#reviving discourse from what. 2015? with this one | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

binhwantstoeatoreo · 5 months ago

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Week 3: Digital Community: Tumblr Case Study

Gen Z is mourning the un-filtered public sphere of 2014 Tumblr

If you’ve spent any time on TikTok over the past few years, chances are you’ve stumbled into the wistful world of 2014-2016 nostalgia. ‘Tumblr Girls’ by G-Eazy is trending again, King Kylie era with jet-black nails and electric blue hair photos, Lana Del Rey’s Born to Die and Ultraviolence lyrics dripping with melancholy, the glorification of cigarettes and poetic sadness, and those moody GIFs of brooding white girls paired with angst captions about how life is just one big existential crisis.

It’s a full-blown revival of Tumblr’s golden age, when this aesthetic reigned supreme, and Gen Z has welcomed it back like a long-lost comfort blanket. Case in point: a girl doing a cover of Sky Ferreira’s Everything is Embarrassing, with messy hair and off-the-shoulder flannel look, sent the comments spiraling into a collective wave of 2014 Tumblr nostalgia (@reme, 2025).

As of 2021, on TikTok, the hashtag #2014tumblr boasts 83.9 million views, while its counterpart #tumblr2014 has garnered 51.9 million views (Navlakha, 2021). But what does this resurgence mean for a generation raised on fast-paced TikToks and Snapchat notifications? And what does it have to do with the public sphere of Tumblr?

Tumblr as a Public Sphere

Jürgen Habermas’ concept of the public sphere describes a space where individuals gather to exchange ideas outside traditional power structures (Çela, 2015, p. 195). While social media platforms often claim to foster such spaces, their algorithm-driven nature frequently distorts participation, privileging virality over authenticity (Yin, 2024, p. 10-14). This creates a tension between the ideals of a public sphere and the realities of social media's algorithmic governance (Dahlberg, 2007, p. 52). Social media platforms grapple with the challenge of distinguishing genuine user profiles from counterfeit accounts (Mahammed et al., 2023, p. 1).

In contrast, Tumblr operated as a counterpublic, a concept described by Warner (2002) as an alternative space where marginalized groups construct their own discourses outside dominant institutions. Byron et al. (2019, p. 2242) apply this idea to Tumblr, highlighting how queer youth used the platform for identity exploration and indirect yet meaningful connections. Tumblr thrived as a platform where users did not need verification badges or massive followings to have a voice; instead, all that was required was internet access and a willingness to share unfiltered thoughts. Unlike social media sites such as Twitter or Instagram, which often prioritize personal branding and follower counts, Tumblr fostered a culture of anonymity and authenticity, allowing individuals to engage without revealing their real identities.

For many LGBTQIA+ users, Tumblr wasn’t just a blogging site—it was a lifeline. Queer youth engaged with the platform far more than other social media, finding a space for identity exploration and connection (Robards & Byron, 2017). According to Byron et al. (2019, p. 2242), young LGBTQIA+ used Tumblr to navigate their identities, often in ways that were indirect and anonymous yet profoundly meaningful. Unlike Instagram or TikTok, where visibility depends on engagement metrics, Tumblr enabled queer self-expression without the pressure of personal branding. The platform’s unfiltered, pseudonymous culture allowed young people to explore gender, sexuality, and mental health in ways that mainstream social media often stigmatized or ignored.

The Politics of Aesthetic and Self-Expression

The 2014 Tumblr aesthetic isn’t just about nostalgia—it’s a whole mood, a rebellion, and a contradiction all at once. It was a space where people rejected the glossy perfection of Instagram and Facebook, opting instead for something raw, messy, and deeply personal. But here’s the thing: even rebellion has its own aesthetic rules. Tumblr’s vibe might have been anti-mainstream, but it still had a way of shaping how people expressed themselves.

Take the #bodypositive movement, for example. At first, Tumblr was the go-to place for people who wanted to push back against traditional beauty standards. It gave users—especially marginalized ones—a space to celebrate diverse bodies, challenge unrealistic ideals, and embrace self-love in ways that mainstream media didn’t allow. But, as Reif et al. (2022, p. 5-6) point out, even in this “empowering” space, certain aesthetics started taking over. A lot of the content still followed a specific look—filtered but “effortless,” curated but “authentic.” So while Tumblr helped redefine beauty, it also reinforced new versions of what was acceptable.

And that’s exactly the paradox of the 2014 Tumblr aesthetic itself. It was all about being different, but in a way that still fit a certain visual and emotional mold. The black-and-white photos of girls smoking in oversized sweaters, in wired earphones listening to Arctic Monkey, cryptic text posts about sadness—these weren’t just random; they became an entire brand. As Goldberg (2022) notes, Tumblr had a way of romanticizing self-destruction. It made heartbreak poetic. It turned depression into an aesthetic. It blurred the line between genuine self-expression and performance.

This whole push-and-pull dynamic also played out in the way people curated their identities online. As Byron et al., (2019, p. 2246) explain, even in supposedly free and unfiltered spaces like Tumblr, certain norms always emerge. People were crafting their own personas through carefully chosen images, quotes, and blog themes, but they were still following an unspoken rulebook.

Final thoughts

Today, Gen Z is attempting to reclaim that balance, by recreating Tumblr’s unpolished aesthetics on TikTok while navigating a vastly different digital landscape. In a way, this nostalgia is an act of rebellion against the hyper-curated, brand-saturated digital spaces we’ve grown used to. The irony, of course, is that Tumblr’s once-anonymous culture is now mediated through platforms that prioritize personal branding. Yet the fact that users are reviving this era suggests a persistent desire for a public sphere where self-expression isn’t dictated by corporate algorithms.

References:

@reme. (2025). everything is embarrassing. TikTok. https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSM8fg1Qf/

Byron, P., Robards, B., Hanckel, B., Vivienne, S., & Churchill, B. (2019). “Hey, I’m Having These Experiences”: Tumblr Use and Young People’s Queer (Dis)connections. International Journal of Communication, 13, 2242. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338593649_Hey_I

Çela, E. (2015). Social Media as a New Form of Public Sphere. European Journal of Social Sciences Education and Research, 4(1), 195. https://doi.org/10.26417/ejser.v4i1.p195-200

Dahlberg, L. (2007). The Internet, deliberative democracy, and power: Radicalizing the public sphere. International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics, 3(1), 52. https://doi.org/10.1386/macp.3.1.47_1

Goldberg, A. (2022, February 2). What the Return of 2014 Tumblr Means For Body Image. Teen Vogue. https://www.teenvogue.com/story/what-the-return-of-2014-tumblr-means-for-body-image

Mahammed, N., Klouche, B., Saidi, I., Khaldi, M., & Fahsi, M. (2023). Bio-inspired algorithms for effective social media profile authenticity verification (p. 1). https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3694/paper13.pdf

Navlakha, M. (2021, October 26). TikTok is reviving the 2014 Tumblr-era aesthetic. Mashable SEA | Latest Entertainment & Trending . https://sea.mashable.com/life/18022/tiktok-is-reviving-the-2014-tumblr-era-aesthetic

Reif, A., Miller, I., & Taddicken, M. (2022). “Love the Skin You‘re In”: An Analysis of Women’s Self-Presentation and User Reactions to Selfies Using the Tumblr Hashtag #bodypositive. Mass Communication and Society, 26(6), 5–6. https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2022.2138442

Robards, B., & Byron, P. (2017, May 29). There’s something queer about Tumblr. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/theres-something-queer-about-tumblr-73520

Warner, M. (2021). Publics and Counterpublics. Zone Book. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1qgnqj8

Yin, H. (2024). From Virality to Engagement: Examining the Transformative Impact of Social Media, Short Video Platforms, and Live Streaming on Information Dissemination and Audience Behavior in the Digital Age. Advances in Social Behavior Research, 14(1), 10–14. https://doi.org/10.54254/2753-7102/2024.18644

#mda20009 #lana del rey #2014 tumblr #2014 aesthetic #tiktok #public sphere #blog #gen z #nostalgia #week 3 #swinburne #queer #lgbtqia #Spotify

7 notes · View notes

shihalyfie · 4 years ago

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Hi :) If it's not too much trouble, could you please share your take on why they'd continue the Adventure brand after tri. was such a flop? (and a tangent: what does "dark history" even mean?). We got Kizuna, the reboot, and a 02 movie. Logically, it doesn't really make sense they'd keep investing in it.

This is a thorny topic, and I'd like to reiterate that although I've ended up making more posts related to this series and the discourse surrounding it recently (probably because it's even more on the mind now that another movie is on the horizon and a lot of people are apprehensive for various reasons), I do not want this blog to be making a brand out of being critical of this series. I’m writing this here and in public because I figured that there is a certain degree I need to clarify what I mean about audience reception/climate and how it might impact current or future works, and I’m admittedly also more than a little upset that I occasionally see Western fanbase criticisms of the series getting dismissed by people claiming that the only people mad about it are dramamongering or ignorant Westerners (which could not be further from the truth). However, this is mainly to address this and to answer your question, and is not intended to try and change anyone's existing opinion or impression of the series as much as it's me trying to explain (from my own personal reading of the situation) what practically went down with critical reception in real life; no more, no less.

The short summary of the matter is:

The series was a moderate financial success (albeit with some caveats; see the long version for details) and definitely outstripped a lot of prior attempts to revive the franchise;

However, the overall Japanese fanbase-side critical backlash from tri. was extremely and viciously negative to the point where even acknowledging the series too much could easily result in controversy;

Kizuna’s production and the PR surrounding it very obviously have this in mind with a lot of apparent “damage control” elements.

The long version is below.

Note that while I try to be diligent about citing my sources so people understand that I’m not just making things up wholesale, I’m deliberately refraining from linking certain things here this time, both because some of the things mentioned have some pretty crude things written there -- it’s not something I feel comfortable directing people to regardless of what language it’s in -- and because I don’t want to recklessly link things on social media and cause anyone to go after or harass the people involved. For the links that have been provided, please still be warned that some of them don’t really link to particularly pleasant things.

I am not writing the following information to suggest that anyone should agree or disagree with the sentiments being described. I know people tend to take "a lot of people like/hate this" as a signal of implication "it is correct to like/hate this" when it's not (and I especially dislike the idea of implying that Japanese fanbase opinions are the only correct ones). There's a reason I focus on "critical reception being this way" (because it influences marketing decisions and future direction) rather than how much this should impact one's personal feelings; this is coming from myself as someone who is shamelessly proud of liking many things that had bad critical reception, were financial failures, or are disliked by many. As I point out near the end, the situation also does seem to be changing for the better in more recent years as well.

Also, to be clear, I'm a single person who's observing everything best I can from my end, I have no affiliations with staff nor do I claim to, and as much as I'm capable of reading Japanese and thus reading a lot of people's impressions, I'm ultimately still another “outsider” looking in. These are my impressions from my observation of fan communal spaces, following artists and reading comments on social media and art posting websites, and results from social media searches. In the end, I know as much as anyone else about what happened, so this is just my two cents based on all of my personal observations.

A fanbase is a fanbase regardless of what part of the world you're from. There are people who love it and are shameless about saying so. There are people who have mixed feelings or at least aren't on extreme ends of the spectrum (as always, the loudest ones are always the most visible, but it's not always easy to claim they're the predominant percentage of the fanbase). That happens everywhere, and I still find that on every end I've seen. However, if I'm talking about my impressions and everything I’ve encountered, I will say that the overall Japanese reaction to tri. comes off as significantly more violently negative on average than the Western one, which is unusual because often it's the other way around. (I personally feel less so because the opinions are that fundamentally different and more so because we're honestly kind of loud and in-your-face people; otherwise, humans are mostly the same everywhere, and more often than not people feel roughly the same about everything if they’re given the same information to work with.)

This is not something I can say lightly, and thus would not say if I didn’t really get this impression, but...we're talking "casually looking up movie reviews for Kizuna have an overwhelming amount of people casually citing any acknowledgment of tri. elements as a negative element", or the fact that even communal wikis for "general" fandoms like Pixiv and Aniwota don't tend to hold back in being vicious about it (as of this writing, Pixiv's wiki refuses to consider it in the same timeline as Adventure, accusing it of being "a series that claims to be a sequel set three years after 02 but is in fact something different"). Again, there are people who openly enjoy it and actively advocate for it (and Pixiv even warns people to not lord over others about it condescendingly because of the fact that such people do exist), and this is also more of a reflection of “the hardcore fanbase on the Internet” and not necessarily the mainstream (after all, there are quite a few other Digimon works where the critical reception varies very heavily between the two). Nevertheless, the take-home is that the reputation is overall negative among the Internet fanbase to the point that this is the kind of sentiment you run into without trying all that hard.

I think, generally speaking, if we're just talking about why a lot of people resent the series, the reasons aren't that different from those on the Western side. However, that issue of "dark history" (黒歴史): there's a certain degree of demand from the more violently negative side of the fanbase that's, in a sense, asking official to treat it as a disgrace and never acknowledge it ever again, hence why Kizuna doing so much as borrowing things from it rather than rejecting it outright is still sometimes treated like it’s committing a sin. So it's somewhat close in spirit to a retcon movement, which is unusual because no other Digimon series gets this (not even 02; that was definitely a thing on the Western end, but while I'm sure there are people who hate it that much on their end too, I've never really seen it gain enough momentum for anyone to take it seriously). If anyone ever tells you that Japanese fanbases are nice to everything, either they don't know Japanese, are being willfully ignorant, or are lying to you, because there is such thing as drama in those areas, and in my experience, I've seen things get really nasty when things are sufficiently pushed over the edge, and if a fanbase wants to have drama, it will have drama. This happens to be one of those times.

(If you think this is extreme, please know that I also think so too, so I hope you really understand that me describing this sentiment does not mean I am personally endorsing it. Also, let me reiterate that the loudest section of the fanbase is not necessarily the predominant one; after all, as someone who’s been watching reactions to 02 over the years, I myself can attest that its hatedom has historically made it sound more despised than it actually is in practice.)

