Stacia L. Brown on Charlena Cook, the eight-months-pregnant woman thrown to the ground by two Barstow police officers in January, and where Black women fit in the conversation over police brutality:
The video, which is more than 11 minutes long, is gut-wrenching. All police brutality footage is. But Charlena Cook is a pregnant black woman whose condition was ignored so completely that her prenatal wellbeing and the health of her child were directly threatened. Just before the video footage faded, Cook was surrounded by male cops and not one of them expressed any awareness or concern about her medical state. If any case should spark national outrage, it should be this one.
Black women’s encounters with police rarely receive the wide-scale attention that black males’ experiences do. Barstow Police dropped the charges against Cook, but her case should still be forcing a national conversation about the methods police use to handle expectant mothers. Cases like these have definite racial implications, but they have gender implications, too.
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Turns out an elementary school kitchen manager was fired last Friday for giving away hot lunches to kids who didn’t have any money to pay. Firing her for trying to make an awful situation marginally better for a few kids seems roughly on par with not letting poor students attend a school carnival. I don’t know what we’re doing, America.
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At The Hairpin, Emerson Cooper talks with choreographer Katy Pyle, artist-in-residence at Brooklyn Arts Exchange, about her work reimagining classical ballets through a queer lens.
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On Ariana Miyamoto, the young biracial Japanese woman who will represent Japan in the Miss Universe pageant:
The child of a short-lived marriage between an African-American sailor in the United States Navy and a local Japanese woman, Ms. Miyamoto grew up in Japan, where she says other children often shunned her because of her darker skin and tightly curled hair.
That experience has driven her to use her pageant victory as a soapbox for raising awareness about the difficulties faced by mixed-race citizens in a country that still regards itself as mono-ethnic.
“Even today, I am usually seen not as a Japanese but as a foreigner. At restaurants, people give me an English menu and praise me for being able to eat with chopsticks,” said Ms. Miyamoto, who spoke in her native Japanese and is an accomplished calligrapher of Japanese-Chinese characters. “I want to challenge the definition of being Japanese.”
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Scaachi Koul’s “A User’s Guide to Judy Blume” is also a lovely, funny letter to her niece, and it was hands-down my favorite thing I read yesterday:
“Your dad was raised Hindu, your mom Christian. My parents take you to temple sometimes and you eat Indian food at their house, but on Christmas, you go to Midnight Mass with your mom. (You won’t remember this, but when you were three, I came with you and snuck you pieces of chocolate at church.) Your grandfather had to work hard to come around to having Christian in-laws. He’s still working on it. I wonder if you notice.
“That’s the other thing about Judy’s books: none of them have clean breaks. You’ll find that a lot of other YA books offer you a tidy conclusion, something intended to let you sleep at night. Judy doesn’t do that because life doesn’t work like that. You’re not supposed to know what happens next, and no one can guarantee that everything will go the way you hoped.”
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I’M HERE FOR ALL THE TONYS TALK
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I spent a summer working at Gap and had somehow forgotten the awfulness of call-in shifts until I read this yesterday, and I was one of the lucky ones who did not have kids or school or three other part-time jobs to worry about.
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Adrian Chen went to St. Petersburg to find out more about a pro-Kremlin “troll farm” commonly known as “the Internet Research Agency”:
Savchuk told me she shared an office with about a half-dozen teammates. It was smaller than most, because she worked in the elite Special Projects department. While other workers churned out blandly pro-Kremlin comments, her department created appealing online characters who were supposed to stand out from the horde. Savchuk posed as three of these creations, running a blog for each one on LiveJournal. One alter ego was a fortuneteller named Cantadora. The spirit world offered Cantadora insight into relationships, weight loss, feng shui — and, occasionally, geopolitics. Energies she discerned in the universe invariably showed that its arc bent toward Russia. She foretold glory for Vladimir Putin, defeat for Barack Obama and Petro Poroshenko. The point was to weave propaganda seamlessly into what appeared to be the nonpolitical musings of an everyday person.
In fact, she was a troll.
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I promise I’ll stop venting about Emma Stone’s role in Aloha pretty soon, but FIRST I’m gonna link you to this interesting piece by E. Alex Jung about that bananas casting decision and the erasure of multiracial Asians.
Speaking of which, do I really have the energy to care about this Tilda-Swinton-as-the-Ancient-One business, guys? I cannot care about everything. [I obviously can.] [I do. Practically everything.]
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WELL: “A female scientist asked a prominent elder in her field about how she should deal with a lab advisor who frequently looked down her shirt. This was the response she got: ‘As long as your adviser does not move on to other advances, I suggest you put up with it, with good humor if you can.’”
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turns out balloon sculptures can be a little TOO real
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Tags: link roundup, the internet
I missed the last couple days so did we talk about the Atlantic article on tampons yet? http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/06…
I would read an entire book about why menstrual products inspire such brand loyalty and I wonder since there are strong geographic differences in purchasing patterns, if there are variations on a national level as well.
Holy cow. What an interesting read.
I was just coming here to post about the same article! I was reading it on the bus on my way to work this morning. I only got halfway through, but it was super interesting. They hadn’t gotten into brand loyalty yet; does it discuss that later?
Not truly, only the differences between applicators and nonapplicators inside and outside North America.
It’s less brand loyalty and more the North American preference for tampons with applicators vs. the European (and maybe rest of the world? The wording in the article is kind of unclear) preference for digital tampons (inserted with your finger).
Now I’m here to try to start the applicator vs. digital fight.
It took me a few tries to get used to the digital thing, but once I did, there was no turning back!
Applicators all the way. I could never get comfortable with the digital kind, but I have noticed that my mum and women her age seemed to use that kind
(Now I used maybe 2 tampons a year though, the joys of the Pill!)
I started using tampons in Europe, and now if I go back to the US and need tampons I have no idea what to do with the applicator.
Not to worry; digital tampons are widely available here.
I love the term “digital tampon.” It sounds super high-tech when it really just means, “Use your finger.”
it makes me think that the thing should beep when it’s full or something
Now THAT would be useful.
Yes! Of all the possible innovations they discussed at the end, I think they should combine the saturation indicator with the vibrator. It could just give you a little buzz when its full!
Well, in this age of Tinder, digital high tech also really does still just mean “use your finger”…
“If you interview women in Europe and ask why they like digital tampons, they’ll tell you about [environmental] concerns. They’ll also tell you that it’s a hygienic concern—that they don’t trust the applicator being inserted inside their bodies,” Keighley says.
When I lived in France, I switched to digital tampons because they were almost 1/2 the price of the applicator tampons–it had nothing to do with environmental or hygienic concerns. I’ve always found applicator tampons to be more comfortable.
Here in the US I switched to OB and they’re also a little cheaper. But actually the big part is that you can put like 20 of them in your purse and they hardly take up any space.
I always stick them in my bra. Harder to do with the applicator types. My genius sister taught me that!
Kotex U has expandable applicators. they’re super teeny tiny. i always have a million in my purse and they even fit in the ridiculously small pockets of my skinny jeans. LOVE.
AND the packaging doesn’t disintegrate/get disgusting when it rattles around in your purse forever!
(My first OB experience was when I was an incredibly high college student having An Emergency at a concert. Someone gave me one and it BLEW MY MIND obviously. Never went back to applicators.)
I loathe applicators with every fiber of my being, and I’m not even totally sure why.
I find the applicators super uncomfortable and less effective than just shoving them in with my fingers.
I jab myself with the stupid applicators about 100% of the time. Plus, as previously mentioned, you can stash vast quantities of the digital ones all over the place without taking up any space. Team Digital!
I mainly use the digital ones even though I have a hell of a time getting them in the right place (seriously, more than once my husband has knocked on the bathroom door concerned about all the cursing.) HOWEVER, I usually stash a few of the applicator kind for gross/portapotty situations where I might not be able to wash my hands properly first.
Ooooh!
Until I lived in England, I literally had no idea such things as applicators even existed. I tried using them a couple of times when I was there, out of curiosity and a mild ‘hmm it would be nice not to have a bloody finger’ thought, but the results were just confusion and sorrow.
I don’t know if anyone else remembers the period blood scene in Superbad? I probably wouldn’t, either, except that when I saw it in a cinema with a couple of hundred other people, and there’s that girl who laughs at him and waves a tampon at him, saying ‘Do you need a tampon?’ all jeering-like. That was probably the biggest laugh in the whole movie. We were all just, like, WHAT IS THAT IS IT A JOKE TAMPON WHY IS IT SO BIG?
And it wasn’t until I got to England that I even understood it.
I read that and the Sally Ride bit made me lolololol at work. “Will 100 tampons be enough for a week.”
Honestly, if I were going to space, I would hella overpack tampons. You don’t want to have to Apollo 13 yourself some makeshift tampons if something goes wrong.
Ha! You’re very correct, I take back my lols. These days I’d Moon Cup it!
Especially appropriate for lunar missions!
How would you empty a cup in space? I’m imagining a blood glob floating off and it’s mildly horrifying. (I didn’t realize how interested I was in space menstruation until now.)
I am imagining that you pull the cup out, the blood glob floats away, and you suck the blood glob up with some kind of suction thing? It wouldn’t be moving fast I suppose. Or, I suppose you could have something waiting to soak it up in your other hand, like a tissue. I imagine after a few months you’d be quite good at it. I wonder if any SF set in zero G environments has ever dealt with this issue. Probably not! The only thing I remember about women in zero g in any SF is from Rendezvous with Rama, where the captain notes that women’s boobs are distracting. SIGH.
Oh my gosh this is wonderful.
