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daybreak-delusion · 4 years

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Chapter 5

Introduction: Whitney Goodwinson was planning on inheriting one of her deceased grandmother's properties, but not a little house off the coast of North Carolina. As she struggles to meet new people, fix up her new property, deal with troublemaker JJ Maybank, and perfect her grandmother's infamous lemonade she might just find that the Outer Banks has more to offer than it seems.

Series Masterlist

Turns out JJ had been working at the “Lemon House” since he was 12 years old. The local kids had apparently been calling it that since before the dawn of time. The house belonged to Grandmother and her family, it was the only property that had ever been completely hers. During the summertime to make extra money, they would sell fresh-squeezed lemonade. I hadn't noticed it before but in the trees to the right of the house was a small greenhouse with a lemon tree grove inside. After Grandmother married Grandfather she would only come for the month of July and her lemonade stand would be packed. JJ said that it was the best months when “Vicky” would come stay at the house and make fresh lemonade for all of the kids. Apparently, the house was “neutral territory” from the two sides of the island, Figure Eight and the Cut. Figure Eight was home to the Kooks, the rich side of Outer Banks. Apparently, Kooks are stuck up, rich, ruthless brats who never had to work a day in their lives.

“You’d fit right in with them, sunshine,” JJ laughed reaching for another beer out of the ice chest. We were sitting on the dock in front of the Lemon House. After our little confrontation, JJ made another joke about my ass, and then I decided he was alright. Grandmother trusted him, so I trust him. Grandmother had a way of figuring people out. Some called her two-faced but she was just trying to survive. So I decided to give JJ and myself a break by day drinking. I honestly hated controlling people, who didn’t deserve it of course and just wanted to test JJ and see how he would react.

“Please you don’t even know me,” I stated, sipping some of my beer which had gotten a little warm. I still couldn't believe the heat of this place, it was excruciating.

“We could fix that you know, get to know each other a little better. I could even think of a few boning exercises we could, uh, participate in,” said JJ with another smirk. He’d been making these kinds of jokes all day and it was getting old. The first few times I felt something in the pit of my stomach, but then realized this is just probably how JJ acted all the time.

“Ha, ha no thank you. Please continue your East Egg, West Egg story.”

“I still don’t get your references, but whatever. So the Kooks think that they own the whole island just because they can use their daddies money to buy anything they want.”

“Ew.”

“Ew?”

“Yeah ew that’s gross, why would their parents let them do that? They won't learn anything about the real world and hard work if they piggyback on their parents' wealth.”

“What and you’re not like that, miss ‘this is my house, my rules,’” said JJ mimicking my voice to sound like a prepubescent boy.

“Oh shut up, I was just seeing if you would pass the test.”

“Oh what test, you just wanted an excuse to get close to me.”

“Shut up and finish your story!” I said impatiently.

“Nuh not until you explain your ‘hard work makes you a better person’ bullshit.”

“Hey hard work does make you a better person, look my family is very well off, obviously, who just gives away houses, but when I turned 18 I was on my own, cut off from my parents and grandparents money. My grandfather grew up in a small mountain town in California with a population of maybe 500 people. During the wintertime, these rich families would come and stay at these fancy resorts where he was a waiter. He worked at that place for eight years. He worked his ass off through college and medical school where he showed he had talent, not because of his parents’ bank account or by how many boats he owned, but by pure talent and it paid off. He had it all: a beautiful wife, three children, and a whole lot of money. Then when my aunt turned 18, she was cut off and had to start over just like he did, but my grandfather taught her and the rest of his children about hard work and dedication. My father taught me the same morals, so growing up while my boarding school friends got to go to parties all the time and go to Vegas for three day weekends I was working as our librarian's assistant.

“Wait, you went to boarding school?”

“Really that’s what you got from my story, really?”

“Yeah pretty much also you were a librarian?”

“I was an assistant librarian, anyways you still need to finish your story! You already told me about the Soches I need to know who the Greasers are.”

“Are you even speaking English? Anyways the other side of the island, The Cut, is home of the Pogues, the greatest people in the world,” he said with a smirk.

“Oh I’m sure.”

“Anyways we’re basically the bottom of the barrel, low life troublemakers according to everyone else. I don’t really mind it. I like the life I live and wouldn't change it for the world. We get to do what we want whenever we want”

“Hm sounds nice, but what are your plans for the future”

“Honestly I thought I would be in jail at this point,” he said completely honestly.

“You’re joking.”

“No, I’m not! I mean two years ago there was this hurricane and some friends and I kinda caught a break and stumbled upon a treasure hunt kinda thing that was supposed to change everything, but it turned out to be a bust,” he said sipping more of his beer. He had a sad look in his eyes so I decided to hold back my Goonies joke and changed the subject.

“So, Pogues basically live like there's no tomorrow?”

“Yeah, basically. After this summer things are gonna change though.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well my friends and I all graduated, some are even going to college, but me and my friend John B are just gonna work for a while.”

“Wait, you graduated high school?” I joked

“Yeah, I’m not as stupid as I look”

“You sure about that?”

“You’ve known me for, what, a day? Even less? You don’t know me,” he had a satisfied look on his face so I decided to keep my observations to myself. There were still some holes to fill, but I had a pretty good idea of who JJ Maybank was. I was guessing a single household and judging by his crude behavior and drinking habit he probably lived with his father. Past tense, of course, the way he talked about his friend John B’s house made it seem like it was his as well. What I really didn’t want to bring up was the obvious abuse from his father. From the way, he joked, didn’t care about his future, and faded scars suggested that he had either gone to war or had an abusive relative. If he was smart he would go into the Army or the Navy to do something with his life, but JJ seemed more free-spirited than that. So for now I guess he’ll mow Grandmother's lawn.

