One could conceive of a wide spectrum of dialects and registers, with the highly Persianised Urdu at one end of the spectrum and a heavily Sanskritised variety spoken in the region around Varanasi, at the other end. In common usage in India, the term "Hindi" includes all these dialects except those at the Urdu spectrum. Thus, the different meanings of the word "Hindi" include, among others:


title: Hindustani language

text: Urdu is the national language and state language of Pakistan and one of the 22 officially recognised languages of India.


title: Hindustani language

text: It is written, except in some parts of India, in the Nastaliq style of the Urdu alphabet, an extended Perso-Arabic script incorporating Indic phonemes. It is heavily influenced by Persian vocabulary and was historically also known as Rekhta.


title: Hindustani language

text: As Dakhini (or Deccani) where it also draws words from local languages, it survives and enjoys a rich history in the Deccan and other parts of South India, with the prestige dialect being Hyderabadi Urdu spoken in and around the capital of the Nizams and the Deccan Sultanates.


title: Hindustani language

text: Earliest forms of the language's literature may be traced back to the 13th-14th century works of Amīr Khusrau Dehlavī, often called the "father of Urdu literature" while Walī Deccani is seen as the progenitor of Urdu poetry.


title: Hindustani language

text: The term "bazaar Hindustani", in other words, the 'street talk' or literally 'marketplace Hindustani', has arisen to denote a colloquial register of the language that uses vocabulary common to both Hindi and Urdu while eschewing high-register and specialized Arabic or Sanskrit derived words. It has emerged in various South Asian cities where Hindustani is not the main language, in order to facilitate communication across language barriers. It is characterized by loanwords from local languages.


title: Hindustani language

text: Amir Khusro referred to this language of his writings as "Dehlavi" ( / , 'of Delhi') or "Hindavi" ( / ). During this period, Hindustani was used by Sufis in promulgating their message across the Indian subcontinent. After the advent of the Mughals in the subcontinent, Hindustani acquired more Persian loanwords. "Rekhta" ('mixture'), "Hindi" ('Indian'), Hindustani, Hindvi, Lahori, and Dakni (amongst others) became popular names for the same language until the 18th century. The name "Urdu" (from "Zabān-i-Ordu", or "Orda") appeared around 1780. It is believed to have been coined by the poet Mashafi. In local literature and speech, it was also known as the "Lashkari Zabān" (military language) or "Lashkari". Mashafi was the first person to simply modify the name "Zabān-i-Ordu" to "Urdu".


title: Hindustani language

text: During the British Raj, the term "Hindustani" was used by British officials. In 1796, John Borthwick Gilchrist published a "A Grammar of the Hindoostanee Language". Upon partition, India and Pakistan established national standards that they called "Hindi" and "Urdu," respectively, and attempted to make distinct, with the result that "Hindustani" commonly, but mistakenly, came to be seen as a "mixture" of Hindi and Urdu.


title: Hindustani language

text: Grierson, in his highly influential "Linguistic Survey of India", proposed that the names "Hindustani, Urdu," and "Hindi" be separated in use for different varieties of the Hindustani language, rather than as the overlapping synonyms they frequently were:


title: Hindustani language

text: Prior to 1947, Hindustani was officially recognised by the British Raj. In the post-independence period however, the term Hindustani has lost currency and is not given any official recognition by the Indian or Pakistani governments. The language is instead recognised by its standard forms, Hindi and Urdu.


title: Hindustani language

text: Hindi is declared by Article 343(1), Part 17 of the Indian Constitution as the "official language (, ) of the Union." (In this context, "Union" means the Federal Government and not the entire country—India has 23 official languages.) At the same time, however, the definitive text of federal laws is officially the English text and proceedings in the higher appellate courts must be conducted in English.


title: Hindustani language

text: At the state level, Hindi is one of the official languages in 10 of the 29 Indian states and three Union Territories, respectively: Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal; Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, and Delhi.


title: Hindustani language

text: In the remaining states, Hindi is not an official language. In states like Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, studying Hindi is not compulsory in the state curriculum. However, an option to take the same as second or third language does exist. In many other states, studying Hindi is usually compulsory in the school curriculum as a third language (the first two languages being the state's official language and English), though the intensiveness of Hindi in the curriculum varies.


title: Hindustani language

text: Urdu is the national language (, "qaumi zabān") of Pakistan, where it shares official language status with English. Although English is spoken by many, and Punjabi is the native language of the majority of the population, Urdu is the "lingua franca". In India, Urdu is one of the languages recognised in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India and is an official language of the Indian states of Bihar, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, and also the Union Territories of Delhi and Jammu and Kashmir. Although the government school system in most other states emphasises Modern Standard Hindi, at universities in cities such as Lucknow, Aligarh and Hyderabad, Urdu is spoken and learnt, and "Saaf" or "Khaalis" Urdu is treated with just as much respect as "Shuddha" Hindi.


title: Hindustani language

text: Besides being the "lingua franca" of North India and Pakistan in South Asia, Hindustani is also spoken by many in the South Asian diaspora and their descendants around the world, including North America (e.g., in Canada, Hindustani is one of the fastest growing languages), Europe, and the Middle East.


title: Hindustani language

text: Hindi-Urdu's core vocabulary has an Indic base, being derived from Prakrit, which in turn derives from Sanskrit, as well as a substantial amount of loanwords from Persian and Arabic (via Persian). Hindustani contains around 5,500 words of Persian and Arabic origin.


