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lizbethborden · 8 days

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Whether you like her music and persona or not, Chappell Roan is extremely interesting as an example of an artist speed-running the famous female experience in a matter of months. After her Gov Ball performance, she exploded in exposure and popularity, with massive crowds on the festival circuit. Her exposure came with a price--her safety and privacy--and when she publicly asked her fans to stop cannibalizing her well-being--to stop doxxing her family, calling her by her real name, and kissing and touching her forcibly--she became hated by large groups of pop fans virtually overnight. Her conduct in public since has only intensified this, as her response to red carpet hostility and her apparent exhaustion and frustration around award shows and publicity have made her appear "ungrateful."

What this reminds me of is Andrea Dworkin's analysis of Marilyn Monroe in her book, Right Wing Women. She is talking about Hollywood's most famous actress, but much of this also applies to Roan, who, like Monroe, performs period-typical ornate femininity and expresses orientation toward male aesthetics and desires (Roan specifically via her much-expressed worship of male drag artists). Here is Dworkin on Monroe:

“The actress is the only female culturally empowered to act. When she acts well, that is, when she convinces the male controllers of images and wealth that she is reducible to current sexual fashion, available to the male on his own terms, she is paid and honored. Her acting must be imitative, not creative; rigidly conforming, not self-generated and self-renewing. The actress is the puppet of flesh, blood, and paint who acts as if she is the female acting.”

Roan is not a subversive artist. Even her explicit desire for other women comes in a "queer" context; modern "queerness" is largely a joint invention of capitalism, antifeminism, and homophobia, which is why it has mass appeal to Gen Z. Many of her costumes and looks are overtly done in drag style and in tribute to famous male drag performers. She has talked about her Chappell Roan persona as her "drag" persona and relating heavily to the experiences of drag queens. (I have never, whether in person at her concert or in interviews, heard her express knowledge of the existence of female drag artists, drag kings.) All of this in combination with her feminine aesthetic--femininity being a social signal of acquiescence to male interests and desire--means that she is, as was Dworkin's Monroe, "reducible to current sexual fashion." Her aesthetic is performed in hero worship of male creators: "imitative, not creative; rigidly conforming, not self-generated and self-renewing."

Dworkin goes on to discuss the effect of Monroe's suicide on the public (male) consciousness:

“Monroe’s premature death raised one haunting question for the men who were, in their own fantasy, her lovers, for the men who had masturbated over those pictures of exquisite female compliance: was it possible, could it be, that she hadn’t liked It all along—It—the It they had been doing to her, how many millions of times? Had those smiles been masks covering despair or rage? If so, how endangered they had been to be deceived, so fragile and exposed in their masturbatory delight, as if she could leap out from those photos of what was now a corpse and take the revenge they knew she deserved.”

Monroe committed the ultimate act of self-declaration, and in our culture, the ultimate sin specifically for a woman like her. By committing suicide, she not only forever severed male access to her person; she also threatened the tenuous male fantasy that she had ever enjoyed male access to her body, her image, her mind, her creative expresssion. Her suicide, though a private act performed out of her own personal anguish, was nonetheless an indictment of the public that had fed itself not only on her creative output, on her beauty and sexuality, but also the contempt bred by such familiarity with her image. No matter what, whether you loved her or hated her, wanted to fuck her or didn't, you could bite off a piece of Marilyn Monroe and chew, and the public consumed her until there was nothing left.

Chappell Roan has made public what Monroe kept private: that the cannibalism of fame is agonizing; that no, she does not like "It—the It they had been doing to her, how many millions of times." Rather than fulfill the female prerogative of suffering in silence, or through hateable, explosive acts like those performed by Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan in their heydays, she has explicitly, verbally expressed that she is hurt, tired, angry, frustrated, annoyed; that she does not enjoy the myriad of intrusions conducted on her person and her life by her fans, by her haters, and by the public and press. In turn, the public has revolted against her: she has violated the ultimate female rule, which is, in very brief, "smile and take it." She has declared at the very outset of her public career that she has a self and interiority that does not belong to anyone else, and she is now despised.

#redacted.txt #and I'm saying all this as someone who paid for a VIP ticket lmao

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am-i-the-asshole-official · 9 months

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WIBTA for telling my sister that she doesn't have OCD?

I (17n) share a room with my sister (15f). She's been a "neat freak" her whole life and is absolutely anal about certain things. She used to have a lot more of those fixations and got anxious enough about them that she would burst into tears if they weren't fulfilled, but I'm fairly sure she doesn't anymore. For example, she used to have anxiety around not being on time to get places, but now she always severely underestimates the time it will take her to get ready for something and makes us all late, and doesn't seem to care all that much. What's more, she yells at me frequently for leaving my stuff out around our room because it isn't "tidy", but she leaves her dirty clothes and makeup out all the time and doesn't put them away for days.

Now, here's the thing. For as long as I can remember, she's been blaming these behaviors on "OCD". She has never been diagnosed with it, though she did once try to claim that the counselor she saw when she was younger diagnosed her (this is obviously false as school counselors don't have the authority to diagnose you with anything, at least not in my country). Now, I support informed self-diagnosis, but A) she's been claiming OCD since long before she had access to the Internet or any other resources to research it, so her only exposure to it at that point would have been pop culture, which is notoriously inaccurate, and B) when I asked her why she thought she had OCD, she said it was because she felt an urge to make things neat all the time, which, while I'm sure it could be a manifestation of OCD, is more in line with the stereotype than with common presentations of the disorder, nor does she seem to have any of the characteristic anxiety of the disorder anymore. Even her urges to make things clean seem entirely focused on me and my stuff, and she's completely okay with leaving her own things out wherever and whenever she wants. So while normally I would never fakeclaim anyone, I really don't think she actually has OCD.

I don't know if she is genuinely self-diagnosed with OCD or if she just uses the label as an excuse to be controlling, but either way, I'm sick of it. She did it again yesterday: I had put a folded-up blanket on my beanbag chair in our shared room, and she told me I had to move it because it "didn't look nice" and was triggering her alleged OCD. WIBTA if I told her she doesn't have OCD and can't use it as an excuse to be pushy about where I put my things?

I might be TA because: fakeclaiming is wrong, and it's possible she does happen to have anxiety about the specific things she gets anal about, since mental illness isn't always rational.

I might not be TA because: she has none of the symptoms of actual OCD and doesn't seem to understand what they are, she uses it as an excuse to harass and scream at me

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

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whinlatter · 10 months

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Hi! I wanted to ask you what's your take on clothes and how wizards dress? I've been thinking about this since the 'gettin ready fot the party' scene. What's a typical wardrobe for typical wizard in te 90's? I always imagined that they just dress like muggles (or maybe the younger generations?), and i when i read the books i always had a hard time imagining them when they are trying to pass as muggles, you know? Like what, they don't understans which clothes are for a specific event? Because Harry says that he could tell thay dress a bit diffrent, like out of place. I mean, it's probably just meant to be funny, but, how isolated are they to not knowwhat muggles wear? I guess it also has to do with how they are raised, i imagine blood-supremacists (is that how it's called?) use only 'robes' (whatever that is, and, also, what's under those robes? like, a thong? do they wear muggle underwear? SO MANY QUESTIONS)

So, i was thinking about this instead of working🤠.

I liiive for that part with tonks' clothes, i even got a litlle "oh i wanna be thereeee and try everything and make everything fit with magic!"

And this how i imagine wizards dress (according to jkr) in the muggle world

ok please know that this image made me howl

thank you for the super interesting question! i have thought a bit about typical wizarding wardrobes and familiarity with muggle fashion among wizards in the 90s as a worldbuilding question in beasts. it's definitely true that wizarding familiarity with muggle dress is another one of those worldbuilding points in canon where the text is unclear and at times inconsistent. i know people have different views on how much wizarding and muggle culture interact, especially in matters of popular culture and fashion. i've heard very convincing arguments that the cultural insularity and physical remove of the wizarding community from muggles would mean most children raised in wizarding households, especially pureblood families like the weasleys, wouldn't know that much about how muggles plausibly dress, what they listen to, or what forms of media are popular (books, music, sports, even less so tv and film).

while i do agree with some aspects of this, in my approach to wizarding youth culture in the 90s, i think young witches and wizards on the left know more about muggle fashion than they do about many other aspects of muggle culture, and that interest and ability to pull off muggle fashion depends on a person's background, politics, gender (because mostly, it does all seem to be about trousers - i reckon pureblood supremacists, as you say, are in their undies most of the time), but especially generation and the politics/patterns of consumption in the time period when they were a teenager. i think your desire and ability to wear muggle clothing varies a lot if you're born in 1950 vs 1980, partly because of changing wizarding politics and the difference between growing up in peacetime vs a world at war, but partly because muggle fashion changes as a market in the second half of the twentieth century.

basically, i think these young progressive millennial wizards would wear more muggle clothing because of changes in muggle fashions/consumption that allow for greater availability and access to muggle clothing by the 1990s, as well as access to information about fashion and trends, and i think they would want to because willingness to embrace muggle fashions would be a way of showing their commitment to their own politics and forms of teenage rebellion that were distinct from those practiced by generations prior living through the first wizarding war. a longer discussion with my reasoning for this is below the cut!

so - in general, in canon, gen X wizards and older (so the youngest of them born in the 1950s thru 70s, and everyone older than that) seem to dress in muggle clothing really only as a protective measure to prevent exposure/risk breaking the statute of secrecy. when bob ogden goes to the gaunts' house in the 1920s, even as the head of a major ministry department dealing with law enforcement, he does a terrible job dressing as a muggle (the bathing suit, pls bob, i beg). if you look at all the wizards trying to dress as muggles for the world cup, it's clear that the adoption of muggle clothing, for most wizards, is a strategic, defensive move more than anything else. in PoS, mcgonagall - herself a progressive woman in her politics - disdains wizards who are celebrating the end of the first wizarding war by celebrating in the street "not even wearing muggle clothes", which she thinks is reckless and risks wizards' exposure (love when mcgonagall dresses like a muggle briefly at grimmauld place in OotP and it freaks harry out lol). there is no enthusiasm or interest in it - there's just conformity for self-preservation.