I was joking with my co-worker that when we fantasize about the future, it’s always flying cards and living on Mars, but WHAT ABOUT FEMININE PRODUCT TECHNOLOGY? Seriously, I want to know what we’re working on.
I always assumed that there wouldn’t be any need for them, because we would be blissfully free from periods altogether.
Seriously, that was a great article. And btw, I recommend The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls by Joan Blumberg if you want whole book chapters on the history of “feminine products”. Really, really interesting read.
Oh yeah, I’ve read that several times and written papers with it. Flawed but fascinating–I want MORE BOOKS ON THIS
you rang? https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/modern-pe…
Fascinating article! It’s also made me glad I’ve switched from tampons to cups.
I don’t think I have brand loyalty, but I do have fit loyalty. When pearl stopped working for me (started falling out?! after using them for most of 10 years) I switched around until I found the best fit. Now I’m loyal to a different line because of comfort/security.
I will forever be loyal to OB Tampons, if for no other reason than this:
A few years ago they had this promotional campaign to apologize for being out of stock for aaaaages. You typed in your name and this mock pop video started playing. And the guy in the video somehow pronounced my weird-by-Canadian-standards Romanian name properly. No other brand of tampons will go near my vagina as long as OB is still making them.
Moving from Europe to the US, one of the big things I missed were the tampons and pads. Lil-lets tampons (digital) and Bodyform pads were my favs, and I used to bring them over in bulk b/c otherwise my period would make me homesick.
But now I have moved onto the sparkly wonderful glorious world of reusables — I know everyone talks about the cups (I have the Lunette and the Lily cup), but for me the breakthrough was CLOTH MENSTRUAL PADS. They’re so amazing I have become a ‘Paddict’ and I would recommend them with every fibre of my being. They are not sweaty and smelly like plastic pads, they are soft and breathable (if you avoid the PUL ones). I just bought this one today — https://img0.etsystatic.com/062/0/5297400/il_full…
I used to love fabric pads until I started riding my bicycle everywhere. Cloth pads + a bicycle saddle = WHOA HEY NO. The snaps! The edges!
So I have reluctantly gone back to disposable pads.
SPEAKING OF BALLOON ANIMALS. My sister and I spent a good portion of the Memorial Day weekend watching this dude on youtube and I was pretty impressed with what he was doing, but holy shit those are gorgeous.
Learning that Alice Huang is 76 doesn’t excuse her bad advice, but it does give it context. My mother is that age, and the comments she got from doctors when she was single and working as an x-ray tech would curl your hair. Dr. Huang may have been like, “All he’s doing is staring at your chest? In my day, that was like a vacation!”
I had this exact same thought.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada released its final report yesterday on Indian Residential Schools.
trc.ca
On twitter have a read though of #myreconciliationincludes
I have no words for what it has been like at the TRC gathering this week in Ottawa. I have tears. I have a heart committed to continuing the journey.
There is a balloon hedgehog, I can die happy.
seriously, all of these are magical. like wondrous childhood spectacle magic 🙂
That Judy Blume piece is gorgeous. And it’s like a how-to guide for being the cool aunt!
That boob-looker advice (on the AAAS website of all places!) may be permanently lodged in my craw, particularly where the LW is advised to “make sure” her advisor takes her work seriously, despite being ogled.
At least for me, there has been exactly zero overlap in the Venn diagram of “looks down my shirt” and “takes my ideas seriously.”
But I suppose I haven’t been creative enough about it. I guess I could start swinging my nips until the boob-looker is hypnotized….
“You are getting verrrry respectfullll….. When I count back from three, you will awake to give me legitimate, thoughtful advice….. And think you’re a chicken.”
The AAAS isn’t my idea of good people. Years ago I wrote this piece about an appalling article about alcohol and young women from the AAAS, and haven’t looked at almost anything from them since.
Oh…. holy hell, what was that?!
But at least now I know why boys don’t like me, slutty slut drunk that I am. Thanks, Science!
And here I thought part of why the boy likes me so much is that I make for a fun drinking buddy…
(obviously boys’ opinions should not be relevant for, well, anything. But also, as always, boys are people! And hence there’s just no telling what an individual one wants or likes)
The odious Emily Yoffe has finally become so hateful to me that I have decided to stop my guilty pleasure of hate-reading Dear Prudence. Her most recent 3-page rape apologia is finally what’s done it for me: http://www.donotlink.com/fe1r
I haven’t seen The Hunting Ground (yet) so I cannot comment on the differences between the film and “the truth” she remarks on, but anyone who is that eager to exculpate a man who acknowledges he “maybe” digitally penetrated a woman who was passed out drunk can eat slugs.
Oh man I really wish I hadn’t read that. With you on the Yoffe-free future, though.
If you are jonesing for a fix of Dear Prudie because the problems of upper-middle-class white people are a total guilty pleasure (as I sometimes do), may I suggest substituting the weekly online discussions of Carolyn Hax’s “Tell Me About It” at the Washington Post? No rape apologia, no suggestions that women are asking for it, far fewer click-baity titles, but same kinds of issues (and more follow-up with readers!).
Carolyn Hax is more of an adult than I will ever be. I seriously think her columns have helped me to become a better person. So much better than Prudie.
Real talk: my brother’s job is literally to edit these columnists’ crap to fit in the space allotted in various local/regional newspapers and also remove or fix up sections to meet those papers’ moral standards (True Story). He also does horoscopes and other things you find near advice columns (Bridge, math puzzles, etc.).
Anyway, one day he got to talking about the absolute nonsense and horrible advice that these columns give, and how the Dear Abby one is the absolute worst for sexist, conservative bad advice. But Carolyn Hax is one of his favorites and also very easy to edit, instead of gobs of crap to pick through to find the important bits. Plus, she gets a little snarky, which makes for fun reading.
So fwiw and secondhand here, but there’s another point in favor of her column.
She is the worst person. Her entire journalistic persona, outside Dear Prudence, is now wrapped up in taking the courageous maverick stance (I am 100% she sees it as that) that feminists have taken this whole “rape is bad” thing too far.
I hate her but I can’t stop reading her column, not because of the advice she gives (mediocre at best, appalling at worst) but because the letter writers are reliably absurd/obnoxious.
The other thing that bugs me, besides the “women should work on preventing being raped” thing, is her hangup regarding alcohol. If any letter writer so much as MENTIONS someone drinking, even if it has absolutely nothing to do with the problem they’re asking about, she ignores their actual question and her entire response will be “Your friend/relative/coworker is probably a DANGEROUS ADDICT and is almost certainly driving drunk all the time, if you don’t get them into treatment they will RUIN EVERYONE’S LIVES.” Lady, I don’t know what your personal family history is with alcohol, and I understand that you may have valid reasons for being sensitive to addiction as a topic, but um, project much?
If you’d like to avoid just putting your head down on your desk and weeping after reading about someone getting fired for giving food to children, you can read this? Universal free breakfast and lunch in Baltimore schools: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/educati…
“But while exciting, the announcement surprised sixth-grader Katia Stanford. “I think it’s good, and kind of crazy because kids should have been getting free lunch from the beginning if they knew kids was hungry,” she said.”
Every single part of your statement is correct, Katia.
Awhile back I was in Scandinavia—traveling around Denmark, Sweden, Norway, etc.—and I went to an excellent cultural museum there. One of the more interesting exhibits was about school lunches, which demonstrated what a social engineering tool school lunch can be.
As I understand it, in Sweden, since the early ’70s, all children receive lunch at school. All over the country, children sit down to eat together and they are both equal and communal. When they grow up, children go to work and they often eat with their coworkers in (employer) cafeterias, communal and more-or-less equal stil—collegial at least. In Norway for many years kids did get supplied school lunches, but at some point (I forget just when), school lunch was discontinued and all children now brown-bag (which, along with high restaurant prices, has led to Norway being pretty much the leading brown-bag-lunch nation on Earth). Everyone sits down with their lunchbox and eats, and this is also egalitarian in its way—not getting onto a sidetrack about home life influencing the contents of the lunchbox—and though they eat together they are eating their own food, not food provided by the state.
The point here is that this slight difference in how children are fed during the school day reveals so much about a culture: how it treats/views its children, what its fundamental values are about individualism versus communalism, what it believes the role of the state in life should be. Both Sweden and Norway have generous social welfare systems, both have many cultural elements in common, but the school lunch distinguishes them.
(There is also an element here of Norway defining itself against Sweden (SO NOT SWEDISH, VERY NOT SWEDISH, NO SWEDISHNESS AT ALL), but that’s another issue.)
Boston has been doing universal free lunch for a few years now. I love it. My kids are never going to go hungry at school. Their classmates are never going to go hungry at school. Now if we could just find some way to drop the qualifier, we would really be getting somewhere.
I….have really mixed feelings about Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One. Like, it’s white-washing and the MCU really needs to be less white. And, I don’t know, the Ancient One is kinda racist? Like, he’s basically an exoticised caricature of a Tibetan man. I feel the same way about the Mandarin. So, on one hand I’m glad they are changing up the character, but on the other hand they could have made him not a caricature but still Tibetan. I sorta get the feeling they recognized the problems with the character, but didn’t know, or were too lazy, to figure out how to address it, so they just cast a white person (which is the same way they dealt with the Mandarin).
The “We’ll just cast a white person and that will fix it!” approach is so mystifying.
Well, jinx on that one I guess.
Marvel’s got a lot of problems here, because they’ve got a whole history of racist characters to unwind, but they’re also completely unwilling to change the ethnicities of their non-racist characters. They are trapped! Trapped — by their own terrible ideas!