title: Hindustani language

text: Historically, Hindustani was written in the Kaithi, Devanagari, and Urdu alphabets. Kaithi and Devanagari are two of the Brahmic scripts native to India, whereas the Urdu alphabet is a derivation of the Perso-Arabic script written in Nastaʿlīq, which is the preferred calligraphic style for Urdu.


title: Hindustani language

text: Today, Hindustani continues to be written in the Urdu alphabet in Pakistan. In India, the Hindi register is officially written in Devanagari, and Urdu in the Urdu alphabet, to the extent that these standards are partly defined by their script.


title: Hindustani language

text: However, in popular publications in India, Urdu is also written in Devanagari, with slight variations to establish a Devanagari Urdu alphabet alongside the Devanagari Hindi alphabet.


title: Hindustani language

text: Because of anglicisation in South Asia and the international use of the Latin script, Hindustani is occasionally written in the Latin script. This adaptation is called Roman Urdu or Romanised Hindi, depending upon the register used. Since Urdu and Hindi are mutually intelligible when spoken, Romanised Hindi and Roman Urdu (unlike Devanagari Hindi and Urdu in the Urdu alphabet) are mostly mutually intelligible as well.


title: Hindustani language

text: The following is a sample text, Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in the two official registers of Hindustani, Hindi and Urdu. Because this is a formal legal text, differences in vocabulary are most pronounced.


title: Hindustani language

text: The predominant Indian film industry Bollywood, located in Mumbai, Maharashtra uses Modern Standard Hindi, colloquial Hindustani, Bombay Hindi, Urdu, Awadhi, Rajasthani, Bhojpuri, and Braj Bhasha, along with Punjabi and with the liberal use of English or Hinglish in scripts and soundtrack lyrics.


title: Hindustani language

text: Film titles are often screened in three scripts: Latin, Devanagari and occasionally Perso-Arabic. The use of Urdu or Hindi in films depends on the film's context: historical films set in the Delhi Sultanate or Mughal Empire are almost entirely in Urdu, whereas films based on Hindu mythology or ancient India make heavy use of Hindi with Sanskrit vocabulary.


title: International Women's Day

text: International Women's Day (IWD) is a global holiday celebrated annually on March 8 as a focal point in the women's rights movement, bringing attention to issues such as gender equality, reproductive rights, and violence and abuse against women.


title: International Women's Day

text: Spurred on by the universal female suffrage movement that had begun in New Zealand, IWD originated from labor movements in North America and Europe during the early 20th century. The earliest version was purportedly a "Women's Day" organized by the Socialist Party of America in New York City February 28, 1909. This inspired German delegates at the 1910 International Socialist Women's Conference to propose "a special Women's Day" be organized annually, albeit with no set date; the following year saw the first demonstrations and commemorations of International Women's Day across Europe. After women gained suffrage in Soviet Russia in 1917 (the beginning of the February Revolution), IWD was made a national holiday on March 8; it was subsequently celebrated on that date by the socialist movement and communist countries. The holiday was associated with far-left movements and governments until its adoption by the global feminist movement in the late 1960s. IWD became a mainstream global holiday following its adoption by the United Nations in 1977.


title: International Women's Day

text: International Women's Day is commemorated in a variety of ways worldwide; it is a public holiday in several countries, and observed socially or locally in others to celebrate and promote the achievements of women.


title: International Women's Day

text: The UN observes the holiday in connection with a particular issue, campaign, or theme in women's rights. In some parts of the world, IWD still reflects its political origins, being marked by protests and calls for radical change; in other areas, particularly in the West, it is largely sociocultural and centered on a celebration of womanhood.


title: International Women's Day

text: The earliest purported Women's Day observance, called "National Woman's Day", was held on February 28, 1909, in New York City, organized by the Socialist Party of America at the suggestion of activist Theresa Malkiel. There have been claims that the day was commemorating a protest by women garment workers in New York on March 8, 1857, but researchers have alleged this to be a myth intended to detach International Women's Day from its socialist origin.


title: International Women's Day

text: In August 1910, an International Socialist Women's Conference was organized ahead of the general meeting of the Socialist Second International in Copenhagen, Denmark. Inspired in part by the American socialists, German delegates Clara Zetkin, Käte Duncker, Paula Thiede, and others proposed the establishment of an annual "Women's Day", although no date was specified. The 100 delegates, representing 17 countries, agreed with the idea as a strategy to promote equal rights, including women's suffrage.


title: International Women's Day

text: The following year, on March 19, 1911, the first International Women's Day was marked by over a million people in Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland. In Austria-Hungary alone, there were 300 demonstrations, with women parading on the Ringstrasse in Vienna, carrying banners honoring the martyrs of the Paris Commune. Across Europe, women demanded the right to vote and to hold public office, and protested against employment sex discrimination.


title: International Women's Day

text: IWD initially had no set date, though it was generally celebrated in late February or early March. Americans continued to observe "National Women's Day" on the last Sunday in February, while Russia observed International Women's Day for the first time in 1913, on the last Saturday in February (albeit based on the Julian calendar, as in the Gregorian calendar, the date was March 8). In 1914, International Women's Day was held on March 8 for the first time in Germany, possibly because that date was a Sunday. As elsewhere, Germany's observance was dedicated to women's right to vote, which German women did not win until 1918. Concurrently, there was a march in London in support of women's suffrage, during which Sylvia Pankhurst was arrested in front of Charing Cross station on her way to speak in Trafalgar Square.