My impression is that the primary core sentiment behind why the series so much as existing and being validated is considered such an offense (rather than, say, just saying "wow, that writing was bad" and moving on) is heavily tied to the release circumstances the series came out in during 2015-2018, and the idea that "this series disrespected Adventure, and also disrespected the fanbase.” (I mean, really, regardless of what part of the world you’re from, sequels and adaptations tend to be held to a higher bar of expectation than standalone works, because they’re expected to do them justice.) A list of complaints I’ve come across a lot while reading through the above:

The Japanese fanbase is pretty good at recordkeeping when it comes to Adventure universe lore, partially because they got a lot of extra materials that weren’t localized, but also partially because adherence to it seems to generally be more Serious Business to them than it is elsewhere. For instance, “according to Adventure episode 45, ‘the one who wishes for stability’ (Homeostasis) only started choosing children in 1995, and therefore there can be no Chosen Children before 1995” is taken with such gravity that this, not anything to do with evolutions or timeline issues, is the main reason Hurricane Touchdown’s canonicity was disputed in that arena (because Wallace implies that he met his partners before 1995). It’s a huge reason the question of Kizuna also potentially not complying to lore came to the forefront, because tri. so flagrantly contradicts it so much that this issue became very high on the evaluation checklist. In practice, Kizuna actually goes against Adventure/02 very little, so the reason tri. in particular comes under fire for this is that it does it so blatantly there were theories as early as Part 1 that this series must take place in a parallel universe or something, and as soon as it became clear it didn’t, the resulting sentiment was “wow, you seriously thought nobody would notice?” (thus “disrespecting the audience”).

A lot of the characterization incongruity is extremely obvious when you’re following only the Japanese version, partially because it didn’t have certain localization-induced characterization changes (you are significantly less likely to notice a disparity with Mimi if you’re working off the American English dub where they actually did make her likely to step on others’ toes and be condescending, whereas in Japanese the disparity is jarring and hard to miss) and partially due to some things lost in translation (Mimi improperly using rough language on elders is much easier to spot as incongruity if you’re familiar with the language). Because it’s so difficult to miss, and honestly feels like a lot of strange writing decisions you’d make only if you really had no concept of what on earth happened in the original series, it only contributes to the idea that they were handling Adventure carelessly and disrespectfully without paying attention to what the series was even about (that, or worse, they didn’t care).

02 is generally well-liked there! It’s controversial no matter where you go, but as I said earlier, there was no way a retcon movement would have ever been taken seriously, and the predominant sentiment is that, even if you’re not a huge fan of it, its place in canon (even the epilogue) should be respected. So not only flagrantly going against 02-introduced lore but also doing that to a certain quartet is seen as malicious, and you don’t have as much of the converse discourse celebrating murdering the 02 quartet (yeah, that’s a thing that happened here) or accusing people with complaints of “just being salty because they like 02″ as nearly as much of a factor; I did see it happen, or at least dismissals akin to “well it’s Adventure targeted anyway,” but they were much less frequent. The issue with the 02 quartet is usually the first major one brought up, and there’s a lot of complaints even among those who don’t care for 02 as much that the way they went about it was inhumane and hypocritical, especially when killing Imperialdramon is fine but killing Meicoomon is a sin. Also, again, “you seriously think nobody will see a problem with how this doesn’t make sense?”

I think even those who are fans of the series generally agree with this, but part of the reason the actual real-life time this series went on is an important factor is that the PR campaign for this series was godawful. Nine months of clicking on an egg on a website pretending like audience participation meant something when in actuality it was blatantly obvious it was just a smokescreen to reveal info whenever they were ready? This resulted in a chain effect where even more innocuous/defensible things were viewed in a suspicious or negative light (for instance, "the scam of selling the fake Kaiser's goggles knowing Ken fans would buy it only to reveal that it's not him anyway"), and a bunch of progressively out-of-touch-with-the-fanbase statements and poor choices led to more sentiment “yeah, you’re just insulting the fanbase at this point,” and a general erosion of trust in official overall.

On top of that, the choice of release format to have it spread out as six movies over three years seems to have exacerbated the backlash to get much worse than it would have been otherwise, especially since one of the major grievances with the series is that how it basically strung people along, building up more and more unanswered questions before it became apparent it was never going to answer them anyway. So when you’re getting that frustrated feeling over three whole years, it feels like three years of prolonged torture, and it becomes much harder to forgive for the fallout than if you’d just marathoned the entire thing at once.

For those who are really into the Digimon (i.e. species) lore and null canon, while I’m not particularly well-versed in that side of the fanbase, it seems tri. fell afoul of them too for having inaccurately portrayed (at one point, mislabeled) special attacks and poorly done battle choreography, along with the treatment of Digimon in general (infantilized Digimon characterization, general lack of Digimon characters in general, very flippant treatment of the Digital World in Parts 3-5). If you say you’re going to “reboot” the Digital World and not address the entire can of worms that comes with basically damaging an entire civilization of Digimon, as you can imagine, a lot of people who actually really care about that are going to be pissed, and the emerging sentiment is “you’re billing this as a Digimon work, but you don’t even care about the monsters that make up this franchise.”

The director does not have a very positive reputation among those who know his work (beyond just Digimon), and in general there was a lot of suspicion around the fact they decided to get a guy whose career has primarily been built on harem and fanservice anime to direct a sequel to a children’s series. Add to that a ton of increasingly unnerving statements about how he intended to make the series “mature” in comparison to its predecessor (basically, an implication that Adventure and 02 were happy happy joy series where nothing bad ever happened) and descriptions of Adventure that implied a very, very poor grasp of anything that happened in it: inaccurate descriptions of their characters, poor awareness of 02′s place in the narrative, outright saying in Febri that he saw the Digimon as like perpetual kindergartners even after evolving, and generally such a flippant attitude that it drove home the idea that the director of an Adventure sequel had no respect for Adventure, made this series just to maliciously dunk on it for supposedly being immature, and has such a poor grasp of what it even was that it’s possible he may not have seen it in the first place (or if he did, clearly skimmed it to the extent he understood it poorly to pretty disturbing levels). As of this writing, Aniwota Wiki directly cites him as a major reason for the backlash.

In general, consensus seems to be that the most positively received aspect of the series (story-wise) was Part 3 (mostly its ending, but some are more amenable to the Takeru and Patamon drama), and the worst vitriol goes towards Parts 2 (for the blatantly contradictory portrayal of Mimi and Jou and the hypocritical killing of Imperialdramon) and 4 (basically the “point of no return” where even more optimistic people started getting really turned off). This is also what I suspect is behind the numbers on the infamous DigiPoll (although the percentage difference is admittedly low enough to fall within margin of error). However, there was suspicion about the series even from Part 1, with one prominent fanartist openly stating that it felt more like meeting a ton of new people than it did reuniting with anyone they knew.

So with all of that on the table: how did this affect official? The thing is that when I say “violently negative”, I mean that also entailed spamming official with said violently negative social media comments. While this is speculation, I am fairly certain that official must have realized how bad this was getting as early as between Parts 4 and 5, because that’s where a lot of really suspicious things started happening behind the scenes; while I imagine the anime series itself was now too far in to really do anything about it, one of the most visible producers suddenly vanished from the producer lineup and was replaced by Kinoshita Yousuke, who ended up being the only member of tri. staff shared with Kizuna (and, in general, the fact that not a single member of staff otherwise was retained kind of says a lot). Once the series ended in 2018 and the franchise slowly moved into Kizuna-related things, you might notice that tri.-branded merch production almost entirely screeched to a halt and official has been very touchy about acknowledging it too deeply; it’s not that they don’t, but it’s kind of an awfully low amount for what you’d think would be warranted for a series that’s supposed to be a full entry in the big-name Adventure brand.

The reason is, simply, that if they do acknowledge it too much, people will get pissed at them. That’s presumably why the tri. stage play (made during that interim period between Parts 4 and 5 and even branded with the title itself) and Kizuna are really hesitant to be too aggressive about tri. references; it’s not necessarily that official wants to blot it out of history like the most extreme opinions would like them to, but even being too enthusiastic about affirming it will also get them backlash, especially if the things they affirm are contradictory to Adventure or 02. And considering even the small references they did put in still got them criticism for “affirming” tri. too much, you can easily see that the backlash would have been much harder if they’d attempted more than that; staying as close as possible to Adventure and 02 and trying to deal with tri. elements only when they’re comparatively inoffensive was pretty much the “safe” thing to do in this scenario (especially since fully denying tri. would most certainly upset the people who did like the series, and if you have to ask me, I personally think this would have been a pretty crude thing to have done right after the series had just finished). Even interviews taken after the fact often involve quickly disclaiming involvement with the series, or, if they have to bring up something about it, discussing the less controversial aspects like the art (while the character designs were still controversial, it’s at least at the point where some fanartists will still be willing to make use of them even if they dislike the series, albeit often with prominent disclaimers) or the more well-received parts of Part 3; Kizuna was very conspicuously marketed as a standalone movie, even if it shared the point of “the Adventure kids, but older” that tri. had.

(Incidentally, the tri. stage play has generally been met with a good reputation and was received well even among people who were upset with the anime, so it was well-understood that they had no relation. In fact, said stage play is probably even better received than Kizuna, although that’s not too surprising given the controversial territory Kizuna goes into, making the stage play feel very play-it-safe in comparison.)

So, if we’re going to talk about Kizuna in particular: tri. was, to some degree, a moderate financial success, in the sense that it made quite a bit of money and did a lot to raise awareness of the Digimon brand still continuing...however, if you actually look at the sales figures for tri., they go down every movie; part of it was probably because of the progressively higher “hurdle” to get into a series midway, but consider that Gundam Unicorn (a movie series which tri.’s format was often compared to) had its sales go up per movie thanks to word of mouth and hype. So while tri. does seem to have gotten enough money to help sustain the franchise at first, the trade-off was an extremely livid fanbase that had shattered faith in the brand and in official, and so while continuing the Adventure brand might still be profitable, there was no way they were going to get away with continuing to do this lest everything eventually crash and burn.

Hence, if you look at the way Kizuna was produced and advertised, you can see a lot of it is blatantly geared at addressing a lot of the woes aimed at tri.: instead of the staff that had virtually no affiliation with Toei, the main members of staff announced were either from the original series (Seki and Yamatoya) or openly childhood fans, the 02 quartet was made into a huge advertising point as a dramatic DigiFes reveal (and character profies that tie into the 02 epilogue careers prominently part of the advertising from day one), and they even seemed to acknowledge the burnout on the original Adventure group by advertising it so heavily as “the last adventure of Taichi and his friends”, so you can see that there’s a huge sentiment of “damage control” with it. How successful that was...is debatable, since opinions have been all over the board; quite a few people were naturally so livid at what happened with tri. that Kizuna was just opening more of the wound, but there were also people who liked it much better and were willing to acknowledge it (with varying levels of enthusiasm, some simply saying “it was thankfully okay,” and some outright loving it), and there was a general sentiment even among those who disliked both that they at least understood what Kizuna was going for and that it didn’t feel as inherently disrespectful. (Of course, there are people who loved tri. and hated Kizuna, and there are people who loved both, too.)

Moreover, Kizuna actually has a slightly different target audience from tri.; there’s a pretty big difference between an OVA and a theatrical movie, and, quite simply, Kizuna was made under the assumption that a lot of people watching it may not have even seen tri. in the first place. An average of 11% of the country watched Adventure and 02, but the number of people who watched tri. is much smaller, in part due to the fact that its “theater” screenings were only very limited screenings compared to Kizuna being shown in theaters in Japan and worldwide, and in part due to the fact that watching six parts over three years is a pretty huge commitment for someone who may barely remember Digimon as anything beyond a show they watched as a kid, and may be liable to just fall off partway through because they simply just forgot. (Which also probably wasn’t helped by the infamously negative reputation, something that definitely wouldn’t encourage someone already on the fence.) And that’s yet another reason Kizuna couldn’t make too many concrete tri. references; being a theatrical movie, it needs to have as wide appeal as possible, and couldn’t risk locking out an audience that had a very high likelihood of not having seen it, much less to the end -- it may have somewhat been informed by tri.’s moderate financial success and precedent, but it ultimately was made for the original Adventure and 02 audience more than anything else.

I would say that, generally, while Kizuna is “controversial” for sure, reception towards the movie seems to be more positive than negative, it won over a large chunk of people who were burned out by tri., and it clearly seems to have been received well enough that it’s still being cashed in on a year after its release. The sheer existence of the upcoming 02-based movie is also probably a sign of Kizuna’s financial and critical success; Kinoshita confirmed at DigiFes 2020 that nothing was in production at the time, and stated shortly after the movie’s announcement that work on it had just started. So the decision to make it seems to have been made after eyeing Kizuna’s reception, and, moreover, the movie was initially advertised from the get-go with Kizuna’s director and writer (Taguchi and Yamatoya), meaning those two have curried enough goodwill from the fanbase that this can be used to promote the movie. (If not, you would think that having and advertising Seki would be the bigger priority.) While this is my own sentiment, I am personally doubtful official would have even considered 02 something remotely profitable enough on its own to cash in on if it weren’t for this entire sequence of events of 02′s snubbing in tri. revealing how much of a fanbase it had (especially with the sheer degree of “suspicious overcompensation” Kizuna had with its copious use of the 02 quartet and it tagging a remix of the first 02 ED on the Hanareteitemo single, followed by the drama CD and character songs), followed by Kizuna having success in advertising with them so heavily. Given all of the events between 2015 and now, it’s a bit ironic to see that 02 has now become basically the last resort to be able to continue anything in the original Adventure universe without getting too many people upset at them about it.

The bright side coming out of all of this is that, while it’s still a bit early to tell, now that we’re three years out from tri. finishing up and with Kizuna in the game, it seems there’s a possibility for things improving around tri.’s reception as well. Since a lot of the worst heated points of backlash against it have a very “you had to have been there” element (related to the PR, release schedule, and staff comments), those coming in “late” don’t have as much reason to be as pissed at it; I’ve seen at least one case of a fanartist getting back into the franchise because of Kizuna hype, watching tri. to catch up, casually criticizing it on Twitter, and moving on with their life, presumably because marathoning the whole thing being generally aware of what’ll happen in it and knowing Kizuna is coming after anyway gives you a lot less reason to be angry to the point of holding an outright grudge. Basically, even if you don’t like it, it’s much easier to actually go “yeah, didn’t like that,” not worry too much about it, and move on. Likewise, I personally get the impression that official has been starting to get a little more confident about digging up elements related to it. Unfortunately, a fairly recent tweet promoting the series getting put on streaming services still got quite a few angry comments implying that they should be deleting the scourge from the Internet instead, so there’s still a long way to go, but hopefully the following years will see things improve further...