What I totally don’t get is that they have so much flexibility! At this point, they know all of their movies are going to make a ton of money, so why aren’t they shaking things up more? Like, start dramatically changing some story lines, make some interesting casting choices. Now is the time to fix some of the shittyness inherent in comics – sure, some fans will be pissed, but whatever! Other people will buy movie tickets.
Also, I got a hard time believing that there’s any serious worry about alienating the hardcore Doctor Strange fanbase. The guy hasn’t had his own ongoing series in twenty years.
I don’t even know who Doctor Strange is. And even for Tilda Swinton, I can’t be arsed to look that shit up. It makes me tired just to think about trying to absorb a whole new Marvel comics mythology at this point.
Oh, man, and Doctor Strange is like a whole parallel and almost completely unrelated Marvel mythology. At least those Avengers guys, they mostly share a bunch of villains and recurring characters, but once you bring in Doctor Strange (Earth’s Sorcerer Supreme, which it’s pretty good they have him around if they’re going to deal with the Infinity Gauntlet, since right now everyone’s power is just “shoot and/or punch”), you’ve got to start talking about the Vishanti, Nightmare, Shuma-Gorath, the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth, and of course the dread Dormammu, warlord of the Dark Dimensions.
On the other hand, it’s a good opportunity for the Ancient One to be exactly like a cross between Tilda Swinton in Orlando and the NotTildaSwinton twitter feed.
Man, that sucks, because usually I am *so here* for Asian (esp East Asian) culture topics, and acting topics, and this whole debate about la Swinton is so interesting, but I’m not going to become an expert on this character. So: carry on, experts!
Well, the good news is that — based on the way that Marvel has been making all of its movies — this will just be about Doctor Strange trying to get a glowing thing before the evil counterpart to his character does (that guy is called Baron Mordru — the Iron Monger to Strange’s Iron Man, the Loki to his Thor, the Yellow Jacket to his Ant-Man, the Red Skull to his Captain America, the Abomination to his Incredible Hulk, &c &c &c).
Everything I know about Doctor Strange I learned from mightygodking’s awesome “Why I should write Doctor Strange” series, which is the most loving and wonderful work of fandom ever.
Oh man, MGK’s series is so, so good. If anyone’s interested, read it here. He has such a great take on Strange – so much better than most of his actual in-comics characterizations have been. I really liked this post, where he lays out what he sees as the core things that define the character and set him apart. I’m excited to see the Doctor pop up in the MCU/MTVU, but I’ll always wish Chris Bird could get a real crack at the character.
And the way Abrams dealt with Khan, and so on and so forth. Like, maybe just… pick a villain who isn’t a racist caricature? Or make a new one?
I’m not clear from your comment about the Mandarin: have you seen _Iron Man 3_?
So, the Mandarin wasn’t the exact same, as Ben Kingsley is half Indian, but the tactic of ignoring the original background of the character so you don’t have to deal with the racist aspects of the character was the same.
Okay, I’m still not sure if you’ve seen _Iron Man 3_, so I’m going to put this in ROT13 because unsolicited spoilers are terrible (decrypt here):
gur znaqneva vf npghnyyl na npgbe, jub jnf uverq ol n juvgr thl (thl crnepr’f punenpgre) gb cynl ba nzrevpna enpvfg srnef fb ur pna fryy jrncbaf. uvf cbegenlny vf fcrpvsvpnyyl cbvagvat bhg naq pevgvdhvat gur bevtvany enpvfg onfvf bs gur punenpgre. lrf, gurer vf n qvssrerag qverpgvba gung pbhyq unir orra gnxra jvgu gur punenpgre, gung ur jbhyq unir unq gur bevtvany rguavpvgl naq orra fubja gb or evtug; ohg v qba’g nterr gung gur zph’f irefvba bs gur znaqneva _vtaberq_ gur enpvfg nfcrpgf bs gur punenpgre.
SPOILERS
I thought they DID address the original background of the character by making him purely an image of “Eastern terror” (in this case, Central Asian rather than East Asian) that’s merely a front and distraction from the white Western capitalist’s actual evil plot. Pierce’s character gets everyone so scared of this racist stereotype boogeyman (“you need a Gaddafi, a bin Laden” he says) that he flies under the radar. I thought it was an interesting take on how people like, say, the entire Republican Party, will use foreign boogeymen to scare us out of noticing what they’re doing.
Pretty sure they weren’t thinking about racism when they de-Sinified the Mandarin. Pretty sure they were thinking about Chinese box-office money money money.
Could it not be both? Marvel has a lot of people who probably don’t think about that stuff, but it also has a lot of people in creative director-type roles who clearly do think about stuff like the problematic legacy of a lot of their heroes. Bendis, in particular, isn’t without his flaws, but he’s been one of the primary forces pushing Marvel to be better on racial issues. The opportunity to both critique the racism of the original Yellow Panic character and make some more money was a win-win for everybody.
It goes without saying, but the comments on the Aloha article are not great.
oh god i made the same mistake.
it’s like playing trite, tired, boring cliche bingo.
The Tilda Swinton thing is weird, because the thing is that the Ancient One is also a pretty racist caricature? Like, having it played by an actual old Chinese guy (or old “Asian” guy, since generally in movies I guess we’ve decided to count al east Asians as one group), that’s a point for Asian visibility, but maybe also a point for stereotypes about old Chinese guys and their mystic secrets?
Bluh, I don’t know. It’s up there with, maybe they should cast Wong as not an Asian, so that Doctor Strange doesn’t have a faithful Asian manservant. Maybe they should just go out of their way to find more roles for Asian actors in that movie? Maybe they should have cast Godfrey Gao as Doctor Strange in the first place, and then we wouldn’t even be facing this question.
That is sort of how I feel about it! I was reading about the original character and trying to imagine who I’d be happy seeing in that role. It’s just a weird character to begin with!
Yeah, like the Mandarin, or Doctor Strange’s faithful manservant Wong, it’s pretty hard to reach a good solution. Esepcially if you’re committed to only having one or, at most, two Asian characters in the movie.
I don’t think it’s that difficult at all though, story-wise; the challenge is finding a writer who is actually capable of seeing Asian characters as people with agency, not as props. I don’t think it difficult, for example, to reboot Wong as a peer instead of a manservant, which makes room to eliminate the “wise old Chinaman” stereotype and cast someone whose age aligns with MCU’s current casting for their heroes. Strange gets an ally, a storied Marvel Asian character has their racist roots course-corrected, and an Asian actor gets a job.
A lot of Marvel’s Asian characters (or white characters that co-opt Asian cultures, a la Iron Fist) have insanely racist/orientalist roots that frankly just need to be uprooted and thrown aside for something smarter and better-researched. That goes from everything from the Ancient One & Wong for Strange’s stories, down to Psylocke and her literal embodiment of a white woman colonising an Asian woman’s body and life. As long as they’re kept having their powers and names and symbols, realigning the narrative is really only a matter of finding the right kind of creators and being unafraid to face the howling of white fanboys stirring up a cloud of Doritos dust as they pound at their keyboards.
I don’t know, I think in the case of Wong that’s probably more trouble that it’s worth. Why use Wong at all, if you’re going to take away all the orientalist stuff that basically defines the character? Why not just cut him out entirely and put Agent Cho in there instead?
I guess you could have him be Agent Wong, but I think this is sort of a semantic debate at this point.
“More trouble than it’s worth” is basically just going “why bother with making change”, though?
The thing to understand about the draw of MCU/DC films is that much as lay people (non-comics) folks say “well why not invent someone completely new to begin with”, it’s not how those comic book films are built. Their whole thing is to grab decades-old characters wholesale from comics, reboot them to their own ends, and sell them back again (and as a nice bonus the comics division gets a massive popularity boost, hence the resurgence of the industry’s wider popularity once MCU got big). That’s the novelty, though I guess if that’s not your thing you can take or leave it.
What I see, as a comics fan, is that a progressive move in the films means blowback into the comics, which if they get big enough, start to cycle back to the films (case in point, Captain Marvel being greenlit). If Wong is, say, rebooted as a savvy, clever, competent magician character on his own, he’ll pick up popularity, kids watching the movies will go “who is that he’s cool and looks like me and I fuckin love magical shit” and get curious about the comics because there’s more content coming out regularly. Comics divisions of Marvel/DC will latch onto most things that’s popular in order to bolster their general poor sales (and it has been poor, American corporate print comics has been in decline for decades), Wong starts showing up rebooted in the comics to match up to MCU depiction (Marvel comics officially denies this influence, but come on, we aren’t naive), and bam, one more little piece of Marvel comics character tapestry is less odious to look at and is actually enjoyable as an Asian reader.
I don’t want an “Agent Wong” because I and many other Asian comics/film fans want DIFFERENT types of Asian characters, from magician/sorcerers to spies (fun note, there’s already a cult-fave Chinese-American ex-SHIELD agent named Agent Jimmy Woo/Wu, who has his own fascinating history and team in Agents of Atlas). I LIKE the universe set up by Marvel and the baseline concepts of given characters, and I want to see them rebooted as less racist, better-researched, etc., because it makes an even richer universe that future diverse creators can come into and be less afraid of building on top of it with aspects and understandings from their own cultures. It makes for fun films with diverse casts and an authenticity to their stories, and certainly gives minority actors more fun in a variety of roles instead of playing Ethnic Nurse #2 or Gangbanger #5.
So yes. I think it’s worth the trouble.