title: International Women's Day

text: On March 8, 1917, in Petrograd (February 23, 1917, on the Julian calendar), women textile workers began a demonstration that eventually engulfed the whole city, demanding "Bread and Peace"—an end to World War I, to food shortages, and to czarism. This marked the beginning of the February Revolution, which alongside the October Revolution, made up the second Russian Revolution. Revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky wrote, "23 February (8th March) was International Woman's Day and meetings and actions were foreseen. But we did not imagine that this 'Women's Day' would inaugurate the revolution. Revolutionary actions were foreseen but without a date. But in the morning, despite the orders to the contrary, textile workers left their work in several factories and sent delegates to ask for the support of the strike… which led to mass strike... all went out into the streets." Seven days later, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated, and the provisional Government granted women the right to vote.


title: International Women's Day

text: In 1917, Bolsheviks Alexandra Kollontai and Vladimir Lenin made IWD an official holiday in the Soviet Union. On May 8, 1965, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet decreed International Women's Day a non-working day in the USSR, "in commemoration of the outstanding merits of Soviet women in communistic construction, in the defense of their Fatherland during the Great Patriotic War, in their heroism and selflessness at the front and in the rear, and also marking the great contribution of women to strengthening friendship between peoples, and the struggle for peace. But still, women's day must be celebrated as are other holidays."


title: International Women's Day

text: After its official adoption in Soviet Russia, IWD was predominantly celebrated in communist countries and by the communist movement worldwide. Communist leader Dolores Ibárruri led a women's march in Madrid in 1936 on the eve of the Spanish Civil War. Chinese communists observed the holiday beginning in 1922, though it soon gained traction across the political spectrum: In 1927, Guangzhou saw a march of 25,000 women and male supporters, including representatives of the Kuomintang, the YWCA, and labor organizations. After the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949, the State Council proclaimed on December 23 that March 8 would be made an official holiday, with women given a half-day off.


title: International Women's Day

text: IWD remained predominantly a communist holiday until roughly 1967 when it was taken up by second-wave feminists. The day re-emerged as a day of activism, and is sometimes known in Europe as the "Women's International Day of Struggle". In the 1970s and 1980s, women's groups were joined by leftists and labor organizations in calling for equal pay, equal economic opportunity, equal legal rights, reproductive rights, subsidized child care, and the prevention of violence against women.


title: International Women's Day

text: The United Nations began celebrating International Women's Day in 1975, which had been proclaimed the International Women's Year. In 1977, the United Nations General Assembly invited member states to proclaim March 8 as an official UN holiday for women's rights and world peace. It has since been commemorated annually by the UN and much of the world, with each year's observance centered on a particular theme or issue within women's rights.


title: International Women's Day

text: International Women's Day sparked violence in Tehran, Iran on March 4, 2007, when police beat hundreds of men and women who were planning a rally. (A previous rally for the occasion was held in Tehran in 2003.) Police arrested dozens of women and some were released after several days of solitary confinement and interrogation. Shadi Sadr, Mahbubeh Abbasgholizadeh and several more community activists were released on March 19, 2007, ending a fifteen-day hunger strike.


title: International Women's Day

text: By the twenty-first century, IWD has been criticized as heavily diluted and commercialized, particularly in the West, where it is sponsored by major corporations and used to promote general and vague notions of equality, rather than radical social reforms. The website internationalwomensday.com was established in 2001; it sets out a yearly theme and hashtags, unconnected with the UN project. In 2009, the website was being managed by the British marketing firm Aurora Ventures with corporate sponsorship. The website began to promote hashtags as themes for the day, which became used internationally. The day was commemorated by business breakfasts and social media communications that were deemed by some social critics as reminiscent of Mother's Day greetings.


title: International Women's Day

text: On the occasion of 2010 International Women's Day the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) drew attention to the hardships displaced women endure. The displacement of populations is one of the gravest consequences of today's armed conflicts. It affects women in a host of ways. It has been estimated that between 70 and 80% of all internally displaced persons are women and children.


title: International Women's Day

text: Though the celebration in the West was low-key, events took place in more than 100 countries on March 8, 2011, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day. In the United States, President Barack Obama proclaimed March 2011 to be "Women's History Month", calling Americans to mark IWD by reflecting on "the extraordinary accomplishments of women" in shaping the country's history. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton launched the "100 Women Initiative: Empowering Women and Girls through International Exchanges", on the eve of IWD. In the run-up to 2011 International Women's Day, the Red Cross called on States and other entities not to relent in their efforts to prevent rape and other forms of sexual violence that harm the lives and dignity of countless women in conflict zones around the world every year.


title: International Women's Day

text: In the context of the Egyptian revolution, in Tahrir Square, Cairo, hundreds of men came out not to support, but to harass the women who came out to stand up for their rights as the police and military stood by watching, doing nothing to stop the crowds of men.


title: International Women's Day

text: Oxfam America invited people to celebrate inspiring women in their lives by sending a free International Women's Day e-Card or honoring a woman whose efforts had made a difference in the fight against hunger and poverty with Oxfam's International Women's Day award.


title: International Women's Day

text: On the occasion of International Women's Day 2012, the ICRC called for more action to help the mothers and wives of people who have gone missing during armed conflict. The vast majority of people who go missing in connection with conflict are men. As well as the anguish of not knowing what has happened to the missing husband or son, many of these women face economic and practical difficulties. The ICRC underlined the duty of parties to this conflict to search for the missing and provide information to the families.


title: International Women's Day

text: The theme for International Women's Day 2013 was "A promise is a promise: time for action to end violence against women."