“Ha, you’d be surprised how well I can read people,” just then I got the dreaded text saying that Rafe was picking me up in 20 minutes, “ugh I have to go get ready for dinner before you go can you tell me your work schedule?”

“Oh right yeah,” I wanted to believe that there was disappointment in his eyes, but quickly pushed those thoughts down, “Um I usually mow the lawn once a week, trim the hedges every other week, and weed the garden and pick lemons every other day”

“What have you been doing with the lemons?”

“Oh I just take them to the farmers market and sell them”

“Ah, so you’re stealing from my property now?” I teased.

“Oh no, no it’s not like that I just didn't want them to go to waste I mean I didn't-”

“JJ it’s okay I’m glad you didn’t just throw them away and put them to good use”

“I tried making her lemonade, but it just didn’t seem right,” he said with a sad tone. I really hoped he was being genuine.

“Oh well, maybe we can try it again? I’d like to continue the tradition for now. Anyways keep to your regular work schedule and I’ll make up a new one for you by the end of this week. Would you be willing to help out with maintenance work? I’d pay you extra.”

“Yeah, yeah that sounds great and I think I can do that”

“Okay perfect, when will I see you again?”

“Well I’m free tonight if you want to practice those bonding exercises?” he asked, wiggling his eyebrows and smirking like a fool. A cute fool. Stop it, Whitney!

“I meant your work schedule dumb-ass, when will you be by again to pull the weeds?”

“Oh um what day is it again?”

“It’s Friday.”

“Oh then I’ll be here tomorrow”

“Alright see you then,” I said, extending my hand for him to shake.

“Yeah, um see you then,” JJ awkwardly took my hand like it was a dead fish.

“Is that really how you shake a person’s hand?”

“Sorry, you just caught me off guard, who shakes hands anymore?”

“Professionals do JJ, next time I extend my hand to you better have a proper handshake”

“I’m on it your majesty,” he said as he saluted me.

“Goodbye JJ,” I finally said walking back up the stone path.

“Good luck in Kook Land Whitney,” He yelled to me, smiling like a fool.

It was the first time he had actually said my name and I had to say I liked the way it sounded.

I quickly got ready for what was going to be the most awkward dinner of my life. Since I didn’t have time to shower or anything (gross) I pulled my hair back into a sleek bun and pinned up any loose hairs. For make-up, I put on my normal country club look and slipped on a white babydoll dress. I kept jewelry simple small diamond studs, with a matching bracelet, and a silver chain necklace with a wave pendant. The necklace was a gift from Grandmother, the last thing she gave me in person. She said that it was special to her and that it would bring me good karma. A lot of good it was doing now, I was on a divided island and was about to have dinner with a bunch of robots. Just then I got a text:

Rafe: I’m outside when you’re ready

A true gentleman.

The drive in Rafe’s truck was silent except for the music playing from a local music station. As we drove through Figure Eight I couldn't help but look at all of the beautiful houses. They were huge compared to the small cottage that I was currently living in. They weren't as big as the mansion my parents had just inherited or even my childhood home, but they were beautiful. We drove along a long driveway that came open to the Island Club. When Rafe finally spoke he told me that the club was also a hotel. It looked like it was out of a fairy tale with its peaked roofs and white windows. We pulled into the valet and a man in a white button-down shirt opened the door for me. I was half expecting Rafe to offer me his arm, but he just trudged ahead. We came to a big dining hall where other rich and important families sat. The Camerons were sitting by the front of the dining hall at a rectangle-shaped table next to a ceiling to floor window. It was dusk and the sun was just starting to set outside. It was weird not seeing the sun sink into the ocean, but the sky looked amazing. I was pulled from the stunning view of Rose Carmen's caked face.

“Whitney! You look exquisite in that dress,” said Rose standing up to greet me with a hug. She was sitting to the right of Ward who was at the head of the table Next to Rose was a young teenage girl with glasses and dark hair. To Ward’s left sat a girl who looked about my age. She had long straight hair that I would die for and tan skin. She held an uninterested look on her face that told me this was the last place she wanted to be.

“You are too kind Mrs. Cameron, I simply cannot compare to your family tonight,” was my rebuttal to the compliment. I wasn't lying this time, the Camerons were a good looking family. I noticed the sour look on one of Rose’s daughters, wait, step-daughter, as she rolled her eyes at me.

“Oh honey please just call me Rose and you are too kind,” she sat back down and gestured to an empty chair on the other side of the table. I nodded to Ward and took a seat next to the older looking sister and Rafe sat at the other head of the table.

“Whitney I’d like to introduce you to the rest of our family, this is Wheezie,” she said gesturing to the glasses-wearing girl to her right.

“It’s nice to meet you Wheezie,” I said, trying to keep the shock/amusement out of my voice.

“And this is Sarah,” continued Rose now looking at the girl that was seated to my right, unaware of my struggle to stay professional, “I believe you two are the same age.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Sarah,” I said, turning to look at the girl trying to be nice. I really did want to try and make friends, even if I was only gonna be here for the summer.

“Likewise,” replied Sarah. Yup, she definitely wanted to be somewhere else.

“So Whitney, how are takin’ to the OBX?” Ward asked me. Ah so, the interrogation began.

“It’s been nice. It’s a lot more humid than California, but I think I’ll get used to it”

“About California, has your family lived there very long?” interrupted Rose, causing a look from Ward.