So, look, I don’t disagree that this is a laudable goal, but I think that, again, this is kind of a semantic argument. If you’re going to change the character of Wong to be a savvy magician who’s Doctor Strange’s peer, then you have invented a new character, you just called him by an old character’s name. Which is fine, I’m not saying that no one should do that, I think that’s a fine thing to do, except that practicaly speaking, it’s still true that Doctor Strange probably shouldn’t have faithful Chinese manservant named Wong.
Legacy cape comics and the franchise are ALL about semantics, and that’s both its problem (why IS it so hard to get completely new characters off the ground?) and its draw. As I said, you can take it or leave it, and a lot of people leave it, but that means you are not looking at the same game I am, which is maybe where this disagreement lies.
We all know that it’s wrong to have a Chinese manservant, but that story exists, and has existed for decades, and will never go away (much as I wish it would), and it’s not a little insulting to say “but semantics” as if we don’t know what the core problem was. Rebooting will not erase the stain, obviously, but it is SATISFYING as an Asian comics fan to see that racist trope with this name and this character upended. The resonance is not as strong if you just erase Wong or any other core-problematic character (e.g. Psylocke) completely – I and many others want that history interrogated honestly, to show what should have been done, which is the magic of these big shared universe comics that have different creators playing in the same sandbox and picking up each others’ toys and improving on them.
As you will. Whether or not I agree on what the best solution to the problem is, I think I definitely agree that what they’re doing probably isn’t it.
Or, like, what if Tim Kang was in it, basically playing exactly his character from The Mentalist, and at first he didn’t believe in any of this nonsense magic that Doctor Strange was talking about, but then later he discovered it was true, and remained exactly as unimpressed.
Hahah, good choice, put Agent Cho in that movie right away.
I am for serious a fan of putting Agent Cho in basically all things.
I mean, I just binge-watched Aquarius. Cho would have been great in Aquarius.
He’s so great! He’s too stoic to even be exasperated nonsense!
There’s no one IRL who really understands, but I am legit going to miss watching The Mentalist. I really enjoyed the new cast and I think it also had some smart things to say about revenge. Plus con-games.
A good (bad) irony here is that I forgot that the Ancient One is actually Tibetan, which makes my self-righteousness about treating all east Asians like one people seem a little stupid.
Right! It really brings up a whole conversation about what to do when your source material is rotten in some way. I think Marvel recognized that to just copy and paste the Ancient One from the comics would have been a bad idea. So how do you fix it? Marvel’s answer tends to be “cast a white person!”. So – like, good for Marvel for seeing it’s a problem, but they need a strategy that isn’t erasing the characters of color.
Also, yes, Godfrey Gao as Doctor Strange. Benedict Cumberbatch feels like the most obvious and boring choice.
yeah I was saying before that Marvel’s big problem is that basically up through the 1990s, almost ALL of their non-white characters were kind of racist caricatures — so they’re stuck between trying to undo that on the one hand, also being largely unwilling to change the ethnicity of any of their white characters on the other. It’s like being stuck between a racist imbroglio of your own making, and a generally unexamined but ultimately completely voluntary support for a racist status quo on the other!
I actually think that putting Godfrey Gao in it as like, an ultra-modern Doctor Strange who then learns about magic leaves a lot of room for exploring the comics’ kind of unexamined assumptions about Asian culture being better in touch with ancient mystic secrets than the west.
I don’t think I’d want to see it reversed exactly, where Strange is Asian and the ancient one is an Old White Guy, but a rich technophile Doctor Strange from Hong Kong learning about an ancient order of magicians that was complex and multicultural and partook of a lot of different historical mystic traditions would be pretty interesting I think.
(If you aren’t getting the sense from any of this that I am deeply resentful that I didn’t get to be the guy who writes Doctor Strange, let me clarify: I am.)
It would be so interesting! So much more interesting than what it will probably be, which is a somewhat sassy, British wizard who shoots energy balls at some number of random bad guys. Now I am getting a little sad that you didn’t get to be the guy who wrote the Doctor Strange movie.
“Guys, what if we had a character who could shoot beams, and he had to get…some kind of a glowing thing before a horde of generic bad guys did — but here’s the twist, what if he acted like a huge asshole, and was played by everyone’s favorite Sherlock Holmes?”
“Brilliant, Jenkins. Get me a script by Thursday.”
(Benedict Cumberbatch is not EVERYONE’s favorite Sherlock Holmes, but I bet he’s got a bigger fanbase than Doctor Strange does.)
oh man Godfrey Gao would be THE COOLEST Dr. Strange!
“Put a white girl in it!” is the Hollywood equivalent of that Portlandia sketch about birds.
(And speaking of Asians and how we’re represented (or not) in pop culture, later today I’m posting a conversation I had with my friend Julia Cho about acting and APIA visibility and her experiences as someone who actually works in the business, and I’m very very excited to share it with you all.)
(F5-ing all over the place – LOVE Julia Cho!)
So on the Judy Blume tip, and on YA in general, did anyone else read Paula Danziger? The Cat Ate My Gymsuit, This Place Has No Atmosphere, etc, etc? God, I loved those books, and they felt a little closer to me than the ten-years-earlier Blume books.
(Side note: how many of us were totally mystified by the mention of “belts” in relation to getting your period? I had no idea what that could possibly mean.)
THIS PLACE HAS NO ATMOSPHERE OMG. I read that book until the cover fell off! That and “Remember Me To Harold Square” were the only ones of hers I read. I loved them, but the protagonists in those books always felt way too cool for me, so it was harder for me to relate.
There is a tampon/pad dispenser in the washroom in my building that advertises “BELTLESS.” Yep.
I’m here for the belts thing. I think that at least ONE of the books of that time/genre explained something enough that I got the general idea, but I definitely also asked my mom to explain.
I thought of, like, a paratroopers harness? And even now, when I picture that, I’m still not sure where the menstrual product enters the picture.
I definitely thought they just meant, like, a regular belt that somehow helped with your period. Something like those seasickness bands people wear on cruises, but for your period and on your waist.
This should totally be a thing.
I loooooved Paula Danziger! I was just thinking about This Place Has No Atmosphere the other day. I also loved those epistolary books she wrote with Ann M. Martin.
Yes! Longer Letter Later! Totally read both those books repeatedly.
I loved Paula Danziger!
Oh, she’s amazing! And looking her up, I just found out there’s a sequel to The Cat Ate My Gymsuit, plus a Matthew Martin book I’ve never heard of. Yeees.
But you know now, right? Or are you asking an older Toastfriend to tell you about the belts that used to be *necessary* during one’s menstrual period? I’ll explain, but only if needed.
I’m not the OP, but I.. still need an explanation? Was it like…. wearing a g-string diaper, basically, like a pad that connected to a strappy belt?
In the mid 70s all the girls in my class had The Talk from the school nurse. She gave out gift bags. Inside were napkins, but no tampons. That’s because many parents in that community, including my own, believed only loose women used tampons. But every girl’s gift bag included a belt and napkins. Kotex pads with no adhesive. This was before peel-n-stick. These pads had long cotton “tails” on each end for attaching to the fasteners on the belt.
Belt and napkin together were very like a g-string, except that most of the pubic mound was uncovered. Just an adjustable length of narrow (1/2 inch?) elastic to go around your hips, with attached elastic in the back to go between your cheeks and in the front to extend toward your vulva. It’s a permanent circle; you step into the belt. At the ends of the vertical bits were fasteners very like those for stockings on a garter belt. Except there was no “button”, just the open bit through which you would pass the long cotton tails of your pad. You’d yank a bit on the tail when it was where you wanted it and the fastener’s narrow portion had a sharp point that bit into the tail and held it still. The fastener had a soft cotton pad that hung between it and you, for “comfort”. (Yeah, comfort is a joke in this getup.) This, Toastfriends, is why women more often in the past stayed home on the first day of their periods.
My mother did explain that the getup stayed in place better when worn under a girdle.
No, I have never worn a girdle. I’m old, but not *that* old!
I believe peel-n-stick may have been sold in other markets in the mid 70s. By the time I needed supplies, late 70s, my mother found some. But they were pads for lighter days. Heavy flow required the damned belt assembly. Again, it’s possible other markets had more modern supplies. Also possible my mother did not know how to find them. She still believed tampons, pierced ears, and black clothing were only for prostitutes. By the early 80s I had friends who taught me how to find peel-n-stick maxi pads and the miracle of “wings” that keep them in place. I do remember wings being new around 1981.
I remember finally learning to use tampons in college. I was thrilled how they made my life so much easier and tidier. And I was so very angry that my mother’s fears had limited me for so many years.
This was weeks ago, but I just saw this! Thank you very much for answering my question. Duh, of course peel and stick changed pads! To be honest, though, even pasting your pad onto your underpants doesn’t keep them in place. The thrill of discovering tampons and how life-changing they can be!
Man, I don’t remember anything about those books besides the fun titles & that I liked them!
I thought the belts were just a nice bonus that came with the product, like a free gift? I remember the girls hoping to find a NICE belt, not a gross awful one. Really, the biggest misconception I had from that book was that a period showed up once and then it was over (good sign I was reading those books well before the age I should have read them; I was even more perplexed by Then Again, Maybe I Won’t. What was “going up???”).
I didn’t read that many of her books, but I distinctly remember The Cat Ate My Gymsuit and the epistolary books with Ann M. Martin.
Also, the Judy Blume article was so great because it immediately sparked a whole network of mental associations of other authors I was reading at that time. Norma Fox Mazer! Willo Davis Roberts! Katherine Paterson! Karen Cushman! E. L. Konigsberg! I feel like I need to spend the summer re-reading all the books I loved when I was in the fifth grade, basically.
Summer book club of rereading our 5th grade favorites?
yes pls!
YASSS.