for that reason, i think you can see why those on the wizarding right in the mid-twentieth century, especially those drawn to pureblood and wizarding supremacy, would come to see dressing like a muggle as a disgrace, a sign of submission to a lesser people, in a way that would become extremely loaded in the years preceding and during the first wizarding war (1970-1981). when harry sees snape in the flashback to his first trip on the hogwarts express in the early 70s, he notices snape is already wearing his wizard robes very early on in the journey, which harry's narration supposes is because snape's happy to be out of his 'dreadful Muggle clothes' (DH). those muggle clothes were a sign both of snape's poverty but also his outsider status in muggle tinworth: special, because he's a wizard, but otherwise socially inferior to other children in every other way. snape, of course, is raised in a wizarding household with knowledge of magic but has been wearing muggle clothing to avoid detection for his entire childhood, in ways that imbue the wearing of wizarding clothes and casting off of muggle garms with great political significance. in canon, we see that the vast majority of wizards, while not death eaters or rabid pureblood supremacists, tend to be small c conservatives in their view of wizarding cultural norms and tend to think they're better than muggles even if they don't necessarily want to go out and kill them all. for that reason, they remain loyal to wizarding traditions, and continue to wear robes, partly as a symbol of their proud cultural identity as wizards, in ways that they would likely only cling to as their society moves towards open war over muggle-wizard relations (as you say, robes seem to be worn without trousers underneath, so most wizards are just wearing underwear under their robes and going about their day. slay, honestly).

so, if the right hate muggle clothes, then the willingness of gen z+ wizards to engage with and adopt aspects of muggle attire and culture might map onto a progressive political outlook and a disavowal of wizards-first ideology. but a person's politics alone doesn't mean they know how to pull off muggle clothing, and in the years of brewing tension then open war, most wouldn't bother risking their lives to be caught wearing a pair of bell bottoms. arthur weasley is the best example of this. arthur is theoretically interested in muggle clothes because he's a progressive man who disavows wizard supremacy and believes in principles of tolerance towards muggles. now, he's not good at knowing how to pair a plausible muggle outfits. this is because he still lives at a reasonable remove from wizards, he's extremely busy with a demanding job and seven children to be staying up to date with changing fashions, and at the end of the day still spends most of his week among wizards in a civil service that demands a certain level of professional conformity. but i think it's also because arthur weasley is born in 1950 and therefore spent his young adulthood trying to raise a young family during a war. arthur instead channels his politics into support for muggle protection legislation rather than in wearing muggle clothing, which he might see as a limited individual act of symbolic resistance that would put his family at risk and also cost time and money he doesn't have. (if we look at the marauders, as an example of a progressive bunch in the interim generation between arthur and arthur's children, especially someone like sirius with greater financial freedom, it's very telling that sirius shows his politics off through riding a cool muggle motorbike and sticking up muggle soft porn on his bedroom walls, but not noticeably through fashion, as far as harry's photographs show).

but if you look at arthur's children, progressive wizarding millennials, it seems like more confident familiarity with muggle fashions and culture is generally more common. i think we can include someone like tonks in this, raised in a mixed marriage household by a blood traitor and a muggleborn dad. harry says that the weasley children are better than their parents at dressing like muggles. when harry sees bill weasley he doesn't think 'this is a man who looks like he's done a bad job dressing for a muggle rock concert' he thinks 'this is a man who looks like he could be going to a rock concert'. this suggests to me a difference, say, between bill and his dad. arthur likes muggles and believes engaging with muggle culture is important, but doesn't really succeed at it, but his eldest son manages to marry both a political commitment to embracing muggle culture with an ability to dress plausibly as a muggle so much so that he's able to ape a subculture in a way his dad doesn't really try to often and has never succeeded at.

why? i think there's a few things going on. one is that the majority wizarding millennials grew up in peacetime, after the fall of voldemort, in the 1980s and 90s, where wearing muggle clothing was less likely to get you killed and more likely to symbolise an individual act of rebellion against more low-level societal norms and cultural pressures rather than against a murderer in a mask. this, plus having the time and disposable income to follow muggle fashions more closely, as well as the opportunity to access about muggle fashions and celebrity styles, has a big part to play. bill weasley has more time and ability than his dad to stay up to date about muggle clothing tastes, as do his siblings. characters who went to hogwarts in the 80s and 90s also did so at the peak of a mass print consumer culture (one that was already on an upward ascent since the 60s) that was designed to be be accessible, inexpensive and create an appetite for following trends among consumers, and that could very easily be of appeal to progressive young witches and wizards. this is why in beasts i have ginny know about the spice girls and their iconic lewks from a copy of smash hits magazine because that seemed like the kind of inexpensive and highly portable source of information about muggle culture that a muggleborn or halfblood student (or even a pureblooded student with a parent with a progressive interest in muggle clothing) would be able to take to school and pass around a dormitory. on the gender point, too - donning muggle clothes, especially the more permissive and sexy clothing of the 80s and 90s would be a great way for a rebellious young woman raised in a wizarding household - eg. tonks or ginny - to stick it to the conservative gender norms in the wizarding world.

moreover, the changes in fashion as a market in the muggle world would make a certain base style of comfortable and inexpensive muggle dress much more readily available to younger witches and wizards than ever before. for kids born in the late 70s/80s, changes in muggle clothes consumption - aka. the globalisation of mass factory production of textiles, especially garments, and the early forms of fast fashion we now recognise today - would also have an impact on the ready availability of certain basic forms of cheap muggle fashion, including the ubiquity of cheap jeans and trainers/sneakers, that emphasise comfort and ease of daily wear at a low cost point produced in such high volumes such that if you wanted a pair of jeans, you could easily get your hands on one. this would have made a plausible muggle clothing a lot more accessible (there's only so wrong you can go if you're just wearing jeans, t-shirt, a jumper, and a pair of trainers, really), and explain why the clothes harry wears in the muggle world don't seem all that different from the clothes he wears in the wizarding world (admittedly usually under his robes), or indeed that different from what ron seems to wear most of the time. passing as a muggle in 1920 with little effort - à la bob ogden - would be a lot harder than doing so in 1990.

so - yeah. that's my take! i think it's mostly about generation, but also about politics, about war and peace, a bit about gender and a lot about capitalism. i hope this helps!

#wizarding culture #meta #analysis #wizarding clothing #beasts #hp meta #loved answering this thank you so much!

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kariachi · 10 months

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Who wants fic!? Some Kevin, some Argit, shopping went wild and our favorite rat is indulging in some of his ancestral culture.

It had been expected for Argit to come back to the apartment with a decent pickling jar and a collection of whatever fruits and vegetables caught his eye. Ever since getting somewhat settled on Earth Kevin had begun working on making a traditional-enough broth like had been a mainstay of his early childhood, and Argit had eventually gotten the urge to follow suit. He hadn’t grown up with traditional Erinaen fare, his nostalgia was for what could be eked out of the Null Void, but since their escape he’d been slowly getting more and more exposure to the cultures, cooking, and so on of his parents’ homeworld. Especially now, with the thriving population in Geilla Bohln giving him every opportunity to sink into the whole. To try to get a pickle together, a household mainstay of the vast majority of the species, especially with Kevin doing similar with his broth? Had been an obvious step to take.

Kevin had not realized that it apparently required restocking the kitchen.

He stood leaning against a wall and watched, cheek on his fist, as Argit pulled item after item out of a jar that had to be at least twice what he’d expected. A stack of papers, about six different varieties of fruit and veg- only half of which recognized- a container of vinegar, a box of salt, cutlery-

“When you were late,” he said, “I was kinda hoping you’d met a cute guy.”

“I should be so lucky,” Argit said with a derisive snort. “Made the mistake of mentioning I was trying to make a pickle for the first time and was forced to buy a larger jar than I wanted because ‘planning for later never hurts you’. Then, the bastards had a few of the teenagers go with me to buy some produce, people there insisted I grab this-” He grabbed a bundle of some sort of green. “-because apparently it makes a healthier and faster pickle.”

“Then,” he continued, and at that point Kevin had to hop up to sit on the counter, “somebody asked what color knife I was using. I said ‘I’ve got metal ones’, immediately half the shop was arguing about what was the best color knife for cooking because apparently that makes a difference. Anyway, another couple of teenagers got sent to escort me to get some ‘good crystal’.” Stepping away from the jar as he finished unloading, Argit grabbed one of the small handful of knives. They were blue tones, with bone handles shaped down to a grip that looked natural in his hand. Kevin couldn’t help a little smirk.

“And is that color good for pickles?”

“Not a fucking clue.” Argit shook his head. “Once the others mentioned the pickle the argument started up again, finally said I wasn’t getting more than one set and seems everyone could at least agree that blues are good for general everyday use. Still tried to talk me into getting multiple colors, but by then I was just done. Damn near everybody with access to a pen and paper gave me a different recipe to follow too.” Snickering, Kevin shook his head. Reached out to fiddle with one of Argit’s ears.

“Think at this point I��m required to make some prayers to help it work,” he teased, snorting as Argit leaned into his touch.

“It fucking better, because if I have to go through this again we’re moving.”

#fanfic #i need to do a more extensive post about carit at some point...#they need so much worldbuilding given how important they are to erinaens

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notsodailykanji · 1 year

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I've Been Using MaruMori (Comprehensive Japanese Study Platform)

(Long post! Scroll down for pictures and see the link at the bottom if you want to check it out!)

My journey in learning Japanese has been a serious of fortunate accidents, stumbling upon one new tool/website after another. I spent about 18 months learning kanji on WaniKani from 2018-2020, and reached around level 26/60. Perhaps around 600 kanji and 2000 vocabulary words discovered, though not all learned. After taking a break for several years, I returned to Japanese study intermittently in 2022, but more consistently in 2023. WaniKani was useful for me in the sense that it finally provided a way to memorise kanji (through a spaced repetition system), and I am grateful for that. However, there was a problem: my grammar was stuck in beginner-intermediate, around mid N4. All the grammar I had learned in my entire Japanese learning journey up to that point was through two amazing mobile apps, Human Japanese, and Human Japanese Intermediate.

When I finished them both, I had a decent foundation in Japanese grammar, but my kanji and vocabulary knowledge was rapidly outpacing my command of Japanese grammar. I tried Bunpro for a time (a grammar SRS website), but I was already paying for a WK subscription, and I missed the tongue-in-cheek, entertaining walkthrough of Japanese grammar that I found in the Human Japanese series. HJ and HJI was relatable, fun, accessible, and made clear the passion the authors have for the language, which resonated with me as a learner. The HJ series was a beginning to a comprehensive Japanese tool. It taught kanji, vocabulary, and grammar all in one-place, with in-depth explanations, and even did quizzes at the end. Every chapter was concluded by introducing an element of Japanese culture (often food and scenic places).