title: International Women's Day

text: It was reported the 70% of women worldwide experience some sort of physical and/or sexual violence in their life. Irina Bovoka, UNESCO Director General on International Women's day 2013, stated that in order "to empower women and ensure equality, we must challenge every form of violence every time it occurs." In view of the increase in violence against women and following the brutal attack on Malala Yousafzai in October 2012, the UN focused their attention on ending violence against women and made this the central theme for International Women's Day 2013. UNESCO acknowledged that violence against young girls was one of the major reasons for girls not attending school and subsequently collaborated with governments around the globe to support women's rights in providing a quality education in a safe environment.


title: International Women's Day

text: For a more cultural and artistic celebration, UNESCO also held a concert in Paris as a "Tribute to Women in Music: from the romantic to the electronics".


title: International Women's Day

text: American singer Beyoncé posted an International Women's Day video to her YouTube account. Throughout the video, her song "Flawless" plays, which includes a portion of the "We Should All Be Feminists" speech given by author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.


title: International Women's Day

text: Governments and activists around the world commemorated the 20th anniversary year of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, an historic roadmap that set the agenda for realizing women's rights.


title: International Women's Day

text: The President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee, said: "On the occasion of International Women's Day, I extend warm greetings and good wishes to the women of India and thank them for their contributions over the years in the building of our nation." The ministry of women and child development announced the setting up of four more one-stop crisis centers on March 8, in addition to the eight already functioning across the country. Ahead of Women's Day, the national carrier Air India operated what it claimed to be the world's longest non-stop flight where the entire flight operations were handled by women, as part of International Women's Day celebrations. The flight, from Delhi to San Francisco, covered a distance of around 14,500 kilometers in around 17 hours.


title: International Women's Day

text: In a message in support of International Women's Day, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres commented on how women's rights were being "reduced, restricted and reversed". With men still in leadership positions and a widening economic gender gap, he called for change "by empowering women at all levels, enabling their voices to be heard and giving them control over their own lives and over the future of our world".


title: International Women's Day

text: The UN theme for International Women's Day was: "Time is Now: Rural and urban activists transforming women's lives".


title: International Women's Day

text: Global marches and online campaigns such as #MeToo and #TimesUp, which originated in the United States but became popular globally, allowed many women from different parts of the world to confront injustice and speak out on issues such as sexual harassment and assault and the gender pay gap.


title: International Women's Day

text: The UN theme for International Women's Day was: 'Think equal, build smart, innovate for change'. The focus of the theme was on innovative ways in which to advance gender equality and the empowerment of women, particularly in the areas of social protection systems, access to public services and sustainable infrastructure.


title: International Women's Day

text: The UN theme for International Women's Day was: 'I am Generation Equality': Realizing Women's Rights'. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, street marches occurred in London, Paris, Madrid, Brussels, Moscow and other European cities. The Aurat March in Islamabad was marred by attacks from stone throwers, after a failed attempt to have it banned as un-Islamic. In Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, police detained dozens of marchers shortly after masked men reportedly attacked the march.


title: International Women's Day

text: The 2021 UN theme for the IWD was "Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world", highlighting the impact that girls and women worldwide had as health care workers, caregivers, innovators and community organizers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The hashtag theme that year was: #ChooseToChallenge.


title: International Women's Day

text: The 2022 UN theme for International Women's Day is "Gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow", looking to highlight the contribution of women and girls around the globe, who participate in their communities promoting climate change adaptation, mitigation, and response, in order to build a more sustainable future for all. The hashtag theme for the year is #BreaktheBias and the color is purple.


title: International Women's Day

text: IWD is an official holiday in several countries worldwide, including Afghanistan, Angola, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, China (for women only), Cuba, Georgia, Germany (Berlin only), Guinea-Bissau, Eritrea, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Madagascar (for women only), Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Nepal, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Zambia.


title: International Women's Day

text: In some countries, such as Australia, Cameroon, Croatia, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Vietnam, and Chile, IWD is not an official public holiday, but is widely observed nonetheless.


title: International Women's Day

text: Regardless of legal status, in much of the world, it is customary for men to give female colleagues and loved ones flowers and small gifts. In some countries (such as Bulgaria and Romania) it is also observed as an equivalent of Mother's Day, where children also give small presents to their mothers and grandmothers. In the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, huge Soviet-style celebrations were held annually. After the fall of Communism, the holiday, generally considered to be one of the major symbols of the old regime, fell into obscurity. International Women's Day was re-established as an official "important day" by the Parliament of the Czech Republic in 2004 on the proposal of the Social Democrats and Communists. This has provoked some controversy as a large part of the public as well as the political right see the holiday as a relic of the nation's Communist past.


title: International Women's Day

text: In Italy, the holiday is observed by men giving yellow mimosas to women. This originated with communist politician Teresa Mattei, who chose the mimosa in 1946 as the symbol of IWD at the request of Luigi Longo. Mattei felt that the French symbols of IWD, violets and lilies of the valley, were too scarce and expensive to be used in poor, rural Italian areas, so she proposed the mimosa as an alternative.


title: International Women's Day

text: In the United States, actress and human rights activist Beata Pozniak worked with the Mayor of Los Angeles and the Governor of California to lobby members of the US Congress to propose official recognition of the holiday. In February 1994, at Beata Pozniak's suggestion, H. J. Res. 316 was introduced by Representative Maxine Waters, along with 79 cosponsors, in an attempt to officially recognize March 8 of that year as International Women's Day. The bill was subsequently referred to, and remained in, the House Committee on Post Office and Civil Service. No vote of either house of Congress was achieved on this piece of legislation.