“Yes, my father’s company headquarters is in San Diego so I’ve lived there all my life.”

“San Diego?” Sarah surprisingly interrupted, “that’s where SeaWorld is right?”

“Oh that must be so fun to go too, seeing all of those fish and dolphins,” Rose added innocently. Sarah gave her a look of disappointment and was waiting for my answer with anticipation as if this question would shift the way the rest of the night went. I’d have to be careful with my words.

“Um yes, it is, however my family and I are not supportive of the company. The captivating of Killer Whales is a huge controversy where I’m from. I don’t believe that those creatures should be held in captivity.” There was a pause of silence.

“That’s really interesting Whitney,” said Rose, not sounding interested at all.

“Thank you, Rose,” I continued pretending I ignored her dull sounding voice, “the abuse of sea life for public enjoyment is not discussed enough in our society. My father's company has donated annually to charities in support of taking care of these issues.”

“Ah yes interesting indeed,” said Ward taking a long drink of his scotch. I knew it was time to change the subject.

“So Mr. Cameron do you like fishing?”

The rest of the night went like this, chatting back and forth about the weather, food, and other things to do in the Outer Banks. The food was amazing: a three-course meal of an appetizer, entree, and dessert. The conversation at the table was basically just Rose, Ward, and me. Rafe would make a few comments when we would talk about fishing and Sarah would bring up the best beaches to go to for tanning.

“Do you by any chance know of any good beaches for surfing?” I asked. I had been dying to get back in the water and the internet only suggested the most popular beaches. I figured a local would know of the best spots.

“Oh um I’m not really an expert on those beaches, but I have some friends who would know some good places!” said Sarah, at the mention of Sarah’s friends the rest of the table fell silent, “here give me your number and I’ll text you when the next time they go out!” She handed me her phone and I put my number in.

“Thank you so much! My board should be coming on Monday, so anytime after that, I’ll be free,” I said, handing her phone back to her.

“Cool, how long have you been surfing?”

“All my life basically, my mother grew up surfing and taught me at a young age and I’ve been surfing ever since”

“Awesome!”

“Anyways girls we should get going, Whitney, it was so nice to catch up with you,” said Rose coming around the table to give me another hug.

“Oh the pleasure was all mine,” I said standing up, “it was so nice to get acquainted with you all.”

“Oh, Whitney you must come by our house for brunch some time!”

“Yeah we'll see,” I said trying to lean towards the door not planning on taking her up on the offer.

“Alright Rafe take Whitney home and we’ll see you-“

“Actually,” interrupted Sarah, “I was thinking I could take Whitney home? She’s been hanging out with Rafe all afternoon and she needs some girl time.”

She said it as if her parents had already agreed to let her take me home. Before they could say another word Sarah took my hand and pulled me out of the Country Club.

“Goodbye!” I cried out as Sarah almost pulled my arm out of my socket and out of the restaurant.

a/n: A little longer chapter and I wont be posting again today :( . Also who didn’t think Wheezies name was kinda ridiculous like I hope I’m not the only one. I’m going to start uploading longer chapters from now on because I just can’t wait for you guys to read more! Thanks again for reading it really means a lot and I’d love your feedback!

Edit: Also next update will be Monday!

#jj maybank #jj maybank x oc #jj maybank x original character #jj maybank fanfiction #jj maybank fandom #outer banks #outer banks fanfiction #outer banks fandom #obx #obx fandom #obx fanfiction #jj outer banks

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stars--n--stripes-blog · 5 years

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Like any religion, wokeness understands the need to convert children. The old Jesuit motto (sometimes attributed to Voltaire) was, after all, “Give me the child for the first seven years and I will give you the man.” And so I was moved but not particularly surprised by George Packer’s tale of a progressive school banishing separate restrooms for boys and girls because this reinforces the gender binary. The school did not inform parents of this, of course:

Parents only heard about it when children started arriving home desperate to get to the bathroom after holding it in all day. Girls told their parents mortifying stories of having a boy kick open their stall door. Boys described being afraid to use the urinals. Our son reported that his classmates, without any collective decision, had simply gone back to the old system, regardless of the new signage: Boys were using the former boys’ rooms, girls the former girls’ rooms. This return to the familiar was what politicians call a “commonsense solution.” It was also kind of heartbreaking.

As an analogy for the price of progressivism, it’s close to perfect. Authorities impose an ideology onto reality; reality slowly fights back. The question is simply how much damage is done by this kind of utopianism before it crumbles under its own weight. Simple solutions — like a separate, individual gender-neutral bathroom for the tiny minority with gender dysphoria or anyone else — are out of bounds. They are, after all, reinforcing the idea that girls and boys are different. And we cannot allow biology, evolution, reproductive strategy, hormones, chromosomes, and the customs of every single human culture since the beginning of time to interfere with “social justice.”

It’s also vital to expose children to the fact of their race as the core constituent of their identity. Here is an essay written by a woke teacher about the difficulty of teaching “White boys”:

I spend a lot of my days worried about White boys. I worry about White boys who barely try and expect to be rewarded, who barely care and can’t stand being called on it, who imagine they can go through school without learning much without it impacting in any way the capacity for their future success, just because it never has before.

This sounds to me as if he is describing, well, boys of any race. And when boys are labeled as “White” (note the capital “W”) and this requires specific rules not applied to nonwhite boys, they often — surprise! — don’t like it:

This week, a student spoke up in class to say that every time a particular writer talked about White people and their role in racism, he would start to feel really guilty, and it made him not want to listen … I try to keep an arm around the boys who most need it, but it’s hard, because I’m also not willing to give an inch on making my room safe for my students of color. It’s not their job to keep hurting while White boys figure it out.

