Since childhood, Kenan Thompson has practiced his craft as a comedic actor and sketch performer. As an adult, he’s been making audiences laugh at Saturday Night Live since 2003. During his tenure, he had been in drag lampooning Maya Angelou, Jennifer Hudson, and other Black women who were public figures. In 2013, he refused to portray a woman ever again on SNL. That line in the sand ended up launching many comedy careers.

At the time, out of the 16 SNL cast members, there were only two other persons of color: Black comedian and actor Jay Pharoah, and Iranian-born American actress, Nasim Pedrad. This meant that either Thompson or Pharoah would have to don a wig and a dress if the show was spoofing a Black woman celebrity. As the longest running cast member on SNL, Thompson felt comfortable to publicly state that he wouldn’t portray a woman ever again. Pharoah backed him up and even pitched potential Black women comedians and producers.

The audition that launched a new wave of comedians

The move forced the producers to conduct a search for at least one Black female cast member by January 2014. The search led to Sasheer Zamata, who joined the cast until 2017. Since then, she’s gone on to other opportunities as a stand-up comedian and actress. Some of her roles include movies such as 2021’s The Mitchells vs. the Machines and Marvel and Disney ’s 2024 series Agatha All Along. 

Even though Zamata claimed the spot on SNL, many of her fellow auditioners were noticed for other comedy jobs. After Zamata’s casting had been announced, the runner-up, Amber Ruffin, was almost immediately staffed as a writer for Late Night with Seth Meyers. Ruffin still currently works as a writer on the show while also getting other opportunities. She wrote her own sitcom, hosted her own comedy talk show, and participates as a talking head on Have I Got News For You.

There was another future SNL all-star who wasn’t immediately cast, but hired on as a writer. However, she was promoted to a full cast member before the end of 2014. That person? Leslie Jones, who has since launched into film and television superstardom.

Many other household names were first noticed at the search

Even though they didn’t get the job, many other funny Black women broke out at that audition. Tiffany Haddish would get recurring roles in TV shows like The Carmichael Show and star in the ultra-popular film, Girls Trip. Nicole Byer would have several live-action and voice-over roles while also hosting reality shows like Nailed It. In fact, Byer co-hosts a podcast with Zamata called Best Friends.

It should be noted that these women likely would have found success without this SNL audition. Kenan Thompson would not and is not taking credit for their success. However, it is funny how refusing to wear a dress was one small push that created momentum in several different directions for so many talented people.

A single door can open up a world of endless possibilities. For homeowners, the front door of their house is a  gateway to financial stability, job security, and better health. Yet for many, that door remains closed. Due to the rising costs of housing, 1 in 3 people around the world wake up without the security of safe, affordable housing. 

Since 1976, Habitat for Humanity has made it their mission to unlock and open the door to opportunity for families everywhere, and their efforts have paid off in a big way. Through their work over the past 50 years, more than 65 million people have gained access to new or improved housing, and the movement continues to gain momentum. Since 2011 alone, Habitat for Humanity has expanded access to affordable housing by a hundredfold. 

A world where everyone has access to a decent home is becoming a reality, but there’s still much to do. As they celebrate 50 years of building, Habitat for Humanity is inviting people of all backgrounds and talents to be part of what comes next through Let’s Open the Door, a global campaign that builds on this momentum and encourages people everywhere to help expand access to safe, affordable housing for those who need it most. Here’s how the foundation to a better world starts with housing, and how everyone can pitch in to make it happen. 

Globally, almost 3 billion people, including 1 in 6 U.S. families, struggle with high costs and other challenges related to housing. A crisis in itself, this also creates larger problems that affect families and communities in unexpected ways. People who lack affordable, stable housing are also more likely to experience financial hardship in other areas of their lives, since a larger share of their income often goes toward rent, utilities, and frequent moves. They are also more likely to experience health problems due to chronic stress or environmental factors, such as mold. Housing insecurity also goes hand-in-hand with unstable employment, since people may need to move further from their jobs or switch jobs altogether to offset the cost of housing. 