title: International Women's Day

text: In Pakistan, the first Aurat Marches were begun by women's collectives in parallel with the Pakistani #MeToo movement on International Women's Day. The first march was held on 8 March 2018 in Karachi. The Aurat March is now an annual socio-political demonstration in Pakistani cities such as Lahore, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Faisalabad, Multan, Quetta, Karachi, Islamabad and Peshawar to observe International Women's Day.


title: International Women's Day

text: Several countries, including Uruguay, Spain, Italy, France and Algeria, have squares or other public spaces named after 8 March in reference to International Women's Day.


title: Reneé Rapp

text: Reneé Mary Jane Rapp (born January 10, 2000) is an American actress and singer. After she won the 2018 Jimmy Award for Best Performance by an Actress, she took over the role of Regina George in the Broadway musical "Mean Girls". She then went on to play Leighton in HBO Max comedy series "The Sex Lives of College Girls". In November, her EP Everything to Everyone was released.


title: Reneé Rapp

text: Rapp attended high school at Hopewell High School in Huntersville, North Carolina, for three years, performing in the theater program and playing on the varsity women's golf team before transferring to Northwest School of the Arts. Corey Mitchell, Rapp's theater teacher, said Rapp "has a special distinction...There is a difference when that vocal ability is coupled with sincere emotions that can move an audience and that literally can excite an audience".


title: Reneé Rapp

text: In 2018, Rapp won the Best Actress award at the Blumey Awards, Charlotte's premiere musical theater awards, for her portrayal of Sandra in her school's production of "Big Fish". Rapp then attended the tenth annual Jimmy Awards in New York City, where she ultimately won “Best Performance by an Actress", beating forty other competitors for the award. This win earned her a $10,000 scholarship. Actress Laura Benanti, who presented the award to Rapp, said, "I will never be as confident as that 18-year-old". Additionally, the "New York Magazine" coverage of the Jimmy Awards claimed that Rapp "set the stage ablaze" with her winning performance, "prompting the stars of "Mean Girls" to collectively start sleeping with one eye open".


title: Reneé Rapp

text: Following her Jimmy Award win, Rapp was cast as Wendla in Theatre Charlotte's 2018 production of "Spring Awakening". On July 27, 2018, Rapp performed at the 2018 Supergirl Pro Surf and Music Festival. On September 23, 2018, she took part in The Educational Theatre Foundation's fourth annual Broadway Back to School event held at Feinstein's/54 Below. In December 2018, she read for the role of Monteen in Roundabout Theatre Company's reading of "Parade". On January 12, 2019, Rapp performed at BroadwayCon's 2019 Star to Be event, singing "They Just Keep Moving the Line" from NBC's "Smash". She was next seen on March 4, 2019, performing at Feinstein's/54 Below's "54 Sings The High School Musical Trilogy," followed by their "FOR THE GIRLS" event on March 28.


title: Reneé Rapp

text: On May 28, 2019, it was announced that Rapp would be taking over the role of Regina George in the Tony Award-nominated Broadway musical, "Mean Girls", first for a limited run from June 7–26, then permanently starting September 10, 2019. On June 3, Rapp performed at The Green Room 42, singing songs from the show after an introduction by Tina Fey. The production closed on March 12, 2020, in accordance with Broadway's shutdown; it was later announced on January 7, 2021, that the show would not reopen.


title: Reneé Rapp

text: On October 14, 2020, it was announced that Rapp had been cast as Leighton, one of the four leads in Mindy Kaling's HBO Max series "The Sex Lives of College Girls".


title: Reneé Rapp

text: On December 9, 2022, it was announced that Rapp would reprise her role as Regina George in a movie adaptation of the "Mean Girls" musical.


title: Reneé Rapp

text: Rapp stated in an interview that she takes "her inspiration from classic pop and R&B music, and mixes it all with her current favorites, Jazmine Sullivan and Yebba". She played golf in middle school and high school.


title: Esther

text: Esther is the eponymous heroine of the Book of Esther. In the Achaemenid Empire, the Persian king Ahasuerus seeks a new wife after his queen, Vashti, is deposed for disobeying him. Hadassah, a Jewess who goes by the name of Esther, is chosen to fulfill this role due to her beauty. Ahasuerus' grand vizier, Haman, is offended by Esther's cousin and guardian, Mordecai, due to his refusal to prostrate himself before Haman. Consequently, Haman plots to have all the Jewish subjects of Persia killed, and convinces Ahasuerus to permit him to do so. However, Esther foils the plan by revealing Haman's eradication plans to Ahasuerus, who then has Haman executed and grants permission to the Jews to kill their enemies instead, as royal edicts (including the order for eradication issued by Haman) cannot be revoked under Persian law.


title: Esther

text: Her story provides the traditional explanation for the Jewish holiday of Purim, celebrated on the date given in the story for when Haman's order was to go into effect, which is the day that the Jews killed their enemies after the plan was reversed. The book exists in two distinct forms: a shorter Hebrew version found in Jewish and Protestant Bibles, and a longer Greek version found in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles.


title: Esther

text: When introduced, in chapter 2 verse 7, Esther is given the Hebrew name Hadassah. It was a common Jewish practice in antiquity, attested especially in the Book of Daniel (1:7) and I Maccabees (2:2–5), to have not only a Hebrew name but also one redolent of pagan connotations. This name is probably an (otherwise unattested) feminine form of the Hebrew word for "myrtle", a symbol of hope and an attribute of Venus, but some scholars contend it is related to the Akkadian word for "damsel", an epithet of Ishtar, or to the toponym Adasa. The name "Esther" probably derives from the name of the Babylonian goddess Ishtar or from the Persian word cognate with the English word "star" (implying an association with Ishtar) though some scholars contend it is related to the Persian words for "woman" or "myrtle".