In regards to the reboot, I -- and I think a lot of people will agree with me -- have a bit of a hard time reading what exact audience it’s trying to appeal to; we have a few hints from official that they want parents to watch it with their children, and that it may have been a necessary ploy in order to secure their original timeslot. So basically, the Adventure branding gets parents who grew up with the original series to be interested in it and to show it to their kids, and convinces Fuji TV that it might be profitable. But as most people have figured by now, the series has a completely different philosophy and writing style -- I mean, the interview itself functionally admits it’s here to be more action-oriented and to have its own identity -- and the target audience is more the kids than anything else. As for the Internet fanbase of veterans, most people have been critical of its character writing and pacing, but other than a few stragglers who are still really pissed, it hasn’t attracted all that much vitriol, probably because in the end it’s an alternate universe, it doesn’t have any obligation to adhere to anything from the original even if it uses the branding, and it’s clearly still doing its job of being a kids’ show for kids who never saw the original series nor 02, so an attempt to call it “disrespectful” to the original doesn’t have much to stand on. A good number of people who are bored of it decided it wasn’t interesting to them and dropped it without incident, while other people are generally just enjoying it for being fun, and the huge amount of Digimon franchise fanservice with underrepresented Digimon and high fidelity to null canon lore is really pleasing the side of the fanbase that’s into that (I mean, Digimon World Golemon is really deep in), so at the very least, there’s not a lot to be super-upset about.

#tri negativity #shiha's ask box #springcrafter

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vergilsfavoritebee · 3 years ago

Text

I posted 4,229 times in 2022

16 posts created (0%)

4,213 posts reblogged (100%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@clubolive

@phoenixyfriend

@decisiontoleave

@storylinecaroline

@tartrazeen

I tagged 141 of my posts in 2022

#heartstopper - 11 posts

#charlie spring - 9 posts

#nick nelson - 9 posts

#eeaao - 8 posts

#nick and charlie - 7 posts

#heartstopper comic - 7 posts

#heartstopper tv - 7 posts

#mine - 7 posts

#heartstopper netflix - 7 posts

#so true bestie - 4 posts

Longest Tag: 99 characters

#but it’s so important for queer ppl to have other queer ppl in their lives outside of relationships

My Top Posts in 2022:

I think people crush on Nick Nelson so hard because most of Heartstopper’s audience identifies way more with Charlie. But I really hope there are people who are like, “Where’s my Charlie Spring? 🥺”

Because wishing for a person who is out and proud, supports your coming out journey, is really smart and thoughtful, has badass music taste*, and built-in amazing friends is just as valid a thing to wish for as a goofy, sporty, golden-retriever partner with heart eyes.

🍃🍂🍃🍂

*you may disagree about Charlie’s taste, but I’m sorry, Charlie liking Radiohead and The Strokes matches my fantasy, sorry about it. And from the comics we know he likes Chloe Moriondo, The Vaccines, and Muse.

318 notes - Posted May 9, 2022

I made this just to gauge what people think. Is this accurate?

tumblr eras

2010: beginning of mainstream

true microblogging platform

fuckyeah! blogs

there were actual celebrities on tumblr

2012-2014: twee “tumblr girl” aesthetic and peak fandom (superwholock & homestuck)

“sides” of tumblr (i.e. “science side of tumblr, explain!” and hipster vs. fandom sides of tumblr)

I feel like viria’s and burdge’s PJO and HP art was especially big

“I like your shoelaces”

2014-2020: peak “tumblr discourse” (think Steven Universe and the rise of TERFs); kinda faded out after the kinning wars and that whole rabies thing

2015: John Green/fishingboatproceeds C*ck Monologue and end of post edits

2017-2019: peak musical theater fandom (Hamilton, Be More Chill, etc.), Voltron fandom

2018: p*rn ban and mass exit

2020: ATLA revival (fr that’s all I remember from 2020 tumblr)—jk remember November 2020? election results, Stacey Abrams, destielgate/superhell, et. al.

2021-present: collective memes that are only important on tumblr (e.g., horse plinko, it’s me i’m the ps5, slug reacts, blorbo, bug ass)

lots of general celebration of queer media (very different from early tumblr where it was all speculation and shipping)

Elon bought twitter, so kind of a new era for tumblr

also, of course, Dracula Daily

960 notes - Posted May 19, 2022

To the Nicks who will likely never see this post:

🍃🍃🍃

Most of the pre-existing Heartstopper fan base and certainly most of the fans on Tumblr are the Charlie Springs of the world. And for them, this show is about the possibility of healthy romance (i want to believe in romaaance) and creating a loving queer community.

But, gosh, I hope the Nick Nelsons of the world find this show. Now that Heartstopper is in the mainstream, I hope the people who have more marginalized identities, who never thought about being anything other than straight but for whom straight doesn’t feel *quite* right, those who deal with toxic masculinity/femininity and don’t feel like they have real friends, this show is for them as much as the Charlies.

And I hope the Nicks who watch this show seek out their Charlies, Taras, Darcys, Elles, Taos, Isaacs, etc. and find a community that loves them for who they are. And I hope one thing you Charlies, Taras, Darcys, Elles, Taos, Isaacs, etc. take from this show is to reach out. This show is so good at demonstrating how being yourself makes others want to be themselves, too!

Much love to the beautiful people on this hellsite:

💖💜💙,

💖💛💙,

🖤🤍💜,

💚🤍🖤,

💖❤️🧡💛💚💙💜,

❤️🧡🤍💗💖,

💛🤍💜🖤,

💙💗🤍💗💙.

1,143 notes - Posted April 28, 2022

[ID in alt text]

1,292 notes - Posted May 9, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Joe Locke Appreciation

Listen I know Kit absolutely BODIED Nick Nelson but Joe Locke also absolutely killed it.

Like his nervous giggles? His chemistry with the entire friendship group? Every interaction with Tori? And he’s already portraying Charlie’s mental illness so well and subtly. That boy is killin it.

3,174 notes - Posted April 26, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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endcant · 4 years ago

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aimless musings on subgenre, citypop, and internet subcultures

theres something very interesting about watching citypop become very mainstream in korea and watching that feed back into both western listeners’ opinions and also into the sometimes-cynical efforts of a variety of kpop producers

a lot of people in the youtube/kpop sphere talk about the growth of citypop as if it were a spontaneous wave that appeared out of nowhere with mariya takeuchi’s plastic love getting picked up by the youtube algorithm in like 2018 or whatever, but thats a very like online-ignorant view of the interaction between vintage japanese music and worldwide online EDM production. citypop has been used in future funk and vaporwave for almost a decade by now, and, as a result, a number of citypop songs took off on social media here and there before plastic love’s acceleration— dress down by kaworu akimoto is one of the big examples off the top of my head, but there’s likely many many more.

youtube

“Plastic Love” by Mariya Takeuchi (1984). if you haven’t heard this yet, you’d better listen to it now. The video that first went viral was uploaded in 2017

youtube

“Selfish High Heels” by Yung Bae, Macross 82-99, and Harrison (2014) is a popular Future Funk remixes of Dress Down by Kaoru Akimoto (1986)

people who haven’t been very aesthetically literate online over the years— musically or visually, since those things are tied in subcultures— treat things like they come from nowhere. there are ongoing subcultural conversations that lead to certain aesthetic choices, and when someone tries to cash in on a trend without understanding what the trend is, that leads people to call bullshit. calling bullshit is not meanspirited, in my opinion, because it very much is like somebody who can’t speak a language getting up in front of everybody and saying “hey, i’m fluent!” and then speaking some vaguely that-language-sounding nonsense. of course people who genuinely speak that language will be outraged instinctively. it feels like being mocked.

that’s why the difference between music producers picking up on a trend cynically and music producers picking up on a trend with earnest interest in that trend’s origins feels different, even if the producers are similarly distant from the original subculture that produced that trend.

youtube

“Lady” by Yubin (2018) committed hard to the 80s JP citypop aesthetic, musically and visually, down to the sets, all fairly early in the major resurgence.

i’m sure that anyone with a passing familiarity with citypop and kpop can ascertain that not all kpop producers know what citypop is and what makes it citypop. all they know is that it is on-trend and they have to make it. not all kpop listeners know what citypop is and what makes it citypop. all they know is their idol said citypop as a buzzword in their little prepared statement. all this results in some interesting moments for me as a Music Fan, Online.

here is where i get to the thing that spurred this post: loona “did a citypop” for their japanese comeback. it doesnt sound like citypop.

youtube

“Hula Hoop (Citypop Version)” by Loona (2021). It has very odd percussion rhythms and mixing for citypop, no real attempt at a citypop verse, and strangely sparse gestures towards citypop in the form of a few seconds of bass and some synthesized orchestral embellishments that were taken from the original mix …all in spite of a very disco-inspired melody that should have worked perfectly for citypop

this is not a very big deal, and im not mad about it or anything. when a kpop act i like gets saddled with an unfortunate B-Side track i dont tend to take it very hard. however, it did raise a little bit of musical discourse in the loona fandom— in the form of remixes.

youtube

“hula hoop if it was actually a citypop song” by loonahatetwinks and Olivia Soul on youtube. this one has an original instrumental that is spot-on for contemporary k-citypop

My most favorite one of these remixes is a futurefunk remix by ZSunder, one of the very best LOONA fan producers. The fact that ZSunder thought to make a future funk remix at all speaks more to an understanding of the mutually supportive relationship between citypop and EDM genres than most kpop citypop producers or fanmixers seem to care to know about.

youtube

“Hula Hoop (Future Funk Mix)” by ZSunder is futurefunk made and mixed with such love that it has the infectious summery energy of a polished, big-name future funk hit

in the comments of this video, some people seemed to get the citypop-future funk connection and some didnt. many did get it, don’t get me wrong! but also, its not all that surprising for some kpop-focused listeners to not know much about EDM subcultures and the reasons behind various trends among producers, since kpop as an institution tends to take influences from any genre and culture it likes and then decontextualize those influences by just having their names used as buzzwords in the blurbs the idols have to recite when variety show hosts ask them about their latest single. this isn’t a criticism of the genre or the fans really, it’s just a part of the kpop industry that is used to add shine to an endless firehose-like stream of polished pop tracks. there are some issues with using whole genres and subcultures with complex histories as buzzwords, but god help us if we ever want a pop industry to give its influences their dues.

anyway, the intention behind ZSunder’s future funk Hula Hoop remix happened to remind me me of why i love Yukika’s discography so much, especially the Soul Lady album. I’ve seen some reviews online baffled by parts of Soul Lady, because the album in general is an exploration of that relationship between citypop and modern/internet EDM. i’ve seen plenty of Soul Lady reviews especially baffled by pit-a-pet, saying something along the lines of “what’s with the modern-sounding dance track in the middle of a retro album?”, but i think that pit-a-pet is a futurefunk-inspired track, at least in the chorus. considering both that and the Chill Lo-Fi Interludes, it seems like estimate’s team put together Soul Lady for Yukika in a way that shows that they love citypop and understand the online-specific electronic music subcultures that led to citypop’s resurgence.

youtube

“pit-a-pet” by Yukika (2020). the stacatto, bass heavy chorus is futurefunk enough, but the soaring orchestral part in the final chorus seals the deal for my interpretation.

youtube

“All Flights Are Delayed (1 hour version)” by Yukika (2020). Estimate literally released an hour-long youtube mix of one of the Lo-Fi interludes on Soul Lady as part of their promotion, clearly inspired by “Lo-Fi anime beats to chill out to,” which is another example of online producers from around the world using Japanese samples as a focal point of their music

Estimate, in the end, is still a Kpop production company, just the same as BBC, so they have no inherent claim over citypop, but the way that their exploration of subgenres clearly comes from passion and interest on the part of their production staff makes it so that their work with Yukika rings true. on the other hand, i really appreciate Ryan S. Jhun’s work on LOONA’s JP comeback, as well as on Not Friends, but the citypop mix thing was so clearly an afterthought to the point where fans of Loona who like citypop seem mostly just irritated by the cynical-seeming attempt.

heres one last good modern kpop citypop MV that has nods to the internet culture that led to its revival in the form of the videography— vaporwave, future funk, lofi, and other internet genres along those lines tend to have videos consisting of looping anime and vhs clips. future funk in particular is known for this, especially since a lot of future funk music, esp early future funk, is just loops of very short, catchy segments of citypop and disco songs. it’s all about the loops

youtube

“My Type” by Yoon JongShin ft. Miyu Takeuchi (2019). This song is so dedicated to the retro JP citypop sound that it’s almost beyond my personal taste. The singer, Miyu, was a headlining act at a seoul citypop festival and sang this song as part of her act (:

youtube

this video of “Only One” by Conscious Thoughts (2015) has a looped clip as an example for comparison with My Type. it also has a pulsing sidechain compressor working in time with its drum beat in a way that is common for future funk and that i think is a good example for my pit-a-pet yukika comparison to future funk

i guess the takeaway here is that media is more and more online, and the creation and propagation of digital audio and video content has been in the hands of literally almost anybody who wants to do it for the past two decades thanks to garage band and fruityloops and audacity and tiktok and youtube and bandcamp and soundcloud and myspace and newgrounds and p2p file sharing and so on and so forth. and therefore like… as with all things, the consumer class more and more is also the creator class, and therefore every member of an audio-visual subculture will have the ability to discern what is and isnt made with knowledge of the audio-visual language of that subculture

#me using elder millennial phrasing for Loona Did A City Pop to imply how out-of -touch it is kfhajfhs #mine #music #long post #Youtube

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frit8 · 4 years ago

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Veteran Labour MP Dennis Skinner revived one of his old adversaries Margaret Thatcher’s put-downs when he branded Theresa May a “frit” during a debate in the House of Commons on Monday afternoon – but what does the unusual insult actually mean?

Mr Skinner has become known for his fiery speeches in the Commons during his near half a century as the “Beast of Bolsover”.

He told the PM: “Doesn’t the Prime Minister realise that she’s handed over power, not to people in this House, but she’s handed over power to the people she’s going to negotiate with – over in Europe?

Dennis Skinner branded Theresa May a 'frit' during a debate in the House of Commons. (Image: BBC)

“She looks very weak, and she is, as he said she had allowed the EU to demonstrate its power over any member state that tried to leave the bloc.

“Mrs Thatcher had a word for it, what she’s done today, F-R-I-T, she’s frit.”

Frit is a colloquial term that means frightened and is used primarily in the Lincolnshire dialect, although can be heard in other English regions.

But the PM hit back, saying: “And I have every confidence that if I had not listened to members of this House, then Mr Skinner would have stood up and complained about that.”

Thatcher’s legacy

Margaret Thatcher first used the word ‘frit’ in the House of Commons in 1983 (Photo: Getty)

Margaret Thatcher brought the term into political discourse during a debate on 19 April 1983.

She angrily told the then deputy Labour leader Denis Healey that he was “frit” of a general election after he told her she should “cut and run”.