When I returned to my old Japanese learning platforms, some of my friends told me about a new Japanese learning platform, Maru Mori. It aims to teach kanji, vocabulary and grammar all in one place. The grammar lessons are detailed, thorough, and interesting, having many of the same qualities of HJ and HJI. The website is leaving Beta soon, launching on August 12th, with grammar srs. As of now, N5 is complete, N4 is almost complete, and the site will eventually cover everything up to and including N1. The website will include mock JLPT tests, and eventually, pitch-accent drills as well. I've been using it since March this year, and seen it grow a lot in such a short space of time. See for yourself:

My cute little Maru panda on the Adventure Map, a journey around a scenic map interspersed with kanji, vocab, grammar lessons, reading exercises, and grammar conjugation drills.

The next reading lesson I'll have to complete tomorrow. Furigana toggle, audio, and English translations.

Kanji lesson pages showing mnemonics, and other supplementary information.

Part of the roadmap for Maru Mori (with much more on the way, but you can check the website for that).

What I've shown here in the screenshots is just a slice of what the site offers. Conjugation drills, crossword puzzles, and even wordle:

My Dashboard, showing some cool statistics. Right now I have about 70% of N5 material revised. Soon I'll reach the N4 region and start digging into new grammar. :D

If you made it to the end of this mammoth post, thank you for sticking with me and scrolling this far. I appreciate it. Let's take a moment to talk about why I made this post. My primary motivation is wanting Maru Mori to succeed and grow as a platform, because I truly believe in its potential. So much so, that I purchased a lifetime subscription back in March of this year. I want this website and company to succeed so that I can continue to study Japanese on it, all the way to N1 level. I want this to be the one and only platform I truly need, other than native exposure. In order for that to happen, I'm doing my part by trying to promote Maru Mori where I think it makes sense, when I can. So that it can grow as a company and continue to deliver just as it has in its launch so far. My secondary motivation is because I am passionate about Japanese language learning. I said I would come back to this blog when I found a method of studying Japanese that I could share with my followers (hello, if you're still around!), and for me, this is it. I want more people to try learning Japanese on this platform. I genuinely believe it is unique in its offering, in its potential, and in terms of user enjoyment while learning.

If any of this post has piqued your curiousity, MaruMori has a 14 day free trial, details are on the on-boarding page after you register for an account. You can register for Maru Mori here: https://marumori.io/register?rcode=komorebi

Yes, that is a referral code. Since I have a lifetime subscription already, I don't expect to get any remuneration from you signing up with my link, but I would appreciate it if you did :D

If you check out the site, let me know what you like and what you don't, I'll pass it on to the developer, he's very active in the Discord. (We have a great community which you should totally join!).

Until next time,

#studyblr #japanese #japanese langblr #langblr #japanese studyblr #notsodailykanji #language #language learning #marumori

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erinpilolla · 1 year

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Applying TV Infomercials to Modern Advertising : Moon Sand

By Erin Pilolla

Moon Sand was a hydrophobic children's play and craft material made from a blend of sand and other compounds that prevented it from drying out while still maintaining its moldability. The idea for the toy was not particularly groundbreaking, and in fact it can be made at home easily. Kinetic sand is a popular modern counterpart you can find in most major stores. But Moon Sand, which was first introduced in August 2006, has its own unique brand identity and was successful in generating thousands of sales by using the power of branding and commercial production while TV was still one of the most effective channels of advertising. The commercial, in all its early 2000’s glory, pulls kids in with its upbeat and horn-filled tune. Then, wow- there are a lot of awesome things you can do with this Moon Sand. You can turn it into a bowling ball and pins? You can make an entire farm of animals? As if it can't get any cooler, Moon Sand came with a branded carrying kit and molds for your sand. It's a classic formula for kid's advertising: Fun music, a friendly and excited narrator, and lots of examples of how you can do something exciting with the product they advertise with "just a little" parent assistance. Yet, Moon Sand manages to put a fresh twist on what one may expect from traditional methods of days yore, and still holds a nostalgic place in my heart.

Don't get me wrong, my mom did buy me this because I begged her to, and I cannot recall using it more than maybe once or twice. The few times I did use it it was a huge disappointment, and I certainly was not going to be able to bowl with this mess. Since it didn't hold its shape very well and apparently came with only castle molds, you couldn't do much with it except make castles, unless of course you purchased more molds separately. I'm thoroughly convinced the commercial hired professionals for the commercial to create castles using additional materials. The product itself, and maybe to some extent the entire brand, was not much more than yet another meaningless cash grab thrown out into a sea of consumers the company hoped to profit off of. It did feel really satisfying to squish between your fingers though.

Moon Sand was not exceptional, but it didn't need to be, because for some reason the brand and commercial still stick out in my mind and it felt like a product I had to have, as if my life depended on it. I vividly remember the commercial coming on and how excited I would be, almost stressed, as I would run around to find a pen and paper, hoping to finally write down the phone number for the product and the name of it. It took several tries, since the commercial was so fast, and I would try to explain to my extremely confused mother what it was and why I could not relax until I had this sand. Didn’t she understand that we could potentially not order fast enough, and miss out on the additional two moon sand molds the commercial offered for free to the first callers?

The early 2000's have already captured a particular time in history that we will never see again, a blend of culture and circumstance that was completely unique. Technology's pervasive spread and rapidly changing trends in business and personal habits made for a memorable and transformative landscape for Gen Z to grow up during. Sometimes referred to as "Digital Natives," a majority of people in the U.S. under the age of 30 have spent their entire lives having access to or awareness of new technology like smartphones, streaming services, and cell phone apps. At the same time however, many of them have also had some exposure to older, "traditional" technology such as landline/flip phones, dial up, and desktop websites on the internet. As these forms of communication and creation have become more outdated, they also start to feel much simpler, and can bring about feelings of nostalgia or longing.

Many of our childhood experiences included a unique blend of both modern and traditional media, so it is important that is reflected in representations of Gen Z characters and through advertising. Including references to media and historical moments of the early 2000s that had cultural impact is a great way to boost engagement and improve consumer relations, including toys and children's shows that were popular such as Moon Sand. This is especially true of groups or topics that may have been niche or underrepresented at the time. Since many more people have access to past media than ever before, content that is easy to find and frequently pushed can become quickly oversaturated or seem stale to these consumers. Therefore, finding content that is truly relevant to your consumers and less obvious to the mainstream can greatly improve your brand standing.

Moon Sand used trends of the time to be able to draw in and hold a captive audience with their TV commercial. At the ending they provide a website which you could log onto and purchase through, as well as a phone number to call. They offered extra product as an incentive for purchasing over the phone. Modern advertisements can feel confusing and unrelated to the original product they are supposed to be informing you about, but this commercial is straightforward and has an obvious sales intent. In a time where it can be hard to distinguish ad from art, many younger generations feel refreshed by this kind of simplicity and lack of obfuscation.

As marketers, it is important to utilize channels of communication that make it the most likely for your message to be seen by the desired demographics. While we may have moved away from some of the forms of media that Moon Sand used to build its branding and attempt to generate sales, we can still mimic the aspects of traditional forms of media that were most enjoyed by younger generations in their childhood by tailoring user experiences and communicating in ways that make sense to these audiences.

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#Youtube

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apportioned-abortion · 2 years

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I don't have a coherent point here I'm getting at, but I hate the way we are as women and we as a culture are completely alienated from pregnancy.

I am happy for declining birthrates, I am happy for birth control, I am happy for women having more economic and social freedom and less unwanted pregnancies. I am not advocating for more. The cultural attitude and dismissal of pregnancy though is so absurd though when you think about it.

The time I was pregnant, it became my personality and identity to other people. I wasn't a person, I was a pregnant woman. Either the other person ONLY talked about my pregnancy and nothing else or pointedly ignored the fact that I was pregnant and refused to acknowledge anything that goes with it. I had to answer questions about my pregnancy with every new stranger or acquaintance, and god forbid I were to complain. Every time I see a pregnant woman now, I offer her the barest sympathy and acknowledgement that it's a hard time for HER without mentioning the baby, and it's like she wakes up mid-conversation and comes alive.

People are so easily able to pretend there are no differences in the sexes when the only exposure they've had to pregnancy is when they were 4 and their mom was having a sibling. With so many childfree women, childfree couples, and women who would never conceive of having a baby for themselves, I think it's easy to forget how big of a difference the ability to gestate a human makes between men and women.

With surrogacy and IVF making it more like an outsourced process than a human bodily function, with pregnant women not being visible in media or in real life (how often when you go get groceries or whatever is there a pregnant women there?), pregnancy becomes a forgettable backdrop.

In having a baby, the most traumatic experience I have ever encountered, I was the supporting character in my own trauma to everyone else. AND I had it very mild compared to stories of other women. You typically don't get treated like a roadblock to accessing your cast when you get foot surgery, you actually get proper care and acknowledgement that what you went through was traumatic or difficult. Following a birth, the new mother is typically treated like a whiny inconvenience who is hoarding her baby, but also a selfish bitch for being in pain, or wanting anyone to even look at her, or have needs.

In practice, many feminist spaces are made up of women who don't have children (for good reason!) and the negative attitude towards the role of motherhood often gets displaced to mothers themselves without self-reflection, or the needs of mothers are absent from discussion. I think also there is this attitude of "since all the right/anti-feminist people talk about how women should be mothers, they are pro-mother and mother's rights are being acknowledged by them" when that is the furthest thing from the truth.

It's just depressing. Pregnant women and mothers are talked around and used an debate points without regard to the women themselves way too often, and the lack of visibility of pregnant women and mothers (who are usually found socially only WITh groups of other pregnant women and mothers due to the high needs of being primary caretakers for children and social ostracization), contributes to this a lot.

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wackybuddiemewbs · 3 years

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Buddie Moodboard - Anthrax Attack AU

Because sure, we haven't put those boys through enough suffering yet. And we overuse an overused trope in pop culture, sure. Have I stolen shamelessly from NCIS and Criminal Minds and all the others? You bet. But this overused trope gives me a lot of feelings, okay? And I'm a hoe for angst. Such a hoe-hoe-hoe.

It was supposed to be a regular call (aren't they all?). A concerned neighbor called 911 when smoke came out of one of the windows. And since no one is in the house, the firefighters will have to force their way inside, it seems.

Buck and Eddie head inside to find the culprit in the stepson's room. It actually was no fire but some malfunction in the cooling unit that spewed out vapor.