Children, in other words, are being taught to think constantly about race, and to feel guilty if they are the wrong one. And, of course, if they resist, that merely proves the point. A boy who doesn’t think he is personally responsible for racism is merely reflecting “white fragility” which is a function of “white supremacy.” QED. No one seems to have thought through the implications of telling white boys that their core identity is their “whiteness,” or worried that indoctrinating kids into white identity might lead quite a few to, yes, become “white identitarians” of the far right.

One of the key aspects about social-justice theory is that it’s completely unfalsifiable (as well as unreadable); it’s a closed circle that refers only to itself and its own categories. (For a searing take down of this huge academic con, check out Douglas Murray’s superb new book, The Madness of Crowds.) The forces involved — “white supremacy,” “patriarchy,” “heterosexism” — are all invisible to the naked eye, like the Holy Spirit. Their philosophical origins — an attempt by structuralist French philosophers to rescue what was left of Marxism in the 1960s and 1970s — are generally obscured in any practical context. Like religion, you cannot prove any of its doctrines empirically, but children are being forced into believing them anyway. This is hard, of course, as this teacher explains: “I’m trying. I am. But you know how the saying goes: You can lead a White male to anti-racism, but you can’t make him think.”

The racism, sexism, and condescension in those sentences! (The teacher, by the way, is not some outlier. In 2014, he was named Minnesota’s Teacher of the Year!) Having taken one form of religion out of the public schools, the social-justice left is now replacing it with the doctrines of intersectionality.

Last week, I defended drag queens reading stories to kids in libraries. I don’t take back my words. Getting children interested in reading with costumed clowns strikes me as harmless. But when I was directed to the website of Drag Queen Story Hours, I found the following:

[DQSH] captures the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood and gives kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models. In spaces like this, kids are able to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions and imagine a world where people can present as they wish, where dress up is real.

However well-meant, this is indoctrination into an ideology, not campy encouragement for reading and fun.

And then there is the disturbing “social justice” response to gender-nonconforming boys and girls. Increasingly, girly boys and tomboys are being told that gender trumps sex, and if a boy is effeminate or bookish or freaked out by team sports, he may actually be a girl, and if a girl is rough and tumble, sporty, and plays with boys, she may actually be a boy.

In the last few years in Western societies, as these notions have spread, the number of children identifying as trans has skyrocketed. In Sweden, the number of kids diagnosed with gender dysphoria, a phenomenon stable and rare for decades, has, from 2013 to 2016, increased almost tenfold. In New Zealand, the rate of girls identifying as boys has quadrupled in the same period of time; in Britain, where one NHS clinic is dedicated to trans kids, there were around a hundred girls being treated in 2011; by 2017, there were 1,400.

Possibly this sudden surge is a sign of pent-up demand, as trans kids emerge from the shadows, which, of course, is a great and overdue thing. The suffering of trans kids can be intense and has been ignored for far too long. But maybe it’s also some gender non-conforming kids falling prey to adult suggestions, or caused by social contagion. Almost certainly it’s both. But one reason to worry about the new explosion in gender dysphoria is that it seems recently to be driven by girls identifying as boys rather than the other way round. Female sexuality is more fluid and complex than male sexuality, so perhaps girls are more susceptible to ideological suggestion, especially when they are also taught that being a woman means being oppressed.

In the case of merely confused or less informed kids, the consequences of treatment can be permanent. Many of these prepubescent trans-identifying children are put on puberty blockers, drugs that suppress a child’s normal hormonal development, and were originally designed for prostate cancer and premature puberty. The use of these drugs for gender dysphoria is off-label, unapproved by the FDA; there have been no long-term trials to gauge the safety or effectiveness of them for gender dysphoria, and the evidence we have of the side effects of these drugs in FDA-approved treatment is horrifying. Among adults, the FDA has received 24,000 reports of adverse reactions, over half of which it deemed serious. Parents are pressured into giving these drugs to their kids on the grounds that the alternative could be their child’s suicide. Imagine the toll of making a decision about your child like that?

Eighty-five percent of gender-dysphoric children grow out of the condition — and most turn out to be gay. Yes, some are genuinely trans and can and should benefit from treatment. And social transition is fine. But children cannot know for certain who they are sexually or emotionally until they have matured past puberty. Fixing their “gender identity” when they’re 7 or 8, or even earlier, administering puberty blockers to kids as young as 12, is a huge leap in the dark in a short period of time. It cannot be transphobic to believe that no child’s body should be irreparably altered until they are of an age and a certainty to make that decision themselves.

I don’t have children, but I sure worry about gay kids in this context. I remember being taunted by some other kids when I was young — they suggested that because I was mildly gender-nonconforming, I must be a girl. If my teachers and parents and doctors had adopted this new ideology, I might never have found the happiness of being gay and comfort in being male. How many gay kids, I wonder, are now being led into permanent physical damage or surgery that may be life-saving for many, but catastrophic for others, who come to realize they made a mistake. And what are gay adults doing to protect them? Nothing. Only a few ornery feminists, God bless them, are querying this.

In some ways, the extremism of the new transgender ideology also risks becoming homophobic. Instead of seeing effeminate men as one kind of masculinity, as legitimate as any other, transgenderism insists that girliness requires being a biological girl. Similarly, a tomboy is not allowed to expand the bandwidth of what being female can mean, but must be put into the category of male. In my view, this is not progressive; it’s deeply regressive. There’s a reason why Iran is a world leader in sex-reassignment surgery, and why the mullahs pay for it. Homosexuality in Iran is so anathema that gay boys must be turned into girls, and lesbian girls into boys, to conform to heterosexual norms. Sound a little too familiar?