From then on she was closely associated with the term, with her political opponents branding her “Madame Frit” and frequently asking her is she was frit during parliamentary debates.

The term’s usage in Westminister has outlived the former PM, who died in 2013, with former Labour leader Ed Miliband accusing David Cameron of being frit for refusing to take part in TV debates in 2015.

Beast of Bolsover

Dennis Skinner is one of the oldest MPs in Parliament. (Image: Nature Of The Beast documentary.)

Mr Skinner said he was given his moniker during a debate when one Tory backbencher asked the speaker to “stop this bloody beast of Bolsover”.

He has held the Bolsover seat in Derbyshire for Labour since 1970.

The 86-year old former miner’s outspoken role in Parliament has landed him in hot water with the speaker before, with him being suspended from the House on at least ten occasions, usually for “unparliamentary language”.

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coochiequeens · 4 years ago

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Under Xi Jinping, the Communist Party has brought back talk of family values and women’s importance as caretakers, messages that many women say are out of step with their thinking on when—or even whether—to marry.

The party has long prided itself on promoting gender equality, but also demands that households follow its priorities of the moment. The emphasis on women’s role in educating children and caring for the elderly comes as birth and marriage rates drop, trends that may have dire economic consequences.

In the early years of Communist rule, Mao Zedong urged women to join the workforce to help build the nation and to hold off on marrying and having children. Later came edicts that couples could have only one child to avoid runaway population growth.During Mr. Xi’s time in power, new party slogans emphasizing “family, family education and family virtues” or “pass on the red gene” have been coupled with efforts to censor voices on women’s rights.

In recent days, more than a dozen accounts used by women’s-rights groups were deleted from the Weibo social-media platform as well as cultural-discussion site Douban.com.

The deletions came as China awaits the results of a once-a-decade census, which had been expected by early April but have yet to be released. Demographers expect the data to show a sharp drop in births in 2020, the fourth straight decline following a brief rise in 2016, the first year after the one-child policy was lifted.

“What are they afraid of?” asks one user in reference to the deleted accounts. “Are they afraid of more women waking up? Are they panicking when seeing the fertility rates and marriage rates?”

Neither Douban nor Weibo responded to requests for comment. Weibo said in a post on its verified official account that some accounts were taken down because they were “related to illegal or hurtful information.” It didn’t elaborate. A spokeswoman for China’s National Statistics Bureau said in a Friday briefing that the agency needed additional time on the census because there was more data to process than in previous ones.

Many women, especially in cities, say they are in no hurry to get married and have a family.

Liang Wei, 28 years old, says she has gone on at most one date a year since her last serious relationship ended four years ago. With a job at a Shanghai education consulting firm, she is financially independent. She has told her anxious parents in Jiangxi province not to pressure her. “Maybe I’ll never marry,” she says.

Caroline Chen, 32, a personal trainer in Beijing, says that back in her hometown of Zhangjiakou, about an hour’s high-speed train ride north of Beijing, women her age would have married long ago and had children. Ms. Chen is content being single and indulging interests like shooting videos and going out with her friends.

“If somebody brought up marriage, I’d run away,” she says.

Most of the women who are resisting marriage and children wouldn’t call themselves feminists, said Leta Hong Fincher, who has written two books about Chinese women. “The biggest challenge for the government is ordinary women just pushing back against pressure to get married and have children,” she says.

In 1990, almost all Chinese women married before the age of 30, according to Wang Feng, a sociology professor at the University of California, Irvine. By 2015, in cities like Shanghai, around one-fifth of women were still unmarried by their 30th birthday, Prof. Wang estimates.

Mr. Xi has built Confucian values, including conservative views of women’s role in the family, into his China Dream of nationalist revival, says Derek Hird of Lancaster University. “If you’ve got these highly educated women who don’t want to get married, that then becomes part of the demographic worries and concerns that play into this larger discourse on family values.”

The state-sponsored All-China Women’s Federation, the main organ through which the Communist Party spreads its messaging for women, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Xi has called families the cells of society that underpin the prosperity of the nation. While saying there should be equality between women and men, Mr. Xi stresses that society must “give full play to the unique role of women in promoting the family virtues of the Chinese nation.”

Despite such rhetoric, fewer Chinese marry every year. In 2019, China’s marriage registrations were 6.6 per 1,000 people, compared with 9.6 in 2014. Part of the problem is that the decades of the one-child policy mean there are now simply fewer people of marriage age.

Alarmed also by a rise in divorces, Chinese authorities this year instituted a 30-day cooling-off period for couples who seek to split up. The wait, during which either party can opt out, can be especially disadvantageous for women trying to get out of abusive marriages, says Feng Yuan, co-founder of Equality, a Beijing group focused on preventing violence against women.

Of divorce cases that go to court, more than 70% are initiated by women, China’s highest-ranking judge has said. Lawyers and activists say judges routinely turn down divorce filings the first time around, ordering couples to try to work things out. Only 38% of cases adjudicated in court were granted a divorce in 2018, according to the Civil Affairs Ministry, the lowest ever.

Ethan Michelson, an Indiana University sociologist who analyzed tens of thousands of divorce cases between 2009 and 2016 in two Chinese provinces, found that women who allege domestic violence were no more likely to have divorces granted.

In recent days, Chinese internet users complained about the difficult divorce process after news spread of a Hunan province court that rejected a woman’s divorce request four times. The woman, Ning Shunhua, expressed frustration in an interview that the court wouldn’t consider evidence that her husband had beaten her. The Hengyang County People’s Court said on its Weibo account it was processing a fifth request and had rejected previous ones because Ms. Ning hadn’t provided enough evidence and her husband had pleaded with her multiple times for forgiveness.

Meanwhile, pockets of society and media are increasingly accepting of divorce or staying single. In a popular TV series set in Shanghai called “Nothing But Thirty,” one female protagonist ultimately decides to divorce her husband while another comes to terms with not finding love.

Wang Zheng, a women’s-studies professor at the University of Michigan, says if the government wants to defend marriage and raise fertility, “It should have policies supporting motherhood and not put all these burdens on women.”

Declines in state-funded child care are among reasons Chinese women are choosing to leave work, says Joseph Chamie, a former director of the United Nations Population Division. “The challenge for many countries [seeking to raise fertility rates], including China, is the balance women face between employment, careers and caring for children and family.”

Lü Pin, a Chinese activist based in New York whose Weibo account was taken down, says that women taking responsibility for the well-being of family members is “like having free labor.”

Jiang Xinyu, 55, who works as a domestic helper in Beijing, says she heard the government’s calls for “late marriage and late births” when she was young and didn’t get married until she was 31.

“At that time, whether in the countryside or in the cities, it was a good thing to get married late,” says Ms. Jiang. She hopes her 22-year-old daughter will choose life in a city, where she thinks women have more say in their own lives, rather than back home in the village.

“I had to take care of everybody. Life wasn’t easy,” she says.

If they want women to get married and have kids they should listen to what women want like affordable childcare. If the want women to stay married maybe they should teach men and boys the skills to hold on to a marriage instead for fretting about boys not being “manly” enough because they like pop music.

#China #women’s rights #women and marriage #The problem is the men aren’t worth marrying

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the-funtime-autocrat · 5 years ago

Quote

The mainstream media hears what it wants to hear and has its own narratives.

Stephen F. Cohen (1938-2020).

Stephen Frand Cohen (November 25, 1938 – September 18, 2020) was an American scholar of Russian studies. His academic work concentrated on modern Russian history since the Bolshevik Revolution and Russia's relationship with the United States.

Cohen was a contributing editor to The Nation magazine, published and partially owned by his wife Katrina Vanden Heuvel. Cohen was a founding director of the reestablished American Committee for East–West Accord which was revived in 2015.

During the Cold War, Cohen was critical of both Western hawks and also the Soviet government, which banned him from visiting the country from 1982 to 1985.[7] He supported the perestroika, the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev.[7] In his book War with Russia?, Cohen explains his suspicion that at "least one U.S.-Soviet summit seems to have been sabotaged. The third Eisenhower-Khrushchev meeting, scheduled for Paris in 1960, was aborted by the Soviet shoot-down of a US U-2 spy plane sent, some think, by 'deep state' foes of detente."[8]

Cohen said that President Vladimir Putin's handling of the Ukrainian crisis, his annexation of Crimea, and his support for rebel fighters in the east were in reaction to the aggressive behavior of the United States and its allies, when they supported the overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych. In a June 30, 2014 article in the left-liberal publication The Nation, Cohen criticized the US political-media establishment for being silent about "Kiev's atrocities" in the Donbass region.[9] Cohen stated that even if Putin's reaction was aggressive, the US should immediately negotiate with Russia to avoid escalation of the conflict.[10]

Cohen said that the US continued the Cold War after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. He cited President Bill Clinton's backtracking on the promise of his predecessor not to extend NATO eastward and the flawed interpretation of an "American victory" and a "Russian defeat," which led US leaders to believe that Russia would submit completely to US foreign policy.[11] Cohen cited the cancellation of the ABM Treaty in 2002 and the refusal to admit Russia to the World Trade Organization at the G8 summit in Saint Petersburg in 2006. Cohen also criticized the "pointless demonization" of Vladimir Putin as an "autocrat."[11]

In a July 2015 interview, Cohen said: "Even Henry Kissinger — I think it was in March 2014 in The Washington Post — wrote this line: 'The demonization of Putin is not a policy. It’s an alibi for not having a policy.' And then I wrote in reply to that: That's right, but it’s much worse than that, because it's also that the demonization of Putin is an obstacle to thinking rationally, having a rational discourse or debate about American national security. And it’s not just this catastrophe in Ukraine and the new Cold War; it's from there to Syria to Afghanistan, to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, to fighting global terrorism. The demonization of Putin excludes a partner in the Kremlin that the U.S. needs, no matter who sits there."[10]

In an article for The Nation that was published in February 2014, he made an accusation of "media malpractice,"[12] including the journalism of The New York Times and The Washington Post, with the result that the "American media on Russia today are less objective, less balanced, more conformist and scarcely less ideological than when they covered Soviet Russia during the Cold War."[13]

In a May 17, 2017 interview with Tucker Carlson, Cohen said: "You and I have to ask a subversive question: are there really three branches of government, or is there a fourth branch of government – these intel services?" He also stated that a military alliance that President Barack Obama had tried to establish with Putin against terrorism was "sabotaged by the Department of Defense and its allies in the intelligence services." Each of Trump's efforts to "cooperate with Russia" was "thwarted [by] a new leak of a story."

Cohen died from lung cancer on September 18, 2020 at his home in New York City, at the age of 81.

#Stephen Cohen #American Foreign Policy #Russia #RIP Stephen Cohen #Media Control #media manipulation #Mass media

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tlbodine · 6 years ago

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Essential Zombie Media

A thing that’s come up over and over again in early reviews for River of Souls is the sentiment that it’s not-like-other-zombie-stories. And that was certainly my intention. But you don’t get to make a good deconstruction without a healthy knowledge and appreciation of the genre you’re twisting around.

So here is a list of what I would consider essential zombie media -- whether you want to write a story that plays it straight with the tropes, or one that twists everything around, or you just want something new to watch/read.

Your own suggestions and ideas are more than welcome in the comments! Please reblog with your own favorite zombie book/movie/TV show/comic, I’d love to discover some I haven’t seen.

The Origins

The generally agreed-upon first zombie movie is White Zombie (1932), starring Bela Lugosi, but I think it’s safe to skip it on account of both obscurity and some troubling racism. The Haitian-Voodoo zombi mythos and tradition is something best kept separate from our modern ideas of the walking dead.

Instead, start your journey with George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968), which starts codifying the tropes that persist well into modern media (including, like most modern stories, never using the word ‘zombie’).

Then compare and contrast with the Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend (1954), which is ostensibly about vampires but I think basically invented the modern zombie genre -- from the post-apocalyptic setting to the spread of undeath by way of disease vectors.

Follow that up with Dawn of the Dead (1978), where George Romero revisits his Living Dead universe with the help of Dario Argento (if you’re interested, there’s a 2004 remake that’s decent, but unnecessary). And then, just to wrap up the trilogy, skip on ahead to Day of the Dead (1985).

For extra credit, play the videogame Dead Rising (2006), which draws liberally from Dawn of the Dead and also allows you to beat zombies to death with literally anything you can find in a shopping mall (I can’t speak for the sequels as I’ve never played them). Dead Rising is far from the only game franchise to use zombies (more on that in a bit), but it pays homage directly to the genre in a way that many others don’t.

The Zombie Renaissance

For a long while, zombies sort of fell out of fashion. Oh, there were some decent takes on the concept, like Re-Animator (1985) and Dead Alive (1992) but by and large zombies in the 1980s and 90s were played for laughs.

But then they made a great big comeback, stronger maybe than they had ever been before. What happened?

Well, for one, they stayed close to the public conscience thanks to video games. Games and zombies are a perfect fit. Their shambling movement and slow, stupid behavior makes them a great choice for imperfect AI programming. They’re people-shaped, which makes them easy to animate, but they can be gross and deformed and scary, which makes them fun for your art team. And since they’re inhuman and dead, you can kill them in any way you’d like without feeling bad about it.

Which is probably why zombies have been part-and-parcel of the gaming world since Entombed (1982) was released on the Atari. Doom (1993) was wildly popular, and just a few years later we’d start the Resident Evil franchise, which became both hugely influential as games and films. And lest we forget, Blizzard was giving us undead in Warcraft by the early 2000s, rising to greater prominence by World of Warcraft in its heydey (especially Wrath of the Lich King).

But I’d argue that the number one single most important ingredient in the horror revival was Danny Boyle’s 2002 film 28 Days Later.

28 Days Later was huge because it breathed fresh life (pun intended) into a genre that had gone stale. The monsters in 28 Days Later aren’t the walking dead at all -- they’re just people infected with a virus similar to rabies that makes them deadly (compare and contrast with The Crazies, both the 1973 original and 2010 remake, which deals with a similar concept.

But thanks to being an excellent film with some wonderfully creepy-gross effects, 28 Days Later reignited fearful imaginations. It also introduced the world to the idea of fast zombies as an alternative to the usual shambling monsters.

A couple years later, zombie content exploded. Aside from the Dawn of the Dead remake in 2004, and some Resident Evil and Doom film interpretations, we got Shaun of the Dead (2004), which is both hilarious and an exceptional zombie film.

There’s also 28 Weeks Later (2007), a sequel to 28 Days (there is much debate as to which is better, I’m in the Days camp) and Planet Terror (2007), a personal favorite and one of the two films in the special Grindhouse double-feature. I’d also like to shout out Pontypool (2009) and, of course, the horror-comedy Zombieland (2009).

