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The new Spider-Man is black. Here's why it's a big deal.

The Marvel superhero roster just got more diverse.

Marvel announced that a new Spider-Man is hitting the stands this fall.

This comes on the heels of a Sony email leak showing a contract that required Spider-Man to be — get this — white, male, and straight. Surprise!


This was actually my reaction. GIF from "Real Housewives of Orange County."

And the announcement about the new Spider-Man movie star and director? Spoiler alert: They're both white guys.

Even white dude Harry Potter is bored by the news. GIF via "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone."

Luckily, the new official Spider-Man in the Spider-Man comics is finally breaking the mold.

Meet Miles Morales, your new friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. Image by Marvel.

If he looks ... different ... from all the Spider-Mans (Spider-Men?) you've seen before, it's because he has an African-American father and a Puerto Rican mother.

He's the first black and second-ever Latino Spider-Man in the Marvel Comics universe.

What's especially great is that Miles isn't new to fans of the Spider-Man franchise, but the co-creators made an intentional move to make him official. He has been around for a while in an alternative Marvel universe where Peter Parker dies and he takes his place.

But now Miles Morales is the official main Marvel Comics universe Spider-Man.

Miles Morales in action. Image by Marvel.

This move is significant because it means bringing diversity to Marvel's main roster of superheroes in a big way.

In an interview with the New York Daily News, Spider-Man writer and co-creator Brian Michael Bendis explains the reasoning behind the decision saying, “Our message has to be it's not Spider-Man with an asterisk, it's the real Spider-Man for kids of color, for adults of color and everybody else."

And it's already having a positive impact.

Bendis was brought to tears when his 4-year-old black daughter picked up a Miles Morales Spider-Man mask at the store, put it on and exclaimed "Look, Daddy, I'm Spider-Man!"

YAS. I'm crying too. GIF from "Bob's Burgers."

It's important to have racial diversity in our superhero stories because studies show that representation matters.

One study found that children are quick to pick up on racial stereotypes portrayed in the media. Kids also notice when people of color are not shown as much as white people. They end up thinking that people of color must not be as important.

An Indiana University study showed that not having positive role models of color in the media lowered the self-esteem of black children.

Who our children see in the media and how these characters act has a big influence.

It doesn't just shape how they view people of other races; it influences how they view themselves. Imagine growing up and rarely seeing people who look like you on TV or in books, and when they do appear, they're doing bad things.

The fact that one of the most recognizable (good) characters in the world is multi-ethnic will help children of color feel good about themselves in a world that offers so few positive portrayals of people that look like them.

That's why this latest move by Marvel is so great.

We're officially living in a world that has a black Captain America, a female Thor, and a multi-ethnic Spider-Man.

How cool is that?

This cool. GIF from "Marvel's Ultimate Spider-Man: Web-Warriors."

Here's hoping we'll see a live-action version of the new Spider-Man in the near future. My spidey senses tell me it'll only be a matter of time.

Education

Teacher brilliantly turns getting her period in front of her class into a teaching moment

"That boy who emailed...his parents must be incredible."

Emily Elizabeth|TikTok and Cliff Booth|Canva

Teacher starts period in front of class, turns into a lesson

Teachers are almost always teaching even when it's not in their lesson plan.

Those that were born to be teachers find teachable moments everywhere and one woman found herself in one of those moments. Though this one was likely just a bit more personal than she probably would've liked.

Emily Elizabeth posted a TikTok video about how she found herself in a predicament in front of her classroom full of 10 and 11-year-old kids. The teacher explained that she was noticing a lot of commotion and whispering among the little girls in her class while she was wearing white pants. After reminding the girls to stay on task, the whispering continued, prompting Emily to be more direct.

That's when one of the girls asked to speak with her privately dropping the bomb that no one that gets periods wants to hear in public.

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teacher starts period
Family

Child-free man's criticism of mom staring at phone while ignoring her son at the park sparks debate

"Are you guys that attached to your phones?"

via MarioMirante/TikTok and Ladislav Stercell/Unsplash

Mario Mirante criticizes a mom he saw at the park.

TikTokker Mario Mirante is going viral for his video that brings up two significant issues: smartphone addiction and whether people without children have the right to criticize parents.

It all started when Mirante saw a young boy playing alone in the park.

“The kid is just playing quietly, not being annoying. I don’t hear a peep from him; he's just doing his thing on the playground,” Mirante said in a video that has nearly 6000,000 views. “The mom the entire time is on her phone, staring right down at her screen. Doesn’t look up one time.”