Adults are increasingly forced to obey the new norms of “social justice” or be fired, demoted, ostracized, or canceled. Many resist; many stay quiet; a few succumb and convert. Children have no such options.

Indoctrinate yourselves as much as you want to, guys. It’s a free country. But hey, teacher — leave those kids alone.

By Andrew Sullivan

#transgender ideology #transgender children #transwomen #transmen #indoctrination #mental health #*

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fourhundr-blog · 7 years

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6/21/17 I Feel Like I Haven’t Slept

(sorry in advance if constantly changing tenses annoys you :p)

I decided today was the day I was actually going to apply for a job at Family Dollar. I waited until my mom returned to work from her lunch break, but before she returned home when her shift was over. That gave me a window of 12-2 pm to return home. When she comes home, she parks the truck in the driveway which blocks the garage where the car is, which I need because it has my resume in it. After she leaves, I hop on my bike and start heading down.

The bike is too small for me, and it is a very awkward ride. most of the time I just sat on the seat and pushed on the ground because I was too scared to stand up and pedal. I am very afraid of the traffic but I decided to ride in the middle of the street anyway, with cars swerving into the next lane so they do not hit me. I can see up ahead that there is construction on the bridge so the sidewalk is closed, so I switched to the other side of the street. The sidewalk was closed on that side too. The whole bridge was closed. On this side of the road, there was a group of children, probably middle school age. They were right up next to the construction crew. The crew had some cones pressed deep in cement. There was a big crash and the tip of the cone came flying down and hit my bike. We all laughed. It turned out the construction crew was trying to blow holes in all of the cones.

The cement on the sidewalk changed into dirt if you went far enough. from this dirt, there was a path about the width of a bike tire that you could go on. I heard the sound of prepubescent boys and, since the path looked wide enough for one, I move very slowly and they would all be right behind me soon, and they intimidate me, I decided to wait for them so they could go first. There were three of them, all riding scooters and doing tricks off of a building as they went down the path.

I followed them down the path and was met with the under construction bridge. There was a group of 3 boys on scooters and two girls on bikes there now. I asked them if they knew how to get around the bridge but none of them knew. One of the girls, a short Hispanic girl, kept getting distracted by fish. I pointed down at a little puddle. There I saw a baby fish. All the children gathered around. The boy pointed out a bigger orange fish, I pointed out more babies, and this went on for a very long time. In the end there were two medium sized orange gold fish and about five brown baby fish. I looked up from the puddle. There were only two children left, a boy and the Hispanic girl. I asked where the others went and they did not know.

Then the children started leaving. I followed them to an abandoned building. I peeked inside the door and noticed it was full of other little kids playing with dolls and stuff. I noticed one of my little sisters friends, 18 year old Celeste, in the building. I thought it would be very creepy if I, a 20 year old, was in an abandoned building with a bunch of kids so I decided to leave. I made eye contact with Celeste as I was leaving. She took this as the opportunity to make silly faces at every window I passed. I was in the buildings hallway now, so there were a lot of windows.

When I finally got out of the building, Celeste was dressed in a gorgeous purple gown. It was frilly, layered, and had a slash down its side (sorry I have no idea how to describe dresses). Her makeup was all white. Her entire head was all white. no hair at all. She had painted on pointy, thin, expressive eyebrows and had on winged eyeliner. There was a block dot drawn on her nose. She made more faces at me at every window I passed. This was even funnier. I decided to go in and check it out.

She was an old woman now, somewhere in her 40s, and the leader of the show. There was an old , plaid couch in the room that I took a seat on. In front of me was a very light colored wooden tv stand with some nick knacks and one of those old fat tvs on it. Behind this was a shelf that looked exactly the same with the same set up. In front of me unfolded a spectacular show with the woman as lead. I do not remember what kind of show. She had a light saber and started fighting off a demon with it as sono chi no sadame was playing loudly in the background. I was sat at home on my mom’s bed watching this on the tv. I tried desperately to fall back asleep as I was in love with the dream, but the show on tv was too interesting. I called my sister over to watch but she never came. I opened up new tabs on my laptop and started writing down what was happening so that I would not forget by the time the dream was over and I could capture it all in a Tumblr post. I was back in the audience. Kanye West appeared in front of me wearing 3 chokers. I found this hilarious for some reason and had to write it down on my laptop. I wondered if any of this could actually count as part of my dream since I kept waking up and since it was actually going on on tv and I was just copying it from there. I forgot about all that though when they started singing Mermaid Festa.

Then I woke up, more tired than ever.

I remember in the dream there was a huge emphasis put on the woman’s name, and I kept repeating it so that I would not forget it. Needless to say I forgot anyway.

I never actually woke up in the dream, that was all part of the dream that I woke up.

IRL the bridge is way after family dollar, and this was probably a sign that I should get my lazy butt up and go apply.

#dreams #dream #weird dreams #dream journal

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itsfinancethings · 5 years

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September 25, 2019 at 12:01AM

A child opens a box. He starts jumping and screaming with joy—not an unusual sound in the halls of Mattel’s headquarters where researchers test new toys. But this particular toy is a doll, and it’s rare for parents to bring boys into these research groups to play with dolls. It’s rarer still for a boy to immediately attach himself to one the way Shi’a just did.