ZOMBIE MANIA

Probably nothing has been as influential in drawing zombie discourse into the public as AMC’s hit TV show The Walking Dead (2010), drawing on the graphic novel series of the same name. With a level of gore and violence rarely seen on network TV, a cast of memorable characters and an anyone-can-die narrative, it ignited a zombie fervor greater than anything we’d ever seen.

The Walking Dead overlapped with a cultural apocalypse zeitgeist. Doomsday prepping started to go mainstream, and people started to plan their own personal zombie apocalypse survival plan. Hell, the CDC adopted zombie apocalypse language as a way to talk about real-world applications of survival knowledge. Zombies and survivalism now go hand-in-hand, for better or worse.

No discussion of a zombie apocalypse is complete without Max Brooks’ World War Z (2007), which bears little resemblance to the film that shares its name. We should also make a shout-out for his more comedic companion volume, The Zombie Survival Guide (2003), which laid a foundation for what followed.

For extra credit, play the TellTale Games: The Walking Dead (2012) and compare/contrast with the TV show and graphic novel. Then compare that with Train to Busan (2016), a Korean film that plays some tropes straight while turning others on their heads (it’s also one of my favorite films on this list).

SYMPATHETIC ZOMBIES

While the zombie apocalypse narrative took root and captured the imaginations of many, others started to look at things from a different angle.

What if, they asked, the zombies were the heroes rather than the villains?

John Ajvide Lindqvist, who you might know for the vampire story Let the Right One In, was ahead of his time with this on: Handling the Undead (2004) is a book that’s simultaneously heartbreaking and deeply unsettling in its portrayal of the dead returning to life and what that might mean to those they’d left behind. Compare and contrast that with the TV show Les Revenants (2004), which deals with a similar premise (there was an American remake, but I can’t speak for it as I didn’t watch it - seriously, just watch the subtitles and enjoy the French show).

But not every zombie-protagonist story was so heart-wrenching. Look at Isaac Marion’s Warm Bodies (2010), and the film adaptation. There’s also Breathers! A Zombie’s Lament by S.G. Browne that is both hilarious and scathing.

Follow those up with Diana Rowland’s My Life as a White Trash Zombie (2012) and the comic book/TV show iZombie (2015), both of which feature pale-haired, witty female medical examiners with a taste for brains.

And finally, a shout-out to The Santa-Clarita Diet (2016), a hilariously dark and over-the-top gross show featuring Drew Barrymore as a zombie trying to get her life back together.

#how to write horror #zombies #horror movies #horror #film recs #house of lazarus

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carolinesiede · 5 years ago

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My 2019 Writing Roundup

Not to get too New Age-y, but 2019 felt like a very ~transformative~ year for me. I turned 30, got a literary agent, and became a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association. After feeling like I’d hit a plateau in my late 20s, it was nice to experience a sense of forward momentum again, even if the lack of financial stability in this career is a constant background stress. Still, on the whole my sixth year as a full-time freelancer felt like a time where I kinda, sorta figured out what I’m doing. Instead of struggling in murky waters, I’m at least actively swimming in them.

I continued to write for The A.V. Club, The Spool, and Consequence of Sound, plus took on new outlets in The Verge and Polygon. I also had an article about romantic comedies published in Southwest Airline’s in-flight magazine and was asked to talk about Hallmark Channel Christmas rom-coms on Canadian radio. Speaking of rom-coms, 2019 was the second year (and first full-year) for When Romance Met Comedy, and I feel like the column really came into its own this year. It’s by far the biggest undertaking of my career (I’ve covered 47 films in total so far!), and I’m really excited to continue shaping its voice in 2020.

Beyond finding a regular fitness routine and seeing Cats onstage for the first time, the biggest personal project I undertook in 2019 was immersing myself in the world of film and film criticism—something I started in mid-2018 and really amped up this year. My goal was to watch 300 new-to-me movies this year, and I wound up watching 355! (Including 129 new releases.) Regular access to CFCA screenings and screeners allowed me to be a bigger part of the film critic conversation than I’ve been in the past, which was exciting. I also tackled a bunch of blindspots from the past decade and put together a list of my 50 favorite films of the 2010s, which you can see right here:

Over on the TV side of things, I bid farewell to the Netflix Defenders universe with binge-review coverage of the final seasons of The Punisher and Jessica Jones. Those Marvel binge-reviews were a big part of my early career, so seeing that universe come to a close was bittersweet. It’s always nerve-wracking when a semi-regular assignment ends, but I’m hopeful that new projects will pop up to take its place.

Putting together this year-end retrospective also made me realize I was on a lot of podcasts in 2019, including jumping in as a regular guest on the Cinematic Universe podcast in the latter half of the year. Podcasting is something I really enjoy (I find talking so much easier than writing!), and I’d love to do more of it in the future.

With that, I’ll leave you with wishes for a Happy New Year and a roundup of all the major writing I did in 2019. If you enjoyed my work this year, it would mean a lot if you would support me on either Kofi or PayPal. Or just share some of your favorite pieces with your friends!

My 15 favorite TV shows of 2019

My 15 favorite films of 2019

Op-eds and Features

“Rom-Com Revival” for Southwest The Magazine

Avengers: Endgame doesn’t earn its big “girl power” moment

An MCU breakup could be a terrific step forward for Spider-Man

“What is a weekend?”: A catch-up guide to Downton Abbey’s cast and characters

Nope, seeing Cats the musical will not help you understand Cats the movie

Let’s talk about the ending of Greta Gerwig’s Little Women

TV Coverage

Doctor Who’s 2019 New Year’s Special

The Punisher S2

Jessica Jones S3

The Crown S3

This Is Us S3 and S4

Supergirl S4 and S5

Rent: Live

Jane The Virgin fill-in

The Tony Awards

The Little Mermaid Live!

When Romance Met Comedy

27 Dresses doesn’t deserve your hate and neither does Katherine Heigl

Bride & Prejudice weaves an impressive cultural critique into a Bollywood-inspired Jane Austen update

How does the original What Women Want hold up two decades later?

In 1990, Pretty Woman changed romantic comedies forever

For one brief, wonderful moment, Eddie Murphy reinvented himself as a romantic-comedy star

20 years later, 10 Things I Hate About You remains a model for how to do the teen rom-com right

Lloyd Dobler is Cameron Crowe’s original manic pixie dream date

We're just not that into He’s Just Not That Into You

Romance is the weakest aspect of one of the most celebrated rom-coms of the ’90s

To All The Boys and Netflix reminded the world why it’s smitten with rom-coms

Imagine Me & You gives a lesbian love story the classic rom-com treatment

Queer resilience thrives in this rom-com about love in the time of the AIDS crisis

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is bubbly and smart, just like Marilyn Monroe

The Best Man capped off one decade of black rom-coms and inspired another

Nicolas Cage romanced Cher in one of the weirdest rom-coms ever made

After a decade of discourse, (500) Days Of Summer is basically the Fight Club of rom-coms

It’s No Strings Attached versus Friends With Benefits in a rom-com showdown

Adam Sandler’s sweetness makes The Wedding Singer a rom-com worth growing old with

The Philadelphia Story delivered one of the most star-studded love triangles ever

13 Going On 30 made Jennifer Garner a rom-com star—and gave tween girls a sleepover staple

Celebrate Halloween with Warm Bodies, the film that tried to make zom-rom-coms a thing

In the 2010s, rom-coms went indie and saved themselves in the process

Sandra Bullock became a rom-com star with a cozy love story about crushing loneliness

With just two storylines, The Holiday paid tribute to the entire rom-com genre

The A.V. Club

The maudlin Five Feet Apart anoints a new pair of winning young stars

After thinks it’s beautiful, that’s what makes it tiresome

Teen Spirit has plenty of it

Ramy is a Muslim millennial comedy with impressively big questions on its mind

Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson’s new comedy The Hustle pulls an inelegant con

The Sun Is Also A Star turns a compelling premise into a lackluster teen romance

The Art Of Racing In The Rain is a doggone mess

You don’t need to love Springsteen to like the thoughtful crowd-pleaser Blinded By The Light

The well-meaning Brittany Runs A Marathon can’t quite go the distance

Renée Zellweger zings in a Judy Garland biopic that clangs

The Downton Abbey movie is as pleasant as a cozy cup of tea

Tall Girl’s familiar teen love story fails to reach new heights

The new Lady And The Tramp feels like a ’90s update of a ’50s classic

The Verge/Polygon

Tigers Are Not Afraid puts a Pan’s Labyrinth spin on a poignant Mexican drug war story

The gloriously surreal space epic Ad Astra is half a great movie

An AI affair fuels a midlife crisis in the eerie science fiction drama Auggie

The painfully generic new animated Addams Family deserves no snaps

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is boldly bonkers

Netflix’s apocalyptic teen comedy Daybreak is an exhausting sugar rush

The Current War is basically Amadeus for electricity

Is Playmobil: The Movie just a reskinned Lego Movie?

The Spool

The LEGO Movie 2: Everything is About Half as Awesome

Isn’t It Romantic: An Instant Postmodern Rom-Com Classic

The Aftermath: Sumptuous but Surface-Level Melodrama

Late Night: A Sparkling Comedy With a Lot On Its Mind

Plus One: An Indie Millennial When Harry Met Sally

The Farewell is A Poignantly Funny Goodbye

Where’d You Go, Bernadette: A whimsical mid-life crisis

After the Wedding: A grown-up drama that doesn’t trust its own story

Falling Inn Love: Love, New Zealand Style

Paradise Hills: Harajuku Gossip Girls

Consequence of Sound

Brexit Takes An Engaging But Ultimately Shallow Look At the 2016 Vote

What Men Want Flips the Script and Finds Mixed Results

Dumbo Delights Without Ever Fully Taking Flight

Someone Great Continues Netflix’s Romantic Comedy Revival

Aladdin Has the Animated Classic’s Songs, But Less of Its Personality

MindMeet Interviews

Nadine Hack and Global Citizens Circle: Creating Connectedness

Podcast Appearances

Filmography: When Harry Met Sally

Filmography: Tim Burton’s mature films (Ed Wood, Sweeney Todd, Big Fish, Big Eyes)

Debating Doctor Who MCU Edition: Avengers: Endgame

Cinematic Universe: Alita: Battle Angel

Hall of Faces: Friends

Cinematic Universe: Joker

Hall of Faces: The West Wing

CBC Radio: Hallmark Christmas movies

Cinematic Universe: The Wolverine

Cinematic Universe: Awards Special—The Cuppies 2019 (Part One)

And here are similar year-end wrap-ups I did in 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2013.

#Best Of #Year End

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bradypnoea · 4 years ago

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As a new Loki and Tom Hiddleston fan, I’m actually pretty jealous to see someone (aka you) be a fan of his for over 10 years now. I didn’t even know that TH has also played Loki for 10 years as well. What’s it like supporting the actor as well as witness what the filmmakers have done to his character? You’ve probably seen so much happen within the fandom and I wish I got to see how rowdy and wild it got (but at the same time, I’m glad I avoided that).

First of all, welcome! I'm terrible at joining fandoms full stop so I have to commend you on jumping in at such a tumultuous time. I’ll try to make this a brief overview of the early days, ‘cause I know I could go on for hours. I can’t speak to the atmosphere on platforms other than Tumblr really, though I have a vague awareness of the goings-on and Major Historical Events on Facebook and Twitter.

Honestly, my comparably extensive experience as a My Chemical Romance fan prepared me well for this fandom, with minor differences (obviously). From 2011-2015, I had to describe Tom by way of, “Did you see Thor/The Avengers? He plays Loki. No, he doesn’t look gaunt and greasy in real life.” Similar to band forums and chat boards, Tumblr offered a respite from that. A major portion of the contemporary user-base was a direct reflection of the surge in UK media popularity, propelled by personalities that enjoyed — let’s say — ‘off-center’ pop culture. The TWH fandom grew steadily yet in my opinion managed to retain an almost insular climate, though I remember Loki content wasn’t far removed from the inescapable Superwholock deluge which annoyed many users.

Day to day happenings were almost mundane: Tom tweeted with some regularity, shared daily song recommendations, interacted with replies, and posted seemingly anything that popped into his head. It felt almost gratuitous, particularly the second half of 2013, the earnest sincerity and encouragement of his own supporters. Tumblr seized that energy and used it as inspiration. Artists became well known for incredible graphics work, fic writers gained popularity in and outside of Tumblr, blogs popped up cataloguing photos of the man himself in varying degrees of tight trousers, the prominence of few cosplayers elicited threads of discourse which continue to this day. If I recall correctly a few fan projects actually made their way to Tom, notably a photobook involving ‘Wendy’ the false moustache. (I think there may still exist a self-recorded video documenting his receipt/reaction of it?) And I have to specifically mention the user Torilla, whose tireless work in sourcing and providing high quality photos to the masses cannot be overstated.

Such is the nature of modern fandom however, when a person attracts such a large number of supporters, the support can quickly shift from admiration to expectation to violation. I can’t recall the exact dates offhand but between ‘13-’15, personal photos were taken from Facebook and widely shared, real people were impersonated online by fans, crowds started to become physically threatening. Not to mention the increasingly invasive actions of paparazzi and fan photographers. When ‘Coriolanus’ premiered at the Donmar late 2013 it was presumed that Tom’s activity on Twitter had declined due to a busy working schedule; by the end of the play’s run, stage door signings had been suspended for safety and privacy concerns.

Throughout 2014, between back to back to back to back projects, fan misbehaviour, and growing scrutiny on how public figures presented themselves online, it was rare to hear anything firsthand. By the time The Night Manager began filming in summer ‘15 the Tumblr fandom comprised discussions of production footage, press releases, a few interviews, and fan-generated content. In my mind that was the last period that the ‘community’ felt manageable — discourse was inevitable but fairly reasonable, even as films were unfavourably reviewed by critics.

Then came May 2016, and nothing was ever the same. Okay lmao that’s so melodramatic, but it’s not inaccurate! I’m not going into detail here but believe me, only since the West End run of ‘Betrayal’ has the fandom been revived to a sustainable degree. Optimism felt like a chore, especially when ‘Endgame’ premiered, and there was no shortage of negative assumptions about Tom’s seemingly indefinite hiatus from appearing on screen. Certainly, other users will have differing experiences and opinions on the 2016-2018 period, but I truly can’t imagine anyone was having an overly pleasant time.