Eddie really wants to get out of the house ASAP, though. It feels more like Fort Knox, and with way too much tech to his liking. Sadly, his wishes aren't granted. Just as they finish up on fixing the cooling unit, a security alarm goes off and suddenly, the whole house shuts down with metal doors, red light, the whole damn package.

Thankfully, everyone else was already outside, which means it's just Eddie and Buck stuck in the boy's room. While the 118 and Athena work as best as they can to find a solution, the two firefighters try their best to keep themselves preoccupied.

Eddie is more than glad when Buck finds a Rubik's Cube to play with, since he doesn't really want to talk about him breaking up with his girlfriend while everyone else can listen in on them thanks to the tech guy from the police managing to hack the security cameras.

The surprise is big when Buck doesn't just solve the Rubik's Cube in a rather short amount of time, but when a small package drops out, containing a white powder. Buck assumes that it's some drugs to cope with the stepdad's obsession with observation.

Sadly, that theory doesn't add up. The tech guy gains access to a camera in the basement, revealing a fully equipped lab down there, and supposedly some bio hazards as well. And it's very possible that what Buck thought to be drugs are actually something more destructive.

The team is frantic to get their colleagues out of the room and to a hospital for treatment, but since the security system is self-designed by the owner of the house, no one really knows how to break in. At the very least, they gain access to the sprinklers, as they are connected to a tank used for decontamination. It's at least something.

Though Eddie is none too pleased with this. After all, there are some things left unsaid between him and Buck. And being naked and on camera is not at all helping the matter.

Athena manages to track down the owner who has been at a presentation for his security system. He turns over the codes immediately, perfectly unaware of what's going on in his basement. He insists that his stepson was the only one who spent time in there.

While Buck and Eddie are brought to hospital for diagnosis and treatment, Athena is determined to get to the bottom of this locked-room mystery turned on its head. Buck's earlier theory about the content of the Rubik's Cube actually contains a bit of bitter truth: The stepfather basically kept his stepson locked up in the house under constant surveillance.

What the stepfather did not foresee is that the stepson would outsmart him, going for the software rather than the hardware. He hacked the security cameras, using an endless loop of the basement. Like that, the stepfather thought all was normal, even though the basement transformed into a lab more and more. Research and equipment he got through the dark net, using the times when his father was gone to set it all up.

What remains a mystery is why that boy decided he wanted a lab for bio hazards instead of using the software to break free. After all, the boy is not at school as presumed. Athena resolves to find the boy no matter the costs.

Buck and Eddie, meanwhile, are confronted with some tough news: The boy got his hands on a variant of Anthrax, and such was hidden inside the Rubik's Cube, too. To make matters worse, Buck had big exposure as the package broke, not only inhaling the white powder but also getting some right in the blood stream from a cut on his hand he got while the two forced their way inside the house.

Though with the new variant, Eddie may not be safe, despite having received a vaccine during his time in the Army. Buck is frantic, fearing for Eddie's life, and for failing at his task to be there for Christopher, should something happen to the boy's father. And Eddie is frantic, too, fearing that he may end up losing Buck before he ever got to tell him something that's harder to figure out for Buck than is a Rubik's Cube...

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elitegymnastics · 3 years

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Q: What is this?

A: It’s a flyer for a virtual fundraiser on June 4th that Elite Gymnastics is playing. You can access the show at quietyear.com

Q: Hasn’t Elite Gymnastics been inactive for like, ten years?

A: Yes. This is the first Elite Gymnastics performance of any kind since November 30th 2012, at the Horn Gallery at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio.

Q: Why did Elite Gymnastics stop playing shows?

A: Elite Gymnastics started out as me (Jaime) and a bunch of my friends agreeing to help me play my songs live back in 2009. I made a lot of weird demos in GarageBand and my friend Dominique Davis from the band Dearling Physique got tired of watching me sit on them. So, he booked me to play at a show he was curating as part of a small local music and arts festival called Clapperclaw. For several months that’s mainly what EG was. At some point the focus shifted to making recordings rather than playing shows, to participate in the emergent culture of new music distributed via MP3 file-sharing. The lineup winnowed to just me and Josh Clancy, who began creating digital EPs that we posted on this Tumblr page as ZIP files full of MP3s accompanied by a PDF of artwork. This is the incarnation of the group that most people are familiar with.

This was before Patreon existed. If Bandcamp was around, we’d never heard of it. Though MP3 file-sharing culture and file transfer sites like MediaFire and MegaUpload allowed anyone to distribute music freely across the world via the internet, it was still pretty difficult to get people to pay you for it. I think it was for this reason that a lot of internet music back then featured a lot of sampling. A lot of artists’ first forays into the world of DAWs and production took the form of mash-ups, bootleg remixes, and DJ mixes. Artists like Animal Collective, MIA, Kanye West, and Daft Punk for whom sampling was a pillar of their creative process were extremely influential. Elite Gymnastics was no exception - the first song of ours to gain traction online was “Is This On Me?” which made no attempt to hide the fact that it heavily sampled Faye Wong’s “Eyes On Me.” The fact that it was so difficult to make money off MP3s pushed people to make different creative decisions than they would have otherwise. It was sort of a free-for-all.

Eventually, all of this started to change. The major labels started getting a lot more aggressive about trying to destroy MP3 file-sharing culture. Platforms like MegaUpload were raided and taken offline. The replacements that sprung up to replace them were increasingly infested with ads and malware. Corporate platforms like YouTube and SoundCloud adopted Content ID filters to prevent the proliferation of copyrighted music there. Blogs and private torrent trackers being taken down meant thousands of hours of labor were wiped out in an instant. Some of the best archives of the history of recorded music ever created were destroyed without hesitation. Even the most devoted participants lost the will to keep repairing and re-making the stuff that cops and record companies kept obliterating.

Josh and I both dreamed of being able to make a living as musicians. We still do. Back then, we were willing to accept a lot of changes in order to make that possible, which seemed necessary. A lot of the stuff that we were great at just didn’t make any money. Once, we were asked to do a remix of a song called “Sa Sa Samoa” by the band Korallreven. I did the remix by myself, which was normal for us, and Josh was so inspired by it that he spent a week working non-stop to create a video for it. People loved it - the day the video dropped, Pitchfork designated the song as a “Best New Track” and New York Magazine wrote about it in their “Approval Matrix.” The video led to a ton of exposure, but from a financial perspective, it just did not make sense to put that much effort into promoting a remix of someone else’s song. The stuff we were personally excited by just seemed to have less and less to do with what actually makes money.

A lot of internet bands during this era began to palpably shapeshift in an effort to succeed in music as a career. Artists who’d first attracted notice for sample-based bangers they made on a laptop started posing with vintage hardware in their press photos and trading in their laptops for live bands and recording studios. It became harder to distribute DJ mixes or mash-ups that contained copyrighted music in them. Influential bloggers either closed up shop or were absorbed into the traditional music industry in some way. Feeds that once touted bizarre songs by laptop-toting weirdos with no industry connections started to become populated mostly by artists with labels and publicists. The bottom rungs of festival lineups started to consist mostly of new major label signings who have lots of money to spend on stage production but not much in the way of grassroots fan enthusiasm or media buzz.

Internet music and what people tend to refer to as “indie music” split off into two separate streams. Today, there’s a pretty intense firewall between internet culture and whatever you want to call the culture of vinyl records, mid-sized indie labels with publicists, and positive reviews from the few remaining websites that still pay people to write about music. I call it “publicist indie,” “lifestyle techno,” or “prestige electronica” depending on whether or not the music features guitars and/or vocals. The recent online kerfuffle about NFTs really emphasized this split. The worlds of digital illustration and game development campaigned aggressively against mass adoption of cryptocurrency - if you saw any Medium posts explaining crypto’s environmental issues, chances are they were written by someone from those fields. Every new announcement by an artist that they had minted an NFT was met with a swift and vocal backlash from fans. Though I’ve never really been much of an Aphex Twin fan, it was still pretty startling to look at the replies under his NFT announcement tweet and see hundreds of furious people announcing that he was now dead to them. That’s an artist who has seemed more or less unimpeachable for most of my life up until this point! All of that seemed to change in an instant.

There is a massive disconnect between the insular world of the industry establishment and the cutting edge of online counterculture. We saw this again a couple of weeks ago with the online response to the crisis in Gaza. We saw passionate advocacy for Palestinians from games journalists and developers much more often than we saw it from musicians. This is a very serious problem for music! I do not believe it is possible to please both sides - that is to say, I do not believe it is possible to be part of internet counterculture and the industry establishment simultaneously. The music industry is too conservative, too compromised, too corrupt. If it weren’t for the ocean of valuable copyrights that labels are sitting on, most of them would be bankrupt within a year. If the industry was forced to live or die based on how they handle what’s happening right now in the present, it would most assuredly die. The only people who don’t realize this are those who are being paid to stay ignorant.

Josh and I did not know this back then. From where we were standing, it looked like internet culture and established media industries were on track to converge. A career in the arts seemed genuinely, tantalizingly possible, right up until the moment that it no longer did.

In my case, I had really been struggling up until that point. My life had been this ongoing sequence of evictions and hospitalizations, and it seemed to be getting worse, not better. I donated plasma twice a week to pay for groceries and while I was sitting there with a giant needle stuck in my left arm for an hour I would see my picture in The Fader or my songs being recommended by one of the Kings of Leon on Twitter or whatever. Music seemed like the only thing the world thought I was any good at. It felt like my only chance at a peaceful, happy life was somewhere out there in a world I could only perceive through a laptop screen.

Gender, for me, was a big factor in all of this. The more invested in the craft of songwriting I became, the harder it was to repress or ignore my gender stuff. At that time I’m not sure I even knew what the word “transgender” meant - I just knew that when I showed up at a venue wearing a skirt, no one would talk to me or look me in the eye, and that reading about people like Anohni or Terre Thaemlitz or on the internet made me feel like if I could get out of Minneapolis maybe I could find a place where people would accept me. The internet was like, a pretty toxic place for someone in my position. When I tried to find people to talk to about what I was feeling, nobody tried to tell me to read Judith Butler or ask me what pronouns I preferred. The internet was just like, overrun with predators who just wanted to fetishize me and exploit me. Music seemed like the only way I’d ever have an actual life as myself. I was desperate for that. I was well and truly desperate.

Between all the big changes that were happening to us individually and the music industry moving farther and farther away of the anarchic free-for-all of MP3 file-sharing culture, the strain on us just got to be too much. We stopped trusting each other. We became the unstoppable force and the immovable object, crashing haphazardly against one another’s resolve in a dazzling display of youthful futility. Our partnership ended, and after finishing out the remaining live shows on the calendar by myself, I retired the name “Elite Gymnastics” and started making music on my own under other names. That was that.