An 8-year-old who considers himself gender fluid and whose favorite color is black one week, pink the next, Shi’a sometimes plays with his younger sister’s dolls at home, but they’re “girly, princess stuff,” he says dismissively. This doll, with its prepubescent body and childish features, looks more like him, right down to the wave of bleached blond bangs. “The hair is just like mine,” Shi’a says, swinging his head in tandem with the doll’s. Then he turns to the playmate in the toy-testing room, a 7-year-old girl named Jhase, and asks, “Should I put on the girl hair?” Shi’a fits a long, blond wig on the doll’s head, and suddenly it is no longer an avatar for him, but for his sister.

The doll can be a boy, a girl, neither or both, and Mattel, which calls this the world’s first gender-neutral doll, is hoping its launch on Sept. 25 redefines who gets to play with a toy traditionally deemed taboo for half the world’s kids. Carefully manicured features betray no obvious gender: the lips are not too full, the eyelashes not too long and fluttery, the jaw not too wide. There are no Barbie-like breasts or broad, Ken-like shoulders. Each doll in the Creatable World series looks like a slender 7-year-old with short hair, but each comes with a wig of long, lustrous locks and a wardrobe befitting any fashion-conscious kid: hoodies, sneakers, graphic T-shirts in soothing greens and yellows, along with tutus and camo pants.

Mattel’s first promotional spot for the $29.99 product features a series of kids who go by various pronouns—him, her, them, xem—and the slogan “A doll line designed to keep labels out and invite everyone in.” With this overt nod to trans and nonbinary identities, the company is betting on where it thinks the country is going, even if it means alienating a substantial portion of the population. A Pew Research survey conducted in 2017 showed that while 76% of the public supports parents’ steering girls to toys and activities traditionally associated with boys, only 64% endorse steering boys toward toys and activities associated with girls.

For years, millennial parents have pushed back against “pink aisles” and “blue aisles” in toy stores in favor of gender-neutral sections, often in the name of exposing girls to the building blocks and chemistry kits that foster interest in science and math but are usually categorized as boys’ toys. Major toy sellers have listened, thanks to the millennial generation’s unrivaled size, trend-setting ability and buying power. Target eliminated gender-specific sections in 2015. The same year, Disney banished “boys” and “girls” labels from its children’s costumes, inviting girls to dress as Captain America and boys as Belle. Last year, Mattel did away with “boys” and “girls” toy divisions in favor of nongendered sections: dolls or cars, for instance.

But the Creatable World doll is something else entirely. Unlike model airplanes or volcano kits, dolls have faces like ours, upon which we can project our own self-image and anxieties. Mattel tested the doll with 250 families across seven states, including 15 children who identify as trans, gender-nonbinary or gender-fluid and rarely see themselves reflected in the media, let alone their playthings. “There were a couple of gender-creative kids who told us that they dreaded Christmas Day because they knew whatever they got under the Christmas tree, it wasn’t made for them,” says Monica Dreger, head of consumer insights at Mattel. “This is the first doll that you can find under the tree and see is for them because it can be for anyone.”

The population of young people who identify as gender-nonbinary is growing. Though no large surveys have been done of kids younger than 10, a recent study by the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that 27% of California teens identify as gender-nonconforming. And a 2018 Pew study found 35% of Gen Z-ers (born 1995 to 2015) say they personally know someone who uses gender-neutral pronouns like they and them, compared with just 16% of Gen X-ers (born 1965 to 1980). The patterns are projected to continue with Generation Alpha, who were born in 2010 and later. Those kids, along with boys who want to play with dolls and girls who identify as “tomboys” and don’t gravitate toward fashion doll play, are an untapped demographic. Mattel currently has 19% market share in the $8 billion doll industry; gaining just one more point could translate to $80 million in revenue for the company.

Mattel sees an even broader potential for Creatable World beyond gender-creative kids. In testing, the company found that Generation Alpha children chafed at labels and mandates no matter their gender identity: They didn’t want to be told whom a toy was designed for or how to play with it. They were delighted with a doll that had no name and could transform and adapt according to their whims.

Photograph by Angie Smith for TIME. Shi’a, left, and Jhase play with Mattel’s gender-neutral doll

But it’s parents who are making the purchasing decisions, and no adult is going to have a neutral reaction to this doll. In testing groups, several parents felt the “gender-neutral” branding of the toy pushed a political agenda, and some adults objected to the notion of their sons ever playing with dolls. Mattel’s President Richard Dickson insists the doll isn’t intended as a statement. “We’re not in the business of politics,” he says, “and we respect the decision any parent makes around how they raise their kids. Our job is to stimulate imaginations. Our toys are ultimately canvases for cultural conversation, but it’s your conversation, not ours; your opinion, not ours.”

Yet even offering customers that blank canvas will be seen as political in a country where gender-neutral bathrooms still stir protests. Mattel joins a cohort of other companies that have chosen a side in a divisive political climate. Just in the past two years, Nike launched a campaign starring Colin Kaepernick after the NFL dropped him from the league for kneeling during the national anthem to protest racism. Airbnb offered free housing to people displaced in the face of President Trump’s travel ban. Dick’s Sporting Goods stopped selling assault-style weapons after the Parkland shooting. All these companies have reported eventual sales bumps after staking their claim in the culture wars.

When pressed with these examples, Dickson admits that staying neutral is not an option if you want to be perceived as an innovator. “I think being a company today, you have to have a combination of social justice along with commerce, and that balance can be tricky,” Dickson says. “Not everyone will appreciate you or agree with you.”

