But some South Korean women, mostly those in their late teens and twenties, are declaring it’s time to “take off their corsets.” These women do not literally wear corsets; the movement references the restrictive, harmful, and gender-essentialist nature of corsets. 탈코르셋, or Tal Corset (tal meaning to take off), inspires women to cut their hair drastically short, destroy their makeup, and get rid of uncomfortable clothes.

You may not be familiar with PyeongChang, the host city for the 2018 Winter Olympic Games, but it has been a popular holiday destination for South Korean tourists seeking clean air and green pastures for years—even before it gained worldwide attention. With rugged mountains, ornate temples, and delectable local cuisine, this South Korean city has much to offer.

When I went back to Colombia after eight years, I was jittery with excited nerves. After living and working there for a year and a half, I have countless memories. Some are awful, most are great, and all of them are special.

This article was previously published on now-defunct website, The Acme Shop.

During the second half of the 19th century, when traveling sideshows were all the rage, the so-called wonders of the world were taken from city to city to be gazed upon by spectators aching to see bearded ladies, tattooed men, and other “curiosities” that often fed the colonialist fantasies of the Western mind. But among many of the attractions included in such shows there was, at one point, an unlikely protagonist: the giant sequoia of the Sierra Nevada.

Years before Stoker was obsessively researching for his book, another vampire story was written in Ireland. Carmilla, a novella by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, could be called the original vampire novel of modern Europe.

Bullets fly, the cold creeps in, and your body is so malnourished that you can barely walk. You know that if smallpox gets hold of you, you don't stand a chance. You look at your fellow soldier's pus-filled lesion and realize there is only one way to survive the smallpox outbreak in your unit. You breathe in deeply, cut your arm open with your rusty pocket knife, and fill the wound with the liquid coming out of your comrade's pustule.

The Victorian era, roughly the 1830s to 1900, is notorious for its bizarre notions of beauty and its even more bizarre secrets to attaining it. From swallowing ammonia to bathing in arsenic—which they knew to be poisonous—to using figure-molding corsets in a never-ending quest for the “perfect” 16-inch waist, there was no limit to what fashionable Victorians would do.

Salvador Dali once claimed that “Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.” It was perhaps because of this that he decided to bring surrealism to one of the art forms he most admired: cooking. In 1973, he published the wonderful, confusing, and delectable cookbook Les Dîners de Gala—a title referring both to his wife, who went by the name Gala, and the lavishness of the dishes he included.

Summer camp is a great American tradition. And one completely out of reach for the so-called “children of the night” — the name given to kids who are allergic to the sun.

As a literary genius and master of wit, Oscar Wilde has fascinated the world since he first started writing. There is one area of his life, however, that remained in obscurity until the 1940s and that continues to be a mystery: the horrifying death of his half-sisters.

But if you venture down there from Cuzco any time between July 15 and 18, you will stumble into a festival marked by an incessant blaze of color and music.

In the 1940s, Argentina was tango and tango was Argentina. Born in the marginalized outskirts and upscale brothels of Buenos Aires, the musical genre slowly but surely seeped into the very roots of the country’s culture and took a strong hold. Fathers would spend years teaching their sons how to dance, singers like Carlos Gardel were national figures, and social gatherings were always accompanied by the sound of the tango concertina, the bandoneon. Then, two disparate but hugely significant things arrived: a series of military dictatorships and rock ‘n’ roll.

Who knew fungi could be so creepy?

Known all over Europe for her astonishing beauty, Lady Hamilton accomplished many things in her lifetime. She was considered a key figure in the arts, a muse and patron, and her political influence saved the King and Queen of Naples. As if that wasn’t enough, she also—along with the spread of democratic ideas in the aftermath of the French Revolution, and the discovery of Pompeii—revived the neoclassical style that marks the Regency Period (1795-1825).

I scoffed the first time someone told me that race is a social construct. Looking back, my reaction seems ironic, given that I’ve continuously struggled with defining my own racial identity. You see, I am white. But I am also a person of color.

Throughout my travels, I've had the pleasure of realizing my instincts about certain places have been gravely mistaken. The good news is, sometimes when you're forced to eat your words, they taste as sweet as honey.

Known as the gateway into the Alps, Zurich is the most popular Swiss city. It is known all over the world for its role in global commerce, and it is quickly becoming a European hub. Set along the intersection between Lake Zurich and the Limmat River, it is undeniably beautiful.