title: Esther

text: In the third year of the reign of King Ahasuerus of Persia the king banishes his queen, Vashti, and seeks a new queen. Beautiful maidens gather together at the harem in the citadel of Susa under the authority of the eunuch Hegai.


title: Esther

text: Esther, a cousin of Mordecai, was a member of the Jewish community in the Exilic Period who claimed as an ancestor Kish, a Benjamite who had been taken from Jerusalem into captivity. She was the orphaned daughter of Mordecai's uncle, another Benjamite named Abihail. Upon the king's orders, Esther is taken to the palace where Hegai prepares her to meet the king. Even as she advances to the highest position of the harem, perfumed with gold and myrrh and allocated certain foods and servants, she is under strict instructions from Mordecai, who meets with her each day, to conceal her Jewish origins. The king falls in love with her and makes her his Queen.


title: Esther

text: Following Esther's coronation, Mordecai learns of an assassination plot by Bigthan and Teresh to kill King Ahasuerus. Mordecai tells Esther, who tells the king in the name of Mordecai, and he is saved. This act of great service to the king is recorded in the Annals of the Kingdom.


title: Esther

text: After Mordecai saves the king's life, Haman the Agagite is made Ahasuerus' highest adviser, and orders that everyone bow down to him. When Mordecai (who had stationed himself in the street to advise Esther) refuses to bow to him, Haman pays King Ahasuerus 10,000 silver talents for the right to exterminate all of the Jews in Ahasuerus' kingdom. Haman casts lots, Purim, using supernatural means, and sees that the thirteenth day of the Month of Adar is a fortuitous day for the genocide. Using the seal of the king, in the name of the king, Haman sends an order to the provinces of the kingdom to allow the extermination of the Jews on the thirteenth of Adar. When Mordecai learns of this, he tells Esther to reveal to the king that she is Jewish and ask that he repeal the order. Esther hesitates, saying that she could be put to death if she goes to the king without being summoned; nevertheless, Mordecai urges her to try. Esther asks that the entire Jewish community fast and pray for three days before she goes to see the king; Mordecai agrees.


title: Esther

text: On the third day, Esther goes to the courtyard in front of the king's palace, and she is welcomed by the king, who stretches out his scepter for her to touch, and offers her anything she wants "up to half of the kingdom". Esther invites the king and Haman to a banquet she has prepared for the next day. She tells the king she will reveal her request at the banquet. During the banquet, the king repeats his offer again, whereupon Esther invites both the king and Haman to a banquet she is making on the following day as well.


title: Esther

text: Seeing that he is in favor with the king and queen, Haman takes counsel from his wife and friends to build a gallows upon which to hang Mordecai; as he is in their good favors, he believes he will be granted his wish to hang Mordecai the very next day. After building the gallows, Haman goes to the palace in the middle of the night to wait for the earliest moment he can see the king.


title: Esther

text: That evening, the king, unable to sleep, asks that the Annals of the Kingdom be read to him so that he will become drowsy. The book miraculously opens to the page telling of Mordecai's great service, and the king asks if he had already received a reward. When his attendants answer in the negative, Ahasuerus is suddenly distracted and demands to know who is standing in the palace courtyard in the middle of the night. The attendants answer that it is Haman. Ahasuerus invites Haman into his room. Haman, instead of requesting that Mordecai be hanged, is ordered to take Mordecai through the streets of the capital on the Royal Horse wearing the Royal Robes. Haman is also instructed to yell, "This is what shall be done to the man whom the king wishes to honor!"


title: Esther

text: After spending the entire day honoring Mordecai, Haman rushes to Esther's second banquet, where Ahasuerus is already waiting. Ahasuerus repeats his offer to Esther of anything "up to half of the kingdom". Esther tells Ahasuerus that while she appreciates the offer, she must put before him a more basic issue: she explains that there is a person plotting to kill her and her entire people, and that this person's intentions are to harm the king and the kingdom. When Ahasuerus asks who this person is, Esther points to Haman and names him. Upon hearing this, an enraged Ahasuerus goes out to the garden to calm down and consider the situation.


title: Esther

text: While Ahasuerus is in the garden, Haman throws himself at Esther's feet asking for mercy. Upon returning from the garden, the king is further enraged. As it was the custom to eat on reclining couches, it appears to the king as if Haman is attacking Esther. He orders Haman to be removed from his sight. While Haman is being led out, Harvona, a civil servant, tells the king that Haman had built a gallows for Mordecai, "who had saved the king's life". In response, the king says "Hang him (Haman) on it".


title: Esther

text: After Haman is put to death, Ahasuerus gives Haman's estate to Esther. Esther tells the king about Mordecai being her relative, and the king makes Mordecai his adviser. When Esther asks the king to revoke the order exterminating the Jews, the king is initially hesitant, saying that an order issued by the king cannot be repealed. Ahasuerus allows Esther and Mordecai to draft another order, with the seal of the king and in the name of the king, to allow the Jewish people to defend themselves and fight with their oppressors on the thirteenth day of Adar.


title: Esther

text: On the thirteenth day of Adar, the same day that Haman had set for them to be killed, the Jews defend themselves in all parts of the kingdom and rest on the fourteenth day of Adar. The fourteenth day of Adar is celebrated with the giving of charity, exchanging foodstuffs, and feasting. In Susa, the Jews of the capital were given another day to kill their oppressors; they rested and celebrated on the fifteenth day of Adar, again giving charity, exchanging foodstuffs, and feasting as well.


