Your special Monday gift via yesterday's edition of the New York Times: a tale of the Central Illinois XPress basketball team, and the sassy 11-year-old girls who comprise its roster. Every sentence of this article is golden:

In a recent interview regarding Michael Bay's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles — a movie about large, sewer-dwelling, sentient turtles who eat pizza in which she plays a human woman — Megan Fox says that some of her more badass moments ended up in the cutting room floor.

Saira Blair, a West Virginia resident who will graduate high school later this month, just defeated a sitting state delegate in her district's primary election. This is a very notable accomplishment for any teen, but it is especially notable for a second-semester senior (a subset of the student population whose daily…

You guys! Remember when the Spice Girls were big and we all went and saw their movie in the theater ten times and then bought it on home video? Remember when we bought the lollipops and the t-shirts and just screamed "GIRL POWER!!!" at everything? (Pepperidge Farm remembers.)

Like most consumption trends presented to women as a rah rah girl power way to do man things like a man, cigar smoking doesn't do anything to combat sexism. It does, however, still give ladies various cancers. You've come a long way, baby.

Hey, ladies! C'mere, Microsoft wants to give you a big you-go-girl high five. Oh, but first—have you considered switching to BING?

I hope you're all prepared to happy-weep with hot tears of pride and encouragement, because here's a video of Malala Yousafzai, education rights advocate and bottomless well of courage and inspiration, declaring that she wants to be prime minister of Pakistan one day.

All the way back in 1842, when humans still spent all their time huddled around in the dark, gnawing on potatoes and reveling in abject confusion (basically), brilliant genius Ada Lovelace penned the world's first computer program. Nowadays, Ada Lovelace is a women-in-STEM hero; annually, we honor her and celebrate…

New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg is taking a stab at dismantling unattainable beauty standards through an uplifting campaign aimed at improving girls' self-esteem that's way less of a bummer than the city's anti-teen pregnancy PSAs.

This morning on Today featured a discussion about post-baby body acceptance and included an interview with 4th Trimester Project's Ashlee Well Jackson. After an impassioned speech by one woman about how she wanted to respect and honor her body after making it through two home births, cohost Mel B (aka Scary Spice…

Archaeologists in Peru have discovered a tomb belonging to a pre-Hispanic priestess, the eighth in over two decades — which they say confirms their belief that powerful women ruled the region 1,200 years ago. WHO RUN THE PRE-HISPANIC REGION OF PERU? PRIESTESSES.

We're so glad that a Redditor dad posted his daughter's "unexpected response to a writing assignment about being female":

Most of us have received a crap email or two in our day. You know the type — the ex who tries to make you feel bad about yourself, the forgotten hookup who's convinced he was the most important person in your life, the date who inelegantly demands a second chance. But these are all garden-variety assholery compared to…

Finally, we've made it. Feminism has won. We can all march forward in solidarity with other people of all genders as we appreciate each other as fellow members of the human race rather than degrade each other as slaves to rigid social categories.

The artist writes "In a world where girls grow up feeling like their value is how they look these are meant to be a friendly reminder that they can do anything." Great message, pretty art. Win-win.

We can't help it: our fascination with the ever-growing American Girl empire continues into adulthood. And when we heard they were colonizing the 'net with something called InnerStar University, we had to take a tour.

Here's a fantastic and entertaining example of resistance: in the video below, a Columbia University a cappella group sings Dr. Dre's "Bitches Ain't Shit."

I've never met anyone who has overwhelmingly fond memories of middle school. That's not to say that the entire experience was horrible—it's just that for many people, middle school was a bit of a challenge in various ways.