Bedugul Coffee: Your radical guide to fighting discrimination in the arts 🎨

Culture Shift is a weekly newsletter curated by the HuffPost Culture writers and editors.

This week we're talking about the future of virtual reality, what ballet dancers can teach us about career changes, body positivity in literature, the Guerrilla Girls, the thespians who perform Shakespeare drunk, and all the books you should read according to your binge TV preferences.

Your Radical Guide To Fighting Discrimination In The Arts

If you spent 30 years trying to accomplish one thing, what kinds of results would you need to keep you going?

When it comes to mastering a skill, a few decades might sound like more than enough time to reach your goal, especially if you adhere to the words of Malcolm Gladwell, who, in the book Outliers, explains that it takes roughly 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field. But when it comes to the task of fighting injustice, the road to success is much longer and harder fought.

Since 1985, the Guerrilla Girls have been raising a much-needed ruckus over gender and racial inequality in the art world, under the leadership of seven anonymous, masked women. For over 30 years, they've publicly condemned museums that fail to collect or showcase women artists and artists of color, using facts, humor and "outrageous visuals." After decades of work, they show no signs of stopping.

Why? Because women are still severely underrepresented in galleries and museums. Recent stats reflect the dismal state of gender parity in the art world: In 2013, every artist in the top 100 auction sales was a man. In 2014, there were no women in the top 40. In 2015, only five of 34 art galleries surveyed by the feminist art collective Pussy Galore boasted rosters in which women constituted more than 50 percent.

In other corners of popular culture, diversity is at the front and center of conversations today. #OscarsSoWhite raised awareness of the white-centric nature of the Academy Awards and Hollywood at large. In the literary world, there are both organized efforts to combat gender and racial inequality in publishing, and individual acts of protest. Despite a statistical lack of progress in the art world, the Guerrilla Girls continue to advocate for more diverse representation in arts institutions with the hope that change is on the horizon. (Read more here)

It's Time To Stop Thinking About Weight Loss As A Fairy Tale Ending

The 28-year-old protagonist of Mona Awad's new novel 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl doesn't sound like someone who'd struggle from body image issues. She has thick, dark hair and porcelain skin. Her curves fit neatly into society's rigid beauty standards, and into the tight black dresses she wears for every occasion.

But her figure is the result of militant discipline -- veggie patties, handfuls of protein and bi-monthly enchilada splurges sculpt her once-overweight figure into the body she longed for growing up. And although she's finally met her goal weight, Elizabeth's fixation on food hasn't waned. Her mood, and her self-esteem, are still wrapped up in her calorie intake. Cheat days bring her temporary happiness, followed by immense guilt. And her husband, Tom, wearies of food-centric habits, which get in the way of their once-satiating relationship.

"So much of Lizzie's personality and so much of her conflict with her body, and so much of her story is bound up in how she sees herself and how others see her," Awad said in an interview with The Huffington Post. In writing the book, she wanted to work against the notion that "fat" is a physical state that can change once pounds are shed. Instead, Awad says, weight is "a state of mind more than anything else, and it's a hard one to break away from, a hard one to step out of." (Read more here)

This Theatre Group Performs Shakespeare, Only Drunker

The Bard bequeathed his fans and scholars with tomes and tomes worth of questions to pick apart: Was "The Taming of the Shrew" a patriarchal play, or a criticism of the patriarchy? Should classrooms avoid "The Merchant of Venice" due to the stereotypes upheld by Shylock? Is all the world a planet, a stage, or both?

Perhaps the most pressing question Shakespeare left us to mull over: Was Lady Macbeth drunk, or what? No, not drunk on ambition -- just plain ol' schnockered. Think about it: girl's inhibitions were out the window, and her antics totally ruined a perfectly good dinner party.

Riffing on the idea that some of Shakespeare's beloved characters, not to mention his captive audience, were almost definitely fans of drink, Off-Broadway theatre troupe Drunk Shakespeare performs one of his classic plays nightly, but only after one actor or actress takes a shot -- or five. (Read more here)

Can Virtual Reality Make Us Better People?

Nonny de la Peña is a pioneer in the field of virtual reality journalism. For years, she has used the technology to craft stories that bring the invisible into view. While that might sound like a tired platitude, de la Peña means the words quite literally. She doesn't just want you to see the dark realities that are too often hidden from view, she'll make you stand in a room with them. (Read more here)

What Ballet Dancers Can Teach You About Finding A New Career

In this series, The Huffington Post profiles some of the best ballet dancers in the world, working in some of the rarest and most unusual work environments imaginable, to try to understand how they deal with the same workplace issues that confront the rest of us mere mortals.

Most of us don't get literal standing ovations from hundreds of people when we do good work. And most of us don't have to visit the physical therapist at the beginning and end of every workday. But no matter what sector we're in, the big questions are the same: What does it mean to have your body under scrutiny on the job? How does it feel to be asked to represent your entire race in a company meeting? How do you find the right people to mentor and guide you?

Read the first installment, about being the kind of partner people fight to work with, here. In this installment, we talk to two dancers from the English company BalletBoyz. (Read more here)

Israeli Artist Paz Perlman Explores The Healing Power Of Art

"In order to liberate myself from the past, I have to reconstruct it, ponder about it, make a statue out of it and get rid of it through making sculpture," Louise Bourgeois famously declared, "I'm able to forget it afterwards. I have paid my debt to the past and I am liberated."

For Paz Perlman, a conceptual artist born in Israel and based in New York City, Bourgeois' words constitute a mythos to live by. Perlman's multimedia sculptures and bricolage, often grid-like tapestries of found twigs, fabric, and otherwise unwanted detritus, are born of a desire to piece together history. Not just her history, but a blanket of past trauma and pain that's wound its way in and out of Perlman's life.

Growing up in Israel, the artist experienced early on the weight of collective memory. Throughout her childhood, she remained acutely aware of the lingering indignity of the Holocaust and how the immense tragedy submerged itself in her Jewish roots. She and her family lived in shelters throughout the War of Attrition in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Her timeline is punctuated by shared experiences like these, fracturing the memories she has of her own life. Today, she lives with a slippery desire to piece it all together; to weave together a story that she can ponder and let go. (Read more here)

All The Books You Should Read, According To Your Binge TV Preferences

Our handy guide to all the books every binge TV lover should read. Go ahead, binge read away. Here's a preview:

1. If you like "Jessica Jones," you'll like Isle of Youth by Laura van den Berg
2. If you like "UnREAL" you'll like Arts & Entertainments by Christopher Beha
3. If you like "The Jinx," you'll like People Who Eat Darkness by Richard Lloyd Parry
4. If you like "The Walking Dead," you'll like Zone One by Colson Whitehead
5. If you like "Master of None," you'll like Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
6. If you like "Skins," you'll like The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison
7. If you like "The West Wing," you'll like This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral -- Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking! -- in America's Gilded Capital by Mark Leibovich
8. If you like "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt," you'll like The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth McKenzie
9. If you like "The X-Files," then you'll like Voices in the Night by Steven Millhauser

(Read more here)

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