title: Esther

text: The Jews established an annual feast, the feast of Purim, in memory of their deliverance. Haman having set the date of the thirteenth of Adar to commence his campaign against the Jews, this determined the date of the festival of Purim.


title: Esther

text: Although the details of the setting are entirely plausible and the story may even have some basis in actual events, the book of Esther is a novella rather than history. Persian kings did not marry outside of seven Persian noble families, making it unlikely that there was a Jewish queen Esther, and in any case the historical Xerxes's queen was Amestris. The name "Ahasuerus" is equivalent to "Xerxes" (both deriving from the Persian "Khshayārsha"), and Ahasuerus is usually identified in modern sources as Xerxes I, who ruled between 486 and 465 BCE, as it is to this monarch that the events described in Esther are thought to fit the most closely.


title: Esther

text: There is some speculation that the story was created to justify the Jewish appropriation of an originally non-Jewish feast. The festival which the book explains is purim, which is explained as meaning "lot", from the Babylonian word "puru". There are wide-ranging theories regarding the origin of Purim: one popular theory says the festival has its origins in a historicized Babylonian myth or ritual in which Mordecai and Esther represent the Babylonian gods Marduk and Ishtar, others trace the ritual to the Persian New Year, and scholars have surveyed other theories in their works Some scholars have defended the story as real history, but the attempt to find a historical kernel to the narrative "is likely to be futile".


title: Esther

text: Abraham Kuyper notes some "disagreeable aspects" to her character: that she should not have agreed to take Vashti's place, that she refrained from saving her nation until her own life was threatened, and that she carries out bloodthirsty vengeance.


title: Esther

text: The tale opens with Esther as beautiful and obedient, but also a relatively passive figure. During the course of the story, she evolves into someone who takes a decisive role in her own future and that of her people. According to Sidnie White Crawford, "Esther's position in a male court mirrors that of the Jews in a Gentile world, with the threat of danger ever present below the seemingly calm surface." Esther is related to Daniel in that both represent a "type" for Jews living in Diaspora, and hoping to live a successful life in an alien environment.


title: Esther

text: According to Susan Zaeske, by virtue of the fact that Esther used only rhetoric to convince the king to save her people, the story of Esther is a "rhetoric of exile and empowerment that, for millennia, has notably shaped the discourse of marginalized peoples such as Jews, women, and African Americans", persuading those who have power over them.


title: Esther

text: Given the great historical link between Persian and Jewish history, modern day Persian Jews are called "Esther's Children". A building venerated as being the Tomb of Esther and Mordechai is located in Hamadan, Iran, although the village of Kfar Bar'am in northern Israel also claims to be the burial place of Queen Esther.


title: Esther

text: There are several . The Heilspiegel Altarpiece by Konrad Witz depicts Esther appearing before the king to beg mercy for the Jews, despite the punishment for appearing without being summoned being death. "Esther before Ahasuerus" by Tintoretto (1546–47, Royal Collection) shows what became one of the most commonly depicted parts of the story. Esther's faint had not often been depicted in art before Tintoretto. It is shown in the series of "cassone" scenes of the "Life of Esther" attributed variously to Sandro Botticelli and Filippino Lippi from the 1470s. In other cassone depictions, for example by Filippino Lippi, Esther's readiness to show herself before the court is contrasted to Vashti's refusal to expose herself to the public assembly.


title: Esther

text: Esther was regarded in Catholic theology as a typological forerunner of the Virgin Mary in her role as intercessor Her regal election parallels Mary's Assumption and as she becomes queen of Persia, Mary becomes queen of heaven; Mary's epithet as 'stella maris' parallels Esther as a 'star' and both figure as sponsors of the humble before the powerful.


title: Esther

text: Contemporary viewers would probably have recognized a similarity between the faint and the motif of the Swoon of the Virgin, which was very common in depictions of the Crucifixion of Jesus.


title: Esther

text: The fainting became a much more popular subject in the Baroque painting of the following century, with examples including the "Esther before Ahasuerus" by Artemisia Gentileschi.


title: Esther

text: Esther is commemorated as a matriarch in the Calendar of Saints of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod on May 24.


title: Esther

text: Esther is recognized as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church, commemorated on the Sunday before Christmas. "The Septuagint edition of Esther contains six parts (totaling 107 verses) not found in the Hebrew Bible. Although these interpretations originally may have been composed in Hebrew, they survive only in Greek texts. Because the Hebrew Bible's version of Esther's story contains neither prayers nor even a single reference to God, Greek redactors apparently felt compelled to give the tale a more explicit religious orientation, alluding to "God" or the "Lord" fifty times." These additions to Esther in the Apocrypha were added approximately in the second or first century BCE.


title: Esther

text: The story of Esther is also referenced in chapter 28 of 1 Meqabyan, a book considered canonical in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.


title: Physical attractiveness

text: Physical attractiveness is the degree to which a person's physical features are considered aesthetically pleasing or beautiful. The term often implies sexual attractiveness or desirability, but can also be distinct from either. There are many factors which influence one person's attraction to another, with physical aspects being one of them. Physical attraction itself includes universal perceptions common to all human cultures such as facial symmetry, sociocultural dependent attributes and personal preferences unique to a particular individual.