As for my personal support/witnessing of MCU Loki’s character development, I probably have an unusually pessimistic-passive set of expectations, and it’ll be very interesting to return to this after I’ve watched the series! The Internet Joke goes something like, “I respect your interpretation of this character unless it’s different than mine,” which is funny! But I learned it’s almost a waste of energy to attempt interpreting nearly any MCU character because the inconsistent writing. I remember my dissatisfaction during the first watch of ‘The Dark World’ and afterward reading that Loki’s death was reversed when early test audiences reacted with confusion and disappointment, I understood then that the broad appeal of Loki was so necessary for profit that Marvel/Disney would never allow the character the room to shock and potentially repulse audiences like I wanted.

Clearly I’m still intrigued by fan interpretations because I’m consuming and curating fanworks for zero dollars(!!) but I let go of the expectation to be satisfied by canon MCU content, though I’ll admit it hasn’t stopped me from being disappointed by MCU writing! It also hasn’t softened the disappointment of encountering poor fan behaviour, but of course I pick my battles on that front. I’ve heard curiosity and compassion can solve all problems in time so I’ll keep working on that, offering it when I can.

With that I have to thank you for your interest and your kind message, I hope you find a few people to really connect with, and feel free to return to me if you’d like. My fingers are crossed for the next few years to be more pleasant for us, and the fandom can meet one another on respectable terms, learn and grow and all that. No accounting for trolls on Twitter though lmao

Oh! My favourite direction to send interested newcomers is toward the inactive remnant of thfrustration.tumblr.com (link), the preeminent Tumblr fan-fiction catalogue established in May 2012. It’s a nicely preserved record of the Golden Age as I like to call it. Be prepared to cringe a little! Much love. b|x

#b|anons #b|asks #long post #The Rest

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upshotre · 6 years ago

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APC: Time For Reconciliation Is Now

By Salisu Lukman Kindly recall that sometime in June this year (2019), I sent what I called a Private Memo on the issues of reported disciplinary actions against Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State by the National Working Committee (NWC). Of course, the Memo noted that before the 2019 elections, the NWC had similarly suspended former Governors Rochas Okorocha and Ibikunle Amosun of Imo and Ogun States respectively. Between June and now, Sen. Lawal Shuaibu, APC Deputy National Chairman, North and Alh. Inuwa Abdulkadir, APC Vice National Chairman, North West have also been similarly suspended. It would appear that the leadership problems facing the party are getting deeper and in the circumstances the business of building the party will be sacrificed. In my letter of July 19, 2019, I have tried to highlight some of the issues of party building as follows: 1. Need to prioritise initiatives to reconcile party leaders; 2. Completing work on the party’s membership database; 3. Strengthening internal processes and procedures for decision on mode of primaries; 4. Resolving all challenges related to party funding; 5. Issues of discipline; 6. Provision of Code of Conduct; and 7. Legislative Benchmarks for especially APC NASS members. Sir, I can imagine that you are not happy with my argument in my July 19 letter to the effect that “emerging realities whereby existing leadership disputes within the party are becoming more and more complicated by actions, inactions, commission or omission. Worse still, all these are compounded by the absence of statutory meetings of party organs as provided in the constitution of the party. This is quite disturbing. I want to strongly appeal to you, sir, to revive what I will refer as the essential Comrade Adams, that excellent negotiator, mediator and conciliator.” Why do I have to take such a position? Perhaps, a reminder to you about how hard you have worked under extreme circumstances to win national recognition and emerge as a national political leader in the country may be important at this point. It was a life journey incubated in the shop floor of Nigerian textile factory – Arewa Textiles, Kaduna, which harvested those negotiating and mediating talents in you that eventually crowned you as an indisputable leader of Nigerian workers. Deploying those negotiating and mediating talents in the services of Nigerian workers’ struggle for workplace and social justice, you distinctively rose as a trade union leader from a steward to General Secretary of a leading industrial union – National Union of Textile, Garment and Tailoring Workers Union (NUTGTWN) – and eventually President of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC). The narrative of your personal development, from the little I know, was about sacrifice, commitment and belief in societal development, based on which minimum standards of livelihood and opportunities for citizens can be guaranteed. Sir, your life history is so rich and full of inspirations. Many in your generation of union leaders hardly move beyond the trade union platforms. You are the first unionists to graduate from being NLC President, served as a two-term state Governor and emerge as the National Chairman of the governing APC. It is in recognition of this that I argued in my congratulatory letter of June 25, 2018 when you emerged as the APC National Chairman that “you have clearly inherited all the blessings of Imoudu and you are providing illustrious political leadership to our nation in the tradition and vision of our labour movement as founded by Imoudu and his peers of 1940s. However, unlike Imoudu and all our illustrious labour leaders before you, you are able to successfully progress to the national political stage, first as two-term elected governor of Edo State and now as National Chairman of the Governing party, APC. For those of us who may be blessed with some capacity to engage in national discourse, could simplistically reduce this to some public commentaries and in the process exercise some discretionary judgements. I want to sincerely say that it is not a small achievement to start from that humble beginning in the labour movement and emerge as the National Chairman of the Governing party. Congratulations sir!” Since emerging as the National Chairman of our party, I have had cause to review decisions and actions you have taken as the National Chairman and often I have difficulty reconciling many of the decisions and actions you took with the leadership standards you upheld. For instance, I recall how in Textile Union you don’t allow any possible grievances graduating into leadership conflicts at all levels of the organisation. Some of those grievances get promoted by managements and became difficult to handle based on strict applications of labour relations dispute resolution procedures. As General Secretary, you always ensured prompt interventions, which most times includes your direct involvement. To the best of my recollection, all the cases of interventions led to resolutions of the grievances, sometimes coming with open threats to leaders of the union, especially your person. Without going into specifics, these were the attributes which naturally and eventually elevated you to the leadership of NLC. And I can say without fear of any contradiction, they were attributes that accounted for your successes as NLC President. For those eight (8) years (1999 – 2007) of your tenure as NLC President, in a very difficult circumstances, you were able to provide the needed leadership to Nigerians to engage the garrison disposition of the Obasanjo administration with its anti-people policy credentials that often only corruptly enrich many PDP leaders. Notwithstanding outright Federal Government sponsored hostility, regularly followed by attempted inducement of union leaders, it was to your credit that you were able to keep union leaders in the country united. In addition, to sustain a united front, you were also able to ensure that emerging leadership disputes in affiliate unions were addressed and resolved promptly. There were many of such cases, which included the cases of Maritime (MWUN), Banks (NUBIFIE), Local Government (NULGE), Chemical (NUCFLANMPE), Construction (NUCECFWW) Unions among many others. It was to your leadership credit as NLC President, even when many of the leadership disputes in these unions threatened their corporate existence, they were never allowed to degenerate to the point of either factionalising the unions or NLC. Sir, many people may not know your capacity in wielding a united leadership through very difficult negotiations. Often, politicians tend to argue that politics is different. But you have demonstrated that it is also possible for politics to be played in a conventional way that permits deployment of those negotiating and mediating skills. With pride, I can recall how in 2016, you were able to manage the transition in Edo that saw the emergence of Governor Obaseki as your successor whereby after some bitter internal contests for the Governorship ticket of APC, involving eight (8) aspirants, you were able to unite all the aspirants to support the victory of Governor Obaseki in the 2016 Edo elections. That was very exemplary and exceptional, and perhaps could be one of the factors that made many APC leaders, including President Buhari to invite you to serve as APC National Chairman. Deducing from that, one would argue that the expectation of many is that you would be able to deploy those personal skills and attributes in managing the party. Since your emergence as National Chairman, have you been able to do that? Sincerely sir, I don’t want to judge you. However, my instinct is to forward to you a copy of your declaration speech APC: REPOSITIONING OUR PARTY FOR A UNITED NIGERIA, which you presented to APC members and supporters on May 10, 2018 at Transcorp Hilton, Abuja and invite you to objectively and honestly review it. Out of all the issues, I will kindly appeal to you to just confirm to yourself which of them could you verify that progress is being made satisfactorily. Above all, sir, can we in all honesty justify why Chief John Odigie-Oyegun had to be asked to vacate the leadership of the party on accounts of your management records of the party’s affairs between June 2018 and now? Some pointers may be helpful in this respect. Many of us who are members of the party could not understand why it took more than two years after winning the 2015 election for Chief Oyegun to convene meeting of organs of the party, notably, National Executive Committee (NEC) and National Caucus. Today, more than four months after winning the 2019 elections and almost one year after the last NEC meeting on August 30, 2018, no sign of any meeting in sight. The only organ that is meeting is the NWC. As a loyal party member, I have difficulty reconciling the absence of meetings of superior organs given all the challenges the party is going through, warranting the suspension of three serving governors (two of them now Senators) and two members of NWC. We had challenges that deprived our party the opportunity to contest 2019 election in Rivers, stripped our party of electoral victory in Zamfara, engendered highest levels of leadership animosities in Imo, Ogun, Adamawa, Bauchi, Kano, Ondo, Oyo, etc. Today, with Kogi and Edo elections approaching, similar leadership animosities are defining political life of the party in those states. My distant observation is that there is hardly any different between your approach in managing the party and the way Chief Oyegun had managed it during his tenure. Instead, things have really got worse and painfully, it would appear, you are in denial of this reality. Perhaps, one need to ask, why was it impossible to replicate the Edo 2016 model of leadership reconciliation to facilitate some minimum reconciliation in Rivers, Zamfara, Bauchi, Adamawa, Ondo, Oyo, etc.? What happened to those your excellent negotiation and mediation skills, which always become active at very critical moment of your leadership. Imaging between 1999 and 2007, an affiliate of the NLC or a State Council being technically disqualified from participating in a national strike. I can bet my life that you will do all you can to prevent that from happening. You will never give excuses. The cases of the APC being unable to contest the election in Rivers and stripped of electoral victory in Zamfara state is antithetical to the brand of leadership you represent. What is it that can be done now given all that has happened? Sir, there is the need to urgently refocus our party and all our leaders on the most critical political issue in the country, which is about reconciling our leaders at all levels. This is urgently needed in order to recreate the electoral advantage of our party. It is an advantage, which will keep diminishing once our leaders continue to grandstand and take positions with reference to technicalities. Grandstanding with reference to technicalities is the trade mark of Nigerian lawyers, with due apologies, which has produced the reality whereby the capacity of our legal and judicial systems to deliver justice are weak. Once our reference point is some of those technical details, which rationalises where we are, the tendency is that all proposals will be reduced to conquest scenarios, which may only deepen and create new conflicts. Sir, any day, anytime, I will always argue that if there is any one leader that can produce negotiated settlement of all the leadership challenges we have as a party, you will be that one leader. It is a painful reality that we have found ourselves in situation of near stalemate in many states under your leadership. Embarrassingly, our leaders, including your very self, appear to be stubbornly inconsiderate of other options of resolving these challenges. If the electoral loss of Oyo, Imo, Zamfara, Adamawa and Bauchi are not a wakeup call to the dangers that lie ahead, what could have been? Is it that our leaders are indifferent to the possible return of PDP even when it is clear to any discerning mind that today’s PDP is a caricature of 2015 PDP? At this point, I will still appeal to you to reconsider your strategy and remember how much progress we made in our struggle for democratic governance in Nigeria. In all my years of association with you, I never imagine that one day you will be so comfortable as to be indifferent to challenges that could threaten our national democratic development. You may be angry why I have to resort to writing you, but I have very little option. Unlike many of our leaders, I am confident that you are one person that knows very well that my interest is the democratic development of Nigeria. I am not seeking to engage you based on any personal demand but based on those same old commitments of engaging our leaders to consider proposals for our national development, which you have always encouraged. May God guide you and all our APC leaders to initiate processes of internal reconciliation in the APC! Amin. Salisu Lukman is Director General of the Progressives Governor's Forum. Read the full article

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tevnakurdi · 5 years ago

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Turkish foreign policy 100 years after the Lausanne treaty: between hopes and illusions.

Introduction.

Turkey is present today in three countries at the same time (Syria, Iraq and Libya) and through its presence it seeks to establish bases in these three countries, bases with strategic objectives. This has angered and surprised many observers in light of the complexities of the political scene in the regional and international arena, however, I find this not surprising, because it was not a coincidence, but a realistic reflection of the AKP's foreign strategy since it came to power in Turkey in 2002.

AKP’s main objective was to restore Turkey's glories and give it a regional and international role, with a significant difference in objectives and tools between the Era of Abdullah Gul, Davutoglu, Ali Babajan and Erdogan. With Erdogan and the first afore-mentioned group, they adopted a soft, open-minded policy that sought to build positive and balanced economic partnerships and relations with all the countries that were under previous Ottoman control. However, the second-mentioned group above relied on the coarse policy of restoring the glories of the Ottoman Empire and restoring its control over neighboring states and entities through the use of force and the use of religious and nationalist discourse through local allies to strengthen its influence and increase its power, as is now happening in Syria and Libya.

But why now? Why are conflicts escalating in such an uncontrolled manner and accelerating in record time? Additionally, from where does Erdogan take his power? What are the strategic objectives of simultaneously intervening in these three countries? These are questions that need answers in order to understand their strategy towards these illegal interventions in independent sovereign states.

Lausanne Convention.

The answers to these questions lie in the Second Lausanne Convention, signed on July 24, 1923 in Lausanne, Switzerland, on the status of Anatolia and Eastern Thrace (now the European part of Turkey). This area was settled by the Ottoman Empire in nullifying the Treaty of Sever, which was signed by the Ottoman Empire as a result of the Turkish War of Independence, between the forces of the Allies of World War I and the Supreme National Assembly of Turkey (Turkish Nationalist Movement) led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. This treaty led to international recognition of the Republic of Turkey, which inherited the place of the Ottoman Empire. The Treaty of Sever gave the inhabitants of the Kurdistan Region the right to hold a referendum to determine the fate of the region that includes Mosul province in accordance with clauses 62-64 of the third paragraph.

Erdogan does not stop attacking the agreement, clearly saying that the Lausanne agreement will expire in 2023, although there are not one of the 143 clauses in the agreement that indicates the expiry date of the agreement. Erdogan's supporters have also

made widespread public declarations by publishing news, articles and research supporting their vision, although international law is clear on the mechanisms to end the agreement.

There are no provisions that allow international conventions to expire over time, but there are other clauses indicating that changing the circumstances and facts of the treaty may bring it to its end; that is, Erdogan must fight a war against the Allies and win it, as Ataturk did, to be able to sit at the negotiating table. The question remains whether that can happen now. This possibility still exists, despite Erdogan's claims that the agreement is not fair to Turkey. Turkey is not satisfied with the agreement although it has given Turkey undeserved rights, such as rule over Kurdistan and the Iskenderun Brigade, in exchange for some oil concessions among others. As a result, this has created one of the biggest crises in contemporary history. Under the agreement, Turkey had relinquished its influence in oil-rich Libya and in Cyprus, which explains the simmering conflict between Turkey and Mediterranean countries such as Egypt, Greece and Italy; it also explains Turkey's attempts to establish bases in Libya using Syrian mercenaries.