Q: Why is Elite Gymnastics coming back now, then?

A: Over the years, Josh and I eventually started talking again. Though there was a lot we did agree on, and potential future projects were discussed, nothing truly felt right. We haven’t been in the same room since Summer 2012, and we’ve both changed a lot since then. We both have other projects and we’ve both developed other ways of working since we stopped working together. It’s a pretty big commitment to put all of that aside in order to join your fortunes together with someone you haven’t seen in a decade.

Recently, Josh decided to leave Elite Gymnastics. His reasons are his own, and I was very surprised by his decision, but after having had time to adjust, I’m really grateful to him. I had kept these songs at a distance for many years, because it seemed foolish to allow myself to get too attached to songs I didn’t feel like I was allowed to think of as mine, if that makes any sense. The songs felt like casualties of a conflict that I had to bury in the ground and try to forget about. Being able to embrace them again felt like re-growing a severed limb or having a loved one come back to life, almost. Feeling like it was safe to love these songs again made me feel whole in a way I didn’t expect to. I became really excited by the prospect of revisiting them, so that’s what I decided to do.

Q: Does this mean you’re going to put RUIN back on Spotify?

A: No. Taking the record off Spotify was the right thing to do. That record was only ever intended to exist during the era of MP3 piracy. I never envisioned a world where the music industry would be so aggressive about policing the way that copyrighted music is allowed to exist online. If we hadn’t opted to take the record down when we did, someone would inevitably have forced us to. If you want to hear those specific recordings again, you’re going to have to do it the way we originally intended: by downloading MP3 files from the internet. Try SoulSeek.

Q: What’s next for Elite Gymnastics, then?

A: Here’s the situation currently. There is no Elite Gymnastics music available to stream or purchase in an official capacity anywhere on the internet. It wouldn’t really be possible for me to put the old stuff on Spotify or Bandcamp now because of all the samples. Like I said before, it was a different time. Those records were created to thrive on a past version of the internet that no longer exists. They weren’t designed to be compatible with the 2021 internet.

Technically, Elite Gymnastics didn’t ever release a debut album. We had EPs, a compilation, and a remix collection. We didn’t make an album, a record that existed as the distillation of all that experimentation that contained all of the songs that fans of the EPs would want to hear, all in one place. It’s like we did Good Fridays but stopped before we made My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

So, I am currently working on the first Elite Gymnastics album. If you were following my stuff as Default Genders, you may have noticed me posting demos on my SoundCloud page from 2015-2018 that were all eventually reworked into the album Main Pop Girl 2019. The album I am making is taking that approach to all the old EG songs, including some unreleased stuff. I’m collaborating with others on some songs and I honestly feel like it has resulted in some of the best and most exciting music I have ever been involved with. It is a drastic reinvention, but iteration and reinvention have always been a big part of what I do. I want to make something that feels like the culmination of everything that came before, and so far, I think I’m succeeding.

Q: When will I be able to hear this new music?

At a virtual fundraiser on June 4th, 2021, where there is a suggested donation of $10. You can access it at quietyear.com

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anti-porn-unicorn · 3 years

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I’m a girl (18 now) who got exposed/addicted to pornography at a really young age, and I wanted to share my specific story on this blog so that the platform can get it out there.

Under the cut is my full story, and it’s a little long winded, so if you don’t want to read the whole thing, I bolded in purple the general topic/idea of that section. Just look for whichever of those interests you and the section will be about that. The first and last paragraph are good for context and end goal, though.

Thank you.

I don't fully remember my first exposure to porn. I know I was in third grade (6-7 yrs old, I had skipped a grade). The reason I had wanted to share my story, in fact, is because I don't see many stories with circumstances similar to mine. Most I see have at least one of the following 'modifiers', for want of a better word. Most I see have at least one of the following 'modifiers', for want of a better word. Most I see have at least one of the following 'modifiers', for want of a better word. 1. The person is a victim of CSA/grooming. 2. The person was at a generally pubescent age (~11-14). And/or 3. The person experienced porn as a quick disturbance. To be clear, these stories are as valid and important as mine, and I simply think more perspectives make evidence of the effects of porn more airtight. I've never been the victim of SA, harassment, or grooming, ever in my life. My story shows the effects of exclusively porn.

The first memory I can recall about this was actually the first time I got caught. I was 6 yrs old, and very into video games,so on this day, I was playing a 3D porn game on my crappy hand-me-down laptop. I kind of knew that what I was doing wasn't acceptable, so I was sitting in my room in the corner as far from my door as possible. My mom walked in so I just slammed the laptop shut because I wasn't that good at hiding things. My mom obviously asked what I was doing, and I tried to keep her from looking, but it was right there when she reopened it. This is where the battle of it begins.

From ages 6-14 I don't have a good timeline of events but a few pop out that exemplify the severity of the issue. These are very probably out of order.

I got an iPod Touch for Christmas (~6-7), and every night I would watch porn on it until they caught on. I literally still remember some names of the sites, most that don't even exist anymore. My parents have always been amazingly caring. I couldn't ask for more. During the earlier ages (~6-8) I was put with a child therapist for fear of a deeper issue. My parents started either taking technology away in the night and/or setting restrictions on the internet. Unfortunately, between my slight tech-savvy, and my crazed addiction at this point, this wasn't a solution.

The addiction got DEEP. It warped my brain. When I had no technology, I used everything I could find.

Whenever I had access to less restricted internet, I used it. Once I asked my older cousin to use her iPod and watched it on there.(she noticed and told my mom. I remember my mom had asked me "Is there anything you need to tell me?", and I knew what she meant, but I just said "nope!" and walked away. At one point my dad's work provided him with a Blackberry, and I asked him could I play one of the built in little games. Once I had it, I watched porn. (when I gave it back to him he pressed the "back" button, and I was caught.)

I used Youtube. This was when YouTube was way less moderated (back when the app was a little old timey TV). I learned I could look up "striptease" and "nip-slip" and other stuff like that, finding more soft-core videos that could suffice when the internet in general was locked down.

I straight-up found out ways to disable the restrictions. Once I found out my mom's PIN for the controls, I went and disabled them, but changed the PIN so it would look like they were still on, and so that she couldn’t access and re-enable them. (I made it 7399. Spells "sexy". My mind was a mess.)

My parents bought a book called "The Classical Tradition". I'm just learning now as I'm looking it up that it was a Harvard Reference Library book (probably why it was so damn thick) about ancient Greek and Roman culture. I didn't know that. I had realized that sprinkled throughout the book there were pages that were more glossy than the rest, which you could see from the sides of the pages (the book was HUGE). These were the photo paper, which had the classical paintings and sculptures. And because these had nudity (Think "The Birth of Venus" type) I would regularly flip through this book when I needed a "fix". Absurd.

My parents got me an American Girl book that was made to ease worries about the developmental years. The pages on breast development / the anatomy of the vagina were what I looked at the most. When my parents had gotten me the child therapist, there was the logical fear that I might have been molested. The therapist gave me a book where there was a page with two cartoon mice, a boy and a girl. They were wearing swimwear/underwear and the point of that was "anywhere the clothing is covering is somewhere that adults can't touch you without telling.” They might as well have been stick figures, there was NO detail. But since they were in ‘underwear’ I'd always look at that page a lot. Anything barely vaguely sexual.

During this part of my life, I got no real pleasure out of this, I was just obsessed. For the first year I even watched it on mute out of fear of being caught. The lowest point during this period was when I very unfortunately filmed a video of me touching myself. I got nothing out of it and had no intent on ever sending or posting it. I was just emulating what I had been seeing. I deleted it the next day. I was 9 then.

From puberty until now (11-18) is when my sexuality was shaped by it. The addiction was far more controllable, I could spend a couple weeks to a couple months without it, but I'd always come back. Because it was now tied to my body. And while my need for it to be constant was gone, now I had to deal with the tolerance issue.

Over time what I watched became more and more depraved. I had the personal preference of hating anything amateur, because of the low quality, so I managed to avoid anything obviously non-consensual or involving visibly underaged girls, but that doesn't really mean much with the stuff the studios were putting out. During the middle points it got REALLY violent and disturbing. Bordering on torture (extreme kink) and even bodily deformation. As a young woman, I couldn't really tolerate any of the role based Kinks (father-daughter, babysitter, schoolgirl), so more extreme for me meant more extreme acts. Just absolute destruction of women's bodies for the purposes of sex. I moved away from that when tumblr banned porn and I started using reddit for it, and also during that time I was realizing how fucked up of an addiction that this was, even before I found feminism/anti-porn. I actively started trying to quit it, for good. But I always went back.

One big effect is heavy confusion with my sexual orientation. A lot of people face this, but the addition of porn for me really throws things off. Like: Am I bi, and a form of comphet/denial/inexperience keeps me from seeing women in a romantic way? Is it a mix of that and porn? (relatively likely) Or am I just straight, and the porn has completley shaped my mind (likely). 90% of the time I watched solo female content or lesbian content, and could only stand to watch certain specific forms if it included men at all. In real life I find a fair amount of men attractive but their bodies in a sexual sense are tolerable at best, but usually cringe inducing. l've never been attracted to a woman romantically, but exclusively women's bodies are sexual to me. It feels like everything in my brain that I would have been able to use in order to figure myself out has been permanently overwritten with incorrect information. Because of porn.

I've still got it bad. Every once in a while, I’ll read something vaguely sexual, or see a woman in a risque photo, and then the seed is planted. I'll always say "I'm not going to do it, I always feel disgusting after, it’s not even really enjoyable at this point, I can do better than this”. I always give in the end of the night. I'm 7 days off of it. I've been on this earth for 18 years. 12 of those years I've been cripplingly addicted to pornography. Two thirds of my life, and for as long as I can remember. I can never undo it. Just like an alcoholic will always be an alcoholic, only able to achieve remission, I will always be a porn addict. I have to be careful. But I have to hope for the future. And with finding the community that is speaking the truth about this, I'm heartened to do better. To no longer be held down by an addiction to consuming my own oppression.