title: Physical attractiveness

text: In many cases, humans subconsciously attribute positive characteristics, such as intelligence and honesty, to physically attractive people, a psychological phenomenon called the Halo effect. From research done in the United States and United Kingdom, it was found that objective measures of physical attractiveness and intelligence are positively correlated and that the association between the two attributes is stronger among men than among women. Evolutionary psychologists have tried to answer why individuals who are more physically attractive should also, on average, be more intelligent, and have put forward the notion that both general intelligence and physical attractiveness may be indicators of underlying genetic fitness. A person's physical characteristics can signal cues to fertility and health, with statistical modeling studies showing that the facial shape variables that reflect aspects of physiological health, including body fat and blood pressure, also influence observers' perceptions of health. Attending to these factors increases reproductive success, furthering the representation of one's genes in the population.


title: Physical attractiveness

text: Heterosexual men, on average, tend to be attracted to women who have a youthful appearance and exhibit features such as a symmetrical face, full breasts, full lips, and a low waist–hip ratio. Heterosexual women, on average, tend to be attracted to men who are taller than they themselves are and who display a high degree of facial symmetry, masculine facial dimorphism, upper body strength, broad shoulders, a relatively narrow waist, and a V-shaped torso.


title: Physical attractiveness

text: Generally, physical attractiveness can be viewed from a number of perspectives; with universal perceptions being common to all human cultures, cultural and social aspects, and individual subjective preferences. The perception of attractiveness can have a significant effect on how people are judged in terms of employment or social opportunities, friendship, sexual behavior, and marriage.


title: Physical attractiveness

text: Some physical features are attractive in both men and women, particularly bodily and facial symmetry, although one contrary report suggests that "absolute flawlessness" with perfect symmetry can be "disturbing". Symmetry may be evolutionarily beneficial as a sign of health because asymmetry "signals past illness or injury". One study suggested people were able to "gauge beauty at a subliminal level" by seeing only a glimpse of a picture for one-hundredth of a second. Other important factors include youthfulness, skin clarity and smoothness of skin; and "vivid color" in the eyes and hair. However, there are numerous differences based on gender.


title: Physical attractiveness

text: A 1921 study of the reports of college students regarding those traits in individuals which make for attractiveness and repulsiveness argued that static traits, such as beauty or ugliness of features, hold a position subordinate to groups of physical elements like expressive behavior, affectionate disposition, grace of manner, aristocratic bearing, social accomplishments and personal habits.


title: Physical attractiveness

text: Grammer and colleagues have identified eight "pillars" of beauty: youthfulness, symmetry, averageness, sex-hormone markers, body odor, motion, skin complexion and hair texture. Traditionally in Samoa, body fat was acceptable or attractive.


title: Physical attractiveness

text: An Italian study published in 2008 studied the positions of the 50 soft-tissue landmarks of the faces of 324 white Northern Italian adolescent boys and girls to compare the features of a group of 93 "beautiful" individuals selected by a commercial casting agency with those of a reference group with normal dentofacial dimensions and proportions. The research found that, in comparison with the reference group, the attractive adolescents tended to have the following characteristics:


title: Physical attractiveness

text: The study concluded that attractive adolescents had more neotenous and juvenile features, but older attractive boys also showed tendencies towards sexual dimorphism.


title: Physical attractiveness

text: Contrary to common misconception, one study finds that non-severe facial scarring increases male attractiveness for short-term relationships.


title: Physical attractiveness

text: Symmetrical faces and bodies may be signs of good inheritance to women of child-bearing age seeking to create healthy offspring. Studies suggest women are less attracted to men with asymmetrical faces, and symmetrical faces correlate with long term mental performance and are an indication that a man has experienced "fewer genetic and environmental disturbances such as diseases, toxins, malnutrition or genetic mutations" while growing. Since achieving symmetry is a difficult task during human growth, requiring billions of cell reproductions while maintaining a parallel structure, achieving symmetry is a visible signal of genetic health.


title: Physical attractiveness

text: Studies have also suggested that women at peak fertility were more likely to fantasize about men with greater facial symmetry, and other studies have found that male symmetry was the only factor that could significantly predict the likelihood of a woman experiencing orgasm during sex. Women with partners possessing greater symmetry reported significantly more copulatory female orgasms than were reported by women with partners possessing low symmetry, even with many potential confounding variables controlled. This finding has been found to hold across different cultures. It has been argued that masculine facial dimorphism (in men) and symmetry in faces are signals advertising genetic quality in potential mates. Low facial and body fluctuating asymmetry may indicate good health and intelligence, which are desirable features. Studies have found that women who perceive themselves as being more physically attractive are more likely to favor men with a higher degree of facial symmetry, than are women who perceive themselves as being less physically attractive. It has been found that symmetrical females and males have a tendency to begin to have sexual intercourse at an earlier age, to have more sexual partners, and to have more one-night stands. They are also more likely to engage in infidelity. A study of quarterbacks in the American National Football League found a positive correlation between facial symmetry and salaries.


title: Physical attractiveness

text: Double-blind studies found that women prefer the scent of men who are rated as facially attractive. For example, both males and females were more attracted to the natural scent of individuals who had been rated by consensus as facially attractive. Additionally, it has also been shown that women have a preference for the scent of men with more symmetrical faces, and that women's preference for the scent of more symmetrical men is strongest during the most fertile period of their menstrual cycle. Within the set of normally cycling women, individual women's preference for the scent of men with high facial symmetry correlated with their probability of conception. Men's body odor is also affected by their diet, with women expressing preferences for male body odor associated with increased dietary fruit and vegetable and protein content, and reduced carbohydrate content.