I have zero interest in being part of any of the Mars missions but am eerily fascinated by any and all press about them. GOOD MORNING, I GUESS:
One of these days, we may well do ourselves in; certainly we’re already killing off a whole lot of other species. But the problem with thinking of Mars as a fallback planet (besides the lack of oxygen and air pressure and food and liquid water) is that it overlooks the obvious. Wherever we go, we’ll take ourselves with us. Either we’re capable of dealing with the challenges posed by our own intelligence or we’re not.
(This article also tells you exactly how many dogs NASA killed to put a man on the moon. :( :( :( You are forewarned.)
Attorneys representing the six Baltimore police officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray have filed a motion to have their trial held “elsewhere in Maryland,” because, they say, the officers “cannot receive a fair and impartial trial in Baltimore City.” The defense lawyers also claim that State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby should recuse herself due to “conflicts of interest.”
Brit Bennett on “Addy Walker, American Girl” and the role of Black dolls in American culture:
For seventeen years, Addy was the only black historical doll; she was the only nonwhite doll until 1998. If you were a white girl who wanted a historical doll who looked like you, you could imagine yourself in Samantha’s Victorian home or with Kirsten, weathering life on the prairie. If you were a black girl, you could only picture yourself as a runaway slave.
Since 2013, a Change.com petition has gathered nearly seventy signatures demanding that the Pleasant Company discontinue the Addy doll. “Slavery was a vile, cruel, inhumane, unjust holocaust of Black Americans,” the petition reads. “Why would this subject matter ever be considered entertaining?” The petition accuses the Pleasant Company of “diminish[ing] the cruelty of slavery and instead glorif[ying] it as some sort of adventurous fantasy.”
I’ve never found Addy glib and insensitive, as the petitioners do—but she does trouble me. She is a toy steeped in tragedy, and who is offered tragedy during play? Who gets the pink stores and tea parties, and who gets the worms? When I received an Addy doll for Christmas, I was innocent enough to believe that Santa had brought it to me, but mature enough to experience the horrors of slavery.
“I didn’t even think about that,” my mother told me. “I just thought it was a beautiful doll.”
“Sexism does exist in comedy, and it needs to be discussed.”
Lyz Lenz on how evangelical churches protect abusers like Josh Duggar:
I recount these examples — and there are so many more — not to drag the church through a litany of accusations, but to show that what is happening with the Duggars is not an anomaly. It’s an epidemic in Christian faith. Christian churches wield incredible social and political power. And they are the the ideal context for domestic and sexual abuse. Abusive personalities seek closed systems in which to abuse, and the mainstream Evangelical church provides that in spades. …
There will be no meaningful change until Christian churches are forced to re-evaluate the idea that the locus of a woman’s power lies in her relationships with her male family members and husband. Until then, our world will always be filled with abused daughters of faith — girls like my sister, like the Duggar girls, and so many more. Girls who are stripped of their autonomy, abused, and blamed, who are told their silence is holy, while their abusers go free.
Over at NPR, Roxane takes down that all-white NYT summer reading list: “The problem is and has always been the exclusion of writers of color and other marginalized writers who have to push aside their own work and fight for inclusion, over and over and over again. We beg for scraps from a table we’re not invited to sit at. We are forced to defend our excellence because no one else will.”
If you’re interested, and of course you are, here’s a more diverse summer book list over at the LAT.
I just renewed my subscription to Bitch and am EAGERLY AWAITING my very own copy of the “Blue” issue. Some of the print articles are available online, including this one about depictions of postpartum depression onscreen:
Much of what we know about postpartum disorders flies in the face of what we see onscreen. As Postpartum Progress founder Katherine Stone says, women with PPD don’t hurt anyone, except maybe themselves, and most women with postpartum psychosis don’t hurt anyone either. The former condition affects about 15 percent of mothers; the latter affects 0.1 percent of mothers. Pop culture depictions wildly overrepresent and sensationalize postpartum psychosis, conflate psychosis with much more prevalent depression, and send the dangerous message that if you ask for help, you’ll be treated like the monster you fear you are.
Jenna Leigh Evans interviewed our own Mindy Hung, and this was my favorite part: I wish that a deity would blow into a conch and officially decree that my writing was essential to the world. I wish that every time I had doubts, I’d look up and flocks of birds would fly in a formation to make the words, Write, Mindy, write! For me, writing is a choice—every day it’s a choice.
Margaret Atwood wrote a book called Scribbler Moon that none of us will get to read, probably.
Remember how I said you shouldn’t see Aloha? You definitely should not see Aloha.
Aloha has already gotten preemptive flak for its lack of diversity and its appropriation of Hawaiian culture to tell the story of how a white dude gets his groove back. That flak is not unearned, though these points don’t come close to covering its many problems. The movie has an awareness of the state’s history and its makeup, but nevertheless tells a story that leaves most of its characters of color in the background. Its approach to Hawaii might be best described as uneasy and misguided if well-meant, from the kid (Jaeden Lieberher) who’s obsessed with local myths and insists that Brian is the god Lono to the way that Kanahele and the Nation of Hawai’i are used as shortcuts for authenticity, mysticism, and the moral high ground. But strangest of all is that the movie has Stone playing a character who’s a quarter Hawaiian and a quarter Chinese and who talks about it all the time — lily-white Emma Stone, with her big green eyes, flashing a picture of parents who look nothing like her and sitting in on a song with some native musicians.
I know it’s a ridiculous movie and you weren’t going to see it anyway. And even if you do, fine, no judging from me; it’s very hot outside and when it’s hot outside I also like to see ridiculous movies. But this is some undeniable grade-A fucked-up whitewashing, casting a white actress to play a character who is one-quarter Hawaiian and one-quarter Chinese. Why make her character “Allison Ng” multiracial at all if you just want to cast a white actress? Is it possible they are trying to pander to the hazy, unrealized wish for “diversity” in film without…actually…having…any…diversity? Did they think we wouldn’t REMEMBER that Emma Stone is white? Why did they think this was a good idea? WHYYYY?
Me: What are you writing?
7yo: A story about a girl named Girl Scout Cookies. Because today was Pick a New Name Day at School and we were all picking silly names and I picked ‘Girl Scout Cookies.’ So that’s what I’m calling the girl in my story. She has two nicknames! Guess what they are.
Me: Uh, I dunno, maybe ‘Girl Scout’ and…’Cookies’?
7yo: …
Me: Was I right??
7yo: yeah
Me: Who else is in this story?
7yo: So far, Girl Scout Cookies’ mom, her teacher, her best friend Mia, and Bossy Helen.
Me: Ooh, tell me more about Bossy Helen.
7yo: Her name is Helen and she’s really bossy! The story isn’t about her, it’s about Girl Scout. Or Cookies.