In fact, dissent among boomers, Gen X-ers and even millennials may be a positive sign, according to Mattel’s own researchers. “If all the parents who saw the dolls said, ‘This is what we’ve been waiting for,’ we wouldn’t be doing our jobs,” says Dreger. “That would mean this should have already been in the market. So we’re maybe a little behind where kids are, ahead of where parents are, and that’s exactly where we need to be.”

***

Walking into Mattel’s headquarters, it’s difficult to imagine a gender-neutral world of play. A huge mural depicts some of the company’s most recognizable toys. A classic bouffanted version of Barbie in a black-and-white bathing suit and heels squints down at visitors. In another picture close by, a little boy puffs out his chest and rips open his shirt, Superman style, to reveal a red Mattel logo that reads “Strength and Excellence.” Even a toddler would be able to discern the messaging on how a woman and a man are expected to look from these images.

But the evolution within Mattel is obvious once visitors make their way past the entryway and into the designers’ cubicles. Inspiration boards are covered with pictures of boys in skirts and girls in athletic gear. The most striking images are mashups of popular teen stars: the features of Camila Mendes and Cole Sprouse, who play Veronica and Jughead on Riverdale, combine to create one androgynous face, and Millie Bobby Brown and Finn Wolfhard, who play the main characters on Stranger Things, blend into a single floppy-haired, genderless person with sharp cheekbones.

In the past decade, toy companies have begun to tear down gender barriers. Smaller businesses like GoldieBlox, which launched in 2012 and builds engineering toys targeting girls, and large companies like Lego, which created the female-focused Lego Friends line the same year, have made STEM toys for girls more mainstream. Small independent toymakers have pushed things further with dollhouses painted green and yellow instead of purple and pink, or cooking kits that are entirely white instead of decorated with flowers or butterflies.

Perhaps it’s surprising, then, that nobody has beaten Mattel to creating a gender-neutral doll. A deep Google search for such a toy turns up baby dolls or strange-looking plush creatures that don’t resemble any human who ever walked this earth. Nothing comes close to the Creatable World doll that Mattel has conjured up over the past two years.

Scientists have debunked the idea that boys are simply born wanting to play with trucks and girls wanting to nurture dolls. A study by psychologists Lisa Dinella and Erica Weisgram, co-editors of Gender Typing of Children’s Toys: How Early Play Experiences Impact Development, found that when wheeled toys were painted white — and thus deprived of all color signaling whether they were “boys’ toys” or “girls’ toys” — girls and boys chose to play with the wheeled toys equally as often. Dinella points out that removing gendered cues from toys facilitates play between boys and girls, crucial practice for when men and women must interact in the workplace and home as adults. She adds that millennials (born 1981 to 1996) have pushed to share child-care responsibilities, and that battle ought to begin in the playroom. “If boys, like girls, are encouraged to learn parental skills with doll play at a young age, you wind up with more nurturing and empathetic fathers,” she says.

And yet creating a doll to appeal to all kids, regardless of gender, remains risky. “There are children who are willing to cross those gender boundaries that society places on toys, but there’s often a cost that comes with crossing those boundaries,” Dinella says. “That cost seems to be bigger for boys than it is for girls.” Some of those social repercussions no doubt can be traced to parental attitudes. In Los Angeles, the majority of the seven parents in an early testing group for Creatable World complained the doll “feels political,” as one mom put it.

“I don’t think my son should be playing with dolls,” she continued. “There’s a difference between a girl with a truck and a boy with a Barbie, and a boy with a Barbie is a no-no.”

The only dad in the group shrugged: “I don’t know. My daughter is friends with a boy who wears dresses. I used to be against that type of thing, but now I’m O.K. with it.”

In videos of those testing groups, many parents fumbled with the language to describe the dolls, confusing gender (how a person identifies) with sexuality (whom a person is attracted to), mixing up gender-neutral (without gender) and trans (a person who has transitioned from one gender to another) and fretting about the mere idea of a boy playing with a doll. A second mom in Los Angeles asked before seeing the doll, “Is it transgender? How am I supposed to have a conversation with my kid about that?” After examining the toy and discussing gender-fluidity with the other parents, she declared, “It’s just too much. Can’t we go back to 1970?”

After the session, Dreger analyzed the parental response. “Adults get so tied up in the descriptions and definitions,” she said. “They jump to this idea of sexuality. They make themselves more anxious about it. For kids it’s much more intuitive.”

Why, exactly, a new generation is rejecting categorizations that society has been using for millennia is up for debate. Eighty-one percent of Gen Z-ers believe that a person shouldn’t be defined by gender, according to a poll by the J. Walter Thompson marketing group. But it’s not just about gender — it’s about authenticity, whether real or perceived. Macho male actors and glam, ultra-feminine actresses have less cultural cache than they used to. Gen Z, with its well-honed radar for anything overly polished or fake-seeming, prefers YouTube confessionals about battling everything from zits to depression. When the New York Times recently asked Generation Z to pick a name for itself, the most-liked response was “Don’t call us anything.”

Perhaps their ideas of gender have expanded under the influence of parents who are beginning to reject practices like gender-reveal parties that box kids in even before they are born. Jenna Karvunidis, who popularized the gender-reveal party, recently revealed on Facebook that her now 10-year-old child is gender-nonconforming and that she regrets holding the party. “She’s telling me ‘Mom, there are many genders. Mom, there’s many different sexualities and all different types,’ and I take her lead on that,” Karvunidis said in an interview with NPR.