Turkey is preparing to be an “oil country” with customs control over one of the most important global straits for the export of oil in the Middle East and North Africa. It is rumored that the Lausanne Agreement, whether the first or the second, has deprived Turkey of its right to explore for oil and gas and as such is "incorrect". The two agreements can be reviewed in the annexes; the purpose of using this propaganda is to legitimize Turkey's interventions and control over the lives of the people and the Arab world.

In the same strategic framework, Turkey has announced its intention to open another canal linking the Black Sea and Marmara to the Mediterranean, and the construction of Istanbul International Airport is part of the same strategy in the coming years: this airport is expected to connect the three continents of Asia, Europe and Africa, and contribute to the exchange of traffic and trade with 300 different destinations, serving more than 200 million passengers annually.

In this context, we may see a tripartite alliance between Qatar, Iran and Turkey. This will prove terrifying for the interests of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the Gulf in general and Egypt. The same may be said for Europe.

Incorporation.

Returning to Erdogan's behavior and speeches, the man follows the example of Ottoman sultans and their achievements; this was in evidence when he was inaugurated as president, following a ritual of the Ottoman Empire. I would not be surprised if he reinstated the post of sultan in lieu of president. His political project is inclined to the form of governance based on the use of religion and its laws to be the bearer of the state and seeks to lead the Islamic world according to his own perspective.

And that's the main reason why he's allied with Qatar's money and the Muslim Brotherhood, he sees trojans in them. Erdogan used the July 15, 2016 military coup to tighten his grip, gain full control over the state and its institutions and weaken the authority of his opponents. He changed the constitution to make the form of government presidential after he was a parliamentarian and removed all his party partners to keep them away from the leadership of the party and the state. He also handed over to his family and loyalists the most sensitive and important positions in the country, such as the handover of the Ministry of Finance to his brother-in-law, Birat al-Bayrak.

Syria.

The border between Turkey and Syria was established under the Ankara Agreement of October 20, 1921 between France and the Turkish national government. The allies adopted the bilateral agreement with the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. The border with Syria has since been redrawn, including the annexation of vast territories, which include the cities and regions of Mersin, Tarsus, Al-Qalqia, Adana, Antab, Kels, Marash, Orfa, Haran, Diyarbakir, Mardin, Nusaybin and Butan Island, in exchange for Turkey's abdication of Libya. Since then, Turkish-Syrian relations have been tense until the AKP came to power, beginning a phase of economic and cultural openness with Syria and increased trade relations. Turkey began its invasion of Syrian and Arab societies overall through a policy of cultural openness, which included a range of television programs, political trips and exchanges with local councils.

After the start of the Syrian revolution in 2011, Turkey stood against Bashar al-Assad after Assad rejected Turkey's demands to share power with the Muslim Brotherhood due to the rejection of the proposal by Damascus's allies, Russia and Iran.

The current Turkish government has stood against Damascus and tried to board the “American-European train”. It managed to establish a foothold in Syria, taking advantage of the presence of the opposition on its territory and the use of Islamic currents such as the Muslim Brotherhood and later, the use of The Turkmen of Syria. It then began climbing on the “Russian train” since the downing of the Russian plane in November 2015, which marked a turning point for meeting with Putin and Rouhani, whose interests and spheres of influence on local allies have become instruments for the exchange of influence and control in order to minimize Turkey's greatest challenge: preventing the Kurds from gaining autonomy, much like Iraq's Kurdistan region. This is also to prevent the Kurds them from separating. Such a discourse has a large audience among the Syrian political and military opposition parties.

Iraq.

Entry into Iraq and the desire to establish bases there are aimed at reviving an old dream of taking Mosul and Kirkuk. The Lausanne Agreement did not address the fate of Mosul and decided to postpone and settle it later. Turkey has continued to claim that Mosul was a Turkish city, to this day, although all the committees that have been formed have recognized that Kirkuk and Mosul are Iraqi Kurdish cities. In fact, the Kink Crane Commission recommended that they be under Kurdish control during the British mandate.

In the coming period, we may see the opening of a crossing between Turkey and Iraq from the Zakho side after Turkey began to build larger bases in order to facilitate logistical as well as commercial operations there. This was done in order to surround the Kurdistan region of Iraq, especially in light of the great differences between Erbil and Baghdad.

The justifications for Turkey's foreign policy to fight the PKK are incorrect, the solution exists in Ankara and is very simple: return to the negotiating table to achieve political and economic stability that will benefit the Turkish people and the Kurds alike, which will have positive effects on Turkey's regional relations.

Turkish position on Kurdistan.

Actions indicate that Erdogan intends to return to the borders of the Zahab Agreement between the Safavid and Ottoman states of May 17, 1639, which established the first division of Greater Kurdistan; this agreement annexed both parts of Syria and Iraq to Turkey while Iran retained the remaining part. The border remained unchanged until the signing of the Second Lausanne Convention in 1923 which drew the current boundaries of the countries dividing Kurdistan.

This project reminds us of the project of Turket Azal, the liberal president of Turkey, the owner of the economic renaissance in the late 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s and the owner of the EU accession project. Azal believed that economic and political stability could not be achieved without a lasting solution with the Kurds, not only in Turkey but also in Syria and Iraq. He arrived at this result not by coincidence, as he first tried to use a different approach based on the liberalization of restrictions on national and religious affiliations and the establishment of a multicultural state, making some reforms along the way. Faced with pressure from Turkish military generals and the PKK's distrust of its intentions, he resorted to force to end the PKK, invading the Kurdistan Region with thousands of soldiers and equipment, but failed significantly. Azal then realized that the Kurdish problem could only be resolved peacefully, but his efforts were unsuccessful in his quest, as he was poisoned the night before the signing of the Peace Declaration agreement with PKK leader Abdallah Ocalan.

It seems to me that Erdogan is inspired by his plan for Kurdistan Syria and Iraq from the vision of Turket Azal, with vast differences in perception: Azal sought a real partnership with the Kurds, while Erdogan seeks to crush the Kurds and end their existence while making major demographic changes at all levels.

Despite Erdogan's hatred and grudge against the Kurds, his policies may achieve what the Kurds have failed to do in the past 100 years: to unite the three parts of Kurdistan under the control of one country, as was the case when the Shirin-Zahab agreement was signed between the Safavid and Ottoman states.

This strategy is beginning to be more clearly defined: creating the Ottoman Crescent, similar to the Shiite crescent, which poses a threat to Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the Gulf, as well as Egypt, Greece, Italy and France.

The Power.

Erdogan's moves and military interventions give rise to widespread confusion because of the weak reaction of the international community, especially the major powers. It is bewildering because of the imbalance that this represents in the parity of regional and international powers. This is due to two things: the first is to exploit the gaps in the global system regarding the balance of power that exist between the two traditional international rivals, America and Russia, on one side and on the other, Europe and Russia. The current Turkish government knows very well that its geopolitical position, its presence in NATO and its involvement in Astana and building strong relations with Iran and Russia alike have made it a key player in the current international conflict. It knows very well that all parties have sensitive relations with Turkey, in such situations as the refugees, NATO, and the Russian S-300 missile system. This explains why everyone seeks to win over Turkey because it is strong, yet this is a wrong belief because no one wants the situation to deteriorate more than it currently is.

The other and most important point is the current US administration represented by Donald Trump. Turkey has always had a distinguished position in US foreign policy in the Middle East as a result of its geopolitical position and the presence of Iran and Israel on the other hand. During the era of Bush Jr., for example, the AKP Party was prominent in US policy towards the Middle East, with very large differences between Trump's policy and Bush Jr. The former was seeking to preserve the allies of the United States, while the latter wanted to replace these US allies.

Trump, who has personal and family interests with Erdogan and his government, runs foreign policy as if it were a trading company based on the logic of profit and standing by

the strong and victorious side, regardless of who has the right or the values of democracy and freedom that the United States boasts. For example, his vision of resolving the Turkish-Kurdish conflict in northeastern Syria was to launch Erdogan's hand in it. Without the friendly pressure groups of the Kurdish people in America, such as the Evangelists who hold 30% of the electoral votes, Turkey would today control all the northeast. These foreign policy trends are certainly not appropriate for its ally, Europe, but it is known to all that Trump does not see any benefit in partnering with Europe; on the contrary, he believes that Europe is without an economic future.

Conclusion.

The great transformation of Turkey's foreign policy is represented in its transformation from a policy being built by a group of individuals and state institutions into an individual foreign policy. This transformation has had many negative effects, although its external appearance suggests that it is better. All these attempts to restore the glories of the Ottoman Empire are for economic reasons first and ideological second, and certainly there are psychological and personal factors that have played a large role in shaping Erdogan's vision of foreign policy. Through the analysis of Erdogan's Turkish foreign policy, it is clear that the man is not open to democratic countries or presidents with liberal or leftist tendencies. Rather, he is inclined towards totalitarian states, autocratic leaders, and singular leaders. In the past, the AKP policy was based on “zero problems” with neighboring countries, but today it is based on “zero friends”. Conflicts and enemies give them justification for controlling the state’s capabilities and directing them according to its policy. The man who got rid of all his friends in the party won the party for himself and won Turkey, and one has to admit that he has been able until now to achieve what he wants through the masses and advocacy. However, he also excels through repression, his policy based on creating conflicts, feeding national and religious feelings, and spreading hatred. But will these conflicts achieve political and economic stability for Turkey and its people? Can Turkey turn once again into a global empire with a respectable position among developed countries?

Personally, I do not think so. We must not forget that there are always possibilities for internal transformation, such as losing elections, a coup or a change in the policies of countries from which he takes his power, such as the United States. Likewise, this approach has exceeded its time and its continuation may place Turkey within the countries of “the axis of evil” and be besieged economically and diplomatically. Today, we are in the orbit of great interests between Iran, Qatar and Turkey; they share the same enemies and seek victory in order to share influence in the Middle East and North Africa But there are basic obstacles, which are Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and also Egypt. Therefore, these three countries join in their support for the Brotherhood to control Egypt and ignite the Gulf, even to reduce its role. In the end, we may witness new military confrontations and their victory means their return, and its loss means that Istanbul becomes an independent country.

In front of these projects and their strong bearers, the Kurds must adopt a clear strategy and choose the partners closest to them. It seems that the Arabs, headed by Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE, are the logical partners in addition to Europe, America and Russia.

The Kurds also have to take advantage of the policy of blanks, but they must first arrange their internal house not only in a part of Kurdistan but in the four parts while building a democratic project based on inclusion and participation of all the components that live in Kurdistan. They must adopt an approach that is consistent with a civilized world and finally adopt one project, either Federalism or the right to self-determination.

Although some people have fears that Erdogan will seek to cancel the second Lausanne Agreement. I believe that we all share this point with him. It may be that canceling it will restore the right to its owners, but we must be ready.

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juniperpublishersjojdc · 6 years ago

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Beauty, A Social Construct: The Curious Case of Cosmetic Surgeries-Juniper Publishers Authored by Vandana Roy

Abstract

In this article we deconstruct the social norm of beauty and cosmetic beauty treatment, an issue that is seldom discussed in medical circles and is often lost to popular rhetoric. In doing so, we also reflect on the institutionalized system of social conditioning.

A Historical Perspective

Cosmetic surgery, as with reconstructive surgery, has its roots in plastic surgery (emerging from the Greek word ‘plastikos’, meaning to mold or form). The practice of surgically enhancing or restoring parts of the body goes back more than 4000 years. The oldest accounts of rudimentary surgical procedures is found in Egypt in the third millennia BCE. Ancient Indian texts of 500 BCE outline procedures for amputation and reconstruction. The rise of the Greek city-states and spread of the Roman Empire is also believed to have led to increasingly sophisticated surgical practices. Throughout the early Middle Ages as well, the practice of facial reconstruction continued. The fifth century witnessed a rise of barbarian tribes and Christianity and the fall of Rome. This prevented further developments in surgical techniques. However, medicine benefited from scientific advancement during the Renaissance, resulting in a higher success rate for surgeries. Reconstructive surgery experienced another period of decline during the 17th century but was soon revived in the 18th century. Nineteenth century provided impetus to medical progress and a wider variety of complex procedures. This included the first recorded instances of aesthetic nose reconstruction and breast augmentation. Advancements continued in the 20th century and poured into present developments of the 21st century.

Desires and Demands in Contemporary Times

In recent years, the volume of individuals seeking cosmetic procedures has increased tremendously. In 2015, 21 million surgical and nonsurgical cosmetic procedures were performed worldwide. In the United Kingdom specifically, there has been a 300% rise in cosmetic procedures since 2002. The year 2016 witnessed a surge in the number of such treatments with the United States crossing four million operations. Presently, the top five countries in which the most surgical and nonsurgical procedures are performed are the United States, Brazil, South Korea, India, and Mexico. Such demand can be viewed from different perspectives. At one end it is a product of scientific progress, growing awareness, economic capacities and easier access and on the other, something on the lines of a self-inflicted pathology. This article dwells on the latter and attempts to address a deep-rooted problem of the social mind.

Lessons from History

History is witness to a number of unhealthy fashion trends, many of which today appear extremely irrational and even cruel. Interestingly, the common thread connecting all of them is the reinforcement of social norms and stereotypes. Forms of socialization which lie at the intersection of race, class and gender-based prejudices. To elaborate, hobble skirts and chopines restricted women’s movement and increased their dependence on others. Corsets deformed body structures, damaged organs and led to breathing problems. The Chinese practice of binding women’s feet to limit physical labor was regarded as a sign of wealthiness. Dyed crinolines and 17th century hairstyles made people vulnerable to poisoning and fire related injuries. Usage of makeup made of lead and arsenic, eating chalk and ‘blot letting’, reflected a blatantly racist obsession with white and pale skin. Lower classes faked gingivitis to ape tooth decays of the more privileged who had access to sugar. Furthermore, other practices like tooth lacquering, radium hair colors, mercury ridden hats, usage of belladonna to dilate pupils and even men wearing stiff high collars, all furthered societal expectations and notions of class superiority. Till the 1920’s, there was rampant usage of side lacers to compress women’s curves. Even today many ethnic tribes continue with practices which inflict bodily deformations. In the urban context as well, trends like high heels, skinny jeans and using excessive makeup dominate the fashion discourse. Cosmetic procedures are the latest addition to the kitty.

