Lifestyle
There are many ideas and concepts historically associated with springtime. Here is how filmmakers have explored these themes and harnessed the aesthetic of Spring to build stories about youth, change, rebirth, and cyclicality.
For our latest digital cover, we sat down with Berlin-born actress Tijan Marei. In our conversation, Marei reflects on the evolving landscape of the film industry—where wellness is replacing outdated notions of “cool”, women are claiming their space in more complex roles, and setting boundaries is an essential part of the job. Beyond the screen, she’s also a certified yoga and breathwork instructor, teaching a class called AntiDote—a practice she says has been life-changing. "I find life more beautiful when I add a little magic to it," she tells TITLE Mag. "We all create our realities together."
Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton had the voice, the power, and the presence to command any stage - but history didn’t give her the recognition she deserved. She sang Hound Dog before Elvis and wrote Ball and Chain before Janis Joplin, yet others profited from her work. Her story is one of many, reflecting a music industry that thrives on Black creativity while denying Black artists their due.
Tennis player Anna Kalinskaya recently became the target of online scrutiny due to her relationship with fellow athlete Jannik Sinner. This kind of backlash is far from unheard of. Famous women often find themselves at the center of parasocial-relationship-fuelled online debates because of their relationships with other celebrities. Yet this phenomenon exemplifies how, in a world obsessed with romance and dating, women in heterosexual relationships still can’t escape societal norms and expectations of how a girlfriend or wife “should” act.
Vampires have been used as allegories for an array of Others, from the LGBTQIA+ community to people with disabilities. Still, stories of female vampires tend to have even another narrative layer. They frequently explore the female experience's many elements and other vampire fiction themes.
In "A Woman I Once Knew," photographer Rosalind Fox Solomon takes readers into an intimate exploration of memory, identity, and aging. Through a clever combination of media, Solomon reflects on her life as a woman, empathically giving space to a subject artists rarely focus on.
“Growing up, I never saw girls who looked like me. Later, I was fortunate to surround myself with the right people to get to where I am today. But I’m still that little girl from Sonnenallee who just loved to dance. I think the less I try to be a role model, the more I can inspire others in my own way. Step by step, I’m happy to see more Arab women in the spotlight, showing other Arab women, girls, and boys that they can say, “That’s going to be me.”
I’m not sure if you can always feel so much and so intensely that you could constantly make music about it. Whether the emotion is amplified or toned down in a song, what matters to me in the end is being able to say, "This is me." APSILON for TITLE Dec24 Cover
Laura Huertas Millán explores the complex history and misunderstood legacy of the coca plant, which originates in the Andean region of South America. In her exhibition Curanderxs at C/O Berlin Huertas Millán invites viewers to reconsider the coca plant beyond its criminalised status and to recognize its true cultural and historical significance.
The music industry is experiencing a powerful shift as Sapphic pop and rock dominate charts and festival lineups, bringing LGBTQ+ voices into the mainstream. With artists like girl in red, MUNA, and Billie Eilish leading the charge, songs that openly celebrate women-loving-women (WLW) experiences are resonating with wider audiences. This new era of queer visibility is finally giving fans the representation they've been searching for, proving there's a thriving market for music that speaks authentically to LGBTQ+ lives and stories.