AH! You are a mind-reader as I was thinking about This Place… this MORNING! Her dad, the gemstones in her mouth. Maybe you can tell me what the winning lotto numbers are this week, Kai_Ko???
I had an older edition of What’s Happening To My Body? (http://www.amazon.com/Girls-Revised-Edition-Whats-Happening/dp/1557047669) that explained belted pads and had a nice little illustration. I think it was published right around the time that beltless pads were becoming a thing? So it explained both options.
It puzzles me that the article about the advice from the female scientist was written with anger towards the female scientist. It also puzzles me that her employer seemed to shame her by pulling her advice and apologizing for her. Her perspective and advice reflect her reality. Probably they also reflect the reality of many other female scientists. It would have been better, I think, for both Quartz and Science to take this conflict between an advice column and the “twitter storm” it produced as an opportunity to open up a dialogue.
The dialogue I think would be about the profound doubt many women (and men) feel about the right they have to their own bodies. It’s not as cut and dry as you don’t own your body (the scientist) and you do own your body and shame on you if you don’t know that (the twitter hoard). Probably many of us purposefully own our bodies as much as we are able and relinquish that ownership when we feel like to put up a fight might threaten our safety. How do we learn to express our rights when we don’t feel safe? Why do we think only our own definition of safe is acceptable? For one woman challenging a leering gaze by saying “stop looking at me like that”, might feel within her sphere of safety, for another it might not. If we allowed everyone to weigh in with their experience without shaming them for what they tell us we may find that we all feel safer to say no.
I don’t think Science handled it well at all — it could have been the starting point for an important discussion. I’m sure her advice reflected her reality, things she saw or things that happened to her. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t point out that it’s messed up, but it’s not as if she created the environment that prompted her advice.
I thought Dr. Isis did an excellent job of acknowledging where the advice was coming from, the messed-up-ness of the advice and the LW’s situation, and giving more solid practical advice. Dr. Isis’s blog may have been a better link for this round-up.
I think there’s a big difference between weighing in with your experience and presenting your experience as generally applicable advice, though. Like, obviously this is kind of the nature of advice columns, no one’s experience is universal and you are inherently getting advice from an imperfect human whose approach to a problem may be totally different from yours, but I read a lot of advice columns and the writers I really like are the ones who do a good job of balancing “Here’s what I would do” with “… but here are some other things you could also try,” and I don’t think that’s too much to ask here.
I had a long FB conversation about this with someone who was furious at Huang for the column, and it helped me understand the anger. I think that there would have been less rage (not zero rage, but less) had she acknowledged that this behavior is fucking unacceptable and that it shouldn’t be women’s job to navigate between standing up for yourself and risking your career. THEN she could have said that given the behavior, there might not be much that you could do without risking your standing in the lab and potential for advancement, so from a purely self-protective standpoint, doing nothing might be the right approach.
But instead she chalked it up to “human nature” and told the woman she should put up with it with “good humor,” rather than with entirely justified anger, rather than validating that the letter writer was right to feel uncomfortable and exploited.
As per my response below, I would have been fine with “That guy’s a wretched excuse for a human being, and I’m sorry. You may not be able to do anything about it legally, because XYZ, and it may or may not be worth it to you to go to HR. Whatever you choose to do, good luck.”
What Huang actually wrote was “Ha ha! Boys will be boys, right? Lighten up, sweetheart–it’s not like you can do anything about it anyway.”
That’s worth getting angry about, and absolutely worth shaming. And while yeah, Huang is in her seventies, and yeah, the world was different back then…if she’s not going to keep up with those differences, she shouldn’t be giving advice to young people. It’s one thing to put up with Sexist Grandma at Thanksgiving, when she’s retired; Sexist Grandma in a public forum is way less okay.
Stockholmed Grandma.
Sure, but…I’m not her therapist, and a professional journal isn’t her support group.
Your anger at the message “put up with shitty treatment that degrades you” is completely correct. You are also angry and shaming another human who believes in the message (that it’s ok for her to be silent about her own degradation). You can distance yourself from the message without distancing yourself from the human. Her belief system is so so sad, shunning her won’t help her overcome it and it won’t keep you safe either. We all have to support each other in becoming whole enough to live a fully actualized life.
When her message is keeping other people from becoming whole enough to do that, and when she’s a public figure who should damn well know better by this point, I disagree. It’s sad that she bought into it, but she did, and at this point saying that said belief system is not okay, and saying it loudly and harshly, is more important than protecting the feelings of the person who clings to it.
ETA: And also, general disagreement. I don’t “have to” support people who behave badly. If they want to stop, apologize, and rectify, I’m glad to support at that point–but until then, their shit’s on them. (It’s like saying that I need to be more understanding about “Nice Guys” because they’re so veeeeery hurt: your angsty backstory does not mean you’re not an asshole.)
I think it’s shitty to tell someone else what to be angry at. As if anger and shaming are always wrong. As if we can’t be angry at someone and think their behavior deserves being called out AND STILL think sympathetically towards them and respect them as people. I think the message of “we have to stick together no matter what” is really damaging.
What’s the line between shaming and criticizing? She’s writing an advice column in a public forum, if people disagree with it, they can criticize her. Who’s shunning her for criticizing a piece she wrote that was ill considered?
I’m very sorry to have hurt your feelings isabelcooper and Ethylbenzene.
No worries on my account–we disagree, I am at the harsh end of a spectrum, and I know that. ‘Scool.
Something about it appearing in SCIENCE, too, one of the premiere scientific publications, just felt extra-gross to me. It’s not like it was on her personal blog.
I like this approach. The advice was undoubtedly bad, but it was bad because she laughed off the harassment, not necessarily because she advised the LW to do nothing. To be honest, I’m tired of advice columns where the only advice ever given is to stand up for yourself, you can do this scary thing, all you need is a little encouragement from a stranger. Sometimes there are bad situations you can’t change by yourself, and that you can’t address without serious repercussions, and the best advice might be to keep your head down until you can get yourself out.
yes, exactly. It should be possible to say “This behavior is unacceptable and you shouldn’t have to put up with it” alongside “The best thing to do in your situation might be to accept and put up with it.”
(ETA: that advice column advice should also definitely go away when “do the scary thing!” means “ask out that person you like who doesn’t know you exist” or “walk right into that office and ask for the job.” We could all benefit from hearing “yknow, it’s okay to let this one go.”)
Yeah, science, especially academic science, is a tight little group where your scientific “pedigree” with your supervisors and means a LOT, to the point where it’s not uncommon for people to trace their lineage (like, “I am from X’s lab, they were from Y’s lab, your supervisor also came out of Y’s lab…”) and take it seriously. Having a supervisor who doesn’t like her because she reported him for misconduct could be a serious block to the letter writer’s career, so “put up with it” is a valid response. If Alice Huang had acknowledged how shitty the situation was and still advised the letter writer to do nothing, I don’t think I’d have had a problem with it.
TONYS TONYS, I LOVE TO TALK ABOUT THE TONYS.
Currently there’s an ~argument~ between some friends about whether Fun Home or An American in Paris will take home Best Musical. There’s some thought that Fun Home won’t win for political reasons, but idk, Fun Home seems like such the obvious choice and I love it SO MUCH.
If Something Rotten wins, I will BURN THINGS TO THE GROUND. It’s a fun show, but The Producers it is not.
I haven’t even seen Fun Home (yet; possibly never because I have terrible ticket-getting mojo), and I’m going to be angry if it doesn’t win.
I haven’t actually seen An American in Paris (saw Fun Home, wept buckets, loved it), but one of the fun things about this fight is that it’s such a classic head vs. heart showdown. An American in Paris is a beautiful spectacle with impeccable craftsmanship and glorious choreography, and Fun Home is this minimalist family drama with little dancing and very few show-stoppers that just grabs you by the feels and never lets go. They’re both such good executions of these totally different ideas of what a musical should be, I love it.
ALSO can we take a second to talk about how great tiny little Sydney Lucas is, and how when she does “Ring of Keys” you can see her cycling through attraction and identification and confusion and joy all at once? I don’t know how she fits all of that in her little self! I know the youngest-ever Tony winner has said she would never wish that on another child, but Lucas kills it so hard that I can’t help pulling for her.
SYDNEY LUCAS MY GOD. I mean, you really need a killer Small Alison to make the show work, because she’s in many ways the heart of it all. But holy shit, she is truly amazing. She definitely deserves the Tony, and if she wins it I hope she has the right kind of support system to help her deal with everything that comes after.
I spent one night racking my brain to come up with a TV show or play where Sydney Lucas and Kiernan Shipka could play siblings.
Wait, there’s anyone who thinks Fun Home won’t win? Whyyy. I want Fun Home to win so much and I will throw things if it doesn’t.
Am I the only person who actually disliked Something Rotten? Phenomenal cast, obviously, but even they couldn’t elevate that material. That one number in the first act (you know the one) is pure gold, but stretching that same joke through the whole show stops being funny.
Anyway, I’m pulling for Fun Home even though I haven’t seen it yet (damn lottery) because I love the book and used to work at the Public and just yes.
That article about the “troll farm” is fascinating! And terrifying. Also, for some reason, my first thought reading the article was about all those people who scoff that activism on the internet/talking about news events on the internet doesn’t matter, because somehow the ability to spread ideas instantaneously across the globe is trivial. I want to point them at this and go “See? See?!”
Yeah, I read it and I was like HOLY SHIT. What is keeping the Koch Brothers or anyone else from basically doing the same thing?
Public school employee, fired for feeding hungry children.
I’m going to crawl into bed forever, y’all.