Perhaps it’s that a generation of kids raised on video games where they could create their own avatars, with whatever styling and gender they please has helped open up the way kids think about identity. Perhaps the simple fact that more celebrities like Amandla Stenberg and Sam Smith are coming out as gender-nonbinary has made it easier for other young people to do the same. Generation Alpha, the most diverse generation in America in all senses of the term, is likely to grow up with even more liberal views on gender.

“This is a rallying cry of this generation,” says Jess Weiner, a cultural consultant for large companies looking to tap into modern-day markets and navigate issues of gender. “Companies in this day and age have to evolve or else they die, they go away … And part of that evolving is trying to understand things they didn’t prior.”

Photograph by JUCO for TIMEMattel, which calls this the world’s first gender-neutral doll, is hoping its launch redefines who gets to play with a toy traditionally deemed taboo for half the world’s kids.

Mattel isn’t the first company to notice the trend among young shoppers moving away from gender-specific products. Rob Smith—the founder of the Phluid Project, a gender-free clothing store that caters to the LGBTQ+ community in New York City—says several large corporations, including Mattel, have approached him for advice on how to market to the young masses. “I work with a lot of companies who are figuring out that the separation between male and female is less important to young consumers who don’t want to be boxed into anything,” he says. “There’s men’s shampoo and women’s shampoo, but it’s just all shampoo. Companies are starting to investigate that in-between space in order to win over Gen Z.”

Still, Mattel enters a politically charged debate at a precarious moment for corporations in America, where companies that want to gain customer loyalty are being pushed to one aisle or the other. A study from the PR agency Weber Shandwick found 47% of millennials think CEOs should take stances on social issues. Some 51% of millennials surveyed said they are more likely to buy products from companies run by activist CEOs. Now, if you walk into a Patagonia store, you’ll see a sign that reads, “The President stole your land. Take action now.”

Such activism is often born of self-interest: companies want to appeal to liberal customers and retain young employees and their allies. They face little risk by speaking up, but major consequences by sitting on the sidelines. In August, customers boycotted Equinox and SoulCycle—two companies that have aggressively courted the LGBTQ+ community—when reports emerged that their key investor was holding a fundraiser for Trump with ticket prices as high as $250,000. According to data analyses by Second Measure, a month later, SoulCycle attendance is down almost 13%.

Weiner says SoulCycle’s experience should serve as a cautionary tale. “I think businesses of any size now recognize that their consumer base values transparency over any other attribute. They want to know that your board is reflective of your choices, and that’s caught a lot of businesses off guard,” Weiner says. “You can’t talk about gender equity in your commercial and then have no women on your board. They have to be savvy.”

Now, a toy company has chosen to make a product specifically to appeal to the progressive part of the country. Lisa McKnight, the senior vice president of the global doll portfolio at Mattel, says major retailers have been enthusiastic about Creatable World. “They’re excited about the message of inclusivity,” she says. “The world is becoming a more diverse and inclusive place, and some people want to do more to support that.” When pressed on the risks, she lays out the alternative. “Candidly, we ask ourselves if another company were to launch a product line like this, how would we feel? And after that gut check, we are proceeding.”

Photograph by Angie Smith for TIMEThe dolls faces betray no obvious gender: the lips are not too full, the eyelashes not too long and fluttery, the jaw not too wide. Here, the dolls faces are painted at Mattel’s headquarters on September 5.

Mattel will launch Creatable World exclusively online first, in part to better control the message. That includes giving sneak previews to select influencers and leaders in the LGBTQ+ community. Selling the doll in retail stores will be more complicated. For one thing, there’s the question of where to place it in stores to attract the attention of shoppers who might not venture into a doll section. Store clerks will have to be trained in what pronouns to use when talking about the doll and how to handle anxious parents’ questions about it. And then there are practical concerns. Dickson admits the company is ready for the possibility that protests against Creatable World dolls could hurt other Mattel brands, namely Barbie.

Mattel has taken risks before. Most recently, in 2016, it added three new body types to the Barbie doll: tall, petite and, most radically, curvy. It was the first time the company had made a major change to one of the most recognizable brands—and bodies—in the world in the doll’s almost-60-year history. The change helped propel Barbie from a retrograde doll lambasted by feminists for her impossible shape to a modern toy. She is now on the rise. Her sales have been up for the last eight quarters, and she saw a 14% sales bump in the last year alone, according to Mattel.

But Mattel felt late to the game when it changed Barbie’s body: For years the Mindy Kalings and Ashley Grahams of the world had been championing fuller body types. Parents had been demanding change with boycotts and letter campaigns. By contrast, Creatable World feels like uncharted territory. Consider children’s media: Disney hasn’t introduced a major gay character in any of its movies, let alone a gender-nonconforming one. There are no trans superheroes. Even characters whose creators say they are queer—like Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series—haven’t actually come out on the page or the screen. In that pop-culture space, a gender-neutral doll seems radical.

Even though there is no scientific evidence to prove that this is the case, there will be customers who say that even exposing their children to a gender-nonbinary doll through commercials or in a play group would threaten to change their child’s identity. This debate will spin out into sociopolitical questions about whether the types of toys children play with affect their sense of identity and gender.

That conversation, if it comes, is worth it, according to Dickson. “I think if we could have a hand in creating the idea that a boy can play with a perceived girl toy and a girl can play with a perceived boy toy, we would have contributed to a better, more sensitive place of perception in the world today,” he says. “And even more so for the kids that find themselves in that challenging place, if we can make that moment in their life a bit more comfortable, and knowing we created something that makes them feel recognized, that’s a beautiful thing.”

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