Affordable homeownership creates a stable foundation for families to thrive, reducing stress and increasing the likelihood for good health and stable employment. Habitat for Humanity builds and repairs homes with individual families, but it also strengthens entire communities as well. The MicroBuild® Initiative, for example, strengthens communities by increasing access to  loans for low-income families seeking to build or repair their homes. Habitat ReStore locations provide affordable appliances and building materials to local communities, in addition to creating job and volunteer opportunities that support neighborhood growth. 

Everyone can play a part in the fight for housing equity and the pursuit of a better world. Over the past 50 years, Habitat for Humanity has become a leader in global housing thanks to an engaged network of volunteers—but you don’t need to be skilled with a hammer to make a meaningful impact. Building an equitable future means calling on a wide range of people and talents.Here’s how you can get involved in the global housing movement:

Speaking up on social media about the growing housing crisis 

Volunteering on a Habitat for Humanity build in your local community

Travel and build with Habitat in the U.S. or  in one of 60   countries where we work around the globe

Join the Let’s Open the Door movement and, when you donate, you can create your own personalized door 

Shop or donate at your local Habitat ReStore

Every action, big and small, drives a global movement toward a better future. A safe home unlocks opportunity for families and communities alike, but it’s volunteers and other supporters, working together with a shared vision, who can open the door for everyone. 

Visit habitat.org/open-door to learn more and get involved today. 

It’s 5:45 p.m. Your feet ache, the kids are hungry, and the idea of making dinner—again—feels like a personal attack. You open the fridge, close it again, and briefly consider disappearing into the couch. 

That sense of dread? Women have wrestled with it for generations.

In the early 1960s, the “ideal” American housewife supposedly lived for her time in the kitchen. Magazines showed smiling women in crisp aprons, beaming over from‑scratch casseroles and perfect party spreads. Ads promised that the right oven or cake mix would make home life “joyful.”

Behind those glossy pages, a lot of women felt exhausted, underappreciated, and quietly furious.

Into that pressure cooker walked Peg Bracken. With a martini in one hand and a can of cream of mushroom soup in the other, she did something radical for her time: she said, out loud, that she hated cooking. Then she wrote a cookbook for everyone who felt the same way.

Her 1960 bestseller, The I Hate to Cook Book, did not offer easy recipes. It gave women at the time something much more powerful: permission to stop pretending that dinner was the highlight of their day.

Who was Peg Bracken, really?

Before she became a household name, Peg Bracken worked as an ad copywriter in Portland, Oregon. That job gave her a front‑row seat to the way media sold the “happy homemaker” myth: a smiling woman who kept a spotless house, raised perfect children, and produced beautiful meals night after night. 

Bracken knew women like that didn’t exist. And if they did, they probably needed a nap. 

At home, she struggled to balance marriage, motherhood, and an endless to-do list. The gap between what people told her she should feel about housework and what she felt—boredom, resentment, fatigue—grew too wide to ignore.

So, she started talking about it with her friends. 

Over lunch with a group of working women she jokingly called “the Hags,” Bracken and her friends swapped what she later called “shabby little secrets.” They admitted they didn’t want to spend hours in the kitchen. They confessed that they relied on canned soup, frozen vegetables, and boxed mixes. They traded recipes that kept their households fed with the least possible effort.

Bracken collected the group’s favorite culinary shortcuts—and added her own, too—and wrapped everything up in her signature dry, self-aware humor. The result: a manuscript for The I Hate to Cook Book—a cookbook for women who felt tired of pretending that making dinner was the best part of their day.

Men were not fans. Bracken’s then-husband read the manuscript and reportedly told her, “It stinks.” Six male editors also turned it down, insisting that women saw cooking as a sacred duty and didn’t want shortcuts.

Nope! They guessed wrong. A woman editor took a chance on Peg Bracken, and when the book was published in 1960, it sold more than three million copies. All those “happy homemakers”? A lot of them turned out to be Hags at heart.

Key contributions to culinary history

From the first line of her cookbook—“Some women, it........

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