The Social Dilemma

What is it that leads the ‘intelligent human’ of today to succumb to archaic and regressive notions of beauty? What motivates them to risk aspects of their lives to cater to selflimiting rules of ‘acceptance’? The surprising part is that this anomaly is often placed in the illusory realm of ‘informed consent’. In common parlance, ‘to consent’ implies voluntary agreement to another’s proposal. The word ‘voluntary’ implies ‘doing, giving, or acting of one’s own free will.’ However, when the entire socio-cultural set up and individual attitudes validate certain behaviors, there is very less space left for an alternate narrative. Let alone free will.

Pierre Bourdieu once argued that nearly all aspects of taste reflect social class. Since time immemorial, societal standards of beauty have provided stepping stones to social ascent and class mobility. Better ‘looking’ individuals are considered to be healthier, skillfully intellectual and economically accomplished in their lives. Such an understanding stems from well entrenched stereotypes in complete disregard of individual merit and fundamental freedoms. An inferiority complex coupled with external pressures and self imposed demands, subconsciously coerce individuals into a vicious cycle of desire or rejection. Active and aggressive media has played a key role in forming societal perceptions of what is attractive and desirable. In addition, lifestyle changes reflect an image obsessed culture, reeking of deep-rooted insecurities. At the root of a submissive and conformist attitude lies a subconscious mind lacking selfesteem and self-worth. People continue to look for remedies in the wrong places. The only difference is that corsets and blot letting have given way to surgeries and cosmetic products. The biggest question is, how have ideas otherwise seen as deviant, problematic and inadequate retained control over minds of millions of individuals?

A Gendered Culture

‘Beauty’ is understood as a process of ongoing work and maintenance, its ‘need’ unfairly tilted towards the fairer sex. History has demonstrated the impact of dangerous beautification practices on women. Contemporary ideals aren’t far from reaching similar outcomes. Today, there is a powerful drive to conform to the pornographic ideal of what women should look like. There has been a growth in the number of adolescents who take to cosmetic surgeries to become more ‘perfect’. In many countries, the growth of the “mommy job” has provoked medical and cultural controversies. Presumably there is an underlying dissatisfaction which surgery does not solve. Furthermore, where does the disability dimension fit in here? What happens to the ‘abnormal’ when the new ‘normal’ itself is skewed? For those with dwarfism and related disorders, new norms become even more burdensome.

The massive pressure to live up to some ideal standard of beauty, particularly for women, reeks of patriarchal remnants of a male dominated society. This kind of conformity further nurtures objectification and sexualization, reducing women to the level of ‘chattel’ to feed the male gaze. There is a also a power struggle at play where biased standards help maintain the unequal status quo. Today, there is idolization of celebrities, beauty pageants and advertisements by cosmetic companies over sane medical advice. They set parameters of size, color and texture to be followed by the world at large. Moreover, people who deviate from such norms are made to feel stigmatized or ostracized from social spheres. The existence of male-supremacist, ageist, hetero sexist, racist, class-biased and to some extent, eugenicist standards reflect a failure of society as a whole. It is thus high time that we revisit and deconstruct skewed standards of beauty.

Mind Over Matter: Psychological Dimensions

Culturally imposed ideals create immense pressure of conformity. Consequently, they have been successful in engendering insecurities via their influence on perception of self and body image. Such perceptions often become distorted and discordant with reality, leading to serious psychological disorders. One such disorder is the body dysmorphic disorder (BDD). This is a psychiatric disorder characterized by preoccupation with an imagined defect in physical appearance or a distorted perception of one’s body image. It also has aspects of obsessive-compulsiveness including repetitive behaviors and referential thinking. Such preoccupation with self-image may lead to clinically significant distress or impairment in social and occupational functioning. With reference to cosmetic surgeries, patients with BDD often possess unrealistic expectations about the aesthetic outcomes of these surgeries and expect them to be a solution to their low self-confidence. Many medical practitioners who perform cosmetic surgery believe themselves to be contributing towards construction of individual identity as well. The notion that beauty treatments can act in much the same way as psychoanalysis has led countries like Brazil to open its gate of cosmetic procedures to lower income groups. This happens while the country continues its battles with diseases like tuberculosis and dengue. The philosophy behind such ‘philanthropy’ is that ‘beauty is a right’ and thus should be accessible to all social groups. While on one hand we may applaud such efforts of creating a more ‘egalitarian’ social order, on the other hand it is hard to overlook the self-evident undercurrents of social prejudice and capitalistic propaganda.

Medicalization of Beauty

Traditional notions of beauty embody a kind of hierarchy and repression which alienate individual agency and renders them as powerless victims. Such is the societal pressure which normalizes cosmetic procedures and subverts serious health effects. These include adverse effects due to cosmetic fillers like skin necrosis, ecchymosis, granuloma formation, irreversible blindness, anaphylaxis among others. Other dangers like heightened susceptibility to cancer and increased suicide rates. However, patients are often unaware of the risks which are hidden behind a veil of expectations and reassurances. Furthermore, quackery and inadequate standards such as lack of infection control also compound the problems of this under regulated field.

Role of Stakeholders

At the heart of any successful social transformation lies the power of united will and collective action. Thus, the consolidated and sustained effort by all stakeholders is the key to realizing an ecosystem conducive to tackle negative social norms. At the outset, government regulation is needed with respect to cosmetic procedures and the cosmetics industry. These regulations should encompass all private and public avenues and should also work against misleading advertising. Spreading awareness is the key to a better informed society. The state should fund and run specialized awareness sessions pertaining to psychological problems and aid mechanisms, gender sensitization as well as those aiming at spiritual and introspective personal development of individuals. NGO’s, medical professionals, academicians and members of the civil society, must come together to eradicate forms of social discrimination which undermine social institutions and individual agency around the world. This would help facilitate discussion, data collection, coalition building, and action that may eventually lead to behavioral changes.

Aesthetic surgery today seems to be passing through an ethical dilemma and an identity crisis. And rightly so for it strives to profit from an ideology that serves only vanity, bereft of real values. Nevertheless, there are exceptional cases where medical-aesthetic inputs have been vital in restoring morale by subverting stigmatization.

The Way Ahead

Beauty is unfair. The ‘attractive’ enjoy powers gained without merit. The perfectionist in humans seeks outward validation of external beauty over inner virtues. Scientific progress and an increase in human expertise to manipulate natural phenomena has paved the way for these desires to become a reality. There is no denying that advances in plastic and reconstructive surgery have revolutionized the treatment of patients suffering from disfiguring congenital abnormalities, burns and skin cancers. However, the increased demand for aesthetic surgery falls short of a collective psychopathology obsessed with appearance. This article expresses trepidation about such forms of social consciousness that first generates dissatisfaction and anxiety and then provides surgery as the solution to a cultural problem.

We have to work towards a social order which embraces people as they are and facilitates free choice, individual liberty and informed decision making. This is particularly pertinent when these decisions work towards framing cultural perceptions and expectations for millions around the world. We should open our hearts to diversification of beauty and aesthetic. Let our entertainment, fashion, capital and media revolve around heterogeneity of ideologies and cultures. In the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent”. So, let us all come together and create a better society.

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For more details JOJ Dermatology & Cosmetics (JOJDC) please click on: https://juniperpublishers.com/jojdc/classification.php

To read more…Full Text in Juniper Publishers click on https://juniperpublishers.com/jojdc/JOJDC.MS.ID.555556.php

#Juniper publishers #Juniper publishers online #Nanotubes #Nanotechnology #Medicine

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rightdeed-blog · 6 years ago

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Instructions to Avoid and Treat a Heatstroke 5 MIN READ

WHAT IS HEATSTROKE?

Despite the fact that heat enervation begins gradually, it can advance into an all-out heatstroke if not tended to rapidly and treated properly. In the run of the mill cases, the body temperature of an individual achieves 105°F (40.5°C) and the body is unfit to chill off satisfactorily. There are numerous approaches to maintain a strategic distance from and treat heatstroke. Untreated heatstroke can hurt an individual's cerebrum, heart, kidneys, and muscles, and can be hazardous. We have to keep our body temperature between 35.5 to 37.5°C to secure our crucial organs and enable the body to work regularly.

Outrageous warmth wave in Karachi are winding up increasingly successive, and they are additionally getting more diligently to persevere. The Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) has cautioned the residents of Karachi to prepare themselves for a sweltering summer.

The deadliest warmth wave in Karachi was in 2015 when the temperature waited between 42-45C and felt like 50C for a whole week. Besides a general absence of mindfulness among individuals, it was likewise the period of Ramadan when many were fasting, and delayed power blackouts combined with water deficiencies declined the circumstance. Around 40,000 individuals had their lives undermined by warmth strokes, with more than 1,200 passing’s detailed authoritatively, a large portion of which were in Karachi.

Because of environmental change, Sindh is required to encounter the searing climate in 2019 as well, and we should be on our toes to keep ourselves and our friends and family safe from damage's way.

SINCE HEAT WAVES IN KARACHI ARE BECOMING MORE FREQUENT, HOW DOES ONE LIVE WITH THEM?

In spite of the fact that we can't control the temperature, we can ensure that we are doing all that we can to remain safe. A brutal atmosphere can deplete your vitality, making you inclined to diseases, retching, queasiness, heat rash or thorny warmth, and low circulatory strain. With temperatures expected to take off over 40C, beginning April, it is pivotal for you to pay attention to issues and stay careful of your wellbeing.

We've arranged a few hints to enable you to care more for yourself. It would be ideal if you remember the accompanying proposals to beat the warmth this season.

The most effective method to AVOID A HEATSTROKE

1. Stay Hydrated

2. Wear Light or Loose Clothing

3. Stay Indoors

4. Avoid Greasy Food

5. Limit Your Activity

6. Take A Cold Shower

7. Avoid Caffeine

8. Optimize Your Fan

9. Know Your Body's Cooling Point

10. Avoid Using or Being Near Any Heat Radiating Devices

Remain HYDRATED

Appropriate Hydration Can Reduce the Chances of Getting Fatigued

Try not to avoid drinking water. Drink water regardless of whether you are not parched. An expansion in warmth results in over the top perspiring, diminishing vitality and electrolytes from your body. Drinking a lot of water enables your body to keep up its temperature and averts heatstroke.

WEAR LOOSE CLOTHING

Free Clothing Helps to Absorb the Sweat of the Body

Tight dress forestalls air supply to your body. Wear garments that are light however spread your entire body as burning sunrays can harm your uncovered skin. Wear light-shaded garments made of cotton and ensure they're free.

STAY INDOORS

Try not to go out pointlessly and stay away from direct daylight. Likewise, the more you move, the more warmth is created by your body. On the off chance that you should head outside, apply sunscreen and wear shades or tops.

Keep away from GREASY FOOD

Oily Foods can Worsen your Metabolism Process

Concentrate more on plates of mixed greens and natural product. Stay away from warmth producing nourishments like meat, eggs, and different proteins, and lower your salt utilization. In any case, it is similarly fundamental for you to eat consistently and fuel your body with the supplements it requires to battle the warmth and keep you dynamic.

On the off chance that you are searching for solid and cool choices there are numerous juice bars in Karachi. That may enable you to battle the heatwave in Karachi.

Point of confinement YOUR ACTIVITY

Abstain from doing any outside movement between 11 am and 3 pm. On the off chance that you cherish working out, attempt to do as such in the early morning or after the sun goes down.

Scrub down

Cold Water Helps Tighten your Cuticles and Pores

Venture into a virus water shower or wetting your skin with a soggy towel is a standout amongst the best approaches to lessen your body's temperature. It will quickly make you feel revived. The cooling towel can likewise ingest dampness and sweat and will keep you crisp for the duration of the day.

Keep away from CAFFEINE

Caffeine Produce More Heat in the Body

Caffeine, tea, and liquor are diuretics, and they will in general advance parchedness.

Improve YOUR FAN

Pivot your Ceiling Fans Counterclockwise to Push Cool Air Down to the Floor

Spot a shallow bowl of ice before your fan and appreciate the breeze as the ice liquefies. Make your very own DIY AC or face the fan outwards, so it extinguishes all the sight-seeing out of the room.

Realize YOUR BODY'S COOLING POINT

Your wrist, neck, ears, and feet are viewed as the cooling purposes of your body and applying ice solid shapes or anything cool to them will help diminish your body's temperature. These specific zones have a lot of nerves and nerve endings, and cooling them is equivalent to chilling of the entire body.

Abstain from USING ANY HEAT RADIATING DEVICES

Utilizing heat emanating gadgets, for example, hair straighteners or hair dryers can duplicate the danger of getting a warmth stroke as your body ingests all the additional warmth radiated from them.

Manifestations AND SIGNS OF HEATSTROKE

1. Fever higher than 39.5°C

2. Dry, red or fair skin

3. Dizziness or tipsiness

4. Confusion, disjointed discourse

5. Aggressiveness or peculiar conduct

6. General disorder

7. Seizure

8. Fast or shallow relaxing

Individuals WHO ARE AT A GREATER RISK

1. Senior residents

2. Infants

3. An individual with genuine ailments

4. Who are taking drugs?

5. People who are physically dynamic, for example, work or competitors

Last warmth wave in Karachi "The vast majority of the individuals who kicked the bucket were the old experiencing different sicknesses that got exacerbated. They were from blocked settlements and were among those living on the general public's edges," said Dr. Appearing Jamali, leader of the crisis office at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center (JPMC).

Step by step instructions to

TREAT A HEATSTROKE

Home treatment isn't sufficiently adequate to treat heatstroke. Indeed, even with prompt treatment, it very well may be hazardous or can result in genuine, long haul entanglements. Look for crisis medicinal help, and keeping that you're trusting that the help will arrive, remember the accompanying tips at the top of the priority list:

1. Stop practicing immediately.

2. Move to shade or inside at the earliest opportunity.

3. Drench patient with virus water.

4. Seek restorative consideration if your condition doesn't improve.

5. Wet the skin with water or envelop it by wet a fabric subsequent to taking off however much apparel from the body as could reasonably be expected.

6. Take an ice shower if conceivable.

7. Fan persistently.

8. Do not give understanding liquids to drink in the event that they are not alarmed.

9. Position an oblivious individual on their side and clear their aviation route.

10. Apply ice packs to the patient's armpits, crotch, neck, and back (These zones are rich with veins and near the skin so cooling them may decrease body temperature).

11. Monitor the body temperature and keep cooling endeavors until the body temperature dips under 38C.

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