#thank you for sharing #you’re not alone in this #I’m glad you escaped the addiction!#submission

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atomic-operator · 3 years

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I would like to say: the so-called nuclear argument is not readily accessible to the ‘layman’ due to the technical nature of nuclear power & STEM in general. I believe that simplicity, transparency, and diligent attention to detail are crucial when discussing the future of nuclear power at any level of production. Online or otherwise, I hear a lot of opinions about nuclear power that, while indeed are only opinions, can at times be ill-informed, influenced by ambiguous sources if not based entirely on subjectivity. I bring it up because there is a world of a difference between touting a ‘solution to all ills’ and allowing others to make informed judgments based on their circumstances.

Nuclear power in any form is not the sole answer to an energy crisis. There are many valid criticisms that should be approached seriously and with an open mind. No industry can afford to be blind to its own hazards -- nukes in particular. One cannot dismiss the dangers of radiation work because it is thought to be overall less harmful than other jobs. Because, believe me, I have had firsthand experience with this: there is a nuclear culture and it kills. Since the dawn of the nuclear age, this culture has been about development for a particular vision of the future.

Unlike a traditional coal-fired power station, nuclear power stations have an ingrained heritage in painting a picture of the greatest minds put to work to for a common goal. This is a complex topic that reaches all the way back to the Manhattan Project and has much to do with a strictly enforced hierarchy of class (and race) dividing nuclear communities around the globe. The role of the nuclear worker is coveted, even today. Meanwhile, others of lower class have suffered accidental or deliberate exposures during weapons testing, releases of radioactive materials; or during radiation work such as mining and fuel processing.

The hazards of nuclear work cannot be ignored at any level nor at any cost or reason. No people can be refused their right to clean water & unpolluted land. While a breeder reactor sounds appropriate in theory, an ideal answer to our energy problem, in reality they are dangerous. This cannot be hidden behind a curtain to protect nuclear power’s “pristine veneer”. That is how we get Fermi-1, that is how we get RBMK. I promise that if there were a solution that was so effective it would already be constructed and on the grid. The answer is not as simple as shouting thorium, molten salt, or breeder reactor at someone who brings legitimate concerns to the table. That is not a discussion, that is a tool to stifle criticism. If a person cannot handle criticism, then in my opinion they have no right to be publishing anything about nuclear power with any ounce of authority.

I say all this as someone who works in this field. Part of my job is understanding the effects of these things on people and the environment. I would ask of someone before they formed a pro- or anti-nuke opinion that they research real accounts from people who are not ambiguously informed and form their own opinions, wherever that may fall on the spectrum of “for” or “against”.

#my shit

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bulletballet-arch · 3 years

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The Revised [ Full ] History of Eve in Picture Perfect

( until I decide to tweak and edit it some more )

In this verse, Eve’s mother Linda would reside in Brooklyn for three years after the death of her husband, William Littlejohn, his brother Malcolm, and Malcolm’s wife Yvette. Initially, she stays in Brooklyn simply because she feels she is supposed to. Her in-laws, Amos and Liza, want to observe her. Similarly, Linda’s parents want to ensure she is fine after narrowly facing death. Haunted by the massacre, Linda suffers from survivor’s syndrome, but she is never allowed to vocalize the pain felt. In the midst of secretly attending therapy sessions ( while Eve is taken care of by her Grandma Evelyn and Papa Giuseppe ) Linda finds that her lifestyle is stagnant. She feels as though she is a woman who does whatever someone else wants. Therefore, Linda decides to move to Manhattan with the five-year-old Eve in tow. They live in a luxurious apartment and Linda makes her living as a secretary on Wall Street while Eve attends ballet classes.

Linda didn’t have to be a secretary, as the Littlejohns (and her father) provided her with money, but she liked working. It kept her mind off things. Sometimes things would feel great until people asked her was her husband the late William Littlejohn. In time, Linda gets a boyfriend who is a stockbroker. He’s white, he’s a recent divorcee and because she worked so closely with him, Linda knew it would be unprofessional to date him. But she thought to herself, ‘this is my decision. It’s okay because I have some control.’ The idea of control was a myth, though. She became his arm candy, similar to what happened within the Littlejohn Family when she initially became linked with William.

Linda could not complain too much, though. Because her new lover was good to Eve. The overall excellent dynamic caused them to get married. Their marriage lasts for four years. Eve is eight years old when they divorce. It’s a divorce that’s long. Messy. He was going to jail for a pyramid scheme was a part of and Linda didn’t want to stand by him. After the divorce - and the trial - Linda decides she could use a break. She decides that she and Eve should leave the country for a little while. Because why not? She has the money. The first country they go to is England, staying in London.

It was supposed to be a month-long vacation, but she kept putting off returning home. She didn’t want to house hunt back in New York, she didn’t want to be identified with a scandal, she didn’t want to see any family. So they began living in London. When Eve is nine years old, Linda would decide to go to South Africa. Eve experienced cities such as Durban, Ghana, Cape Town. While Linda was really in Africa to become more connected to her ancestors, all and all, she thought the experience would be good for Eve. Her baby girl could have a lot of memories of different buildings, landscapes, cultures. And, this exposure did make Eve happy, however, she had no stable school life or friendships. So on a social level, Eve was miserable. She also tried having pen pals, but that only worked for so long before both parties ceased writing one another. Eve did feel at home when she was in New York with her extended family during holidays like Christmas. Eve’s maternal grandparents wanted her to live with them, but her mother refused it. Eve has a vivid memory seated in the back of a taxi, crying because she didn’t want to go to the airport. And as for Linda - well, she would never notice this, but whenever she was deeply distressed, her mental desire was to just keep moving.

When Eve was fifteen years old, her mother fell in love with a highly esteemed professor from the University of Cape Town. This would be her mother’s third significant relationship. They all began living together and he begins an inappropriate relationship with Eve. It’s all an act of grooming that Eve isn’t aware of. Linda catches on to it and calls out her boyfriend for his behavior. However, he is offended by the accusations. He moves out, but he still contacts Eve through phone calls and even picks her up from school at one point without her mother’s consent. Eve remembers her mother always asking her questions, ‘did he touch you?’ ‘What did he do to you?’ Eve was overwhelmed, as she felt her mother didn’t believe her. It caused Eve to give her the silent treatment, which in turn caused Linda to decide to move again. This time, they would leave Africa to live in Europe - France, specifically.

In France, the two moved twice. First to Paris then to Lyon. Eve liked Lyon more than Paris, but was much too stubborn to admit it. Part of Eve was worried that if she was open about her love, then her mother would want to move somewhere else. She attended college with a focus on art conservation. Ultimately, she did not fully complete her apprenticeship because she would meet Alexandre DuBois, a con artist she fell in love with.

He did not expose his true nature to her at first, but she began questioning the source of the jewelry he was continuously giving her. When she reached the conclusion that he was a criminal of some sort, Alexandre kept insisting that it wasn’t as much of an issue that she was making it out to be. To prove this he wanted Eve to come with him to a job wanting Eve to participate as well. Eve declined, she wasn’t trying to get in any legal trouble. However, Alexandre said he didn’t like boring women. Offended, she agreed. He slicked down his hair so it could appear straight. Wore his best suit. Meanwhile, he instructed Eve to dress as though she was going to attend the most extravagant party. When they stood side by side, Alexandre was looking like a wealthy white man with a young, black mistress. The trick, Alexandre told her, was to always act as though you belong. For days Eve waited for consequences. For the police to knock at her door. Something. It didn’t happen. She told herself never again, but she got addicted to stealing with Alexandre, as it became an adrenaline rush.

Eventually, Eve and Alexandre were apprehended by law enforcement. Linda bailed Eve out and told her that if she was not going to continue reaching for her career goals then she would send her to America. Eve would fight back, insisting that she was an adult, so she doesn’t have to go to America just because she said so. Linda then has enough and states that since Eve is a young adult, she can live with Alexandre. The relationship that would progress between Eve and Alexandre was not without its faults. Even when Eve moved in with him, Alexandre was cheating on her discreetly. He had his alternate hookups and one-night stands, with Eve simply being his main girlfriend. When women smugly confronted Eve of how Alexandre was nothing but a womanizer and she was his latest victim, she fought for the sheer integrity of his name. Behind closed doors, when Eve confronted Alexandre about his inability to be monogamous: he blackened her eye.

The relationship comes to an end when Alexandre gains access to an elite party. During their fumbled job, they would be acknowledged by someone who would be very influential in Eve’s future, Gisella Agostini of the Corsican Mafia. The two would leave the scene in shame, fiercely arguing in the car about who messed up. Eve brings up how he’s a liar and manipulator, only for Alexandre to rip the pearls from her neck and kick her out his car. She had to find her way back to safety in the dark of the night.

While Alexandre and Eve are separated, the Agostini family does research on the two. They see that Alexandre has a long history of theft, and even a previous murder charge, while Eve just seems to be a college student who got caught up in the thrill of crime. First, Alexandre is snatched off the street by Agostini goons. In what he deemed as an act of self-preservation, he sells Eve out, claiming it was her idea.

When Eve is abducted by the crime family, Gisella confronts her directly. The old woman states that she could fix everything and spare her from her ‘husband’s wrath.’ But the truth is, Gisella’s husband doesn’t do anything in the crime family any longer due to his age and illnesses, but Gisella uses him as a ‘front’ to reign. Eve ends up working for the crime family, and in little moments, she ever so gradually speculates she is in the midst of a female mob boss. As the months go along, Eve’s mother wants to make amends but Eve doesn’t want her mother to know she is now gang-affiliated. Eve is very afraid for her life. This leads to more mother-daughter tension due to the lack of communication.

As the years pass on, Gisella is progressively attached to Eve. This is reflective of how she has her own passion for the world and the diverse people who live in it (especially those of the African diaspora.) In turn, Eve initially grows to feel like she’s a part of some sort of stable family. Ultimately, their relationship gradually becomes overbearing and toxic. Eve is literally feeling like she’s owned and controlled by an old white woman. Therefore, Eve distances herself from dealing with Gisella personally because it was too much. However, Eve continued working for the crime family in regards to assassinations and heists, but she was not eating at Gisella’s home for dinner or talking over tea. Eve decides to make amends with Gisella by the time she is 31. Little did she know, the woman was on her death bed at this point. They were kind to one another and Gisella lets Eve know she can do whatever she wants now. Later that week, the old woman would die. While Gisella’s death comes as a shock - Eve was also feeling relieved. Afterward, Eve has mild conflict with Gisella’s nephew who feels like she should not be leaving the crime family, but Eve insists Gisella harbored no ill will towards her and wanted her to do whatever she wanted. So, she’s leaving.