Has anyone else been fascinated by Caitlyn Jenner’s recent odyssey? http://nymag.com/thecut/2015/06/worst-reactions-t… has a quick summary, but despite all the nastiness, I think a ton of what’s going on is really great–I was watching TV at the gym, and it seemed like people were for the most part enthusiastic, and the worst comments were mostly from ignorance. I know there’s a looooooong way to go on trans acceptance, but I was actually pretty pleased to mostly hear “she looks soooooo good!” Thoughts?
I’ve heard a lot of positive and supportive comments about Caitlyn Jenner’s journey from people I didn’t expect to hear those things from. It’s so not my place to say “this feels like a turning point,” but it kinda does in terms of vocal trans acceptance among some of the folks I know who are not necessarily justice-minded or overly political.
I’m sure some people I know are thinking less-great things, too, but I have not heard them myself.
I’m actually kinda fascinated by how few people are loudly, publicly saying nasty stuff. Facebook popped up a thing in the little trending box about Drake Bell tweeting something dickish about Jenner, and my first thought was: “That’s an asshole thing to say,” but then my second thought was: “A decade ago, this would have been Robertson/Limbaugh/Falwell saying something way, way more horrible, and they would have been saying it from a favored perch on national television.” It’s not exactly the kind of improvement you write songs about, but it is improvement.
I think it’s great, mostly? It also made me kind of uncomfortable, like people are accepting of transgender people as long as they conform to what we consider “acceptable” performances of femininity … the whole Vanity Fair photo shoot, the wealthy whiteness of it all. It kind of reminded me how long transgender people have been around (forever) but we don’t pay attention because they’re poor, people of colour, or don’t meet a conventional standard of beauty. 😐 Well, like you said, there’s a long way to go.
Laverne Cox talked a little about that on her tumblr:
“But what I think they meant is that in certain lighting, at certain angles I am able to embody certain cisnormative beauty standards. Now, there are many trans folks because of genetics and/or lack of material access who will never be able to embody these standards. More importantly many trans folks don’t want to embody them and we shouldn’t have to to be seen as ourselves and respected as ourselves . It is important to note that these standards are also infomed by race, class and ability among other intersections.”
Yeah, I kept thinking about the public reception of Chaz Bono, and how he was not treated nearly as well. Sure it could just be because it happened a little while ago (5 years ago), but I can’t help but think it was because he didn’t present in a way that people were comfortable with.
I have absolutely no ill will for Caitlyn Jenner, but I feel about her the same way I feel about all the Kardiashians. I really do not care. And nobody else would care if she wasn’t already famous for having kids that are famous for being famous.
Not to be ‘that’ person, but there are more important things we could be breaking the internet with guys #hipster
Well, she was also an Olympian.
Hah, I was just about to say this.
(not to like- obvs no one has to care about her or the kardashians at all. But the conversation about Caitlyn Jenner, olympic decathlete and american heartthrob, standard of (masculine) athletic achievement in the 70s, is maybe a more interesting conversation to have than Caitlyn Jenner, reality tv star.)
I think there’s a generational gap, too, like, Jenner wasn’t a megastar in my lifetime, but my grandparents know who she is.
Actually, if it’ll get the grandparental generation on board with teh trans, I guess that’s a good thing.
I was going to say this, since I wasn’t alive in the 70s and am not from the US, I had no idea who Jenner was until the Kardashians (and then at somepoint someone said she was an olympian, but I don’t even know what sports it was like). So to me and millions of other people, its only because of the tv show that anyone cares about this
Yeah, definitely. Even for my parents, they’re late 50s, and my mom was at the Montreal Olympics. When the show started getting big, my mom definitely talked about how weird it was to see someone she remembered as a huge olympic star in this side-role in the reality tv circus, and my reaction was like “…who.”
Anyways, it wasn’t something I had really thought of until Wesley Morris’s piece on Grantland- here, but I do think having that cultural touchstone for the older generations is useful. Also I kind of want to see that Village People movie.
Yes, but how many people are talking about this because she was an Olympian vs how many people are talking about it because it makes good reality tv and she is part of the Kardashian empire. (I actually don’t know anything about what people are saying, I only get Kardashian/Jenner related news through the headlines that pop up on facebook)
I had legitimately NO IDEA that she’d been an Olympian for the longest time, and I was so confused by all the comments about her being on Wheaties boxes.
THIS THIS THIS. So, there’s this person? I heard she did a sportballs thing once? And now she’s a Kardashian? …aaaand still waiting for a reason to care.
Same here, I couldn’t care less about her, but I gotta care about the conversation around her because that affects people I DO care about.
At the same time I’m frustrated by the conversation turning her into a symbol of whatever argument someone wants to advance…in spite of her obviously being famous and choosing to put herself out there I just want to yell “leave her alone and let her be herself!”
Well she’s not really a Kardashian; she was married to a woman who was married to Robert Kardashian, and who has hung on to that name ever since. So I guess she’s sort of a Kardashian by association.
https://twitter.com/sophiaphotos/status/605420236… https://twitter.com/sophiaphotos/status/605425921… https://twitter.com/sophiaphotos/status/605426188… https://twitter.com/sophiaphotos/status/605426781… https://twitter.com/sophiaphotos/status/605429805…
It’s great that trans visibility is a thing, but there are other, more important things to discuss.
Oh man, so I was in the ER for five hours on Monday night (for a friend, she’s fine) and it came up on the news, and the snide comments from our fellow waiting room people were…. not great. So that was a bummer.
BUT yesterday one of the local morning radio shows, which are usually the epitome of awfulness, actually had a trans woman on the show talking about the experience of transitioning, and they seemed to be listening/asking about it with compassion (she seemed to be a friend of the co-hostess, which probably helped).
So, like… I understand the “acceptable femininity”/”socioeconomic access to beauty standards” conversations that are happening, and they’re definitely necessary. BUT I’m still really interested and often heartened by the level of respect shown in the public attention she’s gotten. And I think something to consider, in terms of her presentation in the vanity fair shoot, is that her transition has already been very publicly documented, often by a vitriolic tabloid culture in invasive, unflattering pictures. So I sort of took the vanity fair shoot, like obviously it’s publicity for a reality show star- but it was also, like the Diane Sawyer interview, a self-directed narrative as opposed to the one that was forced on her before she was ready for it.
Generally speaking, the freer society gets the better I like it. So Jenner is an improvement. I am worried about all the non-celebrity trans people who face the dangers that all social pioneers face. Change brings out the REAL freaks of our society, and they are violent people.
Not fascinated at all. On the one hand good for her. On the other hand, Kardashian. Every time a Kardashian appears in my eyespace I get mad because eyespace leads to headspace and I just can’t waste my headspace on a family that has done NOTHING to deserve attention. Unfortunately Ms. Jenner’s media presence is not due to her past performance as an Olympian, but to the Kardashian Empire and the PR hacks who I hope are getting paid mad dough because it seems I can’t get through a single day without hearing what someone in that family is up to. The thought that enough Americans respond to the Kardashians in a revenue-producing way (how does that work? magazine sales?) boggles the mind. The success of the Kardashian business model means America sucks, and that’s very sad.
I have been waiting for the Toast to mention something about Caitlyn Jenner! I have been so happy this week! Yes, there is definitely so much more to be done (see the Laverne Cox tumblr link below), however, I think it is so critical how Caitlyn has been able to bring trans* issues to mainstream media demanding its attention. (and btw, I love the burn with Caitlyn being spelled with a C instead of a K!)
That was my first thought too…oh snap, the name’s not spelled with a K! Maybe Caitlyn wants to get away from the Kardashian disaster-ness?
I have positive feelings about it in general, but am having a hard time mustering up much interest because of the stank of Kardashian that permeates so much of the story.
i guess i’m on the generational cusp because i think of her as an Olympian.
i mean, when “articles” start popping up on rags in the check-out lane, i had to google her name (still Bruce at the time) to figure out why it sounded familiar. at that time, the first sentence of her wiki article included “…decathlon…Olympics…” and that’s as far as i went.
i *still* forget there’s a Jenner/Kardashian link and it’s so weird to me that people think of her as a Kardashian.
I love Tilda Swinton, but no no no! She is not an ancient Asian man.
Firing a woman for giving food to hungry children? Good work, Jesus would be proud.
What to do about the cops? What indeed?
On the Alice/Science/Shirt thing:
I am all sorts of conflicted. Yes, one shouldn’t just excuse that sort of behavior. That should not be anyone’s default behavior or advice. But it’s ALSO not as simple as to go to a department chair/dean/etc.
I majored in a STEM field at an all-womens-college, and while I didn’t go on to grad school (yet?), my department spent a significant amount of time and effort in offering all sorts of grad school prep to anyone who wanted it, and I stayed on that track just in case. Sure, this meant going to extra lectures and going to conferences, but it also involved a lot of discussion about how to assess how various departments/advisers treated women.
There are some departments of some universities that are not a fun place to be a woman. Sometimes it’s a general culture, sometimes its one or two missing stairs. Sometimes it’s really bad, and sometimes it’s just a constant barrage of micro aggressions.
Sometimes the behavior is bad, documentable, and saying something to someone will actually get some change going on. The Department Chair will back you up, you can move to another lab, pick another thesis adviser, change from the bio department to the biochem department…… Sometimes there are good options.
Sometimes there AREN’T. Sometimes that prof is politically powerful, and the behavior is difficult to prove. How do you PROVE that someone regularly looks down your shirt? And if that’s the only inappropriate thing they ever do, and they are otherwise a great and generous adviser/mentor/lab boss/whatever, and you have to put up with him for another 2 years, and by working with him your career will significantly benefit, and in order to avoid him looking down your shirt you would have to transfer to another school and maybe your degree will take an extra year??