The boy climbed up to the top of the slide and called down to his mother, who didn’t even look up from her phone. “I hear, ‘Hey mom, watch. Watch, Mom,’” Mirante recalled. “And at the top of her lungs, shrieking like a Velociraptor, this mother screams, ‘One second!”

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parenting
Family

Woman who was pressured to quit her job to raise stepdaughter's baby makes a bold decision

This sparked an important conversation about family responsibility.

via Pixabay

A middle-aged woman holding a baby.

A story that recently went viral on Reddit’s AITA forum asks an important question: What is a parent’s role in taking care of their grandchildren? The story is even further complicated because the woman at the center of the controversy is a stepparent.

The woman, 38, met her husband Sam, 47, ten years ago, when his daughter, Leah, 25, was 15. Five years ago, the couple got married after Leah had moved out to go to college.

Leah’s mom passed away when she was 10.

Last year, Leah became pregnant, and she wanted to keep the baby, but her boyfriend didn’t. After the disagreement, the boyfriend broke up with her. This forced Leah to move back home because she couldn’t afford to be a single parent and live alone on a teacher’s salary.

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family
Identity

Watch this 104-yr-old woman break the world tandem skydiving record

Dorothy Hoffner tried skydiving for the first time on her 100th birthday and loved it.

@skydivechicago/Instagram

Dorothy Hoffner is pure #agingoals.

If you're looking for some aging inspiration, look no further, because Dorothy Hoffner is about to blow your mind.

At 104, Hoffner just became the oldest person to parachute out of an airplane in a tandem skydive. That's right, skydive. At 104 years old—or to be exact, 104 years and 289 days old—beating the previous world record set by a 103-year-old in Sweden in May of 2022.

But it's actually even more impressive than that. It's not like Hoffner is someone who's been skydiving since she was young and just happened to keep on doing it as she got older. She actually didn't go on her first skydiving adventure until her 100th birthday.

On Oct 1, 2023, she joined the team at Skydive Chicago in Ottawa, Illinois, for the world-breaking tandem skydive. Though she uses a walker to get around, she manages the physical toll of plummeting through the air at 10,000+ feet before parachuting to a skidding stop strapped to a certified U.S. Parachute Association (USPA) tandem instructor with impressive ease.

“Let’s go, let’s go, Geronimo!” Hoffner said after she boarded the plane, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Watch her do what many of us would be too terrified to attempt:

The way she rolls right out of that plane cool as a cucumber! Hoffner told the Tribune that on her first skydive, at age 100, she had to be pushed out of the plane. But this time, knowing what she was in for, she took charge with calm confidence.

“Skydiving is a wonderful experience, and it’s nothing to be afraid of," Hoffner shares. "Just do it!”

That's some seriously sage advice from someone who knows firsthand that age really is just a number. Learn more about skydiving with Skydive Chicago here.

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aging goals
Education

Unearthed BBC interview features two Victorian-era women discussing being teens in the 1800s

Frances 'Effy' Jones, one of the first women to be trained to use a typewriter and to take up cycling as a hobby, recalls life as a young working woman in London.

Canva

Two Victorian women discuss being teens in the 1800s.

There remains some mystery around what life was like in the 1800s, especially for teens. Most people alive today were not around in the Victorian era when the technologies now deemed old-fashioned were a novelty. In this rediscovered 1970s clip from the BBC, two elderly women reminisce about what it was like being teenagers during a time when the horse and buggy was still the fastest way to get around.

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video
Pop Culture

1956 commercial shows that refrigerators back then were more advanced than they are today

We "modern" folks don't even have all of these luxuries.

Vintage Fanatic/YouTube

Can we bring back some 50s fridge features, please?

There are very few things that would make people nostalgic for the 1950s. Sure, they had cool cars and pearl necklaces were a staple, but that time frame had its fair share of problems, even if "Grease" made it look dreamy. Whether you believe your life would've been way more interesting if you were Danny Zuko or not, most would agree their technology was...lacking.

All eras are "advanced" for their time, but imagine being dropped off in the 50s as someone from the year 2023. A recent post by Historic Vids on Twitter of a 1956 commercial advertising a refrigerator, however, has some people thinking that when it came to fridges, maybe they were living in the year 2056. I don't typically swoon over appliances, yet this one has me wondering where I can purchase a refrigerator like this.

Of course, there's no fancy touch screen that tells you the weather and asks how you'd like your ice cubed. It's got more important features that are actually practical.

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1950s appliances
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