Eve relocates to New York to begin a new, stable life. It’s what she wants. It’s what she needs. Or so she thinks. She thought New York would have her feel at home and content as it did when she was a child, but she didn't feel this way at all. She felt like a stranger among her family, like a guest or something. Eve proceeds to sell the art she makes for a living and gains recognition from it. Admittedly, she’s bored with a quiet life. It is entering a relationship with Salvatore Scozzari that sparks her passion for crime, although he would much rather her marry him and live a quiet but glamorous life. But in the end? Eve can’t do it. Breaking up with Sal by claiming she’ll be working at a gallery in California, she travels to another state. Her life as a thief starting up a second time.

#long post tw //#grooming tw //#v; picture perfect.

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h2shonotes · 3 years

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Attended the first preview of a NEW @trevormusical off-Broadway. It was my first time attending theater indoors since March 2020. I try to support new works, new artists, as investors are slow to fund new projects.

The exposure is paid forward. H2shO™️ only exists because of the access I have had to culture. To know me is to know I am a Broadway baby. I ushered on Broadway during my high school years. I went to the theater weekly prior to shutdown. I also studied film, music, theater in college.

Opera, ballet, musicals, plays, recitals, film, you name it, I incorporate the varied aspects of that lived history into all facets of my work. The medium is the message.

But ultimately my personal desires take a backseat to the health & safety of the people I serve. Consider Broadway was shutdown for 18 months, I was too. And I didn’t receive a stimulus package. 😆 Until recently the risks have outweighed than the rewards.

Stage 42, a small Off-Broadway house, was a first step back to normal. I was honored to be invited. If I lived in a state that didn’t value human life, the vaccine and mask mandates were not strictly enforced, the audience not compliant, things would look very different.

As for the Trevor musical, it is an energetic work in progress with the youngest cast I’ve seen on Broadway since the School of Rock. There is much work to be done still before opening. But that’s what previews are for. Reserving judgment.

#Trevor the musical #off broadway #musical #theater #health & fitness #join the sho #h2sho™️#broadway #fitness

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traumasurvivorshelpingsurvivors · 3 years

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I need support/advice.

TW: ableism, racism, stalking, abusive relationships, incest, CSA, rape, emotional abuse, neglect, sexual abuse, suicide attempt, transphobia

I don’t know how to feel like with my mom. I’m just so confused.

Because for so often I idealized her and thought she was the best thing ever.

My life has never been what anybody would consider very well. In my childhood, I actually didn’t have much of an opinion about my mom, since she was being abused by my dad the majority of the time he was home. And, even when he wasn’t, she mostly paid more attention to my twin sister, or at least that’s what I think. I have always been considered a daddy’s girl against my own will. Also, my mom seems to almost be in denial that I was also miserably abused by my father like her and my sister. Then again, I haven’t told people that my dad raped me multiple times and tried to sell me to sex work out of fear that nobody will believe me.

My sister’s abuse of me is only acknowledged by my sister. I remember that my mom even encouraged her to hit me with a textbook once because I made a sassy comment about knowing her favorite character would die in a video game. Whenever I try to bring it up, I get told to forgive my sister, something not even my sister wants me to do for her actions back then. This adult lasted until the two of us were sixteen years old and had no choice but to rely on each other. I was also made into a second mother of sorts for my sister, and always had to take care of her needs whenever nobody else could or would. It was exhausting.

When I was eleven, I was also groomed into an abusive relationship with my cousin, and at least my mom tried to put a stop to that even though she doesn’t fully realize that we were romantic before he tried to rape me multiple times and began stalking me (my mom even admits that she is a very naïve person and doesn't like to see the truth). I bring this up because I am being forced to move close by a lot of my abusive relatives by my mother, including my cousin who still wants me (I am 22 by the way and he’s a year older than me). Also, my mom refuses to stop talking about how she thinks it’s okay for cousins to date and marry even though I have told her multiple times it makes me severely uncomfortable since my grandparents almost forced me into marrying my cousin using legal loopholes.

My mom is also very ableist and racist. She continues to use the r slur around me even though I also keep telling her that I’m uncomfortable by it and it legit triggers me because of my severe school trauma. Also, makes a lot of hateful comments about people with Autism, and I have Autism but hide it from her (along with me hiding my OSDD because of her hateful comments towards systems). And she won’t stop talking about the typical racist talking points. Stealing jobs, being inferior, using slurs, etc. And, whenever I try to express my mixed Roma culture, she uses slurs and refuses to understand or listen to me when I tell her what she’s doing is wrong. With her views, I live in absolute terror every day that she’ll find out my true political beliefs, and this has been going on for six years.

My problems keep getting downplayed next to my sister’s, especially since when she tried to commit suicide but luckily didn’t succeed. I keep getting forced to do things and yelled at when I don’t. I keep getting told that I’m a burden and useless because I had to quit my job because of our move and my worsening mental health, then by told sorry later and bombarded with attention. I keep getting told I have to do everything for my sister, and we have a pretty codependent relationship. Also, I have been told for pretty much ever since I was a child that I was a waste of money and my mom especially loves bringing up that she went 10,000 dollars in debt during my middle and high school years to feed me.

I just...she’s the only person in my family that hasn’t been absolutely horrible to me. But now I have more exposure to the real world, people aren’t supposed to act this way. It’s more like my mom was the least bad option. I’m just so confused. Then again, I do have a really bad habit of sticking with abusive people until I finally snap out of it. Even now I feel guilty for telling the truth out of fear of making my mom look bad.

Sorry if this is a little bit too heavy for this blog. I just needed to put this out there somewhere. I don’t know what to do. If things get too bad with the moving situation, I do have a plan with one of my friends to move in with him, but that’s only if things get really bad. Because my family also likes to stalk people that try to leave them, make their lives absolutely horrible, and force them back.

If you want to know, I have OSDD, ADHD, Social Anxiety Disorder, CPTSD, OCD, AFRID, Bipolar Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, and Autism. I was also forced to stop therapy recently.

--Raven (she/they)

Also, I’m genderfluid and my mom is transphobic but thinks she’s not because she has a trans friend and uses the right pronouns. She, however, forced me to tell my trans friend’s dead name to her and doesn’t accept nonbinary and genderfluid people. Also she really hates pansexual people, and keeps trying to convince me I'm sexually attracted to others even though I'm openly panromantic asexual with her (but not openly genderfluid). And my mom really likes telling me stuff about her sexual habits that I do not need to know (she did this even when I was a kid).

Hi Raven,

I'm so, so sorry you're going through that. That sounds like such a difficult situation to be in and I appreciate your courage and vulnerability sharing that with us.

There's really a lot to unpack there, and a lot of really messed up and difficult things you've experienced. Your pain is valid, your frustration is valid, and your trauma is valid. You should not have had to go through all of that.

Are you able to move in with the friend even if the move doesn't go badly? Are there any support services in your area (you can google "family violence support resources [your location]") that you can access? They may be able to help you find things you need, and if your family tries to stalk you or force you back, they may be able to help you get a restraining order or find ways to hide from them/stop them from being able to find/contact you.

- Mod Allison

#trauma talks #tw ableism #tw stalking #tw abuse #tw CSA #tw SA #tw r #tw incest #tw transphobia #tw suicide #mod allison

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96thdayofrage · 3 years

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It was the mid-1980s, and African American rock ‘n’ roll, R&B and blues musician and activist Daryl Davis had just finished performing a set with his band in a bar in Frederick, Maryland.

As he left the stage, a White man—who would later reveal himself to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan—went up to Davis, put his hand around his shoulder and expressed his approval and admiration for his performance. “This is the first time I heard a Black man play piano like Jerry Lee Lewis,” he told Davis after they exchanged pleasantries. Surprised with the statement, Davis quickly replied, “Well, where do you think Jerry Lee Lewis learned how to play that kind of style? . . . He learned it from the same place I did: Black blues and boogie-woogie piano players.” The White man was in disbelief and refused to accept Davis’ proposal.

Hearing about this incident on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast made me realise that I had been just as ignorant and oblivious as this man about the extent of the artistic contributions of Black people to American music. The moment also sparked within me many questions about my state of ignorance. Why did I not know about these artists? How much more did I not know? How much of the music I listened to was indeed Black?

As an Indian girl growing up in Kuwait in the 2000s, my exposure to American popular music came primarily through television channels like MTV Arabia (the Middle Eastern iteration of MTV) and MBC (Middle East Broadcasting Center) as well as the radio station Radio Kuwait FM 99.7. Hit singles from a range of American artists, including Black artists, were in heavy rotation along with other shows. My favourite was an MTV show called ‘Rewind’ which played classic pop, R&B and hip hop hits from the previous decades. Songs were played in cars and at parties and hummed in classrooms by local as well as expatriate teens of various nationalities who, like myself, were unaware of the cultural and historical backstories of the music.

For example, I heard of Elvis Presley, dubbed the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” on television shows and news media due to his iconic status, but until recently, I had no idea that Presley was profoundly influenced by and “borrowed” from Black blues, gospel and rhythm ‘n’ blues artists of and before his time. He was influenced by radio performances of then local Black disc jockeys like B. B. King (who later came to be known as the “King of the Blues”) and Rufus Thomas (who also became a successful recording artist) and by performers at the Black nightclubs he visited during his teenage and young adult years.

Furthermore, I only recently learnt that many of Presley’s early recordings were covers of original songs by Black artists and that some of his biggest-selling songs like ‘Don't Be Cruel’ and ‘All Shook Up’ were penned by a Black musician by the name of Otis Blackwell. In fact, the first time I heard about it was last year in a YouTube video of a speech that Michael Jackson gave in 2002. While facts like this have now become somewhat common knowledge for most people in the West, my lack of awareness of Blackwell and others like him may be the residual effect of a time in the United States’ past when racial segregation permeated every aspect of life, including music and entertainment.

Dr Portia K. Maultsby is a renowned ethnomusicologist and professor emerita at the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University and the founder of the university’s Archives of African American Music and Culture. Maultsby took up the study of African American popular music traditions in the 1970s when there was no one looking into it as a valid area of research. She explains that segregation ensured that White Americans remained ignorant of Black musical traditions.

“Due to the segregated structure of the country for years and years, White Americans were kept away from the sounds of Black music,” Maultsby says. During this time, many Black jazz, gospel, R&B and soul artists enjoyed popularity in and even toured different parts of Europe. However, within the United States, Black artists were relegated to the so-called category of ‘race music’, an umbrella term—later replaced by ‘rhythm ‘n’ blues’ in the 1940s—used to denote essentially all types of African American music made by Black people, for Black people. The songs were distributed by mostly White-owned record labels catering exclusively to Black audiences, which meant that the White population remained largely ignorant of the large volumes of work that was recorded by countless Black artists. Black artists also did not get paid as much as White artists or have as many resources, and segregation ensured that their performances were limited to smaller venues.