Maybe you put up with it. It’s not a GOOD option. It’s a terrible terrible shitty option. The fact that it’s a thing that happens at all is a thing that makes me feel guilty that I didn’t go to grad school and then become a prof for the express purpose of making it better for women in my field. But it is AN option, and it’s an option that lots of women distastefully make. Things have gotten better, SO much better, but things are NOT so much better that if a man in power sexually harasses someone, going to a higher-up and complaining will solve the problem with no negative consequences to you.
Here’s what my main problem was with the response- she didn’t give her any other options. She basically spelled out the legal terms of what sexual harassment is, said that she wasn’t sure that it counted, and so the letter writer should probably put up with it, “with good humor.” And there was also an undercurrent of “boys will be boys” to it all.
I don’t think the LW should necessarily go to the chair or to the dean, or make a legal case for it. She may need to approach her advisor about it, she may want to find another mentor, she may want to do other things. But being told “you don’t have a legal case, so you better suck it up and make sure he’s paying attention to your work instead of your boobs” is your best and only option?
Agreed. EVEN if it turns out to be the best option (and it might be, but hopefully not, hopefully at least “say nothing but find another adviser/lab/etc” is an option), it’s definitely not the ONLY option.
I agree with both of you. My Twitter feed has been full of people like, “You just march in there and tell him what’s what!” and maybe I’m cynical, but I think that would have been equally horrible advice. You are so, so vulnerable when you’re a graduate student and even saying something in good humor to your advisor could go so awfully wrong.
Dr. Isis had the best response about it that I’ve seen, and she included the all-important advice to document, document, document, in case he gets worse.
ETA: oops, I see Either_Ada already linked to Dr. Isis before me!
“You just march in there and tell him what’s what!”
Yeah, that would have worked so well when my advisor commented on how good the food must have been in {Faraway Land} given how much weight I’d gained during one particular research trip.
You guys, maybe he didn’t realize he was supposed to be commenting on my research, not my body! It’s a mistake anyone could make!
That is bullshit. I am sorry that happened to you.
There were many elements of that working relationship that were bullshit, but I didn’t realize it at the time–I had so thoroughly internalized the “I am probably doing it wrong and that’s why he’s being this way” narrative. Oh, grad school, keeping my therapist busy years later.
I agree completely. I was also struck by how many people were saying things like “Well, she’s 76, her advice reflects her experiences in the Bad Old Days.”
While no doubt 100% true, it’s not like women in science now are in some golden age of gender equality. I have a number of friends who have worked or currently work in Bad Old Days Labs, Inc. I mean, this study came out only last year, FFS!! https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sexual…
Speaking from my own limited experience in academia, I also thought the advice itself was relatively reasonable (although it still blows my mind that speaking to the dean/some other figure of authority was not even presented as an OPTION, ALONG with “grin and bear it”).
Mostly what I found distasteful about Dr. Huang’s response was the framing. The whole answer had a strong “what are you gonna do, that’s life” vibe that strongly downplayed the wrongness of the sexual harassment itself. I would have been a lot more on board if she’d said something like “I’m so sorry, it’s a shitty situation that no one should ever have to go through. You have the option of going to the dean, but unfortunately our system and culture are still horribly broken in many ways, and depending on where you are you might be better off putting up with it.” Instead, she basically justified the supervisor’s behavior, or at least presented it as inevitable (“the kind of behavior you mention is common in the workplace. Once, a friend told me that he was so distracted by an attractive visiting professor that he could not concentrate on a word of her seminar. Your adviser may not even be aware of what he is doing”). I don’t think that was her intention, but it almost made it sound as if she was blaming the letter writer for being upset by this in the first place.
tl;dr: framing matters.
THIS.
I would’ve had no objection to “Well, you’re totally right to be skeeved, dude is a grown-ass man and your boss and if you have the self-discipline to get a Ph.D. you have the self-discipline to KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE OTHER PERSON’S DAMN FACE, but legally, you may be kind of screwed, here’s why.”
But the response was “Ha ha, you’re so silly! Just let it go.” Which: fuck that, fuck her.
“Consumers are just unpredictable, when they will or won’t buy,” Rowley said. “Gas prices are at a significant low right now, which frees up a lot of money in people’s hands. You’d think retail sales would be up significantly because of that — they’re not. When you ask economists, nobody can tell why people aren’t shopping.”
….maybe because the practice of call-in scheduling is leaving a metric fuckton of people with no money to pay the bills, let alone with disposable income for shopping? jfc economists, man.
Paul Krugman’s perpetual exasperation with his field is one of the reasons I enjoy reading his NYT column. The obtuseness in that quote by Rowley demonstrates how out of touch many economists have become with what they’re actually studying. Current consumer behavior is mystifying only if you ignore reality and only pay attention to your models.
“Current consumer behavior is mystifying only if you ignore reality and only pay attention to your models” needs to be cross-stitched backwards onto the foreheads of most economists so they’re forced to see it every time they look in the mirror.
I heard this interview on Marketplace with the behavioral economist, Richard Thaler, and thought this point he made was interesting: “In the 1940s, economics started getting highly mathematical. It was basically because economists weren’t smart enough to write down models of real behavior, that they started writing down models of highly rational behavior – and they kind of forgot about humans.”
I think behavioral economics is interesting as a field, although there are obviously nuances of behavior that aren’t going to model well.
Ughh. It turns my stomach when economists and their journalist cronies yell at people to buy things/ you should buy more things/ why aren’t you buying things???!
Like, if people could afford to buy things, they would.
yelling back at them Pay me!/Pay me!/Pay me!
i hate how The Economy (also: The Stock Market) has become a Living Thing. it’s treated as if it’s a physical being that is necessary to life and that it requires care & feeding and OMG WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE ECONOMY!. it’s just a set of numbers that reflects what people do with money. it’s one thing to use those numbers to get an idea of where there may be problems but to treat those numbers as The Problem seems misplaced. some peoples’ obsession with the the ides that those numbers must be a certain way is kinda scary.
does that… make any sense? i dunno. i’ve only had one cup of tea. it may be too early for this *sips tea*
That Kremlin Troll story…. it read like the Ms. Scribe story all over again! (Do you think any of the more expert professional trolls cut their teeth in fandom? Or get sent over to learn how it’s done? If they were, they’d probably be better at it though.)
Just popping in to say that the Ms. Scribe story is probably my favorite saga of all time.
Spoiler alert: all of those trolls are, in fact, MsScribe.
Re Tonys: I saw The King and I last night and it can just win every single award.
I’ve wondered how they fix/update the Orientalism in The King and I, having only seen the movie version and not a modern stage adaptation.
SO JEALOUS. Was Kelli O’Hara as luminous as I imagine her to be?
like, I think it’s possible! I’m really curious about it, that’s all. The Mikado yellowface snafu a couple of years ago made me wonder the same thing about how you’d update it in a non-offensive way (I LOVE The Mikado, it is my secret Asian shame).
It was a beautiful production, but I am not totally sure they did fix the Orientalism? I think the best defense the show has is that all of the Asian characters are their own people–they have coherent POVs and they’re portrayed with great specificity instead of being, like, this vague mob of ~Orientals. But on the other hand, The King and I is for sure a show about an English woman explaining to a bunch of POC everything that is wrong with their culture in a series of catchy songs, and this production presents that in a very straightforward way.
That said, Kelli O’Hara is a goddess and Shall We Dance is a perfect theatrical moment.
I feel like you fine people will enjoy this latest piece of glory from Canada’s Public Broadcaster, the CBC: http://dawn.cbcr3.com/misc/programuploads/blogemb…
No enough peen-bulge on the Labyrinth one, imho.
That is absolutely fair. If I can get my artistically-enabled partner to make a more realistic version, I will be sure to post it here.
Cameron Crowe, this isn’t really an apology
oh lord
“He added that he is “so proud that in the same movie, we employed many Asian-American, Native-Hawaiian and Pacific-Islanders, both before and behind the camera… including Dennis “Bumpy” Kanahele, and his village, and many other locals who worked closely in our crew and with our script to help ensure authenticity.”
Dude, if you’d done that you wouldn’t be in this situation!
Re. Aloha, and the terrible casting choice of Emma Stone: Sharon Chang has a great piece on her blog about why, by focusing on how Emma Stone doesn’t look a multiracial Asian, we (particularly fellow Asian Americans) are contributing to the erasure of multiracial Hawaiians.
It’s a constant battle within the larger Asian/Pacific Islander American community, Asians erasing the concerns of Pacific Islanders, and it particularly fraught in Hawai’i where Asian Americans occupy the role of settlers just as much as whites. I’m an East Coast-er though, so I am no doubt glossing over a lot of finer nuances, but I just wanted to put this out there.
I don’t think whether she “looks” like a multiracial Asian is the point, at all. It’s the fact that this was a role that was clearly written for someone of Asian descent, and those roles are incredibly rare in this industry. This was a huge movie with a star cast, and it could have made the career of an Asian actress who has been constantly given casting calls for “girl in the background.”
I have a close friend who is Asian-American and working in Hollywood. He rarely gets casting calls that specifically say the actor must be Asian, and then it’s usually for roles like the “ninja” or the “gang member.” Casting calls that do not state race are ALWAYS looking for white people. Always.
So we’re talking about an industry where 99% of all leading roles go to white people, and then a role for an Asian lead is finally written, and it goes to . . . a white person.