By the early 1950s, however, a number of independent radio stations (again, mostly White-owned) began popping up, including rhythm ‘n’ blues or “Negro” radio stations. Since it was not possible to segregate radio waves, Black music became accessible to everyone and White teenagers began taking an interest in it. Seeing this, the music industry recognised the potential of appropriating Black music and record companies started making sanitised covers of the music with White artists to distribute to White listeners. But as Maultsby explains, they did so while “keeping the original artists in the background, unexposed” and rhythm ‘n’ blues music, covered and performed by White artists, was now marketed to the mainstream White listener as ‘rock ‘n’ roll,’ a term coined by radio disc jockey Alan Freed.

Record companies and White artists wanted the Black sounds and styles that appealed to the White audience but they did not want the Black artist. American record producer and founder of Sun Records Sam Phillips had been looking for “a White man with the Negro sound and the Negro feel” when he found Elvis Presley. The Beatles got their start by covering various blues artists like Arthur Alexander and rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Chuck Berry. Janis Joplin, who was dubbed the “Queen of Rock”, wanted to sound like a Black blues musician and was influenced by Lead Belly, Bessie Smith and Big Mama Thornton. Pat Boone covered ‘Tutti Frutti’, an original song by musician, singer and songwriter Little Richard, and reached 12th place in the national charts of 1956—several places ahead of the original.

Covers like these were made by record companies much to the disapproval and discontentment of the artists. Little Richard, nicknamed “The Innovator, The Originator, and The Architect of Rock ‘n’ Roll” and whose style influenced big names like the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, Michael Jackson and Prince, told the Washington Post in 1984 that he felt as though he was “pushed into a rhythm ‘n’ blues corner” to keep him away from the White audience. He said that “they”—who he does not name—would try to replace him with White rockstars like Elvis Presley who performed his songs on television as soon as they were released. He believed that this was because “they” didn’t want him to become a hero to White kids.

Little Richard’s statement reveals the racism and the lack of agency that Black artists suffered while under exploitative record labels. Exploitation happened to almost all artists in the music industry, but Black artists were particularly targetted as they would receive very little or nothing in royalties. Forbes reports that Specialty Records purchased ‘Tutti Frutti’ for a meagre 50 USD and gave him just 0.05 USD per record sold in royalties, while White artists received much higher rates—a discriminatory practice that was quite common in the industry. Richard, after he left the label in 1959, sued Specialty records for failing to pay him royalties.

Dr Birgitta Johnson is an associate professor of ethnomusicology in the School of Music at the University of South Carolina and teaches courses on African American sacred music, African music, hip hop, blues and world music. She explains that Black artists were not protected by copyright laws and would often have their music recorded and sold by record companies without proper contracts—in other words, their music would get stolen.

“Back in the day, there was no expectation that the Black artist could fight someone in court even though some of them did,” Johnson says. “If they didn’t have the copyright stolen from them, the record companies would own the music [instead of] the artists, and [the artists] wouldn’t know it because a lot of the time, they wouldn’t have the legal know-how to recognise what was happening in contracts. They wouldn’t get paid royalties . . . even though they were due royalties.”

While this exploitation of Black artists continued, in the late 1950s, after the development of smaller and more portable transistor radios, a wider audience of White teenagers began listening to Black radio stations. This new generation no longer had to depend on the family’s devices and gained more autonomy over what and who they listened to. “Young White people, who would become the hippies of the ‘60s, are the generation of people who started to press for their freedom . . . to [listen to] what they wanted to hear,” Johnson explains.

Listeners who heard the originals would call up the radio or go down to their local record store and ask for the originals, and record companies had to start supplying to demands to stay relevant in the market. “The covers made money but didn’t last long,” Johnson says, “because young White people no longer wanted the covers, the fake versions, the copies.”

The problem was that cover bands and artists tended to simply do whatever the producers asked them to do, which was usually to copy the original artist’s sound, style and moves, and more often than not, it made for bland and inauthentic renditions of the originals. The covers lacked the authenticity that Black artists conveyed in their performance and the young audience who had heard the authentic versions could see this. “They knew what the good music sounded like—it was almost like they understood... they may not have understood the racial dynamics of it, but they knew [the real thing from the fake],” Johnson says.

Moreover, artists who did covers were performing in styles that were foreign to them. “It was outside of their tradition; it was outside of their aesthetics; [and] they couldn’t bring the same excitement to it sometimes,” she explains. The music, performance and singing style had characteristic elements such as polyrhythms (layering of multiple rhythms), call-and-response, dance and improvisation—elements rooted in traditions that were brought to the United States by enslaved West and Central Africans between the 18th and 19th centuries. More importantly, the lyrics of songs by Black artists reflected the unique social customs, trends and living conditions of Black people, and these were not fully understood by people covering the songs. As a result, “[the covers] couldn’t compete with the real thing,” Johnson says.

Maultsby explains that due to the increasing popularity of the originals, record labels soon began recording more Black artists. However, she says, they watered down or “temper[ed] [their] heavy gospel-oriented sound” to make it more palatable for the White audience, and “one way they did [that] in the ‘50s and into the early ‘60s was to use pop production techniques” which meant a “background of strings and backup singers that sounded more White—concert-type singers—to soften the more raspier, emotional sound of the Black singer.”

By the 1980s, Black music gained exposure to an even wider international audience through television channels like MTV as well as broadcasts of live performances. Throughout the 1980s and ‘90s, collaborations between interracial duos were used as a mass-marketing strategy to increase the reach of Black artists and pop production continued to be used to “soften the Black sound.” Record companies also paired up White artists with Black producers to achieve that ever-popular Black sound.

“Thus, more White artists embodying or imitating aspects of the Black style made it acceptable and soon . . . that Black sound began to define the American sound,” Maultsby explains. However, this imitation and dilution meant that people could never experience authentic Black music.

According to Maultsby, who helped pioneer the academic study of African American popular music, the way non-African Americans experience African American music, even in the United States, is from the perspective of an outsider, and this applies to the international audience as well.

“By and large, within African American communities, music is created as a part of everyday life . . . music is a part of our lived experience,” Maultsby explains. “When that music is then taken out of that context and placed in the music industry, it becomes a commodity for mass dissemination, and it takes on a different meaning and a different function.”

She explains that the live performances of legendary artists like Aretha Franklin or James Brown were very different from the studio-recorded performances because the records were “mediated so that [they] fit a certain format that [could] appeal to a broader audience.”

“Record labels didn’t like recording performances live because they felt the audience interaction would interfere with the performance,” she says. “But that audience interaction [was] very much a part of the way Black music is created and experienced.

The writing and coverage of Black music both in and outside of the United States also did a poor job of representing its true essence. As Maultsby explains, White journalists who covered Black music would write about it from a White perspective rather than a Black one.

“A lot of misconceptions early on had to do with the music being reported by White journalists who reported through the lens of White audiences,” Maultsby says. “When journalists wrote about Black music . . . in the US—and this carried on to Europe and the rest of the world [including] Asia [and the] Middle East—they wrote about it through their observation of performances in venues with predominantly White or all-White audience, or in general, non-Black audiences . . . they did not go into the Black community to see how the music was performed and experienced.”

Writing about Black music and culture from a Eurocentric or White point of view has resulted in early Black contributions to popular music being misrepresented as well as erased from the general consciousness. Black culture was appropriated, exploited and diluted and in the process, consumers were left with watered down, commodified versions of the art that did not represent the people that were at the heart of creating it, and its after-effects have carried over to the present-day, among non-Western consumers.

Black contributions to music are also rarely discussed in mainstream media, which is largely controlled by White executives.

“The influence of Black music in a lot of American music are things that only get discussed in classes or documentaries—sometimes award shows—but mostly in formal environments, unless you’re from that tradition,” says Johnson. “[Artists like] Steven Tyler . . . [have] said, ‘I grew up listening to the blues; I love the blues’ . . . but the people who promote him don’t really have any interest in [promoting that] narrative because it’s really about selling a personality when you think about how the music industry works.”

She explains that though most people are analytically aware that the United States is a diverse country, images that are promoted by American companies are very White-centric. What is sold to the rest of the world as “American” is usually centred around Whiteness, whether that’s through music, movies, television or other forms of entertainment.

“The outside world sees a very limited package and predominantly a White or Eurocentric image . . . people look at America and assume this is basically a White space even though we have all this diversity—we’ve always had this kind of diversity of culture,” remarks Johnson, who often does not get recognised as Black American when she travels internationally. “When I go to China, they don’t assume I’m American. When I go to Thailand, they don’t assume I’m American."

Even though a lot has changed for Black musicians and artists in the United States since its “race music” days, the impact of racism and Eurocentrism lingers on and affects the way Gen Z as well as millennials outside of the United States, like myself, understand pop music in the 21st century. Many tributes have been paid to pioneering and legendary Black artists in award shows, documentaries and biopics and their contributions have been studied academically by scholars like Maultsby and Johnson, but my awareness of Black music and culture as a non-American is not only limited by what’s been given to me in the media, but also by what’s been left out of the conversations around popular music. How do we change this?

As Maultsby expresses, it starts simply with acknowledgement—just like a symphony orchestra’s roots are acknowledged to be European no matter who performs it or how it is reinterpreted in different cultures, or how a sitar is recognised as an Indian musical instrument whether it’s played in a jazz performance or a symphony orchestra, we need to continue to learn and acknowledge the Black roots of the music even when it has a local interpretation or variation.

“We all know [the symphony orchestra] comes from Europe; there’s no question there; we don’t try to claim it as our own conception, but we do participate in that culture. That’s how we have to think about Black American culture,” she says.

We need to recognise African American music for its role in shaping Western popular music, and understand what constitutes Black musical traditions and what differentiates it from the rest of the world, rather than generalise it as merely American music. And while music may have transcended cultural and racial boundaries, transcendence should not come at the price of obscuring and erasing the source.

“It’s fine as long as we keep in mind the source of that music,” Maultsby says. “We can say it transcends race—it just shows how influential Black has been internationally—but at the same time, we don’t need to erase the group that created the music and make Black people invisible in terms of their contributions. And that happens a lot.

“If we are not reminded that Black people are the ones that created the music you love, we question their contributions to society and to the world. We shouldn’t need to be reminded every day. It belongs in our consciousness.”

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