Whether or not she can ‘pass’ is not the point. People of all races can and do ‘look’ white, but white people should not be trying to pass for a people that are still marginalized in their industry and their society. If an Asian actress who happened to have strong Caucasian features was cast in the role and people were bitching that she looked too white, then that’s the time to pull out this argument. Because I guarantee that Asian actress has been rejected from many, many roles because she looked ‘too Asian’, but Emma Stone has never been turned down for a role because she looked too white.
I guess what I’m saying is that this feels like we’re suddenly concerned with the racial identity of a CHARACTER, who does not in fact exist in real life, and I think we would be better served to be concerned about the actual people who are trying to build careers as actors.
I get that representation is important, and that Asian people should be able to see all versions of themselves in film, but I’m not sure how representation is accomplished by casting someone who is not, in fact, representative of that group.
But the point is that, in every article and conversation about this, people are describing both the character and the actors who should have been cast primarily as “Asian,” when the character is as much Hawaiian as she is Chinese. The piece isn’t arguing that Emma Stone is a totally legit casting choice, it’s just pointing out that the character has Chinese and Hawaiian heritage and the “and Hawaiian” part is largely getting left out of the discussion or treated as equivalent to/included within “Asian.”
Please see reply to Hieu below; mistakes have been made. (Spoiler: they are mine.)
I’m not arguing that point at all, really–I was just typing this comment rather quickly! I realize that it is ultimately about it’s about a white actress being casted in a role of character who is multiracial POC.
The point that I was sharing of Sharon’s is the insistence of folks, particularly fellow Asian Americans, to be concerned about the representation & casting of Asians while ignoring the fact that this is also about the representation & casting of Native Hawaiians. Her post was more of an internal community discussion about whose needs and concerns are drowned out, and in the context of larger Asian American/Pacific Islander conversations, Asian American concerns usually drown out those voiced by Pacific Islanders and Native Hawaiians. I was trying to do some signal boosting around it because as an Asian American, I think this issue of being a good ally to Pacific Islanders & Native Hawaiians come into play. The rhetoric around this seems to follow suit, whether on representation or casting.
That’s a very interesting article! I see the same thing in Canada…the focus of racism conversations is typically on how to make society more equitable for settlers of colour, while ignoring the horrible history of how First Nations Canadians are/have been treated. It shouldn’t be an either/or; we should be able to do better.
Honestly, I think in the US we do the same thing to a far greater degree! I don’t want to elide the serious problem of anti-Black racism in the US, but the needs and concerns of Native (US) Americans (gah, I wish we use the First Nations moniker like you do in Canada) and Native Hawaiians aren’t discussed to the same degree. Twitter has actually catalyzed a lot of my thinking about this, thinking about my own relative privilege as a settler of color and how I might be reinforcing/reproducing harm.
BTW, hadn’t come across the phrase “settle of color” yet but I find it very helpful, thank you.
BTW, her point about The Descendents really hit home for me. I watched the movie, understood that they casted a bunch of white people to play white-passing Native Hawaiians, and didn’t question any of it. In my head, I rationalized it as “well maybe that’s white white-passing Native Hawaiians look like” and I missed many many key points, including the issue of casting that Lnette rightly points out, as well as being too lazy to educate myself re. multiracial Hawaiians.
That piece was so good I almost cried.
I keep reading all of these casting thinkpieces because I’m part-Hawaiian and we’re almost never discussed in the media like this, but none of them really hit home until another Hawaiian put my feelings into words. She just got me, y’know? She got me.
I feel so much better. THANK YOU for sharing this, truly.
You’re very welcome! I’m glad that it resonated with you and you felt someone was articulating your feelings about this topic. It’s so powerful when that happens.
Everything is terrible!
Yes, we’re all doomed. Gotta roll with it!
http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/seven-a1s-bu…
Just saw this on FB, its an amazing breakdown of the failures of the Irish education system (supposedly one of the best in the world, *scoff*), and western education in general, from the inside.
I only went to uni after working for a few years (left school early) and realizing what I wanted to do, why I wanted to do it, and why I needed to go to university, although frankly I only went for the piece of paper and worked the system a bit so I don’t have 30k in debt.
The Fallout 4 trailer is up!
I’m so excited for this game!
Me too! I hope I get to see a post-apocalyptic version of the building I work in.
Ariana Miyamoto is awesome. It’d be easy for her to just shy away from talking about the shit she’s faced for being multiracial Japanese, but she’s talking about it openly and publicly. That takes serious guts.
I might actually try and watch the Miss Universe pageant to see her? WHAT AM I EVEN SAYING
Did anyone see this piece about the Batteriser?
http://www.macworld.com/article/2928997/batterise…
This man is the Dad of Dads: the All-Dad. All Dads shall bow before him, and he shall reign.
Wait, wasn’t “lunch lady gets fired for giving food to the needy” an episode of Wishbone? I swear that was an episode of Wishbone.
It was, I remember it too. And then the kids helped straighten everything out, and she was able to come back, but I don’t remember what the book was.
It was Robin Hood! And Ellen showed up at the school to lay a truly epic smackdown on the vice principal who orchestrated the whole thing.
YES Ellen! She was so awesome!
You are correct! From Wikipedia: “Joe and a cafeteria worker take perfectly good food headed for the dumpster, so that it can go to the local food bank, despite the protestations of an uptight school supervisor.” I think it’s not that the cafeteria worker gets fired, but that Joe almost gets suspended.
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHBi9YeNYS8
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvWwFG26zXY
The Ariana Miyamoto article is fascinating and not especially long. I hope everybody reads it.
I’m not arguing that point at all, really–I was just typing this comment rather quickly! I realize that it is ultimately about it’s about a white actress being casted in a role of character who is multiracial POC.
The point that I was sharing of Sharon’s is the insistence of folks, particularly fellow Asian Americans, to be concerned about the representation & casting of Asians while ignoring the fact that this is also about the representation & casting of Native Hawaiians. The post is in some ways more of an internal community discussion about whose needs and concerns are drowned out, and in the context of larger Asian American/Pacific Islander conversations, Asian American concerns usually drown out those voiced by Pacific Islanders and Native Hawaiians. The rhetoric around this seems to follow suit, whether on representation or casting.
… This is one of those moments where I have to admit I have inadvertently been a dingus, because I read what turns out to have been a truncated version of this article on Tumblr and thought it was the whole thing, thus setting me off on a misinformed tangent. My apologies to everyone, I cannot Internet.
No worries! I was a little surprised because I think we usually see eye to eye on stuff, so I was like “maybe I miswrote something or am misunderstanding something.. or maybe it’s her.” Just wanted to be clear!
on-call shifts are the fucking WORST and should be illegal. At least for doctors etc they’ll pay you a nominal fee for being available (my mom works in a hospital & is paid peanuts for being on call but at least it kind of gestures towards respect for your employees’ time) and I hope it will be illegal soon. I worked at an ice cream store that had at least three people available on call at all times!
Actually wait, I’m rethinking my position on this. If I’m reading you right, I think that the point that you’re saying here is that, while adding more Asian characters is good, something…well, let’s say at the very least equally good is to purposefully take old racist characters and reinvent them as being non-racist, since the movie doesn’t exist on its own, the movie exists in conversation with previous interpretations of the material.
And okay, yeah, I agree with that, I think that’s a good process a good idea. As I kind of said before, while I think Marvel is in a bind, I don’t think they’re in a real bind; they want to make their legacy characters into movie characters, but they also want to not be racist, and they ALSO are resistant to the idea of changing their characters, and the solution is to just not be resistant to changing their characters.
But then, back to the first hand, I think that the Ancient One is more problematic than Wong, who’s got sort of more room to tinker around with, where the Ancient One is kind of a dumb, cliche character no matter who plays him/her. But maybe this is my having a problem with most of the trappings of Doctor Strange in the first place.
Yes that’s what I mean – we have to approach the conversation within the framework of Marvel comics, and its nature of being a “shared universe” on top of having an “elastic timeline” and how the film franchise adopts that, and what its effects are on consumers and the stories that inform us. Big 2 cape comics are fascinating because they ARE living narratives, a permanent “Act 2”, which means it is built-in to their DNA to interrogate their history, something regularly tackled now with a new vanguard of more self-aware creators. The films in that sense are doing the same, in a very Marvel way, of taking old characters and spinning/updating them to be plausible in the real current world, which is why it’s frustrating when higher-ups specifically embrace or step over what was wretched in the comics. This view is not in isolation from the “raze the ground and make something of our own” perspective; the realistic view is that honestly you need to do both – the latter doesn’t exactly have money and a 70+ year marketing behemoth.
Doctor Strange, to me, is similar to Iron Fist in that there is something very oldschool about the core story (redemption of a hubristic man, an errant son embracing duty) but its true potential is completely mired in white colonial and white supremacist values plus jaw-dropping Orientalism and fetishistic racism. A lot of it struck me as white guys trying to hammer very classically non-European story traditions around a white American framework, and get a mess out of it because they only half-listened to the original stories anyhow.
And because I know some of these stories, I can see how even the Ancient One or K’un L’un’s inherently racist current setup can be fixed (embrace the original stories from the pens and mouths of the originating cultures, not the white guy comic knockoffs), but it’s a huge amount of care and work involved and Feige honestly doesn’t appear to give a shit, alas, but there stands a better chance in the comics.
Youch that sounds bad! I heard that metal snaps can be easier on bike riders than the plastic ones. I don’t know about the edges — are the ones that are turned & topstitched worse than ones with serged edges? (I think Gladrags have metal snaps and serged edges, but I wouldn’t really recommend them)
But biking is fun and worth all its genital injuries!
I was using gladrags, as it turns out. Serged edges and metal snaps.
Which ones do you use?